Glossary
Clicking the words below(as will also happen when you click certain instances of them in other pages) will open a small window with a brief definition of the word or phrase. Where it seems helpful, we'll also refer you to other texts that discuss the term in greater detail.
Occasional Articles
As with the Introductory Articles, we will add other articles as time permits or as our readers request. If you have a suggestion for anything, please let us know.
Michael Hardin
Is the Apocalypse Inevitable?: Native American Prophecy and the Mimetic Theory presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
Michael's Essay for a Celebration Volume honoring Rene Girard
Does Peace Make A Difference? - Michael's essay in response to Rick Warren's P.E.A.C.E. plan (which somehow never mentions peace).
An Analysis of Rick Warren - Michael's response to "The Purpose Driven Life."
"The God of Pat Robertson" - a response to Pat Robertson's words to the people of Dover, PA.
"A response to Charles Stanley's "A Nation at War"
"Must God be violent? A Diagnosis and Prescription for Modern Christianity"
The Scapegoat: Christologies in Conflict - A Study in Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Biblical Testaments as a Marriage of Convenience: Rene Girard and Biblical Interpretation
Finding Our Way Home: A Brief Note On The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture
"Does The Passion of the Christ Preach the Gospel?"
A sermon for the holiday devoted to Dr. Martin Luther King. (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
GRASPING GOD: Philippians 2: 1-11 in the Light of Mimetic Theory
Rene Girard and the Recovery of Early Christian Perspectives (Brethren Life and Thought)
The Dynamics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor (St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly)
"EcoSpirituality"
Or What Happens When You Sit Down With A French Literary Critic
Jeff Krantz
Mighty One or Crucified Messiah? Competing Christologies and the Chiastic Structure of Mark's Gospel
There's No Such Thing as the Rapture - A sermon preached at the Church of the Advent, Westbury (requires Acrobat Reader)
Holy Scripture and the Consecration of Gene Robinson - a response to the request of the Windsor Report for a Scriptural rationale. (requires Adobe's Acrobat Reader)
Worship - The Redemption of Desire by Jeff Krantz
Myth and Film - a piece written for the City of Angels Film Festival
The Stations of the Cross - Rewritten by Jeff Krantz
A Dramatic Presentation of the Stations of the Cross for Youth by Barb Fabijan-Waddell
Escaping the Power of "My" - A NonViolent Approach to Stewardship
Preaching Peace in Hollywood: The Theologies of Terminator, Lord of the Rings, and the Matrix
V for Vendetta - The Name Says It All A review of the movie.
Essays, Sermons and Liturgical Pieces by Friends of Preaching Peace
Mark Heim's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement
Kate Layzer's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement (and inspiration for Mark Heim's hymn!)
Alan Cork, "Transformation" in L'Arche: A Mimetic Account presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
"The Wisdom of God's Peace" a sermon by Jim Amstutz, co-pastor of Michael's church.
Girard's Christology - Per Bjornar Grande
Violence, Anarchy and Scripture: Jacques Ellul and Rene Girard - Matthew Patillo
Comparing Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's - Per Bjorner Grande
C. Frank Terhune, an Easter Sermon: "God's Big But" (no kidding!)
Gerald Biesecker-Mast's paper from Theologia Pacis on Pacifist Gospel Epstimology.
An essay by the Rev. John Hill on Mimetic Theory and Catechesis
Either this page has not yet been completed, or we have not found any significant textual issues in the lectionary texts for this Sunday.
Introductory Articles
We will add articles as we are able, or as users of the site request them, so if you have suggestions for additional pieces, please write to us!
"Introduction to Mimetic Theory"
"Jesus"
Finding Our Way Home: A Brief Note on the Authority and Interpretation of Scripture
Mimesis means imitation (from the Greek, it has been pronounced both “mim-e-sis” or mim-ay-sis). In terms of the Mimetic Theory, mimesis is best understood as desire passed from one individual to another. We do not simply imitate each other’s actions, attitudes and beliefs but more fundamentally we imitate one another’s desires. On reflection, this may seem obvious, but for the most part, this imitation happens at the unconscious level.
Mimetic theory the unconscious aspect of this imitation. The broad definition of mimesis used throughout Western thought, from Plato to Heidegger, saw imitation only in terms of type and copy. A painter portraying a landscape imitates what she sees. While true, this understanding of mimesis is not the only manifestation. Mimetic theory asserts that all desire is taught to us, “mediated” by an Other. We only want what is first modeled to us as desirable. Of course, it is easy to recognize that this is precisely the way the advertising industry works by getting us to want what celebrities have. It is more difficult for each one of us to see this work out on a personal level since we would all prefer to believe that desire arises from within us autonomously.
The assertion of the completely autonomous “I”, reflected in everything from the Cartesian ego to modern political theory is, according to mimetic theory, an illusion, a lie. Indeed, Girard traces the history of this lie throughout the Great Literature of Western culture.
Mimetic theory acknowledges that we are
all interconnected. This interconnection can also be seen in the biblical
tradition, in the concepts of corporate personality (the Son of Man sayings)
and in the Pauline understanding of the church as the Body of Christ. Both
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth argued that the notion of ‘image
of God’ in the Genesis narrative reflects a relational understanding,
we are our relationships. No person is an island, no person stands alone.
We are all together in this thing called life,
although it must be confessed that we do not often share life together.
Negative and Positive Mimesis
It would not be enough to state that mimesis is simply mediated or imitated
desire. Mimesis has severe consequences. Have you ever put two children in
a room full of toys only to have an argument break out because they both want
the same toy? Have you ever seen a parking space only to realize that another
has seen it as well and you fairly fly through the parking lot to get there
first? How many Holly wood movies revolve around the theme of two men wanting
the same woman? We either model desire or we are imitating desire.
Mimetic or mediated desire inevitably leads to rivalry. We humans will fight over everything whether honor or money, ideology or relationships and we do so to the death. This is the curse of mimesis. If you posit something as desirable (gold, diamonds, that new SUV, power, etc), and I imitate your desire, we have a problem because we cannot both possess the same object. Someone will lose. Taken to its extremes, this rivalry often leads to some sort of violent behavior in order to possess the object desired.
While it is recognized that animal species other than humanity also learn by imtation, nevertheless, humans lack the ‘braking mechanism’ of animal species where rivalry ends when one submits to the other (dominance-submission). As mentioned above, we humans, in imitating one another’s desires, will go to any length to secure the object of our desire. This, not some primordial stain, is the mystery of that which the church calls ‘original sin.’
When it is recognized that desire is imitated (and does not arise spontaneously within), the necessary outgrowth of this new knowledge is to see that we are all interconnected. We are not so much individuals as ‘interdividuals’ (a term coined by Girard). We are all connected. One does not have to go far to see that this understanding of humanity has more insight than that of the so-called individual. It fundamentally reorients us. Jesus’ social teaching and understanding of relationships comes into powerful focus here. Forgiveness, love, peace, reconciliation are all relational terms and this insight restores the bond between spirituality and sociality that is cleanly separated in the modern notion of the individual ego.
What then does the gospel have to say about mimesis? A most instructive text here is the hymn of Philippians 2:5ff. This hymn which Paul cites speaks of the relation of the Father and the Son as a relation of not grasping, that is, Jesus does not grasp at divinity. Ralph Martin (Carmen Christi) has shown that this hymn may be considered as a reflection of the Genesis story, paralleling Christ and Adam, something the apostle does in Romans and Corinthians. Unlike Adam who engaged God mimetically and grasped divinity (in taking and eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil), Jesus does not engage God mimetically but instead does the Father’s will, listens to the Father’s voice, even to the point of the becoming the scapegoat (s.v.). Therefore, God has highly exalted him. This positive mimesis, where the Son only seeks to do the will of the Father, to imitate the Father, is one of the most important themes in the Fourth Gospel. The Synoptic tradition gives us the obverse side of this in the call to follow (imitate the desire of) Jesus and his Abba.
Mimesis, this imitative desire that leads us to violence, has been redeemed through the person and work of Jesus. Just as Jesus imitates the Father, so we who have been called by him, imitate him. That is, redemption consists of a real alternative; to imitate one another or to imitate God.
