Have you ever thought that religion, despite all its claims, is really in the business of scapegoating?

Why is it that goodness is always defined against badness? And those who claim to be “saved,” are all too ready to damn the “wicked” to hell. How can religious groups, Christian, Muslim or Jewish, claim to offer salvation when they continue to be so divisive? When I look at all the centuries of religious rhetoric on the part of the various traditions, I can’t help but think that scape- goating is one of the oldest games in the book and probably the root of many of the world’s problems.

Imagine my surprise when Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, and spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, actually admits that scapegoating is the problem:

“The claim of Christianity is both that this mechanism [scapegoating] is universal, ingrained in how we learn to behave as human beings and that it is capable of changing.”

In a statement given on Easter Day 2008 [Click here] Williams says that “the Easter story can help humanity escape a lethal cycle of fear and resentment.”

It seems that Williams wants to challenge our common assumptions: “the alarming thing is that anyone should think that the story of Jesus’ death is a story about the triumph of bad men over good ones, with the implication that if we’d been there we would have been on the side of the good ones.”

In effect Williams is saying that none of us get to claim “goodness” at the expense of someone else! So for instance, instead of using the Bible to point the finger at others, Williams points the finger at our universal tendency to scapegoat. The real sin, Williams makes clear, is one that each and every one of us is guilty of:

“Much more importantly, the entire message of the Bible on this point is that the problem begins with us, not them. Jesus is killed because people who think they are good are in fact trapped in self-deception and unable to get out of the groove of their self-justifying behavior.”

“It breeds a mentality that always seeks to mirror the one who is threatening you. It generates the ‘zero-sum game’ that condemns so many negotiations to futility.”

Exposing the human tendency to blame others is not necessarily an earth shattering revelation. For Williams, however, scapegoating is more than just a blame game. In fact, his understanding of scapegoating is influenced by one of my favorite contemporary thinkers to whom he makes reference:

“In recent years, a number of Christian writers, inspired by French critic and philosopher René Girard [learn more], have stressed with new urgency how the Bible shows the way in which groups and societies work out their fears and frustrations by finding scapegoats.”

Girard who is famous for his theory of scapegoating, is concerned with scapegoating that occurs at a unconscious level. In an interview Girard says that “conscious scapegoating is a modern parody of this scapegoating which is of the order of propaganda.” [Link to Interview]

In his book, The Scapegoat [Link], Girard explains that scapegoating occurs in moments of cultural crisis, when people feeling powerless are “disconcerted by the immensity of the disaster [whatever that might be] but never look into natural causes.” Instead there is a strong tendency to explain the crisis by moral causes. “But, rather than blame themselves, people inevitably blame either society as a whole, which costs them nothing, or other people who [they perceive as] particularly harmful for easily identifiable reasons,” but who are, for all intents and purposes, innocent. [René Girard, The Scapegoat, 14]

Crisis creates anxiety which, if not directed onto a scapegoat, may actually break out into uncontrolled violence or lead to some sort of political or social upheaval. We can find numerous examples throughout history, when rising tensions which threatened to tear society apart were redirected onto a single person, a minority or religious group: i.e., the Inquisition or the lynching of black men in the South. The death of the scapegoat has a cathartic effect, producing a period of peace and reconciliation for those who might otherwise have been at each other’s throats.

Girard says that in the moment when the crowd yelled “Crucify him!” the Roman authorities, the Jewish leaders, and the people were all united against a single scapegoat; their prior differences were dissolved (Girard, The Scapegoat, 115). Rejected by everyone, even his own disciples, the Gospels expose once and for all the true role of the victim, who despite all the charges against that person, is always innocent.

This explains why war, despite all the best arguments against it, continues. Because it has the power not only to unify people around a common cause, but to redirect the mounting tensions within our own borders onto a foreign “enemy”. “Worst of all, Williams says, “it gives a fragile society an interest in keeping some sort of external conflict going. Consciously or not, political leaders in a variety of contexts are reluctant to let go of an enemy who has become indispensable to their own stability.” For instance, as economic crisis in the U.S. deepens, as racism persists, and the divide between the rich and the poor grows ever wider, people may become more and more anxious. In response our government may be increasingly tempted to redirect those tensions onto another country: Iraq or possibly Iran.

The truth that the Gospels expose, is that Iraq, Iran, gays or even terrorists are not responsible for the problems that plague this country.

As the role of scapegoating becomes more evident, we in turn may be tempted to blame George Bush or even the military for all the scapegoating. But pointing the finger at the politicians will only perpetuate the problem and in fact becomes just another form of scapegoating. Every American is to one degree or another complicit with scapegoating at a national level. The point is, when we become conscious of our unconscious motivations which lead us to scapegoating we are in a position to reject scapegoating once and for all. Girard says that “history, for better or worse, is inseparable from the revelations of the Gospel.” Meaning that it is becoming more and more difficult to believe first, that the scapegoat is guilty and second, that the leaders or politicians are the only ones with blood on their hands. As Rowan Williams says, “the New Testament invites every reader to recognize this in himself or herself.”

“For many of our contemporaries, the Christian message is either a matter of unwelcome moral nagging or a set of appealing but finally irrelevant legends. If it has a place in our public life or our national institutions, it is on the basis of a slightly grudging recognition that ‘it does a lot of good work’ and represents something about continuity with our past.”

“But what if,” as Williams says, “the Christian story offered more than this? What if it proposed a way of understanding some of the most pervasive and dangerous mechanisms in human relationships, interpersonal or international?”

What most intrigues me about Rowan Williams’ statement is the idea that whether or not people “grasp what is meant by the resolution that the Christian message offers.” It is at least “possible that they will see the entire scheme as a structure within which they - we - can understand some of what most lethally imprisons us in our relationships, individual and collective.” This allows me to envision an approach to salvation free of divisiveness.

The revelation of the scapegoat actually liberates us from the blame game. As Girard says, Jesus’ words in Luke 23:34 which reveal the unconscious nature of scapegoating: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing,” are at the same time words of universal forgiveness. Likewise Peter says in the Acts of the Apostles “And now friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.” (Acts 4:17) As we become increasingly aware that we are all participants in scapegoating, we should not use that knowledge to punish ourselves or to condemn others. Rather, Jesus’ death on the cross exposes our guilt, but through the very act of forgiveness. For since no individual or group deserves to be the next scapegoat, we, despite the fact that we are all complicit, are all innocent. [See Girard, The Scapegoat, pg. 110-111.]

In a world of growing tensions, could anything be more relevant? I can say for myself, as someone who was not raised in the church, that this is precisely what attracts me to Christianity. -Sue Wright