Mourning the Scapegoated Christ: An Incarnational Political Theology of the Persecuted Savior

Since October 2023, the world has witnessed a spike in both antisemitic and Islamophobic violence. Jews and Muslims are held responsible for actions committed thousands of miles away. In many cases, the motivation is that perpetrators’ sadness and anger collide with their inability to do anything about the situation, so they look for more proximate targets. In other words, they look for scapegoats.

Tragically, this story is a familiar one. When plagues ravaged Medieval Europe, townspeople preferred to believe Jews were poisoning wells rather than imagining that impersonal nature was responsible (Girard 1986; cf. Winner 2018). Faced with real grief in the wake of plague and pandemic, but lacking better alternatives, people repeatedly act out their mourning violently, usually targeting those already on society’s margins. Throughout that time, persecution was the object of both theological reflection and, unfortunately, theological culpability.

At their best, theologians have asked how theology might combat scapegoating violence. Here I consider two streams within that tradition: queer theologians’ discussion of the scapegoated Christ and William Cavanaugh’s treatment of torture and the Eucharist. While each identifies an important element in the Christian rejection of societal violence, each fails to wrestle with their view’s limited practical significance either for people not normed by Christ’s narrative (pace the queer theologians) or for non-Christian polities (pace Cavanaugh). I argue that what each stream lacks is a political theology that positions the church (Christ’s body) over and against the state or, more broadly, political powers that are responsible for victimization. The goal is twofold: first, that religious communities liberate themselves from the privilege that might enable them to enact scapegoating violence; and, second, if such violence occurs nevertheless, then religious communities would be formed into people who stand in solidarity with, or even in front of and in defense of, other victims. That liberation and formation requires mourning, and it can draw on religious practices already highlighted by Cavanaugh and the queer theologians, to prepare us to resist scapegoating violence.

Writing in the wake of the AIDS epidemic, wherein gay men were targeted and ostracized, queer theologians such as Chris Glaser, James Alison, and Patrick Cheng turn to the figure of Christ crucified (Glaser 1998; Alison 2001; Cheng 2012). They argue that Christ’s victimization signals an end to all scapegoating violence. This approach gives careful attention to the psychological dimensions of Christ’s persecution and death. It meaningfully speaks to the experience of victims, while offering a warning to those of us at risk of falling into these same patterns and persecuting others. Its healing potential is evident in Alison’s personal testimony. Glaser, Alison, and Cheng demonstrate the way in which genuine recognition of Christ’s death entails a change in the believer: the unveiling of the scapegoating mechanism makes believers unwilling to participate in these systems any longer. We mourn Christ’s crucifixion and refuse to crucify Christ all over again. But what this theory cannot do is speak to a broader world not normed by Christ’s crucifixion. What relevance does Christ have to those not already in the know?

William Cavanaugh’s work is a step in the right direction (Cavanaugh 1998). Drawing on the experience of Roman Catholics in Pinochet’s Chile, Cavanaugh focuses on eucharistic and liturgical praxis as a Christian answer to state violence, especially torture. The Eucharist unites present-day victims with the victimized Christ. We mourn modern victims and re-member their bodies as we learn to mourn Christ’s death and re-member him. Cavanaugh examines three practices: excommunication, community services, and liturgias. Excommunication only works if the victims and offenders belong to the same religious community, as in Catholic Chile but often not elsewhere. The community services offered in resistance to the Pinochet Junta might avoid that pitfall, but Cavanaugh repeatedly characterizes the poor persons served as Christ’s body, an identification not always welcome. Finally, the liturgias—self-consciously liturgical public protests—can teach us how to take a stand in relation to the state but not what that stand should be. They have a liturgical form but lack a connection between their theology and their content. As such, we have not yet arrived at a fully-fledged political theology capable of resisting scapegoating violence not only within a religious community but in the broader world as well.

Drawing on Hans Urs von Balthasar’s assertion that the church is “the prolongation of Christ’s mediatorial nature and work,” I argue that the church must present itself as a ready target for societal pressure, so as to protect other vulnerable populations from persecution (Balthasar 1988). Normed by Christ and trained by the eucharist, Christians “complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24) by suffering for others’ sake. What follows is a political theology that resists convenience and protection offered by society and the state. The church must stand at a critical distance from the regular machinery of scapegoating violence, even as the church remains wary of its own persistent temptation to join up with that machinery. What follows is a virtuous cycle: for religious communities to accomplish such moral formation, they must step away from the mechanisms of scapegoating violence; in turn, newly transformed people will be even more aware of that temptation, and so they will critique both church and state anew. Most importantly, they will be formed into people willing to suffer on behalf of the marginalized, to be imitators of Christ in all his sufferings.

Finally, I close by noting how this framework avoids two common critiques of other theories of scapegoating violence. First, it does not require that an ontology of violence be fundamental to creation and social cohesion (contra Milbank 2006). Rather, this political theology only says that scapegoating is an adequate description for many of the all-too-predictable violent patterns we observe today. Second, this approach does not reinscribe violence by acquiescing to it. As Cavanaugh shows, Eucharistic mourning can be an effective tool for resistance. Instead, this view avoids future violence by teaching people to mourn constructively rather than looking for a new scapegoat.