Glossary
Clicking the words below(as will also happen when you click certain instances of them in other pages) will open a small window with a brief definition of the word or phrase. Where it seems helpful, we'll also refer you to other texts that discuss the term in greater detail.
Occasional Articles
As with the Introductory Articles, we will add other articles as time permits or as our readers request. If you have a suggestion for anything, please let us know.
Michael Hardin
Is the Apocalypse Inevitable?: Native American Prophecy and the Mimetic Theory presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
Michael's Essay for a Celebration Volume honoring Rene Girard
Does Peace Make A Difference? - Michael's essay in response to Rick Warren's P.E.A.C.E. plan (which somehow never mentions peace).
An Analysis of Rick Warren - Michael's response to "The Purpose Driven Life."
"The God of Pat Robertson" - a response to Pat Robertson's words to the people of Dover, PA.
"A response to Charles Stanley's "A Nation at War"
"Must God be violent? A Diagnosis and Prescription for Modern Christianity"
The Scapegoat: Christologies in Conflict - A Study in Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Biblical Testaments as a Marriage of Convenience: Rene Girard and Biblical Interpretation
Finding Our Way Home: A Brief Note On The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture
"Does The Passion of the Christ Preach the Gospel?"
A sermon for the holiday devoted to Dr. Martin Luther King. (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
GRASPING GOD: Philippians 2: 1-11 in the Light of Mimetic Theory
Rene Girard and the Recovery of Early Christian Perspectives (Brethren Life and Thought)
The Dynamics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor (St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly)
"EcoSpirituality"
Or What Happens When You Sit Down With A French Literary Critic
Jeff Krantz
Mighty One or Crucified Messiah? Competing Christologies and the Chiastic Structure of Mark's Gospel
There's No Such Thing as the Rapture - A sermon preached at the Church of the Advent, Westbury (requires Acrobat Reader)
Holy Scripture and the Consecration of Gene Robinson - a response to the request of the Windsor Report for a Scriptural rationale. (requires Adobe's Acrobat Reader)
Worship - The Redemption of Desire by Jeff Krantz
Myth and Film - a piece written for the City of Angels Film Festival
The Stations of the Cross - Rewritten by Jeff Krantz
A Dramatic Presentation of the Stations of the Cross for Youth by Barb Fabijan-Waddell
Escaping the Power of "My" - A NonViolent Approach to Stewardship
Preaching Peace in Hollywood: The Theologies of Terminator, Lord of the Rings, and the Matrix
V for Vendetta - The Name Says It All A review of the movie.
Essays, Sermons and Liturgical Pieces by Friends of Preaching Peace
Mark Heim's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement
Kate Layzer's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement (and inspiration for Mark Heim's hymn!)
Alan Cork, "Transformation" in L'Arche: A Mimetic Account presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
"The Wisdom of God's Peace" a sermon by Jim Amstutz, co-pastor of Michael's church.
Girard's Christology - Per Bjornar Grande
Violence, Anarchy and Scripture: Jacques Ellul and Rene Girard - Matthew Patillo
Comparing Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's - Per Bjorner Grande
C. Frank Terhune, an Easter Sermon: "God's Big But" (no kidding!)
Gerald Biesecker-Mast's paper from Theologia Pacis on Pacifist Gospel Epstimology.
An essay by the Rev. John Hill on Mimetic Theory and Catechesis
Wallace’s green spirituality addresses disputes within the ecology movement, the tragic influence of humanism and its androcentrism, and the role played by deconstruction culminating in the application of Kenneth Gergen’s theory of ‘social constructionism.’ This last move could well have been supplemented with Girard’s notion of our corporate interdividuality. The end result is that our very language about the earth is exposed as culpable and we are invited into the transformation of our language by the Spirit.
Wallace then boldly moves right into the strategic significance a theology of the cross makes for green spirituality, following the insights developed by Jurgen Moltmann. For me, as a reader, this was the grounding I sought, the way language was truly transformed by experience and experience by new language, the articulation of suffering. “Jesus suffers on the cross the sins of the world; the Spirit in the earth suffers the despoilment of the world. Jesus suffers because he bears the sins of the world in his human flesh. The Spirit, as coeternal and coparticipatory with Jesus in the eternal Godhead, also experiences this suffering (even as does God the Father, for that matter). But the Spirit also suffers in a way distinctive of her role in creation because she feels the pain of a degraded earth in her more-than-human body.”
Wallace begins the book with his childhood experience of the Pascagoula River (the Singing River) and ends with his contemporary experience of Crum Creek. Like all good authentic language on the creation it abounds with the personal, yet is humble, recognizing the limits of language to perceive or describe. Mark Wallace makes a great many important contributions in this book. It is as fine an example of Evangelical Christian post-modern theology as you will find. Mark Wallace is Associate Professor of Religion, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA.
- reviewed by Michael Hardin, April 2005
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Introductory Articles
We will add articles as we are able, or as users of the site request them, so if you have suggestions for additional pieces, please write to us!
"Introduction to Mimetic Theory"
"Jesus"
Finding Our Way Home: A Brief Note on the Authority and Interpretation of Scripture
Finding God in the Singing River by Mark Wallace
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005) 158 pages, with photos, notes and indices.
It is difficult to say how important this book is; Mark Wallace makes so many crucial connections essential for a Christian pneumatology, I hardly know where to begin. The book itself is an experience of ‘deep calling to deep.’ It simply asks, “Is our spirituality green or Gnostic?” while it invites us into a way of perception that is as wholistic as it is beautiful. If the measure of a good book is that it is readable, nurturing, adventurous and educational, then this is a good book. Wallace’s writing style has some of the finest use of inclusive language I have ever read.
Modern Christianity suffers from dualism. As a result, there has been a denigration of the material, the physical and an exaltation of the ideal. Our common Platonism is deficient in that there is nor can be any true relation between the real and the phenomenon. Consequently, we automatically rule out of our Christian theology any relationship between God and creation. The deconstructionist funeral of philosophy has left us all wanting. We seek Spirit. This had really come home to me as I was writing my essay on ‘Ecospirituality.’
Wallace clearly demonstrates that the biblical language of the Spirit is primarily brought to us in physical imagery, fire, water, wind, dove. The biblical story narrates an intimate relationship between Spirit and creation, and opens us to the beautiful, nurturing, caring character of the earth. It is an opportunity of exploring the feminine in all life (especially essential for us males who have wrongly understood the feminine). It is to find the beauty and benevolence of the Creator as visibly demonstrated in the entirety of the creation and especially appropriate to do so in the light of a theology of the cross.
“I am self-conscious about my earth-centered hermeneutic and believe that such a hermeneutic allows the Bible to speak again from the center of its love and passion for the good creation God has made. God is not distant from our planet, unmoved by earthly concerns, dispassionate and unaffected by the environmental degradation that despoils the bounty and beauty of the created order. Rather, from a green spirituality perspective, we learn that God loves the earth, manifests Godself as an earthen being in the human Jesus and corporeal Spirit, and suffers deeply from the environmental abuse that causes pain and loss to all beings…If we would learn again, like Jesus, to see the world with green eyes, then we could catch Jesus’ vision of an earth charged with a natural grace and beauty more profound that anything can imagine. A green world alive with color and fragrance – the restrained elegance of lilies in an open field – is the supernatural food Earth God offers to us to feed our hungry bodies and souls.”
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