13 January 04
Is Religion Inherently Violent?
This is a question being asked in a class I’m taking here at UC Davis—a class that is going to involve a lot more work than I had bargained for when I signed up. Lisa’s post on William Stafford over at field notes has prompted me to jot down a few things from what we’ve learned so far.
Given that most world religions have their origins in sacrifice, animal or even human (or divine), it’s interesting to speculate. Religion pushes humans to an ultimate commitment, for which they’d be willing to undertake violence (and do, to an alarming degree: many wars and genocides in history, recent and less recent contain religious elements). When this religious commitment gets paired up with a national one, it becomes very dangerous, and much more likely to engender violence.
The language of religion is often suffused with violence (“the wrath of God”); its symbolism, no less so (the Christian cross, for example, is a symbol of extreme violence perpetrated on its founder). Rn Girard believes that religion is inherently violent, because of the notion of sacrifice that is at its core. Its function is to limit violence through violence (so that religion becomes a kind of legal system through animal sacrifice).
The kind of religious violence that seems to be on the increase worldwide can be linked to fundamentalism, that is, a re-renewal of the foundations of a specific religion. The fundamentalist Christian sects that seek to blow up government buildings in the United States share this with Al-Qaeda: they perceive the world as heading down the slippery slope to evil and corruption, and it is the duty of the religious practitioner to “correct” this tendency. At whatever cost, apparently.
With all this it will be interesting to explore how a religion of NON-violence can emerge; how a Jesus, or a Buddha, or a Gandhi can come about in the first place.
A final note: I have learned a great deal about the life of undergraduates in the last few days, in particular how much time they spend standing in line, waiting to buy books, getting treated rudely by staff, and adapting to the whims of different professorial styles. They are condescended to routinely. It sucks, basically. (I’m learning the lingo.)
Ecotone wiki joint post on “Coming and Going” is due on January 15…
Previous: The Serendipity of Soups Next: Coming and Going
Even as a kid, I was always amazed at the abundance of cross trinkets (and this was before Madonna burst onto the scene in the ‘80s!) Wearing a jeweled cross seemed akin to wearing a gold electric chair on your neck. It always seemed to me that people ignored the pain & sacrifice in favor of something trite & sugar-sweet.
Regarding animal sacrifice, I always thought (my own opinion again) that the point of sacrifice was the UGLINESS of it. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the sacrificial altar is gorgeous: covered in gold, ornately wrought. Then the priests splash blood and guts all over it: eeew! I’m sure the tabernacle was a stinky place with all that blood reeking in the desert heat…
Isn’t this the perfect physical representation of sin? Take something beautiful and make it totally disgusting. THIS is what human sin does. So I always imagined animal sacrifice to be necessary for PEOPLE more than for God: God didn’t need to be reminded that his people are sinful, but those people needed a tangible reminder of how ugly sin is.
“Sin” seems a very Christian notion, though transgression is obviously highly tied in with sacrifice. We’ve been looking at Vedic sacrifice—the ancient Indian practices which originated in the primordial sacrifice of the man-god Purusa (and his dismemberment over all the earth, his different body parts literally engendering the caste system). Hinduism grew out of this as the sacrifice of (and to) the deity changed into sacrifice of horses then smaller animals and now, finally, grain: a non-violent offering (though the practice of widow self-immolation, suttee, has not entirely vanished, a means to gain extra spiritual merit). Animal sacrifice has long been absent in Judaism, but there are certain ultra-Orthodox Jews who would like to see its return, provided all the conditions could be met (rebuilding of the temple, ascertaining the unblemished nature of a red heifer, etc.).
A different take on animal sacrifice involves the Hmong ritual slaughter of a heifer and placing of its head and feed at the doorway to guide the spirit invoked to heal a dying child. We saw the video of this yesterday (Between Two Worlds).
It’s all very fascinating but I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with the amount of reading!
I don’t have time to comment extensively but, with my going to Rome, as I am going, you two have given me lots to think about. (My husband, who is already there, found his way, accidentally, into old Jewish ghetto and attended services at the synagogue—heavily guarded, apparently—which happened to be in Sephardic, so he was lost … but he likes ritual, I suppose.)
My older son, soon after his Bar Mitzvah announced that he believes that religion is the source of most violence.
I suppose that my issues with the story of Isaac and Abraham might have had some influence on him … but more likely, it was his own reasoning and stance toward life in general (which was evdient, now that I think of it, from the moment he was born, that brought him to this conclusion.
And, Lorianne, the Elaine Scarry book was an important “inspiration” for a number of arguments to me a couple of years ago …
If we decide that human nature, like animal nature, is inherently violent, than I suppose it makes sense that religion would be too. On the one hand, we might want religion to “remove” those part of human nature that are ugly, base, or even “animalistic”: “Why can’t we all just get along?” On the other hand, I think there’s something to be said for a religious perspective that honestly acknowledges ALL parts of our human nature: sexuality, death, and, yes, violence.
I’m not saying that religion should be pro-violence; I’m suggesting that religion needs to acknowledge & allow a place for all sides of human nature to be believable. If the Bible were as sticky-sweet as the images of “gentle Jesus, meek & mild” we encountered in childhood Sunday School classes, then Christianity doesn’t offer much for “real” adults with more complicated problems.
As much as I cringe everytime a Psalmist prays that God crush his enemies, bash his foes’ childrens’ heads on rocks, etc, there’s part of me that’s grateful that the Psalmist felt so comfortable with God that he could admit ANYTHING in prayer, even anger.
I think this all comes back to the ideas in Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy. Holiness was originally a TERRIFYING thing, the experience of facing something wholly “other.” God wasn’t “nice,” nor did he necessarily make sense: his ways weren’t your ways. More recently, I think we’ve transformed God so he’s more nice, gentle, forgiving, etc. And although I think it’s great for PEOPLE to be nice, gentle, forgiving, etc, I think it’s a big mistake to ignore God’s “scary” side so he goes from being holy to being a great big celestial teddy-bear.
If Jesus (or Gandhi, or Buddha) were simply “nice,” I don’t think he would have been able to do what he did. It takes real courage & strength (both a “spine” and some “balls”) to fight the system, even nonviolently. If you believe in an entirely peaceful, wimpy God, that’s not very compelling. Sometimes it’s great to think that legions of Seraphim with their flaming wings & eyes-
not simply cute little cherubs-are fighting alongside you.But heck, I’m a Buddhist, and I haven’t even started to talk about that yet… ;-)
A survey article I finally finished reading last night by David Rapoport on this subject talks about the sense of millenarian urgency that permeates violent religious sects: that time is running out, the time to act is NOW, and that glory and great religious merit are tied to this test of perfect steadfast faith: go and blow up that wretched godless building, and if you die in the process, God, our God, the God that’s on OUR side, will reward you.
I suppose the latest trend in suicidal violence is far more sinister to secular authorities, particularly the military, than more conventional violence: there is almost no defence against it. Previous defence strategies, almost all of them, were predicated on the notion that the enemy would rather not die (the Cold War was all about this idea of mutually assured destruction). This fact is not lost on recruiters for extreme religious terrorist organizations: they know we’re scared; they have great power here. The report of a female Hamas suicide bomber yesterday is testament to the growing appeal of this form of violence (though not, necessarily, to its success in achieving the purported aims of Hamas) across the culture.
Geoff’s point about people being inherently violent rather than religions is interesting. Older religions, I think, certainly understood this and incorporated violent elements to satisfy that violent tendency, to turn it into religious devotion, to make the group cohere. Religions or sects that have emerged since the Enlightenment tend to ascribe to humanity a fundamental goodness (I’m thinking of the Universalists and Baha’i, here). I would venture to say based on the cursory reading I’ve done so far that this does not augur well for their longevity; indeed the Universalists have already merged with the Unitarians. There is great appeal to these churches in a secular society, especially the “reasonable” tone they project. (The joke Unitarian Universalists make of themselves if that if there’s a choice between going to heaven and having a discussion about heaven, the UU’s will choose the discussion.) However, “reasonable” is not “ultimate commitment.”
A Jewish friend of mine in Santa Barbara said that if there are still Jews in a thousand years, they would be the descendants of the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox—the ones who say that if you are converted to Judaism by a Reform or Conservative Rabbi you are not really Jewish, therefore you don’t have the “right to return” and other benefits accruing to “real” Jews (and, of course, if you’re a woman, your children won’t be Jewish either). Daniel was a secular Jew, hardly ever went to services, and he told me this with a mixture of sadness and resignation. It was really poignant. It was the first time I was made fully aware of the national/religious/cultural identity that Jews experience, something quite alien to me as a variously lapsed Christian.
I’ve gone on at length here because today we start on Ahimsa, the non-violent philosophy of the Jaina, and the starting point for a lot of Gandhi’s thoughts on non-violence. So my thoughts will be turning more toward inner peace than blood and gore (I hope). This is a great discussion, and thanks for your excellent comments.
Wars have been fought for so many reasons religious and otherwise, and crimes committed under the auspices of many dubious causes. And yet it has been the church which was perhaps the largest pressure group against the violence of aparthird in South Africa, for example. Wheareas some people develop the power to influence others through whatever means they can for anti-social reasons.
The tragedy of martyrdom, of course, is that it borders so closely on fanaticism. What’s the difference between a Christian martyr (take your pick of early Christian saints) and a Hamas suicide bomber? The first difference that springs to my mind is the scope of violence: it’s one thing to die for one’s faith; it’s another to die & kill others in the process for one’s faith.
But of course this all is a slippery slope: as soon as you say it’s glorious to die for religion, you open yourself up for all kinds of warped, fanatical views. But it seems to me that this problem is so close to the core of what religions are about, it’s impossible to root out. As soon as you make religion “safe,” I think you’ve taken away that religion’s teeth. A toothless religion isn’t very compelling: it’s bland & boring. It’s the sense of walking on the edge that makes spirituality feel alive, vibrant, and essentially human.
Or at least that’s how it seems to me! :-) Pica, your class sounds wonderfully interesting, and if you bring up half of the points you’ve raised here, your prof will be overjoyed. I’d love to sit in a classroom with ALL of you anyday!
Just at a guess, I would say that animal sacrifice has its roots among hunter-gatherers
in the act of propitiation to the spirit of any killed animal or harvested wild plant.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I do hear strong overtones of ethnocentrism in all these generalizations. If we are the norm, and we are violent, therefore all people must be violent by nature. (Similarly with the argument about post-neolithic religions.) But (as I keep saying over and over in my blog) we don’t know what nature is. We don’t even have a clue! Arguments that attempt to derive norms from nature are therefore highly suspect, in my opinion. Take homosexuality. How often have you heard opponents of gay rights claim that it is “against nature”? (In all likelihood, they are wrong. Either that, or a great number of other species are also “against nature.”) We are cultural animals. Not only is it very difficult to distinguish between the effects of nature and nurture, but that whole debate distorts what may be (maybe!) the true picture. Depending on what you consider important in terms of attributes, random chance (or god(s)) can easily be seen as the single greatest influence on the development of the individual of any species.
But I am beginning to sound like a broken record, even to myself. While I have great respect for scholars like Rene Girard and Konrad Lorenz, the limitations of human knowledge (let alone their own particular grasp of it) should strongly suggest that there is no scholar to whom we need to pay special obeisance. All scholars cherry-pick the literature, which even despite its limitations is vast and full of contradictions. Actually, someone who speaks from a wealth of meditative practice and lived experience, like Gandhi, Dorothy Day or the Dalai Lama, carries far more weight with me on these sorts of questions than any mere scholar (even if the scholar in question is me dear old Dad!).
I think “nature” is just another one of these ideas based on “faith” and that the world as it is is fundamentally natural, whether or not it is violent, altruistic, eat or eaten. I do believe there is mind and method to the universe, but that most likely it is not what we hope and want it to be. Most likely the human race has still not weaned itself from the mother’s embrace. When we can look the world in the eye and not flinch, perhaps then we can better comprehend what our place in it all might be.
Violence is entirely a human-made ideology. Perhaps it’s an effect of the higher brain functions as a result of evolution, or, more likely, simply the way society has developed, and forced us to think. I think most everyone would agree that people are products of their environment, and genetics are very limiting on their intellectual growth. I imagine all of you religious people can attribute this stuff to god, but an atheist such as myself would rather seek out a scientific truth, than rely on some misleading and contradictory passages in a well aged overly-rewritten book.
So, to sort of sum this up: Nature = Nonviolent, Violence = Product of Society.