Stories from the Hidden Heart of “sacred violence”: An exploration of violence and Christian faith in East Timor in dialogue with René Girard's mimetic insight

This dissertation explores how Christian faith affected the hope and resistance of an oppressed people in their response to violence orchestrated against them. It undertakes this task through stories collected from the people of East Timor, a half-island nation located in South-East Asia that was brutally ruled by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999. The nature of Christian faith is a vexed question for the modern world particularly when this faith has grown in countries like East Timor where suffering, violence and oppression were inflicted on the people. This lack of understanding of the nature and development of Christian faith is evident in academic studies of East Timor. Moreover, the difficult nature of this question is compounded by the fact that the violence and oppression, such as that inflicted on the East Timorese, is often orchestrated by the nation-state, which itself is a creation of the modern West. Faith in these circumstances of violence is often explained away as a circumstantial reaction after which the people will return to the path of reason. Yet, this attitude is problematic in the way it juxtaposes reason and faith. It ultimately exposes an unsound anthropological understanding of the human person as well as a view of reason that is narrow and insufficient as it sees reason as unable to cope with the circumstances of violence. This dissertation argues for an understanding of faith and violence through an analysis of the experiences of the East Timorese. This analysis is undertaken from an anthropological and theological understanding of the human person, primarily based on the insights of René Girard which provide clarity in understanding the relationship between human being, reason and faith. This dissertation argues that Christian faith helped the East Timorese people confront the existential and anthropological challenges posed by violence, and so, enabled them to overcome the illusions and false transcendence of violence, which Girard (1977, 31) says “…is the heart and secret soul of the sacred”. The dissertation shows that Christian faith helped form purpose, hope and non-violent resistance to state-sanctioned violence in East Timor through the anthropological, existential and imaginative resources fostered in relationship with Christ. The dissertation proposes an explanation of the experiences of the East Timorese recounted in this dissertation that posits that relationship with and faith in Christ, as the self-giving and victimised “Other”, had a discernible and plausible effect on the East Timorese particularly in the circumstances of violence. This faith commitment seemed to change and free persons and cultural structures in East Timor from the violent transcendence imposed by the dictatorial state that presents itself as “sacred”. This freedom emerged as the oppressed and victimised East Timorese, through their experience of the violent depths of human relations, were directed toward the pacific transcendence located around the victim, Christ, the substance of which is Christ’s self-giving love originating from and shared with the Father through the Spirit. East Timorese people were directed and responded to Christ in faith as they encountered the self-giving mimesis of the Trinity sacramentally and through the martyrs. This faith formed a new ontological way, or direction, which fostered resistance to the sacred violence of the state and their supporters. Through the enactment of their faith in this new and pacific way of being in self-giving mimesis, the Christian community in East Timor sought to resist and transform the state into a more benign and responsive entity by exposing and removing its ability to arbitrarily and indiscriminately victimise and oppress. This ecclesiological stance sought to expose the truth in the midst of the lies of sacred violence through a pacific way of being that was learnt from communion with the risen Christ as self-giving victim