Scapegoating, pt. 1

 Friends, 

I walked out of the first interfaith event that I attended after moving to Orange County eleven years ago. I was torn about it. I had been the president of The Interfaith Alliance of Iowa when I served my previous church, so as a strong supporter of interfaith dialogue it was an was honor to be welcomed with tremendous hospitality at a local Islamic Center. The speaker for the event was a former undersecretary of something in the Clinton administration. After his opening remarks, he made a comment that I thought I misheard, because it seemed to presume that all of us in the room were opposed to same-sex relationships. I had not misheard. He dug in with an argument that one thing that can unify our different faith communities could be to stop the gay agenda in the US, in order to protect the family structure that all our religious traditions cherish.  

 

Please remember, I didn’t know anyone in the room, so I had no idea whether he was saying something with which they agreed personally and collectively or not. I just knew that, as much as I love unity and interfaith dialogue, I have no interest in a unity that comes at the cost of throwing the LGBTQ community – or any other marginalized community – under the bus. So I left. I didn’t make a scene, I didn’t disrupt, I was conscious of the fact that I was a guest and that for a white Christian man to get up and disrupt an event at an Islamic Center would be an act of white privilege presumption and historical unawareness that is problematic in itself. But I did leave. One woman noticed me get up, leave the room, put on my shoes and head out the main door, and she followed. She got my attention, introduced herself, and promised me repeatedly that the speaker’s comments were not how these meetings generally go. We had a lovely conversation, during which she convinced me to try this interfaith organization again. She was right. The speaker’s plea was an anomaly and over subsequent years I have found the Newport Mesa Irvine Interfaith Council to be a positive voice of compassion and justice for our community. So, today’s missive is not about the interfaith council. It is about scapegoating. 

 

Do you remember that movie when all the nations of the earth set aside their wars and differences to defeat the aliens who have come to attack us? The title is, “Every Movie about Aliens Ever” and it is a repeatable plot because nothing gathers people more than a common enemy. Sometimes that common enemy really is an enemy, such as when the US and the Soviet Union collaborated to defeat Nazism. It was an uneasy alliance. One Senator from Missouri (who later became president) suggested as the US entered the war that we ought to defeat Germany then keep marching east and defeat the USSR. Still, the photos of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill at Potsdam are examples of how a common enemy can create unlikely allies. 

 

Scapegoating happens when we create that common enemy, in order to gloss over our real differences. The term comes from Leviticus chapter 16, when the Hebrew people would literally select a goat and impute on it all the pain, anger, and discord of the community – their sins, so to speak – and send it away, taking all of their sins with it. It was an uniquely insightful way of dealing with resentments that build up over time in every community and it steered the community away from its worst tendency, which is to scapegoat others, usually the most vulnerable. We create “them,” vilify the “other,” who threaten us and our tranquility. The Hebrews knew this experience because when they were in Egypt they were scapegoated and became the common enemy of their Egyptian masters. The public act of scapegoating was both a method of social healing and a confession that we have tensions, anger, and resentment, and we do not know how to resolve them. 

 

In the New Testament, the signature line for scapegoating came from Caiaphas, the high priest in Jerusalem, when the council wondered what to do about an upstart named Jesus and Caiaphas replied, “You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (John 11:50). We select the one – one person, one people, one race, one ethnicity – and we impose on them all the things we fear, and we allow ourselves to engage in cruelty and injustice because, “It’s better for one man [race, etc.] to suffer than for us all to suffer.” In the interfaith event that I attended, the speaker sought to build our interfaith unity on the perceived threat by the “gay agenda.” It was clearly an attempt at scapegoating that I am happy to say did not define the unity of the interfaith council. Next week, we will circle back to Caiaphas and explore the irony of the cross when it comes to scapegoating. 

 

Mark of St. Mark