Violence and the Cross
An interview with Gil Bailie, by Gavin Simpson
Like many others today, Gil Bailie believes that humanity stands at a particularly dangerous crossroads. And this conservatively Catholic author, one-time peace activist and University of Tennessee doctor of jurisprudence, believes he can point a way out of the crisis.
His theory is at once complicated and simple, relying on the concept of 'sacred violence'. It draws heavily on the ideas of another Catholic thinker, Stanford University cultural theorist Rene Girard, now in his 80s.
"I trained as a lawyer, though I never practised, worked in the peace movement and for many years lectured at an institution I started myself, on Western literary and religious traditions," a somewhat jet-lagged Bailie explained after arriving in Perth at the start of an Australian lecture tour.
"In the process of that, I began to read Girard and then met him. Everything had been preparing me for assimilating his work."
That work is based on forging an alliance between anthropology and theology, forgoing the old alliance of Christianity and Greek philosophy.
Girard's major insight, says his disciple, is that human culture as long as it has existed has been rooted in violence endowed with a religious significance. And the reason is that this brings human groups together.
Social solidarity is generated by finding scapegoats on which violence can be vented, as represented in mythology through the ages.
The "violence of all against all is switched to the violence of all against one" - at the expense of the victim on which this is turned.
"This process is intoxicating in that those caught up in it don't understand what they are doing. They believe anything that will give legitimacy to what they are doing."
Bailie says that standing in sharp contrast to this mythology of violence and victims is the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
There are still violence and victims but in the Jewish and Christian stories the situation is turned around.
"There is a powerful thrust here, found nowhere else, that recognises the situation of the victim and valourises the victim.
The climax of the story of Jesus' Passion, for example, is the same as the ancient myths but it is told from the point of view of the victim.
"It reverses the markers. The crowd is wrong, not right. The victim is innocent, not guilty."
Bailie says this Gospel perspective deconstructs and takes away the power of the myths justifying violence and scapegoating in contemporary culture.
It teaches how to live without the structures that produce violence. To instead embrace others, including the victims, to reach out in reconciliation and to turn the other cheek in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount.
But hasn't Christianity through the ages been pretty adept at scapegoating its own victims?
Ah yes, says Bailie, but you can't blame the Gospel for that.
Christians, like everybody else, are sinners and don't always put the Gospel teachings into practice. And it is not easy to bring about the sort of changes envisaged in the Gospel; it requires a realignment of our make-up.
"It is a fact that historically Christians have been part of the problem but at least they have kept a record of it and have looked back in chagrin and sought forgiveness," he says.
Bailie also points to the fact that the West has traditionally always had an acute sense of the plight of the victims and has over time set up a huge apparatus for protecting them.
Other cultures, he says, have not done that and in fact if anyone feels victimised, they always look to the West to vindicate them.
Bailie sees the attacks of September 11 by Muslim extremists as an example of sacred violence. Partly it occurred, he says, because the Islamic culture is not as "inoculated against it as the Judaeo-Christian tradition."
"If you believe you can kill innocent victims because you think God wants that, then you are engaged in sacred violence. You can see it in Muslim fundamentalism and the BJP in India."
But, says Bailie, we need an analysis of the situation that is not totally dismissive and takes careful account of the cultural ramifications involved.
"Christians should be listening to what Muslims are saying about vulgarity and the trashiness of our cultural exports. Muslims have strong moral aversions to what is happening in the West."
And in many ways, Bailie thinks they are right to do so. At its most critical time, the West, he says, is becoming morally inept.
"At a popular level there is a betrayal by the West of its own traditions that is massive. There is moral decay, a collapse of the family and sexual ethics.
"We are becoming morally emaciated at just the time when moral vigour is required."
Liberal forces, he says, are part of the problem because they are at home with the moral slide that has happened in the last half century.
And the conservatives are also playing a part to the extent that they are at home with the forces and ideology of the market and the nation state. They have sold out.
By Gavin Simpson email: gavin.simpson@wanews.com.au
First appeared in The West Australian Weekendextra "Belief&beyond" Saturday July 19 2003 p. 11.
Used with permission. Further reproduction should acknowledge source.
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