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The Guardian 06/03/14

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Madeleine Bunting The Guardian, Friday 18 April 2014
Source: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/18/sacrifice-easter-human-experience-christians
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Sacrifice is at the heart of Easter – and of human experience

The violent yet redemptive event celebrated by Christians this weekend has meaning
and a use in our wider society.

For a religion that professes to be all about love and forgiveness, it can appear mightily confusing to an
outsider that the central event of Christianity, Easter, is a commemoration of a violent death (and, of
course, controversially, a resurrection). It is a confusion illustrated by the fact that the symbol of
Christianity is the Roman form of torture used that day in Palestine, the cross. We live in an age when
we prefer our violence on celluloid. We expect plenty of violence from Hollywood but what kind of
religion puts violence at its heart?

How does Christianity make violence a central theme? By setting as its peak event the torturing of its
messiah. The act of torturing becomes a means of transcendence

The point about Easter is not so much the violence as the sacrifice. Arguably, no word is more
problematic in secular Britain. Sacrifice is morally disturbing: how can it be both violent and
redemptive? The awkwardness of this question goes some way to explaining why Easter has become so
emptied of meaning – for most people it's about DIY and chocolate.
Almost all religions have included rituals of sacrifice and, to this day, much of the world's population
still use them. Ancient sacrificial practices have clearly shaped Christianity: priests, altars, a shared
meal, and the frequent references to blood in rituals such as the mass. Some would argue that this
continuity speaks of a deep human preoccupation with a set of dilemmas around the taking of life.
Sacrifice explores this and offers some resolution. Others would argue that sacrifice has no place in the
modern world and that it is symptomatic of a superstitious irrationality.
Does the idea of sacrifice serve our violent human instincts? No, it's an act of redemption. A way to
rationalize the taking of life, i.e. death.
Sacrifice intrigued the literary scholar René Girard, and the theory he developed nearly 50 years ago has
become immensely influential. Put simply – and he is a complex and subtle thinker – he argued that
human beings imitate each other's desires: we want what those around us want. That triggers
competition and often violence. That violence could become pervasive and uncontrollable, so societies
channel it by creating scapegoats to maintain harmony. History is littered with instances of how
societies are united by turning on a scapegoat. Christianity was radically innovative in that Christ
exposed the innocence of the scapegoat victim, and offered an alternative of non-violence, turning the
other cheek and resisting revenge and anger.

What is the root cause of violence according to Rene Girard? The desire to have what our fellow people
desire and have. We share our ambitions just because we imitate one another. And that leads
inadvertently to fierce competition.
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The Guardian 06/03/14

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What is the function of a scapegoat in society? The scapegoat takes all the collective blame of
wrongdoing and frees the people from sins. You are no longer guilty since you have condemned the
culprit of all evil.

What is the ingenuity of the Christian scapegoat? Christ -the scapegoat of the Christian religion- is
perfectly innocent, absolutely unfit to take any blame but yet carries the cross of the sins of others for
their own good. Christ preaches non-violence, no revenge, no anger. Christ proves that the scapegoat is
nothing but a pretext that people use to intentionally turn a blind eye to their own sins.

More recently, the theologian Sarah Coakley has offered a powerful new reading of sacrifice. She argues
that it needs to be restored as a central biological, ethical and theological principle. Far from sacrifice
being an outmoded ritual, it is central to human experience. She cites recent evolutionary theory that
puts sacrificial co-operation on a par with mutation and selection as a fundamental "principle" of
evolution. "Individual evolutionary loss can be group evolutionary gain," she says.
Rather than imagining our genes as selfish, struggling in a race for the survival of the fittest, we can see
evolution as requiring ceaseless sacrifices, small and large, to ensure the survival of the group. For any
mother, this experience of sacrifice has been visceral as she carries a child to term, gives birth and
breastfeeds. The growing new life is feeding off her body: her hair, blood and teeth are often drained of
nutrients.
How can sacrifice serve the evolution of a species? An individual loss may lead to the survival of the
group. It's a slightly different approach to the often-cited 'survival of the fittest'.
What makes Coakley's ideas so challenging is that, as she suggested in her 2012 Gifford lectures, "there
is a need for models of sacrifice in a society" – that the existence of people dedicated to an "altruism
beyond calculation" plays a critical role in challenging, inspiring and provoking the social order around
them.
How can sacrifice serve the smoother functioning of a society? By inspiring people to act in the name of
a common cause. You decide not to evade taxes (individually beneficial) in the name of a collective
benefit, i.e. a robust economy that caters for everyone's needs.
At some level, we are all aware of this power of sacrifice. We studiously attempt to avert our eyes. We
are living in an age of sacrifice on a near apocalyptic scale: a great extinction is under way with
hundreds of species being eliminated as their habitats are destroyed. Looking at another dimension of
this age of sacrifice, we have developed a global economy in which people's wellbeing and communities
are routinely sacrificed for the sake of economic growth and efficiency – strange gods built on fantasies
that allege rationality.
What is the environmental sacrifice that we're currently experiencing? The extinction of stacks of
species. They are sacrificed on the altar of technological development.
What is the social sacrifice that we're currently experiencing? The ravaging of small community
economies and individual well-beings for the sake general-impersonal economic growth and efficiency.
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The Guardian 06/03/14

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This is the ugly sacrifice that consumer capitalism attempts to conceal with its glamorous illusions and
ideology of desire and entitlement, of self-fulfillment and self-expression. Capitalism offers speed,
convenience and choice, but behind all of these lies sacrifice, from the poor working conditions of an
exhausted workforce to the water-stressed cotton fields.

Who is called to make sacrifices and for what cause? It's the working class people that are called to
sacrifice themselves to feed a glamorous illusion of well-being that ironically excludes the ones who are
actually sacrificed.

The urgency of us grasping the importance of sacrifice in human experience must surely be a vital part
of any sustainable future.
Any proposal to slow down or reverse our destructive impact on the natural environment leads to talk of
sacrifice on the part of consumers in western developed economies. Only when we understand how
sacrifice can be a force for good have we any hope of restraining our destructive capabilities.
• This is an extract from the BBC Radio 3 series The Retreating Roar

Is the author contemptuous of the idea of sacrifice? Sacrifice is used by mainstream politics as a means
of persuading people to adopt self-destructive practices in the name of an impersonal god of alleged
economic rationality. Sacrifice, though, can be redemptive if people sacrifice their overly consuming
lifestyle for the sake of environmental protection and the well-being of the many rather than the few
'chosen' ones.