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Monday, March 01, 2004

Rhode Islanders consider The Passion

by Andrew Wetmore

ENS 030104-1

[Episcopal News Service] Passions have been running high over The Passion 
of the Christ, the Mel Gibson movie about the death and resurrection of
Jesus.
Even before the film opened, voices were lifted to criticize and support 
the project, and there has been worry by both Christians and Jews about how 
the rumored violence of the film would affect relations between people of 
the two faiths.

Since the film was released on Ash Wednesday it has had excellent ticket 
sales despite very mixed reviews. Some have praised its uncompromising look 
at Jesus' crucifixion as an antidote to the "safe and suburban" 
Christianity that is taught too often. Others have held that the extreme 
violence--45 minutes of the film focuses on the torture and murder of Jesus 
with all the skill Hollywood cinematography can deploy--verges on a sort of 
pornographic obsession that distorts the meaning of the life, death, and 
life of Christ.

Anticipating these and other concerns, the Cathedral of St. John in 
Providence, Rhode Island hosted a "Forum for Inter-Religious Understanding" 
on February 18. A large crowd, including Christians, Jews, seekers, and 
many members of the press, filled Synod Hall for the day-long event.

Modern passion play

The first of two keynote speakers, Professor Amy-Jill Levine of Vanderbilt 
University, addressed the problems the Gibson movie raises for her. 
"Whenever we talk about matters of religion," she said, "we risk unsettling 
people. So we have to proceed with care, and with as much listening as 
talking."

Levine called the move a modern passion play. "Passion plays are a pious 
response to a passion about Jesus. But through the centuries such plays 
have inflamed thought. Gibson could have done more to ensure that the 
Gospel of Love does not present itself as the Gospel of Hate."

Levine said she had taken part in an ecumenical review committee that 
looked at the film script with Gibson's knowledge. The committee found 
that, despite Gibson's claims, "the script was not accurate to the Gospel. 
There was a relentless anti-Judaism. Moreover, there were many scenes with 
no scriptural basis. Some of these scenes are based on the visions of a 
19th-century nun [Anne Catherine Emmerich] that have had wide distribution 
among conservative Roman Catholics, including a scene showing the making of 
the cross on which Jesus would hang--in the Temple."

According to Levine, the movie lessens the responsibility of the Romans for 
Jesus' crucifixion by making the governor, Pontius Pilate, "a coward who 
was awed by Jesus. But from the historical record, Pilate was a ruthless 
shmuck."

The distortions of the Gospel as presented by the Gibson movie are so 
extreme, according to Levine, that "to give a modern analogy, it is like 
suggesting that the gas ovens used in German death camps were made in the 
Vatican."

When the team making the movie learned of the review committee's reaction, 
"Gibson went after the scholars," Levine said. "We were excoriated by 
right-wing commentators, who started to talk about 'Jewish censorship.'"

Seeing what others see

Levine said that the movie is a problem not for people who are active and 
thoughtful in their faith, but for those who do not have a deep 
understanding of Christ's message. "Christians know the story: Jesus is 
killed not by the Jews, but by human sin, to which he made himself a 
willing sacrifice." She said that Jews need to know Christian teaching, and 
Christians need to know how the story is heard by Jews.

Responding to a question, Levine suggested a series of steps to avoid 
anti-Jewish interpretations of the Gospel: "Avoid making a division between 
the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament: they are the 
same God. Avoid stereotyping Jesus, and divorcing Jesus from Judaism. Avoid 
the idea that the Law was bad, or that Judaism has been disenfranchised."

Levine continued, "Avoid the view that the fault is all on one side, that 
someone has to be found guilty. Avoid the idea that the Jews have an 
unapproachable God, and that Jesus fixes that. Say what Jesus' 'radical 
message' is, because it isn't hating the Jews. Try to hear the text through 
Jewish ears."

Offering some advice for those who will see the Gibson movie, Levine said, 
"When you sit in the theatre and watch this story, picture my 13-year-old 
son on one side of you and my neighbor from down the street, who survived 
the Holocaust, on the other side. Try to see what they would see."

  Concluding, Levine said, "This move is a symptom, not the problem. The 
problem is that Jews and Christians do not really know each other. They 
need to."

'Violence is pornographic'

Bishop Krister Stendahl of Harvard Divinity School spoke of how he had 
learned the Passion story growing up in the Church of Sweden. "It is not 
unsimilar to how most Christians at that time lived and related to that 
text. We understood 'Jew' = me = a sinner. We would sing, 'Tis I, Lord 
Jesus, I it was who denied thee. I who crucified thee.'"

"This way of reading," Stendahl continued, "has the advantage of having no 
anti-Semitism. But the irony is that this is achieved by reading the Jews 
and the Jewish community out of the book."

  It was not until after World War II and the Second Vatican Council, 
Stendahl said, that "Christians began to learn how the things we say sound 
in the ears of the Jews. We have a new situation which calls upon us to 
make new attempts to help one another against the undesirable side effects 
of our devotion. The historical record is shocking."

The cross, he said, is a symbol of faith and hope for Christians. "But the 
Cross reminds Arabs of the Crusades. The Cross reminds the Jews of the 
Crusades and the pogroms (massacres). Historically, most attacks on the 
Jews in Europe took place in Holy Week, after the people in church heard 
the Passion narrative."

Stendahl suggested that, to live together, we have to practice three 
principles of communal living:

  1. "Let the Other define herself. 75% of what our tradition says of 
another tradition is bearing false witness."

  2. "Compare equal to equal. We all have our extremists and nuts. Don't 
compare ideal Christianity with the actual or distorted form of the Other."

  3. "We will never have good relations without an element of holy envy. 
Find something in the Other that is beautiful and meaningful and that tells 
you something about God. You are not called upon to absorb it or to pass 
judgment on it."

Stendahl said that, to him, the Gibson movie seemed like an obscene 
magnification of violence. "Violence is pornographic. I've always thought 
the suffering of Christ and the shout 'why have you forsaken me?' is the 
pain of the martyr-the pain of wondering was it all in vain, had it all 
been wrong. That's where the deep suffering is, not in the physical abuse." 
The way in which the movie describes the Passion, he continued, "is a 
celebration of suffering and death instead of a celebration of life and of 
the triumphal resurrection."

Stendahl noted that there is a positive side to the controversy about the 
movie. "At least we have woken up to the fact that our Christian tradition 
has caused us enormous pain, and that we need to do something about it."

Speaking of the attraction of the movie's approach, Stendahl said, "It 
feeds the hunger for simplicity and uncomplicated answers. It's a kind of 
power-grab. In response, we need to keep teaching and speaking and 
educating toward a capacity of living in a non-absolute world. Do not 
settle for this, which is really the Gospel for suckers."

Two different movies

In the afternoon a panel responded to the morning's presentations. Rhode 
Island Bishop Geralyn Wolf spoke of her experience as a Jewish convert to 
Christianity. "During my years as dean of a Cathedral, there were people 
who referred to me as 'the Jew Dean.' I know they did it for all the right 
reasons."

For the future, Wolf said, "We need to get honest. We don't often share the 
pain we have inflicted on each other, and we need to."

Rabbi Marc Jagolinzer of Temple Shalom, Middletown, spoke of the history of 
anti-Semitism. "The anti-semite hates first, before he meets the Jew. Jews 
didn't cause, and cannot cure, anti-semitism."

Jagolinzer noted that Christians and Jews, when they discuss The Passion of 
the Christ, are really talking about two different movies. "This film will 
come, and this film will go, and in the United States it will leave us 
largely untouched. But overseas...? I am scared, I am horrified by the 
graphic depiction of crucifixion and what response it may call up from
people."

David Lewis Stokes, a former Episcopal priest who is now a member of the 
Roman Catholic Church, expressed worry that "the film will obscure 50 years 
of incredible dialogue. The last thing we need right now is for this film 
to muddy a conversation that is far from over."

Selma Stanzler, interim Director of the Rhode Island Holocaust Museum, 
cautioned that "for evil to thrive, good people must remain silent." She 
offered the resources of the museum to help explain the implications of 
letting anti-semitism go unchallenged.

-- Andrew Wetmore is editor of RISEN. This article first appeared in RISEN, 
the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island.

Send QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS to The Rev. Jan Nunley, deputy director, 
jnunley@episcopalchurch.org The enslist is published by
Episcopal News Service: www.episcopalchurch.org/ens