The violence of “Christian” pedophiles, sexual abusers, and whore-mongers – or to state it differently the characteristic forms of perversion found in Roman Catholicism, evangelicalism, and fundamentalism, respectively – on Walter Benjamin’s scale of violence (per his “Critique of Violence”) amounts to “law-maintaining” violence. That is, these systems consistently churn out characteristic forms of sexual transgression as part of the necessity of maintaining the status quo of these forms of belief and their institutional structures. This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is obvious that these systems structure desire, through law or doctrine, in such a way that the transgression supports the desire and the belief attached to it. Fundamentalism gives us a steady flow of Jim Bakkers and Jimmy Swaggarts, and evangelicalism churns out its endless Bill Hybels, in the same way that Roman Catholicism seems to manufacture pedophiles. By not coming to grips with the characteristic nature of sin these systems reconstitute it. To state succinctly (what I expand upon below), the object of desire is that which is relinquished or lost and this loss is definitive of the identity produced. This identity produces a split within the body (the self or soma) such that the law of the mind (be it that of Roman Catholicism or of fundamentalism) is established through the transgression of the flesh. The law always has its transgressive support – doing a particular form of evil so as to produce a particular form of the good. This is Paul’s definition of sin – which indicates that these forms of faith may perpetuate, rather than identify and dispel, sin. Continue reading “Baptism (Fully Realized) as the Resolution to Pedophilia and Sexual Abuse”