Comments on: The Passion of Uncomfortable Orthodoxies: Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”

By: Martin Kelley

Martin Kelley — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 14:13:49 +0000

Just for the record: I've decided to stop discussing this movie with people who refuse to see it. I've noticed that the debate ends up really being about people's feelings about Christ and Christianity (Mel Gibson & the movie just act as the conversation starter). Free: I'm sorry to hear you've been hurt by anti-Seminitism. I think we all have stories to tell of being screwed over by Quakers. A line in the hymnal? Come on, I've seen more clear-cut anti-Semitism than that. And racism. And ageism (what I get hit with all the time). Quakerism is rooted in history, in specific times and places. The Spirit is trapped in human institutions, it's caked in crud, we're all outsiders trying to wipe off the proverbial pearl of great price buried in all this. For believers, the death and resurrection of Christ was more important than anything else that has ever happened in human history. The Spirit and the mud collided into one life. The human institutions failed, just as ours fail. Anyone who has felt the living presence will know that our human forms will fail us but that _there is something greater there we must keep seeking out anyway_. It's these metaphors that keep me going despite the obvious failings of Quakers.

By: Free Polazzo

Free Polazzo — Tue, 13 Apr 2004 07:28:38 +0000

I have not seen the Passion of the Christ and do not plan to. There is no need for me to go to the movies to see "reality suffering" movies. The nightly news does that well enough. The pain and suffering inflicted by people on other people is well documented before this movie was shot. In fact, most of Mel Gibson's movies are about the cruelty that we inflict on each other and how we need our friends and family to remain sane in this world. Why would the death of one man, 2000 year ago, need to be elevated to God-like status for us to hear and see and feel the message that violence is NOT the Answer? Many died a gruesome death at the hands of many others and still do. Why is this one man's death so important to so many? Why do many of the same people who cry at the movies, not cry at the news of our bombing of women and children and men around the world? Could it be that by worshiping this one man, above all others, Christians are taught that your neighbor's suffering is not quite so bad. All you need to do, if you inflict pain on another, is to confess your sins and don't do it again? (Until the next time). I also have a problem with the focus of the Christ being male! The Patriarchy gets a big plug, every time we see the man on the cross. The Protestants empty cross at least allows the viewer to not "humanize" God, if they are not led to do that. The empty cross sends a message that it is not the death of Jesus that was important (after all, we all die, one way or the other). It was the rebirth that matters. And we all know who gives birth. (yes it's a figurative metaphor, but the choice of a male is not accidental.) While I haven't seen the movie, many others who have viewed it speak of the problem with Jesus and Jesus's followers not being portrayed as Jews, while Jesus's persecutors are clearly Jewish characters. Did you get that when you saw the movie? If this is true, then the message that this movie is Anti-Jewish is convincing. Remember that hardly nobody thinks that they are Anti Semites, or Racists, or Mysogynists. You MUST listen to the people who are being portrayed to understand the impact on them. This in not just "political correctness". It is what even anthropolgists have learned. Folks from outside a culture, no matter who well trained, cannot fully understand another culture. That's one reason I became a Quaker. We are often better listeners than most. Qukaer meetings allow more diversity than most and even Religious Diversity is valued. As a Friend who is a "Birthright Jew", I can say that Anti Semtism is still prevalent in our community. The Religious Society of Friends (FGC) has shown that they don't really care about how Jews are portrayed. The proof is in your very FGC Bookstore. Check out the book in the FGC Bookstore titled "A Friends Hymnal" and look up the "Lord of the Dance". Read it and then continue. . . . . . Do you see the words that blame the Jews for the death of Jesus? Jewish Friends did, and after almost a year of discussion on line, this concern was brought to FGC. What we got a was footnote at the end of the book. Who reads footnotes at the end of a book while singing a hymn? Not I. The song is not even of Quaker origin. We Jewish Friends contacted the author, who lived in England, and he wouldn't change the words. We even came up with alternative verses. (I thought they were even better than the original). Thanks for giving me a chance to "Rant". I agree that we need a movie called "The Passion of the Quakers". Maybe by attracting more Catholic Friends and Jewish Friends to Quakerism, we can have "better" arguments than a room full of protestants from England could provide. :) Blessings, Free

By: Melynda Huskey

Melynda Huskey — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 14:39:20 +0000

Full disclosure: haven't seen it. Not at all sure that I will. I do note, though, that the *Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,* by the controversial (in her time as well as ours) visionary and stigmatic Sister Ann Catherine Emmerich is a primary source for many details in the film. Emmerich is indisputably anti-Semitic (she had a vision of Hell which paid particular attention to the torments of those Jews who killed Christian children for blood to add to the Passover matzoh), and her additions to the Passion narrative were taken up enthusiastically by Gibson, including the presence of demons in the "large crowd" of Jews calling for Christ's death and her portrayal of Pilate and his wife as well-meaning, gentle souls essentially forced into murder by the Jewish religious establishment--in open defiance of the historical record. Theologically, I believe that the empty cross is far more revelatory than the inhabited one--in part because I find substitutionary soteriology so profoundly at odds with any concept of either a just or a loving God. Just as I reject Calvin's obscene notion that God would express a Perfect Holy Will by creating a few to redeem and a mass to torment, just because He can, I can't get my own experience of the Holy Spirit to square with the notion that what Gibson seems to value most about the Passion, Christ's apparently boundless capacity to endure physical torture, was a generous payback that somebody had to make. What kind of God would want or require that? I'll tell you what I'm waiting for: a film about the Paraclete. Now there's a film-making challenge. Melynda Huskey

By: Tim Kennedy

Tim Kennedy — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 18:15:03 +0000

We all need conviction first, then comfort.
I admit that I do not know whether I want to see this film. I know Jesus’ sacrifice was bloody and violent, but I do not patronize other violent, bloody films and I do not know whether this is something I want to see or if it is spiritually better to continue to see Christ’s suffering more in the light (of my own concept than someone else’s Mel Gibson’s?. A difficult decision.