A Nonviolent Culture?

Girard: Evolving Toward a Culture Beyond Violence

Renee Girard[1], a French anthropologist who recently retired from Stanford University, sees the resurrection as a new way to nonviolence in our world. In his view, Jesus was the ultimate innocent victim, meaning a victim of injustice with whom we can identify. In Girard’s anthropology, human culture is founded on the majority building unanimity through scapegoating a victim, and that cyclical process of ongoing violence is both covered up and justified by the mythology of religion. Most of human history, before the death of Christ, founded religion on the “single victim mechanism” which relied upon the guilt of the scapegoat.

The cycle of violence originates for Girard in the inherent human characteristic of imitation, which, when fueled by desire, creates jealously and exploding competition that leads to conflict and violence. Satan, rather than a being, is this process of perverse mimicry which ends in violence. God and Satan, therefore, are the “arch models”: one whose disciples desire nothing by way of greed, the other who models greed for whatever is desired.

The concern for the just treatment of victims in the Psalms and Prophets, Girard concludes, comes to fruition in Jesus. Following Jesus is building non-exclusive communities (including the church) that function without scapegoats.

Questions:
1. Where do we see the contagious cycle of violence in our world? In ourselves?
2. Can viewing the crucifixion as: Jesus showing the world how to return love for violence, be reconciled with our ideas of salvation?

Rev. Dan Geslin


[1] Renee Girard, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning (Marynoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999)