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

Mel Gib­son’s movie _The Pas­sion of Christ_ is a chal­lenge for many mod­ern Quak­ers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suf­fer­ing of the ear­ly Friends have been dumbed-down to feel-good clich­es. Can the debate on this movie help us return to that uncom­fort­able place where we can acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ties of being fer­vent­ly reli­gious in a world haunt­ed by past sins and still in need of con­vic­tion and comfort?


I keep read­ing inflam­ma­to­ry pieces about Mel Gib­son’s movie _The Pas­sion of Christ._ The basic gist is that any­one who focus­es on the suf­fer­ing of Jesus’s last days is inher­ent­ly anti-Semitic. Because medieval pas­sion plays stirred up anti-Semitism, all good Chris­tians should stay away from the sto­ry and should stay away from Gib­son’s movie.
I haven’t seen the movie (update: yes I have, see below), but I find it hard to imag­ine that there’s any anti-Semitism in it that match­es the anti-Catholicism of Gib­son’s detrac­tors. To focus on Christ’s suf­fer­ings is to explain one of the most impor­tant metaphors of Chris­tian­i­ty, espe­cial­ly of Roman Catholi­cism. I went to a Catholic col­lege where every room had a cru­ci­fix – Jesus nailed to the cross. It was very dif­fer­ent from the emp­ty cross­es I had always seen grow­ing up as a pseudo-Protestant, but this dif­fer­ence is an impor­tant dif­fer­ence of focus between Catholics and Protes­tants. Is the most icon­ic act of Jesus his suf­fer­ing for our sins (his time on the cross) or his res­ur­rec­tion (his dis­ap­pear­ance from the cross)? As a good Catholic, Gib­son is going to focus on the tor­ture, on the pain, on the cru­el­ty and on the suf­fer­ing and to imply that he’s doing so just to shock is to miss the whole point. It is the very grue­some­ness that makes the sac­ri­fice so mean­ing­ful and it is the hor­ror that makes the res­ur­rec­tion even more of miracle.
While we need to be aware of anti-Semitism we also need to be aware of this coun­try’s his­to­ry of anti-Catholicism. My alma mater is sit­u­at­ed twelve miles out­side Philadel­phia because its first home was burned to the ground by anti-Catholic riot­ers (of course the Irish Catholics killed, loot­ed and burned out African Amer­i­cans in New York City a gen­er­a­tion lat­er). My Ital­ian wife is relat­ed to Aunt Jemi­ma (I kid you not) because in the 1920s Ital­ians were con­sid­ered half-black (and pre­sum­ably because white audi­ences pre­ferred a half-black per­former to an all-black one). Lots of the anti-prohibition soci­eties and reform soci­eties of the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry were fueled in part by an abhor­rence of the garlic-eating immi­grant mobs with their too-colorful cloth­ing and their reli­gious obses­sion with suf­fer­ing and icon­ic excess. Much of this WASPy dis­taste and aloof­ness lingers in the anti-Gibson pieces.
It’s all a shame. This is just a movie folks. But because it’s become so polar­ized we can’t talk about it with­out tak­ing sides. And the sides have noth­ing to do with the movie itself or its mer­its or detrac­tions, but are instead posi­tions in a proxy cul­tur­al war about reli­gion. A recent piece by one promi­nent reli­gious essay­ist argued that good Chris­tians don’t focus on Christ’s suf­fer­ing. For the last fifty years lib­er­al Chris­tians have focused on the pos­i­tives, on that emp­ty cross, and Gib­son’s movie is a chal­lenge to that. It’s a chal­lenge that reminds lib­er­als that suf­fer­ing is also a cen­tral part of the sto­ry. For those who would demote Jesus to a mere­ly human teacher, on the scale of Abra­ham Lin­coln, _The Pas­sion of Christ_ is a reminder that for many Chris­tians the suf­fer­ing and mir­a­cles of his life is quite beyond any­thing else in that has ever hap­pened in human history.
This movie is a chal­lenge for many mod­ern Quak­ers. Most of the rich metaphors of co-mingled joy and suf­fer­ing of the ear­ly Friends have been dumbed-down over the cen­turies to become lit­tle more than feel-good clich­es. Today we talk of “The Light” as if it’s some sort of ultra­vi­o­let grow lamp help­ing us to become nice big plants. That’s a nice image and George Fox might have appre­ci­at­ed it. But Fox’s “Light of Christ” was also the harsh light of the inter­ro­ga­tion room, a light that ban­ished shad­ows to expose our sins and human fail­ings. It was only after the light had “con­vict­ed” us (and that was the ter­mi­nol­o­gy) and only after we had giv­en up our human fol­lies to walk only in its pow­er that we would find Christ’s com­fort. And that com­fort would often be in the midst of our suf­fer­ing in imi­ta­tion of Christ, in our per­se­cu­tion by those who would call them­selves Christian.
Friends burst onto the scene in sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry Eng­land with a rad­i­cal mes­sage: that Chris­tian­i­ty had been stolen to serve the pow­er of the state and that only by restor­ing prim­i­tive Chris­tian­i­ty could we tru­ly fol­low God. Today that’s a chal­lenge to both left and right: to those who will use Gib­son’s movie as a ban­ner to rein­force their cul­tur­al big­otries. On the right, some will sure­ly use _The Passion_ to jus­ti­fy their anti-Semitism. On the left, I see many op-ed writ­ers using it to jus­ti­fy their dis­taste for any­one who takes their Chris­t­ian faith too seri­ous­ly. Mel Gib­son is mak­ing a movie about his belief. He claims that it’s not anti-Semitic and I’m inclined to believe him, that any big­otry we will see there is con­di­tioned by our grue­some his­to­ry and not by a delib­er­ate act on Gib­son’s part. Why can’t we just accept a believ­er believ­ing? And why can’t we just watch the movie before argu­ing about it?
The heart of this debate is this: is Chris­tian­i­ty so defiled by cen­turies of those wrong­ly tor­tured in its name that any hon­est expres­sion of it is big­ot­ed? There are many who will answer on both sides of that ques­tion. But Friends are a peo­ple born in a time of much wrong­ful per­se­cu­tion and so for us the answer is actu­al­ly kind of easy: Chris­tian­i­ty has been stolen time and again but we must con­stant­ly try to recov­er it. We do that by telling sto­ries and reaf­firm­ing the truths we have no mat­ter who’s cri­tiquing us. We need to engage with our his­to­ry and with each oth­er. We are often put into a �uncomfortable middle� when we affirm the truths aris­ing out of our peace tes­ti­mo­ny (oppos­ing a war while still denounc­ing a dic­ta­tor) and it seems to me we should have a sim­i­lar atti­tude towards Chris­tian­i­ty’s past.
Does Mel Gib­son cross the line into big­otry? I haven�t seen the movie but I doubt it. All the op-eds against him have argued guilt-by-association and some of the charges against the “cult” or “sect” of tra­di­tion­al­ist Catholics are so laugh­able that it’s pathet­ic to see them repeat­ed on respect­ed news pro­grams. Gib­son is a tal­ent­ed sto­ry­teller, one who will choose dra­ma over sen­si­tiv­i­ty. He�s not averse to pan­der­ing to stereo­types to rouse an audi­ence. He�s not a Quak­er, that�s for sure. But he is a sin­cere believ­er telling a sto­ry about his faith. We need more of those. Let�s not pick­et and boy­cott some­one sim­ply for telling a sto­ry that doesn�t fit with the pieties of the mod­ern lib­er­al ortho­doxy. Let�s return to that uncom­fort­able place where we can acknowl­edge the com­plex­i­ties of being fer­vent­ly reli­gious in a world haunt­ed by past sins and still in need of con­vic­tion and comfort.


h3. Update 3/1: Hav­ing Seen the Movie
I’ve seen the movie now. It was­n’t as ter­ri­fy­ing as I had feared. As a direc­tor, Gib­son pro­vides cues as to when the squea­mish should look away. About half a dozen times I antic­i­pat­ed a par­tic­u­lar­ly grue­some image and was able to avert my eyes in time. He did­n’t need to do this – he knows how to shock audi­ences and he does have a few moments where he springs us from our seats, but he does play nice and keeps the shocks and gory­ness separate.
Because the movie tells a famil­iar sto­ry and tries to por­tray it in real­is­tic terms, it acts as a sort of blank slate ripe for the pro­jec­tion of indi­vid­ual audi­ence mem­bers. How you see this movie depends in large part about what you bring to it. What you bring to it of course often depends on your feel­ings about Jesus Christ. More than any movie I can remem­ber, you will see what you want to see in the film.
Take the famous scourg­ing scene. My wife Julie winced at every bloody lash, but she did so because she under­stood the Catholic teach­ing that each strike rep­re­sent­ed her own sins.
I did­n’t take it that way. As an anar­chist and Chris­t­ian paci­fist I was struck anew with the impos­si­bil­i­ty of sup­port­ing empire in the name of this man. Our tem­ples have been rent asun­der and reborn in the Spir­it. We are the lam­b’s war­riors. If even Jesus did­n’t save him­self from this tor­ture how can we? For me, the Roman war­lords were clear­ly the Amer­i­can gen­er­als in Iraq and Pon­tius Pilate’s sac­ri­fic­ing of a Jew­ish prophet to keep civ­il order too rem­i­nis­cent of “US occu­py­ing forces giv­ing jobs to ex-Saddam secu­ri­ty forces”:http://www.nonviolence.org/articles/000206.php to do the same thing. To be hon­est, the high Jew­ish priests all looked like Catholic bish­ops to me – I kept see­ing Boston’s for­mer Car­di­nal Bernard F. Law, a man who cared more about keep­ing his church out of scan­dal then he did the inno­cent chil­dren being molest­ed by abu­sive priests. The mes­sage for me was that lead­ers will always be tempt­ed to sac­ri­fice the truth to pro­tect the van­i­ty of their insti­tu­tion­al pow­er. As Fox said:
bq. “When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had noth­ing out­ward­ly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, ‘�There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition.’ ”
Now, I can pret­ty sure that Mel Gib­son does­n’t share my anarcho-pacifist pol­i­tics or George Fox’s the­olo­gies (update: or can I be? See below for a link to an inter­view with the Jew­ish Romainan actress who plays Mary and explains the film in fair­ly polit­i­cal terms). And that’s the most inter­est­ing thing about this movie. I’m sure an anti-Semite will find rea­sons to be anti-Semitic. Some­one angry at Chris­tian­i­ty will find rea­sons to be angry. It seems as if just about ever movie review­er I read must have seen a dif­fer­ent movie, and I think there’s a ker­nel of truth in that. I won­der if this is a result of it being such a loaded sto­ry worn rigid by two thou­sand years of retelling for such dif­fer­ent agen­das or whether it’s a result of Gib­son’s rel­a­tive­ly rad­i­cal film­ing deci­sions? I kept won­der­ing what it would have been like if Gib­son had fol­lowed through on his orig­i­nal con­cept and omit­ted even the subtitles?
A few friends of mine have been email­ing back and forth, not­ing that they would be scared of any­one con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty by this movie. I bare­ly see how that’s pos­si­ble. With­out the con­text of belief, this is just a sto­ry about some guy being tor­tured to death. (There were only two mir­a­cles, touched at briefly: a reat­tach­ment of a Roman solid­er’s ear and a brief, dream-like scene of the Res­ur­rec­tion. The lat­ter remind­ed me most of end­ing in “Being There”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078841/ where the lucky sim­ple­ton played by Peter Sell­ers unex­pect­ed starts walk­ing on water, tan­ta­liz­ing us that maybe he was­n’t quite so sim­ple.) There are plen­ty of sec­u­lar movies that have more mir­a­cles or more overt “Christ fig­ures” than this one.
If there are any con­ver­sions it will be because of the activ­i­ty _around_ the film.
The sad thing though, is that too many peo­ple have become divid­ed on this film. Polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness has set­tled in on both sides of polit­i­cal aisle. I lot of peo­ple I respect might have gone out to see this film had it been made by any­one but Mel Gib­son and had it not been so denounced by the lib­er­al media.
Because of this Mar­tin Kel­ley Quak­er Ranter web­site, I’ve been intro­duced to a much wider vari­ety of Friends and fel­low believ­ers than I had before and it’s become hard­er to take seri­ous­ly the insti­tu­tion­al divi­sions we’ve erect­ed. There’s a lot of sweet peo­ple among the big scary Evan­gel­i­cals and a lot of deep think­ing and con­cern deep in FUM-land. Like­wise, non-Liberal Friends read­ing this site might real­ize that Lib­er­al Quak­ers aren’t all the car­toon­ish stereo­type we’re some­times made out to be (fair dis­clo­sure: my wife Julie, the ex-Quaker, just read this sen­tence and laughed out “yes they are!”). The truth is beyond these divi­sions and it’s only when we break the ranks of our own ortho­dox­ies that we will are real­ly able to greet that of Christ/God/Spirit in each oth­er. It’s fine to like or not to like _The Pas­sion of the Christ_ but the biggest les­son the film might teach us is how to look beyond the pat answers to engage with each oth­er and with our traditions.
h4. Oth­er Stuff
* New Quak­er Mer­le Har­ton Jr. wrote an inter­est­ing piece last year about “pas­sion plays, anti-Semitism and the upcom­ing movie”:http://www.newQuaker.com/2003_08_17_blogarchive.htm#106116543162349803 and he has this piece “about see­ing the movie”:http://newQuaker.com/2004_02_29_blogarchive.htm#107820009585274899.
* The Evan­gel­i­cal Friends at “Bar­clay Press”:http://www.barclaypress.com/ have a spe­cial fea­ture on their web­site with reviews and read­er’s comments.
* Whoa, appar­ent­ly the cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er from the movie is Quak­er!? Here’s an iin­ter­view that “men­tions he’s a Quaker”:http://starbulletin.com/2004/02/22/features/story4.html but does­n’t go into any depth. Link from Quak​er​in​fo​.com. Googling him he’s also described as a “Philadelphia-born Quak­er,” which makes me won­der if he’s “eth­ni­cal­ly” Quak­er but not prac­tic­ing. If any­one knows more I’d be interested.
* Talk about inter­est­ing cast­ing: Mary is played by Maia Mor­gen­stern , a Jew­ish Roman­ian whose par­ents are Holo­caust sur­vivors, who says of the film: “Again and again — I under­line and under­line this — it’s not the peo­ple who are blamed. It was some lead­ers. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we have so many exam­ples — even now, every minute — of polit­i­cal, social, mil­i­tary, reli­gious lead­ers who are deal­ing with our fears, with our hopes, who are try­ing to manip­u­late our ideas and our fears. And that film speaks about this.”
* Celebri­ty film crit­ic Roger Ebert has an “inter­est­ing review”:http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/cst-ftr-passion24.html: “For we altar boys, [the Sta­tions of the Cross] was not nec­es­sar­i­ly a deep spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence. Christ suf­fered, Christ died, Christ rose again, we were redeemed, and let’s hope we can get home in time to watch the Illi­nois bas­ket­ball game on TV. What Gib­son has pro­vid­ed for me, for the first time in my life, is a vis­cer­al idea of what the Pas­sion con­sist­ed of… This is not a ser­mon or a homi­ly, but a visu­al­iza­tion of the cen­tral event in the Chris­t­ian reli­gion. Take it or leave it.”
* There is of course an offi­cial “Pas­sion movie website”:http://www.thepassionofthechrist.com/.

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

  1. 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.

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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.

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