Robert Gerald Hamerton-Kelly was a Christian theologian, ordained United Methodist pastor, ethics scholar, and author and editor of several books on religion and violence. He served as Dean of the Chapel at Stanford Memorial Church at Stanford University for 14 years and was on the faculty of the university for more than 30 years. A leading advocate of the work of René Girard's theory ofmimetic desire, Hamerton-Kelly co-founded several organizations dedicated to the study of the theory and edited several important texts about it.
In 1973, Hamerton-Kelly was hired as Dean of the Chapel at Stanford University. In that capacity, he also was minister of Stanford Memorial Church, and a Consulting Professor of Religious Studies and Classics, where he taught New Testament Greek to graduate and undergraduate students. He also taught Western Civilization to undergraduates. Hamerton-Kelly's work was not limited to pastoral study; his interest in religious violence led him to the work of fellow Stanford professor René Girard, where he became an advocate for Girard's theory of mimetic desire, in which imitation of others is the source of all human conflict, with conflict resolved through the use of a scapegoat and the introduction of religion. Hamerton-Kelly's Christian perspective in the subject led him to write several books which interpret New Testament writings from a Girardian perspective: these include Sacred Violence: Paul's Hermeneutic of the Cross, published in 1992; and The Gospel and the Sacred: Poetics of Violence in Mark, published in 1994. He was a co-founder of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion, which works to further research and discuss the themes of Girard's work. Another of Hamerton-Kelly's key works was editing 1987's Violent Origins: Walter Burkett, René Girard, and Jonathan Z. Smith on Ritual Killing and Cultural Formation, a collection of essays from early meetings of the colloquium by Girard, Jonathan Z. Smith, Walter Burkert, Burton L. Mack, and Renato Rosaldo, among others. In 1986, Hamerton-Kelly resigned from Memorial Church and became a Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International Security and Arms Control. In this capacity, he focused on the ethical issues raised by nuclear weapons and other aspects of military intervention. Hamerton-Kelly was particularly interested in ethnic conflict in Central Europe, in particular the role of religion in these conflicts. He traveled extensively in Central Europe during the early 1990s, shortly after the Revolutions of 1989 had created unprecedented democratization of the region, but which also exposed ethnic friction.
After Stanford
In 1996, Hamerton-Kelly became pastor at the Woodside Village Church in Woodside, California, remaining there until 2004 and delivering more than 400 sermons. He started a speaker series in Woodside that featured several former Stanford colleagues, including Condoleezza Rice and former United States Secretary of DefenseWilliam Perry. After leaving Woodside, Hamerton-Kelly continued to deliver several sermons a month to a smaller congregation based in Palo Alto, California. In 2005, through a connection with former student Peter Thiel, Hamerton-Kelly and Thiel founded Imitatio, an organization dedicated to promoting research in Girard's mimetic theory and disseminating awareness of it. Hamerton-Kelly served as the organization's first president from 2007 to 2010, when he retired to become Chairman Emeritus. He moved to Portland, Oregon in 2010. He died in 2013 after a stroke and short illness.
