7 - Jesus Christ and Intolerance

Summary

Chapter 7 conceptualizes how, if monotheism “separates” God from the political sphere this does not result in what Mouffe denounced as depoliticization. I examine Christ as manifesting the monotheistic “separation” from the political sphere while agonistically engaging the mechanisms of scapegoating. In Christ the victimized-divinity we do not have a regression into polytheism; nor yet do we find an “escape” from the sacrifice and exclusion that polytheism contained. Rejecting both as insufficient, I consider Girard’s paradox that Christianity is an “exit from religion in the form of a demythified religion.” Drawing cues from Mouffe’s critiques of liberalism, I see in monotheism not an escape from intolerance into an exclusion-free utopia, but something more like exclusion-in-reverse in which intolerance is a photographic negative. I thus illustrate Christ as embodying a monotheism that – precisely through, not despite, his intolerance – points us toward the marginalized other and pluralistic concerns today.