Scapegoats Quotes

“For several decades, New Testament commentators have emphasized how vital it is to read Mark’s Gospel with an awareness of its political undertones and the first-century context in which Mark wrote. Neither Jesus’s Galilean audience nor Mark’s Roman or Syrian audience can be understood apart from their social realities of empire and imperial power.5 Against this backdrop, Mark presents Jesus as a prophet in the vein of Moses and Elijah, leading a peaceful but powerful revolution in Israel’s village communities against those who dominated over them, both in Jerusalem and in Rome. The political message in Mark is subtle but effective. It begins when the narrator introduces the story, “The beginning of the good news (euangelion) of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Normally, it was Rome that heralded the good news or gospel of Caesar, and Roman citizens were supposed to revere their emperor as a divine man or a “son of a god.”6 Mark, though, announces the good news of the Messiah (Christ) and boldly identifies not Caesar but Jesus with the title “Son of God.” This sets the tone for the rest of his story. Mark then spends the first section of his Gospel portraying Jesus’s ministry as one that works against the worldly powers of domination—spiritual, physical, social, and political—and brings healing and inspiration to those who are oppressed.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“How can we follow Jesus and the Samaritan woman in making outsiders into insiders? In John 4, Jesus defied social conventions and the popular understanding of sin and purity and asked an outsider for a drink of water. He put himself in a vulnerable position, acknowledging his own need and opening himself up to criticism and condemnation from his faith community. We can do the same thing with social and ethnic outsiders. I think most of us who grew up in the church learned unconsciously to assume a position of superiority toward outsiders. We are taught that we are the sole possessors of the truth, that we have higher moral standards than the “secular” world, that we are the chosen of God, destined to bring salvation to the masses. But there is hope for those of us who grew up (or still worship) in congregations characterized by closed minds, closed doors, and closed hearts. We can experience transformation as individuals, and then we can begin to change the culture of our churches. We can go about our daily interactions with the awareness that we don’t have the exclusive rights to the truth and that other people might be able to teach us something. We can admit that we are broken people who struggle with failure. Instead of patting ourselves on the back for our church involvement or our superb ethical standards, we can realize that God works through us much more easily when we choose humility over pride and confession over condemnation. We can enter into the kind of dialogue that Jesus and the Samaritan woman had, where outsiders become insiders and we welcome even our so-called enemies into our communities and our hearts.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“In Luke, participating in the reign of God takes much more than a prayer of commitment or a dunk in the baptismal waters. It involves giving up possessions, privilege, and power and casting your lot in with the poor. Jesus is calling us to no less than a complete reversal of the priorities we have embraced under the capitalistic, individualistic reign of America.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. (Luke 12:16–21) The social context outlined earlier in this chapter should help us understand why Jesus has such a harsh rebuke for those who store up treasures. In poverty-stricken Judea, a huge barn of grain and goods could provide sustenance for many suffering people. A rich man who stored up his abundance rather than providing for the needs of those around him is not only a negative example—he is a villain and an oppressor. When Jesus condemns those who are “not rich toward God,” he is reprimanding those who do not share their resources with people in need. What looks like smart financial planning in our American context—saving up for the future when we have extra—is a destructive kind of greed that ignores and even contributes to the plight of the poor. It might be tempting for us to point to the differences between our culture and theirs to excuse ourselves from Jesus’s condemnation. Surely growing our 401(k)s or saving for a family trip doesn’t make us greedy? And yet, the reality of Jesus’s world is not much different from ours—people still suffer in poverty while corporations and individuals build bigger barns and store up their treasures.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“When God reigns, the poor and oppressed will be filled and joyful while the rich and powerful (those content, laughing, and well-respected now) will mourn and weep. The picture is one of reciprocal reality—as long as the rich prosper, the poor will suffer because the rich are the ones who benefit from oppressing the poor. As soon as the rich no longer exploit the poor, the poor will experience comfort. The two fates are interrelated; Jesus is calling out and convicting the oppressor so that the suffering of the oppressed might end. Jesus’s ministry and message indicate that the reign of God that reverses fortunes is not a future dream (only an eschatological goal) but a present reality—one toward which followers of Jesus should strive in their current circumstances.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“What did it mean for Jesus to use jubilee language in his ministry’s mission statement? Scholars conclude that Jubilee was probably not practiced in Israel’s history, but if it had been, the economic result would have been dramatic.4 Every fifty years, land would have been returned to the smaller households or family units, which would mean that clan lands could not be controlled by one or two powerful families. Under this practice, oppression of the poor would have been severely limited. That means that from beginning to end—from “good news to the poor” to “year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18–19)—Jesus outlines a mission that offers relief to the poor and oppressed.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“The problem is not isolated to Southern Baptist churches; it is rampant. Unbalanced power in the church—caused by strict gender roles and a dearth of women leaders—is widespread and firmly rooted in most evangelical churches. The unsettling irony of complementarians favoring a male-dominated structure for church and society is that Jesus worked against such a structure during his ministry. In the story of the woman who crashed the Pharisee’s dinner party to anoint Jesus, Luke highlights how Jesus reverses the positions of the powerful, religious man and the shamed, sinful woman. He lifts up the faith and worth of the woman and demotes the leader from his position of honor and power. This, of course, was not the only time Jesus set men and women on equal footing. When he delayed a healing request from Jairus to speak and restore dignity to the bleeding woman of faith (Mark 5, Matt 9, Luke 8), Jesus gave a religious, male leader and a poor, female outcast equal attention in the kingdom (and equal access to health care). When he commended Mary as a disciple/rabbi in training (Luke 10), Jesus opened religious education and leadership to women. When he revealed his messianic identity first to the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4, a story we will study later), Jesus confirmed that women have equal access to the truth. When he entrusted the message of the resurrection to Mary Magdalene (John 20), Jesus demonstrated that the gospel message of the kingdom should be preached by women and men. In these and many other teaching moments, Jesus dismantles the idea that men should have the sole claim to authority and leadership in society.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“The political policies that make life so difficult for single moms—lack of subsidized childcare, weakened child support enforcement, antiabortion laws, and loss of government assistance—find support from the Religious Right. The family model and social norms touted by complementarians stigmatize single mothers, adding emotional and psychological burdens to the financial ones. When conservative churches lament the “broken family” in order to push their congregants toward the godly model of the “traditional family,” they are not building up the sanctity of the family; they are stigmatizing those families who need their support and encouragement the most. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, God’s people are called to care for the widow and the orphan. We see it in the laws from the Torah, in the prophets’ admonitions against Israel and Judah, and in the model that Jesus sets for us in his interactions with women and children in his context. Families with single mothers are the widows and orphans of our day, and yet they experience a great deal of suffering because of the politics of the Religious Right and the disdain and disregard of many conservative Christians. The result of this idolatry (idolatry of “traditional” family and values) is a heavier burden laid on the backs of our modern-day widows. This is not just scapegoating—it is a lamentable reversal of what the Bible teaches us to do.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“In a previous chapter, I gave a broad overview of the Christian history of witch-hunting. Although this extreme type of scapegoating no longer occurs in its fatal form, it continues today in more subtle ways. We have gotten much better at hiding the scapegoat mechanism at work in our midst. At the heart of the church’s persecution of witches was the maintenance of its patriarchal theology and practice. Acute situations like plagues or storms provided the catalyst for Christians to scapegoat “witches,” but the hand that pointed the finger was able to do so because it kept a tight rein on women, reinforcing their subordinate position. The way to end the scapegoating of women, then, is to raise them onto equal ground with men. Although some Christian traditions have worked to lift the position of women over the centuries, the majority of church history has shown that when women begin to gain influence and power in society, Christian leaders respond by starting the scapegoating process.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“The Gospels expose the scapegoat mechanism because they proclaim Jesus’s innocence—thus revealing the violence and blame poisoning the heart of human society.30 Girard’s reading of the Gospels suggests that it was not God who sacrificed Jesus; it was people. Jesus’s undeserved death at the hands of a violent mob exposed the core nature of our sin in order to liberate us from it. This is the beginning of our salvation from sin and ourselves.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“However, what Girard uncovers in the literature of the Jewish and Christian religions offers another narrative perspective. While other religious myths tend to conceal the scapegoat mechanism by framing reality from the perspective of the persecutors, the biblical stories speak from the perspective of the victim.26 In the Hebrew Scriptures, Israel tells the story of their people and their God with a focus on their own failures.27 They are the slave people whom God rescues, the unfaithful covenant breakers whom God forgives, and their laws and stories reveal God’s preference for the victimized and downtrodden. Instead of keeping victims invisible, the Bible tells their stories: Abel whose blood cries out from the ground, Joseph who is a victim of his brothers’ mimetic violence, and Hagar who is sent into the wilderness as Sarah’s scapegoat.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“When a community focuses their condemnation on an innocent scapegoat, they erase their own culpability and participation in violence by enacting violence against that scapegoat. The society uses “good” violence to evade “bad” violence, or the widespread, reciprocal violence that would threaten the stability of the community.22”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“The intriguing bottom-line conclusion of Girard’s research is that Christianity should be the cure for human violence and scapegoating. While humanity tends to succumb to a cycle of sacred violence, in which we create and destroy scapegoats to keep societal peace, the Christian Bible—the Gospels in particular—presents Jesus as the conclusion to the cycle of violence, the innocent victim who reveals the violent nature of humanity.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“What we discover about Jesus through the stories of first-century victims should give us new insight not only into the character and mission of Jesus’s kingdom but into how we might pursue that mission in our society today. The hope is that by recognizing the scapegoating of the past and grasping the powerful freedom that Jesus offers victims, we can end the practice of scapegoating in the church and imitate Jesus in his love for the vulnerable and victimized. In the end, we may discover that we are more likely to encounter Jesus in the bleeding body of a Mexican immigrant than in the pulpit of a church. Then we will realize why the Jesus story is, at its very heart, a scapegoat’s story.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“My task in this book relies on four main goals—(1) to provide an accessible introduction to scapegoat theory and the work of René Girard, (2) to examine Jesus’s ministry in the Gospels with special reference to victims in his context, (3) to survey some of the ways the church has participated in scapegoating in its history, and (4) to suggest ways Christians can end the cycle of scapegoating today, working toward a better future for the church and the world.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“That is why I have written this book. I want to help Christians read the Gospels well, understand Jesus’s message better, and internalize how his ministry models the values of the kingdom for us. Those are my goals. But I also have in mind a bigger purpose. As we experience Jesus and the people he loves, heals, and champions in the Gospels, I believe it will change the way we recognize and treat victims today. The radical message the Gospel writers communicated about Jesus in their context should help us in our context—it should lead Christians to the truth that God is on the side of the scapegoat, and when the church participates in, condones, or ignores scapegoating, it opposes the work of God in our world.”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims

“I am convinced that people in the church disregard and remain silent about oppression in society not because they are apathetic but because they deeply misunderstand Jesus and the gospel. Some have lost sight of the countercultural message of Christ; others have been misreading the Gospels all along. The result of this misinterpretation is that many Christians do not model their lives after the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Instead, they follow a Jesus of their own invention—papier-mâchéd out of pieces of the American dream and constructed with strips of exceptionalism, ethnocentrism, and false optimism. A large percentage of those who claim to be Christians in America don’t understand their own Scripture; they”
― Jennifer Garcia Bashaw, Scapegoats: The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims