Rene Girard on American Fundamentalists

I found this interview the other day. Rene Girard is an interesting thinker and his work on violence is amazing. He was asked what he thought of the religious right in America and responded:

What we see in America today is more the rise of the Republican Party than the religious right. I don't think there are more Christian fundamentalists in America today than 30 years ago; it is just that they have become politicized. Republicans have focused on issues that bring them to the ballot box. And that is a big change indeed.

The problem with the Christian fundamentalists, though not as much as with the Muslims, is their view of the violence of God. They often talk these days about the Apocalypse. And there is certainly reason to be concerned about where the world is headed. But the violence will not come, as they suggest, from God. I find that incredible. It is we humans who are responsible. That, in many ways, is one of the key messages of the Gospels.

The whole point of the Incarnation is to say that the human and divine are interrelated in a way that is unique to Christian theology, unthinkable in any other religion and, in my view, absolutely superior.

Whether in the case of Muslims focused on martyrdom or the fundamentalist Christians focused on the Apocalypse, the old Greek conception of a God apart from man is not enough. That is really the meaning of all my work.