In his later work, Girard demonstrated the origins of violence in competing mimetic desires. He also showed the origins of culture in the scapegoat-mechanism, in which an innocent victim is sacrificed to catharsise the community of violence. Religion, according to Girard, originated in these sacrificial mechanisms, but developed in the Judeo-Christian tradition into a denouncing of violence and the scapegoat-mechanism.

Source: René Girard – Colloquium on Violence & Religion