Bringing Mimetic Theory and Open and Relational Theology Together
with bite-sized definitions of both ideas for easy digestion
‣ Check this Out: Upcoming Live Videos
‣ Bringing Mimetic Theory and Open and Relational Theology Together: With Bite-Sized Definitions of Both Ideas for Easy Digestion
👉🏼 Jump Straight to the Bite-sized Definitions
‣ Some Resources for Mimetic Theory and ORT
‣ Check this Out: Upcoming Live Videos
Hey, my pal
and I are doing live videos on Substack. That’s right, starting April 4, we’ll be live five Fridays in a row (except for Good Friday) talking to some of our favorite people. Who are our favorite people? Oh easy: Authors who are theologians. Obviously. Here’s the lineup: 👇🏼˃ - April 4, 1pm central
˃ - April 11, 1pm central
˃ - April 25, 1pm central
˃TBA - May 2, 1pm central
˃ - May 9, guess what time…? Yep, 1pm central
All you have to do to jump in on these live conversations is be subscribed!
‣ Bringing Mimetic Theory and Open and Relational Theology Together
What follows is an adaptation of my introduction from Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open and Relational Universe. I reprint here for a two reasons:
To invite you to dive into these meaningful ideas, sure by way of T of C, but also by way of resources that I include at the bottom of the post.
To give context for those of you who’ve read any of my stuff on atonement, hell, or eschatology. (Oh, I also reprint it here cuz I spent almost three years on this project, I mean, why wouldn’t I reprint it?)
👉🏼 In my work and in this publication, I intend to bring together mimetic theory with open and relational theology, an intention as important as it is challenging.
Important Part: Origin Story
First, “important” in that humanity needs pathways back into better origin stories to help us gain access to better future stories. The past is never just the past, for we constantly tote its interpretations right into the present, bringing to mind that Orwellian line, “Whoever controls the past controls the future.” We are in desperate need of fresh ways to decode what’s gone before, to help us locate ourselves within commonality, cooperation, interdependence, and love.
Even as I type this, Russia and Ukraine (and the whole world) are embroiled in the latest outgrowth of humanity’s psycho-spiritual push and pull that Girardians might label a contagion of negative mimetic desire. Open and relational theology, for its part, isn’t quite as narrow in its naming of humanity’s “push and pull,” although it has much to say about chaotic fluctuations, tension, and resolution as well as power. So yes, whether we’re informed by Mimesis or ORT, in very real ways, Putin and Zelenskyy are representative of all of us here. And all of us are legitimately in peril if we don’t (re)discover a better origin story.
Origin stories can empower or disempower, encourage or discourage, take away from or add to and as such, there may be nothing more important. I’m of the mindset that all military campaigns, past and present, rise and fall upon origin stories. (Marital campaigns too.)
If there was one word that encapsulated the origin story in the West, it just might be capital-O Omnipotence. It is a mother of a word. Actually, it’s a father of a word because, let’s be honest, gender is crucial here. It’s only the most masculine of cosmological fathers that could begin to describe the “All-Powerful God of Power” (redundancy is as important as capitalization).
As the story goes, at some point in the past, this deity descended from, well, wherever “All-Powerful Gods of Power” descend from: A separate time and space? On high? Far, far away? We don’t know exactly, but the point is, it’s separate from us. Furthermore, we don’t really care because we just need Him here to do His thing, variously described as vanquishing, ordering, overpowering, inseminating (believe it or not), or otherwise fixing our broken and sterile world.
Yes, I believe capital-O Omnipotence is our origin story. Except … it’s not a very good story. It would be difficult to find anyone who suggests that absent fathers are essential to good stories and yet, that is the structure of Omnipotence.
Separateness
There are several concerns we might have with Supernatural Dads from distant zip codes, but for now let’s keep it to the problem of separateness:
From a Girardian viewpoint, separateness only serves as a billowing black backdrop of insecurity against which the lives of others, like bright lights, pop out in contrast. These flashing distractions suggest to us (masqueraders of angel light that they are) that the people we are viewing—our models—have no insecurity. We are so attracted to this perception that we imitate them. Why wouldn’t we? So painfully aware of our lack. So incredibly aware of their obvious value. We must have what they have. Even more, we must become who they are.
And suddenly, our model becomes our rival. And so it goes. Rivalry kicks humanity into a new gear, the reckless speed of which drives us to deal with our insecurity by offloading our problems onto the back of someone else. We victimize, scapegoat, and kill, only to repeat it all the next time our insecurities make any noise. It’s in this repetition, for Girard, that religion is born, yielding the surprising revelation that religion doesn’t inspire violence; much worse, violence inspires religion.
Just think: all this instigated, or at the very least exacerbated, by the theological conditioning that God and us emerge from separate places and are, therefore, separate. In the same way that children removed from loving environments might grow into underdeveloped adults, so communities removed from a loving origin story might form underdeveloped cultures.
Sigh… if we only knew we had a papa that was with us. 😔
Meanwhile, open and relational theology has its own take on the problem of separateness. They will say (I will say) that at a fundamental level, everything is relational: micro into the macro, immaterial into material, humanity into divinity, and back again. Separateness is an ontological impossibility. Therefore, broadly speaking, Americanized-christianity, with its interventionist God, coming from somewhere else to order everything in the beginning, only to come back at the end and destroy everything (after extracting a select group of people), is a perspective that is fundamentally opposed to reality.
Open and relational theology offers thoughts about science that align with the nature of reality: where reality might actually be infused with the divine; where the divine might actually be, as the Apostle John wrote, “love”; where love might actually be, as Teilhard de Chardin wrote, “the physical structure of the universe.”
Yes, mimesis and open and relational mindsets are telling us, each in their own way, that where we imagine we come from is important and that the Omnipotence origin story is just not very imaginative. Thankfully, there is something more interesting. More robust and substantive, too: Love. Intentional, relational, consensual, in-it-with-us love. “To love,” modifiying Tom Oord’s definition in his book Pluriform Love “is to act intentionally, in a relational and non-scapegoating response to God and others, and to promote overall well-being.”
Whatever the definition, the point is that love’s strength is not in its powerful ability to cover some intergalactic, metaphysical, ontological chasm to extract us from our hopeless situation. No, love’s strength lies in the astounding reality that “in the beginning,” it was already here. And if love was with us in the beginning, it will be with us in the end (and all the endings after that).
Now, that has the makings of a good story.
Challenging Part: Two Vastly Different Approaches
Having unpacked the first and “important” part of my opening sentence, I now turn to the second and “challenging” part. These two distinct modes of thinking, as best as I can offer evaluations of such things, are world-class theories. Additionally, while they are brought together by relationship, Girardians are tracking the concept deep into psycho-spiritual forests while Whiteheadians follow it into microscopic and macroscopic worlds. In other words, they aren’t attempting to answer the same questions.
Making it even more challenging is that extended conversations between mimetic theory and open and relational theology are rare: needle-like within barns full of theological haystacks. Outside of some academic papters by Martha Reineke and Katelyn Carver, and
’s work (all three very good sources, btw), I’m unaware of any formal attempts to synthesize the two concepts. Therefore, I’m grateful for the questions these theologians introduced into the conversation.So I’m back on Microsoft Word trying to fit these two venerable concepts together, not unlike someone who might be on Logic Audio trying to blend Chopin with Thelonious Monk. It’s frustrating. The music emanating from each artist is just so different. And yet, here I am. Approaching. Considering. Listening. Playing with melodies, chord progressions, time signatures, and rhythms. Trying to create music. Better yet, trying to create the conditions for music to emerge. I’m hesitant. Undoubtedly, as I work through this, there will be some unmusical ideas, embarrassing mistakes, and wrong notes, but then again, how else does art emerge?
My Proposal
The modest proposal I make is that open and relational theology might enhance mimetic theory, particularly the latter’s tendency to be pessimistic, regressive, and even apocalyptic in the most violent sense of the word. Mimesis is brilliantly insightful. Oh, and maybe brilliantly depressing.
Open and relational thinking might give us hope, for, in its Whiteheadian-process orientation, we see, just as in evolution, that tension is capable of catalyzing something new. It’s the inability to replicate perfectly, as Kately Carver says, “that necessitates at the very least some differentiation, some newness, which in turn axiomatically precludes stagnation.” In other words, rather than trapping us, our endless replicating could provide the spark of difference that lights the fuse, that activates the launching pad, that breaks us free from the gravitational pull of negative mimesis.
I continue with the same proposal but also switch directions. I think mimesis might enhance open and relational thinking, particularly regarding religion. As I hope to show, religion, for one of the progenitors of open and relational thinking, Alfred North Whitehead, emerges out of a deep sense of value. This is honorable. And good. And maybe only half of the story.
Religion might emerge from value when it’s centered around healthy mimesis. But the religion that’s been packaged and sold (systematized and controlled) by the preponderance of the super-religious is less than value-laden. I am with Moltmann in this: taking the passion story seriously means considering it “as the end of all religion.” But for this to occur, we need insight into why its meaning has evaded us for so long. Mimetic theory can give us that kind of insight. The proposal, then, is that mimesis might enhance open and relational thinking, particularly regarding religion constructed upon negative mimesis: in other words, the majority of Christianity in the West!
What we need is something new, “something opposed to strong religion,” as John Caputo says, “that reposes on the power of principals and propositions, the prestige of proper names, of properly sacred names, of sacred proper names found in sacred books.”
Something that would capture the idea of loving our neighbor, where loving our neighbor means all humans, the whole of creation, and the creator herself. For God isn’t separate from us. She’s not the exception; as Whitehead’s famous line goes, rather God is the “chief exemplification.”
What’s going on with us is what’s going on with the divine.
♲
And what’s going on with the divine is what’s going on with us.
Fundamental Characteristic of Love: Consent
It’s here at the intersection of the divine and us, in the folds of creation and creator, in the permeability of creativity and the one who partners with us to harness creativity, that I am drawn to love and what I suspect might be its fundamental characteristic: consent.
Consent is the depth of love. The mystery, too, for in consent’s vulnerability, room is made for relationship that can be positive or well, very negative. Admittedly, in the midst of the negative (e.g., coercion, manipulation, violence), the idea of consent is challenging. Would I suggest that love is in favor of such things? Does love, for example, coerce? Or will violence? In a word: No. “God,” as Simone Weil says, “does no violence to secondary causes in the accomplishment of his ends.” We can make distinctions between consent and complicity, and if God is love, S(H)e’s uninterested in using violence.
Even more, love is uninterested in using anything. Using is antithetical to love. Despite love’s consensual relationship in and with all things, including the negative, I maintain its power. It is a power that welcomes and works in all things. If this is true, then in love’s consent, there’s room for God to endure our wrath. I don’t imagine this is God’s wrath. I imagine its our wrath.
In love, God consents to the consequences of our choices, nowhere more so than at Golgotha. But despite love’s inability to control, it isn’t ineffective; rather, it simply finds another way. In this, it is irrepressible, endlessly patient,and powerful.
“God’s love,” as Brad Jersak says, “does not need to violate the freedom or the laws of that which exists through interventions that suspend natural and spiritual order, because love is the ground of all that exists. Love is part of that order—its essential heart.”
Admittedly, consent is not involved in normal God conversation. Even more, it’s avoided. To introduce the topic into theological conversations is like driving the wrong way on the busiest of religion’s one-way streets named control. At best, the authorities (officers of orthodoxy, constables of conformity, patrolmen of purity) will pull me aside and point me in the right(eous) direction. At worst, I’ll be hunted down and hauled away. Omnipotent-obsessive Western Christianity cannot or will not consent to the strength of consent. And yet, this is what I claim, even now, pressing on the gas, not for the thrill of reckless driving but because:
• A consensual God empowers us to participate with love in crafting a more imaginative and hopeful way.
• A consensual God aligns with what science has been telling us: that our universe is through and through relational.
• A consensual God is biblical. It is the only way I can begin to understand a God who, according to the biblical writers grieves, laments, rejoices, and hopes. Furthermore, it’s the only way I can begin to understand the potential for evil in a world that, according to scripture, has been declared “good.”
• Speaking of biblical, it’s consent that seems to inform the biblical messiah. He engaged with consent so authentically that two thousand years later, we are still talking about it.
He didn’t robotically follow God’s commands. He consented: that is, laid down his life of his own volition.
He didn’t react to love’s invitation by blaming God or forcing his own will; ultimately, in a very intentional move, he consented to the lure of what was possible even in and beyond death.
He didn’t demand blind obedience from others. He consented to be a part of their world, particularly those who were marginalized.
He demonstrated time and time again that he was interested in others, even if it meant his reputation would be diminished. I believe consent to be the fundamental nature of God and what Jesus fundamentally chose to imitate as his desires blended with those of his papa.
• Bonus bullet point: A consensual God, for what it’s worth, has been my personal experience. At life’s most painful and absurd depths, I have never once felt love’s coercive impatience. I have always and only sensed love to be a fiercely committed co-partner. ♥️
Beauty
The beauty of consent is undeniable to me. The more attention I give it, the more I realize it influences all my ideas around power, sexuality, politics, justice, liberation, peace, freedom, and—specifically, in the case of this project—around that ancient and presupposition-laden term known as sacrifice. This gives me reason to pause, for as I hope to point out, sacrifice is something of a common denominator between mimetic theory and open and relational theology.
To be even more specific, both disciplines are highly suspicious of any systems framing sacrifice as redemptive. Unfortunately, to call out the myth of redemptive sacrifice is to poke the dragon. (Yes, we’re poking dragons and racing the wrong way through one-way streets!) Despite the flashing red lights in my mirror, I lean forward. I’m on to more important things. The siren decreases even as the music emanating from the overlap of mimesis and open and relational theology increases.
I listen. Noting where ideas from each weave in and out. Monk into Girard into Chopin into Whitehead. More than listen, I practice. Experiment. Scales and keys. Chords and enharmonics. It’s not a perfect blend. But to pursue perfection in art, like pursuing morality in life, is, I think, to miss something. I think there’s a more substantive way. And I think this more substantive way has to do with beauty.
Beauty is elusive. Maybe this is due to its absence. Or perhaps it’s due to our absence. To be present to beauty invites vulnerability, the possibility of wounds. And yet, by faith, I believe all wounds might yet be the marks of beauty, like roads, winding deep into forest of psyche and spirit, winding deep into forest of heart and soul. Yes, evil is always a reality, but beauty even more so.
Therefore, breathe; be at one with everything. Insecurities too. They are a part of us. They are us. We cannot defeat them. Our suppression only serves to invigorate their vitality and ensure their tenacity. Our denial only validates the honor we reserve for religions of scapegoating and violence, as if God is interested in any of our “religion projects.” The way forward is to embrace the un-ease that so easily puts us at dis-ease, to allow solicitudes to rattle and hum within, divine-human fluctuations that they are leading us to newer and deeper instantiations of love.
🙏🏻
Mimetic Theory in Seven Non-linear Bites
1-Humanity emerges from a context of relational community and cooperation, but also with baggage that I name existential anxiety.
2- None of us are free from imitation. This can be good, in that we learn from others, and this can be bad, in that eventually, we begin to desire what the other possesses to the degree that we overemphasize the possession.
3-None of this is lost on our model … they reciprocate the imitation, and in the process, we mirror one another. The overemphasis serves to drive up two things: the value of the possession and the intensity of everyone’s anxiety.
4-We become ensnared within a vortex of anxiety, imitation, and envy to the degree that we assume the other is our rival. Rivalry, which takes all shapes and sizes but might be categorized into competition and comparison, becomes the dominant framework from which we see the other. We point fingers and blame until, as G.K. Chesterton said, “The world is all one wild divorce court.”
5-What Rene Girard discovered (or uncovered) was the ingenious way we’ve evolved to deal with our anxious envy and rivalry: scapegoating. It’s more than blaming; it’s what I call a psycho-spiritual “offloading” of our problems onto the back of an innocent bystander. We blame them for our anxiety, for our rivalrous energy. And then … we push them into the volcano, lynch them on a tree, shove them into a gas chamber, crucify them on a cross, or write bad things about them on social media.
6-Unfortunately, scapegoating works, for often, a sense of peace will sweep over a person and a community after such behavior. The problem is that the peace never lasts, which means that when a community becomes re-antagonized, they’ll repeat the process with a new scapegoat.
7-It’s in the repetition, for Girard, that religion is birthed. Each iteration of scapegoating is layered with new liturgy, rituals, prayers, songs, and traditions. What mimetic theory points to is the startling idea that religion, then, doesn’t birth violence; rather, violence births religion. 🫤
What’s the antidote? Ha, well, that’s contained in other things I’ve written and also within some of the resources below. Still, something that seems indispensable is finding healthy people to imitate, people who don’t exacerbate our anxiety. I think JC is probably a decent place to start.
Open and Relational Theology in Two Non-linear Bites
1-That God is deeply and truly interconnected with creation (i.e., relational). The fundamental building block of all creation, from the micro to the macro, is not independent and substance-based; rather, it is interdependent and relationship-based. This is true of the cosmos and, again, of God. Therefore, a relational view rejects the notion of a God that’s separate, unable to suffer, and impervious to change. Whatever God is, S(H)e is dynamic, interactive, experiential, and intimately related to all creation moment by moment.
2-That this moment-to-moment interaction happens in a linear sequential fashion, the result of which is an undetermined future (i.e., open). The future has not yet happened; therefore, it follows that the future is unknowable. It would only be knowable if it were set in stone, fixed, or complete. An open view rejects the notion of a God with exhaustive divine foreknowledge of all future events (and this is true, if for no other reason than the previous paragraph: God’s in relationship with creation!)
‣ Some Resources for Mimetic Theory and ORT
Some books:
Open and Relational Theology: An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas,
Processing Mimetic Reality: Harmonizing Alfred North Whitehead and René Girard,
I See Satan Fall Like Lightning,
Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life,
Theology of Consent: Mimetic Theory in an Open and Relational Universe
Some online resources:
Rebecca J.Adams - “From Colonizing Mimesis to Loving Mimesis: A Brief Theoretical Overview.” Plenary Talk on Video Recording. Colloquium on Violence and Religion Annual Meeting (Online), July 2021.
jonathan_foster podcast - Why it’s a Good Time to Go Open and Relational with Andrew Davis
Rebecca J. Adams - “What is ‘Good’ or ‘Loving’ Mimesis? Understanding Different Models of Mimetic Desire for Creative Outcomes.”
Wow. that's a lot of great information and food for thought!