Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

JOEL HODGE    

Vulnerability, Imagination & Christ’s Body

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This paper will examine how secularism and tolerance form part of the "imagination" of the State and as such is part of the State’s effort to monopolise violence and maintain control over against other groups like the Church. The paper will draw on the work of cultural anthropologist and literary-critic, René Girard, as well as the American political theologian, William Cavanaugh, and philosopher, Charles Taylor. By locating modern secularism within a Christian discourse (as Girard and Taylor do) and retracing its history and the roots of its social imagination before the Enlightenment (as Cavanaugh and Taylor do), I argue that the State, under the modern guise of secularism, has appropriated an anthropological and theological imagination to lay its supernatural claims to power. Secularism is an integral development of the Western nation-state as it guarantees the control of the State over a multitude of groups and beliefs. The secular nation-state establishes a social discipline and legitimacy through its claim to be the only legitimate and effective body in dealing with religious and other conflicts, including in protecting its citizens and those being victimised (often by itself claiming divine authority). In the paper, I make reference to some of my doctoral research on East Timor .  

René Girard has developed what is called the “mimetic insight” which posits that humans desire according to the desire of another. This mimetic desire can lead humans into rivalry over common objects of desire. The build-up of these rivalries results in cultural breakdown. Girard (1986, 1987 & 2001) says this cultural breakdown is resolved by the accumulation of rivalries (“all against all”) being cast onto a victim (“all against one”) through the unanimous imitation of an accusation that results in expulsion or murder. Girard calls the process where a victim is accused by a mob and is expelled or killed “the scapegoat mechanism” or “the victimage mechanism.” The unification of desire by scapegoating a victim produces a newfound cultural unity and order built on the lie of unanimous violence.  

Through his literary and anthropological analysis, Girard shows that human cultures keep a precarious balance between their warring members and these members’ conflicting desires. The modern manifestation of this cultural balance is the nation-state. According to a Girardian analysis, it can be seen that the State provides some security from generalised violence in a manner typical of violent sacrificial structures by periodically unifying its isolated members against scapegoats (giving rise to sacrificial rituals, myths and laws). In this way, the State’s nationalistic basis is built on an expulsion of certain “others”, most especially what is regarded as “religion”. Charles Taylor’s identification of the secular view that the modern State has a “self-sustaining social order” is part of the exclusion of God and religion, which are not needed to guarantee peace and order (Abbey, 2000, 205).[1] This new view of order itself comes from a Christian critique of the sacred, sacrificial gods that has been appropriated by the modern State.  

Girard argues that the driving force for modernity, particularly as it has become dominated by secularism, finds its inspiration in Christianity itself. Girard’s major insights that human being is structured by mimetic desire and that human culture is convened and maintained by scapegoating or sacrificing victims was eventually accompanied by a third, major insight: that the Hebreo-Christian revelation, particularly as it is expressed in the Bible, reveals the innocence of the victim. This third insight is important because Girard says that no comparable text critiques and exposes the truth about human culture and mimesis like the Bible. Human culture and the overwhelming majority of human stories (or myths as Girard calls them) are based on perpetuating the guilt of the victim in order to sustain cultural order. According to Girard, the Hebreo-Christian revelation definitively reveals the innocence of the victim, which comes to its climax in the death and resurrection of the innocent victim, Jesus.  

Both Taylor and Girard agree that much of what secularism argues for (and against) has its roots in ideas and movements in the Catholic and Christian churches. Girard (2001) argues that modernity is driven by a concern for victims, which it has appropriated from Christianity. Because of Christianity’s widespread impact on Western culture that has given it an acute awareness of humanity’s propensity to scapegoat, the concern for victims has become sacred, i.e., it has become taboo and a cause for violence. Because of its distorted appropriation by the modern West, the concern for victims has ironically become one of the only legitimate reasons to commit violence and scapegoat someone. By this I mean that in Western culture, while it is not “politically correct” to scapegoat a person, it is acceptable to scapegoat a scapegoater or one who inflicts pain on perceived “victims”, e.g., pedophiles, murderers, mobsters, criminals and war-mongers. Even the Church is excluded from public debate because it is regarded as a dinosaur from the past that continues to victimise the same-old groups, such as women, homosexuals, Jews, heretics, indigenous peoples and other religions. Thus, the Church cannot be trusted to safeguard its own revelation and must be undermined and excluded because it is not tolerant, secular and pluralist in applying its concern for victims. The Church is seen to universally apply its revelation (often by force), while authentic Christianity and the secular, tolerant State allows open and multiply expressions of the concern for victims. This is really an inversion of roles which is shown in how intolerant the State and Western society becomes against a perceived “victimizer”.  

The modern concern for victims has essentially driven Western culture to gut itself by guilt in what Taylor identifies as a process of disenchantment (Abbey, 2000, 203). This process has led the West to give up its own beliefs and cultural practices to allow a multitude of religions, cultures and practices in its geographical and political space. However, as Girard and Taylor agree, the process of disenchantment from violent superstition and myth in the West began with the Hebreo-Christian revelation and the Catholic Church. Girard identifies the beginning of the demystification of human myth and culture with the Jewish and Christian recognition of the victim, which undermines human cultures’ sacrificial rituals, superstitions and myths. Moreover, Taylor sees the process of eradicating the superstition and myth, which had built up in the popular imagination of Western Christianity, beginning with the medieval Church from Pope Gregory VII and the Council of Trent (Abbey, 2000, 203). However, for the modern West, this process of demythologisation or disenchantment has become an insatiable drive to deconstruct any ideology or system. Further, because of an uncritical popular affinity for and identification with “victims” in the West there is a confusion of “the victim” with “casualty”, “the persecuted” and “the oppressed”.  The vagueness and ambiguity in the use of these terms results in a distortion of how we understand violence, and in the exploitation of “victims” and “victim” terminology as a justification for revenge as “retributive justice”.  

Thus, as many have commented, the secular and pluralist notion of a free space open to all is itself a myth. It targets certain groups and people for blame and exclusion. Taylor says that secularism is not only solely defined by “the subtraction thesis” (i.e. the loss of belief, illusion, superstition, etc.) but has instituted practices, norms and myths through its own “social imaginary” (Abbey, 2000, 201-5). The foundation of these norms and myths remain violently sacrificial. The modern secular State still victimises certain people and groups to maintain order. Girard (2001) argues that modern Western culture scapegoats and sacrifices at an incomparable rate (though it is better at recognising what it has done). It is clear from modern history that there have been no shortage of victims and that the State legitimises this on the basis of security and order. Ethnic cleansing, incarceration, war, deportation and other reasons for violence and scapegoating appeal to the need to exclude these “others” who threaten the social order (whether this threat is real or perceived).  

The American theologian, William Cavanaugh, has written extensively on the false anthropological and theological basis of the modern State and its claims to give security and maximise its citizens’ freedoms, particularly over against religion. Like Taylor , Cavanaugh is dissatisfied with the explanations and justification for the State and modernity. Just as Taylor seeks to recover a historical appreciation for the development of secularism, Cavanaugh (2002) argues for a re-reading of history in order to understand modernity and the State. Cavanaugh (2002) argues that this re-reading is important because the secular State functions out of its own construction of history that legitimates its exclusion of some groups in order for it to be dominant. According to Cavanaugh (1998 & 2002), the State creates a certain imagination through its use of violence that isolates its citizens from each other on the basis of a distorted appropriation of Christian anthropology and theology. The State structures the relationships, desires and consciousness of its citizens by positing an anthropological and salvific end for human beings through the pursuit of self-interest (or welfare) under the guise of maximising individual utility (“the state of nature”) (Cavanaugh, 2002, 17). Self-interest is over-riding because the transcendent God is seen as distant and requires human to apply their agency in order to reap the salvific benefits of nature (Cavanaugh, 2002, 17-18). Humans, then, fulfill their divinely-ordained role as sovereign individuals who enter society under mutually-beneficial contracts (Cavanaugh, 2002, 17).  

This anthropological and theological view has definite mimetic undertones that legitimates the acquiring, self-sufficient human being cut off from the other. Cavanaugh (2002, 17) says that, in this way, the “division between mine and thine is inscribed into modern anthropology”. This results in a soteriology that claims humans are saved through a social body who defends and protects each person’s interests (Cavanaugh, 2002, 19). In other words, the State is saviour from the violence of conflicting desires and interests (Cavanaugh, 2002, 19). In effect, this makes people dependent on the State to provide an order in which each individual can be self-interested. The order is protected through the expulsion of the transcendent and its replacement with the human whose end can be achieved through a secure environment of exchange undergirded by a certain moral doctrine of respecting others through tolerance. The isolation of the individual and his/her dependency on the State legitimates the conflicting mimetic desires of citizens, which the State uses to construct a system of exchange held together by transcendent nationalistic fervour that supports its own power. The State periodically unites and reconciles these divided individuals in a nationalistic fervor built over against others that ensures security and order.  

Therefore, the isolation of the individual who needs reconciling to his/her cultural other actually ensures the power of the State. Cavanaugh (2002) argues that the State can promote its liberal anthropology because it has acquired and undermined the way God is perceived and the way humans achieve their salvific ends. Instead of a unity of people in a personal God, modern political ideology posits a distant God who leaves humans with the tools to achieve their own salvation within a contract society. Essentially, the rise of the nation-state guaranteed a controlled sacrificial order legitimated by the efficacy of what Cavanaugh calls “the imagination of the State”. In casting aside the Christian anthropology and theology, certain leaders, peoples and authorities were able to expand and centralise their power to the exclusion of the Church. There was a radical shift in how civilization was ordered as the secular princes usurped the traditional ecclesiastical role as head of the social body (Cavanaugh, 2002, 26). Cavanaugh (2002, 27) shows that this usurpation was not to bring religion under control or pursue the interests of the prince’s chosen denomination in “wars of religion” but to guarantee the rise of the centralized State in opposition to other rivals, especially the Church. The Church was seen as holding back the possibilities of great power over great lands.  

In demonstrating the exclusive and violent nature of the State, Cavanaugh (2002) shows that the rise of the nation-state in the West was the result of the centralising power of the State in opposition to local communities and the Catholic Church. While the “religious wars” of early modern Europe were blamed on religion, Cavanaugh (2002, 20-31) shows that these wars had much more to do with the attempt by centralising authorities and leaders to establish their power and control over lands and nations (often smaller than their own) that they regarded as part of their sphere of influence or as enemies. The attempt by these centralising States to establish control over geographical areas came at the expense of Christianity, particularly the Catholic Church, whose influence and efforts to temper and civilise the European tribes and peoples were usurped. The Catholic Church was accused of being an intrusive and intolerant power-monger, who catalysed conflict against peoples and groups, such as the Protestant reformers. Where in fact certain people and authorities were attempting to establish control and power, the Church and religion were blamed. While the Church had tried to temper human culture and religion, it was equated with the violent tendencies of culture (which included all types of sacrificial religions) as it was seen to be one rival amongst many religious and political groups, particularly a rival to the State. The guise of religious conflict helped to legitimise the nation-state and allow it to establish and expand its area of control by replacing Christian soteriology with State soteriology (Cavanaugh, 2002, 84).  

The centralising dominance of the State can be attributed in large part to the effect of the Hebreo-Christian revelation and the Church. Though the usurpation of local communities and the Church is a result of the desire for power, the breakdown of violent sacrificial structures at a local level effected by Christianity helped establish the circumstances and need for a State. It orientated humans out of their contained, self-centred cultural systems but it meant that the violent rivalries and desires of humans were pointed outwards in an intensifying search for satisfaction and reconciliation of desire, which came at the expense of weaker people. This uncontrollable and uncontained world of desire led some to recognise the power of the Christian community, particular the monastic and religious communities who were able to control their desires through a Christian discipline of prayer and work based on sacrificial submission to God. The appeal of these Christian communities led many to settle around them and ask them to settle and resolve disputes.  

Though the State was to some degree developed in reaction to the Church, this Christian witness effected the nature of State institutions. The respect for human dignity, though gradually gutted of its transcendent core, was central in how political doctrines and laws were developed, particularly in the development of the ethics and limits placed on security organizations like the military. The ability to see humans as unique, equal and able to pursue their own interest came out of Christianity which had broken down the strong cultural injunctions of tribal Europe that saw the group and family of the upmost importance. It also gave rise to the basic division of police and military where the police had responsibility for putting limits on violent behaviour and the military largely took on a defensive role (at least in name). The violent nature of security forces and laws were still evident, especially when they were used for purposes of war, but they also had a strong Christian influence in their formation.  

In this way, the State can be influenced by Christianity and even be transformed and work with the Church. Though the powers of the world may become benign in the face of the Christian revelation of the victim, the modern State and the secular ideology have strong characteristics that contrast to the Church. The modern State, while maintaining order for the good, to a significant and defining degree sets itself up in opposition to and rebellion against the Church, particularly in its belief that it can better protect its citizens and victims. In rejecting the Church and moving away from their local communities, the modern person wishes ‘to determine his own destiny’, though this desire is not original to modern man but follows the tutelage of the State. The State provides the conditions for the human to pursue their own desire in exchange for their allegiance and identification with the State.  

The soteriological myth that the State saved Europe from destruction, because it controlled and subjugated religious faith and passion, was crucial in its legitimisation (Cavanaugh, 2002, 84). To justify this myth, modern thinkers appropriated and distorted the Christian story of primal human unity with God by replacing its transcendent centre with a humanist focus (Cavanaugh, 2002, 15-20, Abbey, 2000, 209). This appropriation was initially accomplished by redefining the human-divine relationship with the divine becoming more distant (Cavanaugh, 2002, 16-17). The individuality, equality and self-sufficiency of each person were asserted in a system of mutual and self-interested exchange (as derived from the state of nature defined by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) (Cavanaugh, 2002, 16-17). Instead of each person being defined by their unique image and relationship with God, they were defined as self-sufficient individuals who could possess and pursue their own interests directly with other humans and the State (as ordained by a distant God) (Cavanaugh, 2002, 16, Abbey, 2000, 208). Further, Taylor argues that secularism denies the human search for transcendence and instead substitutes an “exclusive humanism” that posited human flourishing is an end in itself which could be satisfied by the human’s own efforts (Abbey, 2000, 209).  

The expulsion of religion gave rise to the State’s own faith in “secularism”. The belief in secularism was built through the State’s own myths, rituals and taboos; the three key components of any social order, according to Girard. As mentioned, Cavanaugh (2002) argues that the dominance of the State is particularly built around the myth that the State provided “salvation” and order amongst the warring religious groups of Europe in the 16^th to 18^th centuries. The myth is built on a particular definition of religion that does not include nationalism, and so, legimitises the power-politics of modern Europe that saw the rise of central authorities and leaders (Cavanaugh, 2002 & 2006). In fact, guided by the State, nationalism became the new sacred space to which all must belong and participate. Nationalism became the over-riding discipline of modern Western culture that inducts people into the State “religare”, the “practices of binding”, i.e., the actions, movements, habits and knowledge of nationalism (Cavanaugh, 2002, 32 & 85). In this way, secularism became attached to nationalism and, in some ways, secularism substitutes nationalism for religion[2].

 However, nationalism is not a simple substitute for religion because secularism itself has similar characteristics to religion, most especially in shaping communal practices through certain beliefs and norms. In the secular nation-state, all peoples and groups are subjugated to the control, authority and direction of the State as it supposedly creates a “free space” for all to flourish free from religious and other violence (Cavanaugh, 2002). As Taylor observes, the State allows a multitude of beliefs but does not allow a common or universal experience of faith (Abbey, 2000, 210). Secularism does not allow this universality of faith because its belief is primary: there is no one truth or faith but a multitude that must exist together under the tutelage of the State. The belief in secularism, the subjugation of faith, and secularism’s attendant ideology of tolerance is promoted by the modern State to enforce its power at the expense of groups like local communities and the Church. In this way, the public claims of the Church are undermined as the guiding story of Western culture. “Exclusive humanism”, as Taylor calls it, predominates (Abbey, 2000, 209). Culture is no longer subject to God but to the will of the human-made State. Human self-assertion becomes the norm driven by distorted desire and mimetic violence, which the Church had attempted to bring under control (though the West tired of these efforts).[3]  

The secularism of the modern nation-state has a number of important taboos, perhaps the most important of which is tolerance. Tolerance is a distortion of the Christian virtue of justice (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church & Kreeft, 1986). Tolerance accepts the human’s right to pursue his/her desire but within certain limits. One is able to grasp objects and assert themselves over against the other if that assertion and grasping is limited in its violence. Tolerance is the minimal requirement to control one’s own desires and lifestyle. It does not seek relationship with the other nor require honesty or acceptance but is an undertaking not to interfere with the other until the State deems it appropriate. In contrast, the Christian virtue seeks fair and open relationship with the other based on the submission of the self to the transcendent Other. One submits one’s own desires and wants to the other through following a model of desire that is self-giving and accepting of the other.

 Like all sacrificial systems, the State breaks its own taboo of tolerance as an outlet for unifying and ordering people in scapegoating. For example, the State unites its citizens against those deemed to be “intolerant” (and so intolerable), such as religious fanatics or illegal immigrants. The State does this so to protect its power, order and moral superiority against those who traverse the sacred boundary of tolerance. In so doing, the State exposes its hypocrisy and violent sacrificial structure that feed off rivalry with intolerant people.  

The power of the State to single out intolerable “deviants” is a way for it to maintain order. In extreme circumstances, this power of the State is revealed to be very violent, bloody and dictatorial. In his study of State violence in Chile , Cavanaugh (1998 & 2006) shows how the violent imagination of the State is built on torture that singles out people as enemies, and so, isolates the rest of the population in fear. The State uses age-old mimetic tactics of accusation and scapegoating. The inadequacy of the secular doctrine becomes manifest when the State uses its power to isolate and manipulate its citizens in fear, envy, rivalry and violence. The violent dictatorship of the State becomes clear in the raw circumstances of crisis and violence. In Girardian terms, the State is at base a legitimised mob that directs its citizens in fear and frenzy. The ultimate arbiter of the State (and any violent social order) is death and its tools are torture and violence directed against victims who are charged as enemies of the State:

Torture plays out the dream of a certain kind of state, the production of a type of power/knowledge which I will call the imagination of the state. To speak of imagination is not, of course, to imply that state power is “merely imaginary,” a disembodied thought. The imagination of the state has a tremendous power to discipline bodies, to habituate them and script them into a drama of its own making. The Chilean torture apparatus, therefore, should not be seen simply as a response to a particular type of threat against the state. Torture is rather both the production of that threat and the response to it, and thus the ritual site at which the state produces the reality in which its pretensions to omnipotence consist (Cavanaugh, 1998, 31).

 The violence of the state is “the ritual site” that creates and sustains its very existence and legitimacy by the mimetic unity and power it catalyses. The state creates mimetic binary systems of friend-enemy to legitimise its institutionalised system of violence. According to Cavanaugh (1998, 206), “torture creates fearful and isolated bodies; bodies docile to the purposes of the regime.”  

The absence of the transcendent to structures desire, power and order without violence has left the State and its citizens without meaning or truth to protect or guide them. By denying the primal unity of humanity with God as one inter-connected Body, humans become many bodies in a State that “conquers and divides” (Cavanaugh, 2002, 9-20). In the most extreme circumstances, the State uses violence and torture to secure its power (like in Chile or East Timor) and, in its everyday affairs, it forms its citizens to seek their own desires tolerantly, i.e., in concealed and controlled contempt for the other that is restrained until the appropriate outlet is given by the state to vent built-up rivalries and violence (Cavanaugh, 1998).  

The State and Tolerance

In the modern nation-state, tolerance has become a powerful regulating force. Like religion, it habituates people to certain behaviours and imagination. Tolerance particularly instructs people in regards to religion and “religious people”. It is a category in the West that separates non-religious people from religious people. Religious people are generally regarded as crossing the boundaries of what is tolerable behaviour: they are emotive; single-minded; extremist; inflexible; and, ultimately, intolerant; meaning they are uncontrollable and intolerable. Religious people have certainty of belief and action in an age of uncertainty that  is turning away from its quest for truth to seek comfort, security, money and power. What is intolerable, then, is that religious people show to us what we have given up on: the search for truth and fulfilment. In giving up this search for meaning and truth, we have given up on having our being and desires redeemed.  

Now, certainly some “religious people” do cross the boundaries of taboo into violence and death. This is our other fear: that these religious people will continue to terrorise us by showing us violence and death. We associate them with the violence and attribute the cause to them because they do not stick to the bounds of what is tolerable. Yet, as Cavanaugh shows, what is regarded as “religion” and “religious” compared to non-religion is not easily definable. In fact, its lack of definition lends itself to be exploited by those who wish to label some as intolerant and “religious”. Cavanaugh further says that what is religious cannot be separated from other forms of belief and imagination such as the nation and nationalism. He says that in taking a survey of Americans, for example, most would be willing to kill for their nation but not for their religion. Therefore, the roots of violence are not to be found in religion and belief in themselves but in more complex and underlying motivations.

 From a Girardian perspective, these underlying motivations can be identified as mimetic rivalries that come about in the conflict over common objects of desire: most importantly, power and victory. The battle to assert the State is to legitimate mimetic rivalry in a certain form of belief that seeks victory: “I want to win! I should win!” Why do we want to win? Because the other has what we want. What do we really want? We want being; we want life; we want fulfilment. We envy the other for his perceived “ontological density” (de Lubac). Tolerance tries to mediate this distorted belief based on envy and pride. Nationalisms and religions are placed in competition with each other. Religion, instead of being true to its mission of starting new forms of communion free from rivalry and violence, is subjected to nationalism and the marketplace of competition. The State, then, must mediate and use the distorted desires and beliefs of the population and project them onto a certain minority who are particularly “religious”, or in other words, who want to win over against “us”. It is not that those who are regarded as “religious extremists” do not pose a threat some or all of the time but it is that religion is causative of violence that is at issue which provides a cover for the State to act. 

The Eucharist & Vulnerability

We may receive a clearer idea of what tolerance is by looking at what it is meant to be. Tolerance acts like a virtue or as “religio”, i.e., habits of life aiming toward the good (Cavanaugh, 2002, 32 Catechism, 1833). Tolerance is a habit that seeks to isolate humans from each other in an attempt to control rivalry and envy. It is a distortion of virtue because it is a habit that does not seek the good but only a path away from violence that allows appropriative desire to function. The sacrificial system is based on this very movement: taking humans away from violence. But it is ineffective because it does not deal with rivalry and envy but only contains them until another crisis comes to release the built-up tensions against those who are “intolerable”.  

What tolerance is ultimately seeking is fulfilment and relationship with the other, that is free from violence, i.e., justice. Humans are seeking just relationships in order “to do good” and achieve the good (Catechism, 1833). Tolerance attempts to mediate between envy and rivalry, which is motivated by and gives rise to the self-belief in one’s own sufficiency and need to win. Yet, artificial barriers cannot ultimately accomplish justice. In other words, what tolerance is aiming toward is acceptance; full and complete acceptance of the other in which one seeks the other’s good in love. This seems a long way from where we are: in the midst of polarising threats and violence. How do we breach the gap? How do we achieve justice? Christianity gives an alternative answer to these questions than the typical means of scapegoating by opening up a new belief, i.e., a new way for humans to believe and imagine their lives moving toward the good with the Other.

The essential factor… is that the persecutors’ perception of their persecution is finally defeated. In order to achieve the greatest effect that defeat must take place under the most difficult circumstances, in a situation that is the least conducive to truth and the most likely to produce mythology. This is why the Gospel text constantly insists on the irrationality (“without a cause”) of the sentence passed against the just and at the same time on the absolute unity of the persecutors, of all those who believe or appear to believe in the existence and validity of the cause, the ad causam, the accusation, and who try to impose that belief on everyone (Girard, 1986, 109).

The violence and secular faith of the nation-state can be challenged by an alternative Body (or communion) that is placed in relationship to the self-giving Other. The Eucharist is showing that rivalries, violence and death do not have the ultimate say over the victim, and by implication, humanity. Violence is not the ultimate arbiter of human life. In contrast to a distant God who leaves humans to their own desires, Christ reveals God to be intimately involved in human life so much so that He becomes a human victim in loving sacrifice for humanity. Girard argues the exposure of the State and secularism occurs through the anthropological power of the Hebreo-Christian revelation, which brings people to see the innocence of the victim and the mimetic nature of human being in the revelation of the victimised Other who seeks loving relationship with humanity. In this way, Christ inaugurates a new Body of people in the midst of violent and warring humanity through a new self-giving mimesis that breaks through the secular (dis-)belief and false imagination of mimetic violence and individual desire.  

Christ, then, forms the beginning point for a different imagination based in the Eucharistic remembering of the victim. The Eucharist re-members God (as victim) into the human community, who wish to forget about their own sins, violence and rebellious relationship with the Other. The Eucharist inaugurates a new mimetic communion of self-giving for the other that overcomes humanity’s violent sacrificial culture, which seeks to build identity over against the other. In this way, the Christian Church challenges the power of human culture and authority by shattering their violent basis in victimage and death. The Church undermines the myths and rituals associated with the secular nation-state, particularly as the State makes victims through torture, by becoming a united Body standing alongside the victims and oppressed. “We have learned to identify our innocent victims only by putting them in Christ’s place…. The Gospels, of course, are interested not in the intellectual operation they enable, but in the ethical change that they can possibly, but not necessarily trigger…” (Girard, 1987, 202).  

So, what does the Eucharistic imagination look like? The stories of some East Timorese victims and martyrs, who were singled out by the State, helps to demonstrate the Christian witness that can break-through the power of the mob and the State. The strong identification of the East Timorese with Christianity is often linked to their innocent suffering at the hands of the State.[4] The suffering of the East Timorese came to be informed by the Eucharistic remembering of the innocent victim, Christ. One extraordinary example of this was of a former village king (liurai). He was imprisoned both by a Timorese political party Fretilin, who briefly controlled the country during the civil war in 1975, and by the Indonesians. He was imprisoned innocently, for he had committed no crime or violence, though he did support independence. Some in his own village had colluded against him with the Indonesian authorities to have him expelled and imprisoned. He was brutally treated and tortured in prison. In other words, he was an enemy of the State which manipulated and colluded with the envies and rivalries of the people.  

So, what enabled this man to face his sufferings and eventually come to be seen as innocent? I argue it is because of an emerging Eucharistic imagination which the man himself identified with daily mass attendance and his wearing of a large Cross around his chest. He identified with Christ and his witness was eventually seen that way by his fellow people. His Cross gave him particular help during his sufferings as he identified with Christ and learnt to forgive, i.e., to not hold onto the violence of others but offer his sufferings to God. Despite torture by the authorities, he continued to evangelise in a quiet, humble way and he baptised those who wanted it. His faith in Christ and his devotion to the Cross enabled to see beyond violence to gain hope during his trials.  

After five years, the former village king was released from prison, still hurting from his betrayal though he had come to peace with his sufferings. He saw his sufferings as an opportunity to stand with Christ and share in the pain of the world so to transform it. His village eventually acknowledged their guilt and shame before the humble innocence of this man. The living witness to Christ, the innocent victim, broke through the power games, ambitions, envies and rivalries of the village, which the State used for their own power. The man settled with his family in the capital, Dili, no longer desiring to have power. He continues to wear the Cross (he gets sick if he doesn’t) and practices his faith in constant pray and daily attendance at mass. The man’s habits and way of living was habituated to the Eucharist; to daily reception of Christ which enabled him to practice and witness to Christ by conforming himself to his way of living as vulnerable, open and self-giving.

 Another example of the impact of Christian witness in the midst of violence is from the latest crisis in East Timor in 2006 in which political parties and gangs have been fighting each other, a policeman was killed in cold blood, defenceless, before a mob in which certain political elements took advantage. He was supposedly singled out for his ethnic origin as well as his actions during previous riots. However, he and some of his fellows were abandoned by the police and authorities. The policeman was no longer acting for the State. He was sent to his death by some higher authorities in the police and interior ministry.  The local priest and state official tried to negotiate with the crowd. Though the crowd promised to allow safe passage, some in the crowd stabbed two of the policeman, resulting in one death.  

After the body had been examined, the policeman was given a State funeral. In the long funeral procession from the capital to his home in a rural village, some members of the policeman’s family wanted to take vengeance against policemen from another part of East Timor . These policemen were identified with the killers and were accused of not supporting the deceased. The father of the deceased sought to intervene. Emotions were high and retribution was sought. The father went before those who wanted vengeance to plead for restraint. He knelt down before the mob pleading for them to not shed any more blood but to forgive as God has forgiven them all. The mob was shocked. They had sought to right a wrong in the normal course of tribal retribution but the father was not with them. Instead, he defended those accused. In the high emotions of the funeral procession and the crisis, there needed to be an outlet of violence. The funeral procession is a highly charged mimetic atmosphere with wailing, shouting and an underlying sense of retribution and vengeance. Instead of vengeance, the father knelt before them like Christ. The mob could not take action. They were frustrated by the father.  

But why did the mob stop before the father? They not only respected him as a family member but they were reminded of the victim, though they did not want to be. Their conscience was awakened, however briefly and superficially, to Christ. Furthermore, the father was not alone. He stood with and for those who did not want violence; particularly those in his family who had stood against attempts to turn the deceased’s death into a rallying cry for violence. His witness and stand was most powerful because his grief and role as father is of upmost importance, particularly in Timorese culture. The father actually stopped two mobs on two occasions: once at the beginning of the funeral procession in Dili; and the other time during the procession on the road to their home village. These examples begin to show people who, in facing the violent crisis and the mob, were willing to give themselves like Christ to their death in order to open a new space of mimetic freedom and openness, free from the interference of the violent powers of the world.

 Thus, the Eucharistic imagination that remembers the victim undermines the legitimacy of the State’s imagination. In the current crisis in the West, it may seem that the State is not violent protagonist or at least not the original aggressor. However, the way the State reacts to enemies can be seen to have continuity with the cases of Chile and East Timor as everything is sacrificed to the altar of security. Security measures do not harm “the innocent” but target the weak and the guilty. The most notable examples are the wars that are being raged in the Middle East which were initiated under false pretences of guilt as well as the programs like the CIA rendition program. The State continues to use violence to create enemies and foster a climate of fear and powerlessness in the citizen body. The State’s championing of violence helps to empower the citizen body from the fear it created. Nevertheless, according to Cavanaugh (1998), these actions are undermined by the Church when the State’s violent imagination and discipline is broken by a new Body of people who stand with the victimised and live as if “death did not exist” without fear of violence. This is demonstrated in the lives of those called martyrs. Martyrs are the direct imitators and exemplars of the innocent victim, Christ, and provide a space for the Christian community to resist violence “as if death was not” (Alison, 1996). For example, in East Timor , martyrs became a central catalyst and one of the most powerful symbols for resistance during the Indonesian rule.  

In this paper, I have attempted to show that secularism is intimately tied to the rise of the nation-state. The State bases its power and influence on dividing and isolating its citizens, especially in limiting their faith, and allowing them to individually determine their desires within certain limits. The State guarantees its own order based on an exclusive nationalism. The illusion that the secular nation-state gives a free space for people to determine their own selves is exposed when the State becomes increasingly violent and dictatorial. In these circumstances, the Church’s unique nature as a Body founded on the victim Christ becomes a stark contrast and challenge to the State. The Church’s Eucharistic witness awakens and fulfils the mimetic nature of the human being who seeks relationship with God and stands alongside those victimised and oppressed by the State.  

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