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.
What is Mimetic Theory? – Colloquium on Violence & Religion
[René ]Girard thinks that the power of Christianity lies in “unveiling” the scapegoat mechanism. Here unveiling is, quite literally, pulling back the curtain to see that, behind all the smoke and sounds is just a small man, pulling the levers. The gospels have the same structure as myths, but an entirely different perspective—a key issue for Girard. In myths we are given a scapegoat whose death promises both to heal fractured communities and to appease the gods. Yet in the gospel story we gradually learn that God is the victim, and that the victim’s blood only appeased humans, not God. Having a real event told in this particular way intends to foster conversion. Though we think of the gospels as telling a story about God, Girard follows Simone Weil in showing that the gospels are as much about us (humans) as about God. And the true power of the story, or the conversion, lies in the permanent alteration in the way we read not only the gospel story, but everything else. Instead of reading through a sacrificial lens, we read through a forgiving lens, realizing that we, both on an individual and on a social level, have been involved in a multi-generational process of victimizing and expelling others. And that God has nothing to do with this violence.
Source: What is Mimetic Theory? – Colloquium on Violence & Religion
Q&A: Oregon Writer Robert Leo Heilman on the Power of Language – The Daily Yonder
We must not now fool ourselves into excessive anger with our words and we cannot let the bluster of others fool us into expressing hatred for each other. Perhaps we should fear our words rather than fearing our neighbors. Robert Leo Heilman, “Of Tyrants and Tyranny”
Source: Q&A: Oregon Writer Robert Leo Heilman on the Power of Language – The Daily Yonder
God is the good creator of all–David Bentley Hart
God is the good creator of all, he must also be the savior of all, without fail, who brings to himself all he has made, including all rational wills, and only thus returns to himself in all that goes forth from him. If he is not the savior of all, the Kingdom is only a dream, and creation something considerably worse than a nightmare. But, again, it is not so. According to scripture, God saw that what he created was good. If so, then all creatures must, in the ages, see it as well.
David Bentley Hart,
That All Shall Be Saved
The Fight for the Heart of the Southern Baptist Convention | The New Yorker
Within a week, hard-line conservatives within the S.B.C. seized upon the resolution and cast it as a threat from the left.
Source: The Fight for the Heart of the Southern Baptist Convention | The New Yorker
Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin? – YouTube
Inside the Attacks on Critical Race Theory – CounterPunch.org
Lurking in this idea of “civic knowledge” is a mandate to consider only land-owning whites as constituting “the American experiment”.
Source: Inside the Attacks on Critical Race Theory – CounterPunch.org
Noah Gundersen – Jesus, Jesus (God’s in the Garage Performance) – YouTube
The largest dam-removal in US history – BBC Future
For over a century, one of the most important salmon runs in the United States has had to contend with historic dams – and now four of them are set to be taken down.
Richard Rohr Meditation: Our Faith Is in Community
On my own, I don’t know how to believe that I am a child or heir of God. It is being together in our wholeness, with the entire body of Christ, that makes it somehow easier to believe that we are beautiful. We each have our own little part of the beauty, our own gifts of the Spirit, as Paul puts it in 1 Corinthians 12. Paul says that the particular way “the Spirit is given to each person is for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Paul’s word for this is a “charism”—a gift that is given to each person not just for themselves, but to build up the community and even society. Since we don’t have the full responsibility of putting it all together as individuals, we can shed the false theology of perfectionism. All we have to do is discover our own gift, even if it is just one thing, and use it for the good of all.
St. John One: One 