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Many Evangelical Christian leaders, including James Dobson and Billy Graham have endorsed the movie both for the education of fellow Evangelicals, and for use as a teaching and evangelism tool to "save" those who have not yet been "born again." |
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Other Evangelicals have criticized the film because they disapprove with what they feel are its Roman Catholic themes, which either leave out or contradict conservative Protestant beliefs. Mel Gibson is a Catholic Traditionalist, and follows the beliefs and practices of the Roman Catholic Church before the reforms of the Vatican II Council. |
Evangelicals generally appear to have a high regard for the movie. The largest Evangelical Christian magazine in the U.S., Christianity Today, conducted a poll of visitors to its web site. On 2004-APR-22, six weeks after the movie was first released in North America, their visitors reported:
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6% had seen the movie more than twice |
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17% had seen it twice |
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40% had seen it once |
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9% have not seen it, but plan to |
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28% have not seen it and don't plan to. 10 |
Negative assessments:
| Andrew J. Webb, the pastor of the Providence PCA Mission Church
in Fayettefille, NC, 1
recommends that "Evangelicals should not see or recommend" the movie.
2 "PCA" refers to
the Presbyterian Church in America, a denomination in the
conservative wing of Presbyterianism. He has five concerns:
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| Ralph Ovadal, director of Wisconsin Christians United,
a pro-life, fundamentalist Christian agency which
is opposed to equal rights for gays and lesbians.
7 Members of
his church displayed banners directly across the street from the exit
of a movie theatre which was showing "The Passion." One banner
was worded: "How shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" The other
read, "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Other members
distributed gospel tracts in front of the doors. Ovadal refers to the
movie as a piece of religious propaganda; a "Romanist counterfeit
filled with false doctrine meant to subtly turn their hearts toward Roman
Catholicism." He predicts that Christians will take one of three
positions on the movie:
His own beliefs parallel #1. He writes: "The Lord will not bless a movie that so assaults His Word. May God help us in this hour of apostasy." 8 | ||||||||||||||
| Jack Chick heads Chick Publications Inc. of Ontario, California. His group mass produces small gospel tracts, movies, and books written from a Fundamentalist Christian perspective. Many attack non-Christian religions and liberal Christian beliefs. In his news release "New from JTC - Apes, Lies and Ms. Henn," he writes: "The Passion's" message of a sad, brutalized Christ. We serve a RISEN Christ who sits in power at the right hand of the Father in heaven. Not a weak Christ who runs to His mother for comfort, but the Creator and Lord of the universe. We can KNOW Him and have eternal life! That's missing from Gibson's film." 9 |
Positive assessments:
| The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) issued a statement on 2003-JUL-22 in support of The Passion, which they describe as an "authentic retelling of the New Testament accounts" of Jesus' last hours on Earth. Ted Haggard, President of the NAE, described the film as "A beautiful, wonderful account of the last twelve hours of the life of Jesus Christ. It is consistent with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." Haggard also stated: "The movie portrays historical accounts realistically, but the Body of Christ worldwide does not blame Jewish people for the crucifixion. Evangelicals believe that our sins are responsible for creating the situation that required the crucifixion of Christ. Christ did not die because of the political and religious powers of the day, but for a far greater purpose. We are all responsible. This is why evangelicals view The Passion as a love story. It demonstrates the profound love Christ has for all people." A NAE news release states that: "At a special showing in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Haggard, along with 30 other prominent evangelical leaders, reviewed the film and encouraged Gibson to release it with minor stylistic adjustments. All acknowledged the biblical accuracy of Gibson's creative dramatization of the historical account." Their news release concludes: "The NAE believes Gibson's film is an accurate depiction of the final hours of the life of Jesus Christ and true to the teaching of the New Testament. The NAE affirms the accurate representation of the historical and Biblical account of the life of Christ and applauds the efforts of Mel Gibson and others to produce this work." 11 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention
has collected a number of positive comments on the movie. They were all based on
the showing of an early version of the movie:
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This essay continues below.
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Whether to take children to see the movie:
ChristianityToday.com, the most popular magazine for fundamentalist and other evangelical Christians in the U.S. asked visitors to their web site whether they planned to take their children to see The Passion. Results of the poll were:
| 20%: I don't have kids. |
| 19%: No, it's too violent for children. |
| 16%: Yes, this is an important movie to see. |
| 14%: I'll decide after watching it without them. |
| 7%: Yes, the message outweighs the violence. |
| 4%: Yes, the violence is important to the story. |
| 4%: Yes, the violence is historically accurate. |
| 4%: No, my children won't see an R-rated movie |
| 3%: No, because of its portrayal of Jews. |
| 3%: No, violence distorts the spiritual meaning. |
| 2%: I don't know. |
A criticism of negative movie reviews by a Roman Catholic:
Martin Rhonheimer wrote an article for Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture in which he criticizes the many negative reviews that this movie has received. When he finally had the opportunity to view the movie in the unidentified foreign country where he lives, he was confronted by a warning sign placed there by the government's film commission. It said that the film was sadistic and brutal, historically unreliable, and contained religious propaganda that could encourage anti-semitism.
He criticizes the critics for describing the movie as a 126-minute martyrdon -- nothing but violence and brutality. He writes: "This is quite simply false. The film is almost half over before we see the first violence, the scourging of Christ." One wonders how Rhonheimer could have overlooked the frequent scenes of violence in locales ranging from Gethsemane to the temple when Jesus -- in the movie -- was repeatedly attacked. He criticizes critics for concentrating on the brutality of scourging and crucifixion and ignoring "the transformation of these horrible sufferings into an offering of love to Jesus' heavenly Father....Evil is shown for what it truly is, and we see clearly the only power that can overcome evil: the love and mercy of God, who has become man in Jesus Christ."
He accuses the critics as being "motivated, it seems, by prejudice..." They '...claim that the film has no transcendental dimension, it ignores the biblical message of the passion as one of hope and love, it shows instead only suffering and hatred, it contains no theological interpretation of the passion and no spirituality. Instead (so critics charge) we are shown simply a man being tortured to death. This whole indictment is quite simply false. He suggests that the critics have completely missed the central tenet of Christianity: the atonement. They also have not realized that the Gospels describe Jesus as both human and God.
Rhonheimer rejects the critics' charge "...that Gibson’s interpretation of the passion is theologically shallow, naive, outdated, and that he gives priority to faith over theology." Rhonheimer suggest that it is modern theology -- particularly in its Protestant form -- which has taken leave of Scripture. He writes: "Modern theology dismisses the gospel accounts as 'historically unreliable.' It discards the Pauline theology of the cross and treats the suffering servant passages in Isaiah as irrelevant."
Rhonheimer does admit that Gibson incorporated some of the visions of Anna Katharina Emmerick into the movie. But he indicates that "they are few." In reality, those visions permeate the movie to the point where it seems a great injustice that Emmerick was not acknowledged as the major author of the screen play.
He dismisses comments of the movie's anti-semitism by writing: "Crying 'anti-Semitism' becomes a way of avoiding confrontation with one’s own guilt. Not everyone is able to recognize that we are all guilty and that we cannot be freed from guilt by our own merit but only by the love of another who has taken our guilt on himself." 12
References:
- "Providence PCA Mission Church's" home page is at: http://www.providencepca.com/.
- Andrew Webb, "Five Reasons Not to Go See The Passion of Christ," 2004-FEB-21, at: http://www.providencepca.com/
- "EWTN to air 2nd exclusive interview with Mel Gibson on 'The Passion of Christ'," EWTN. com, 2004-JAN-13, at: http://www.ewtn.com/
- "The Passion of the Christ: What others are saying," North American Mission board, Southern Baptist Convention, at: http://www.passionchrist.org/
- "Churches Make 'Stunning' Show of Support for Gibson's 'Passion'," Newsmax, 2004-FEB-5.
- Romans 1:23, King James Version of the Bible.
- Wisconsin Christians United's web site is at: http://www.wcuweb.com/
- Ralph Ovadal, "Witness at The Passion," The Covenant News, 2004-FEB-27, at: http://www.covenantnews.com/
- "New from JTC - Apes, Lies and Ms. Henn," Chick Publications Inc., news release, 2004-MAR-31.
- The movie section of Christianity Today's web site is at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/
- "NAE Defends Gibson's New Film, The Passion," National Association of Evangelicals, 2003-JUL-22, at: http://www.nae.net/
- Martin Rhonheimer, "Mel Gibson's 'The Passion of the Christ': A plea for fairness," Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, Volume 8:1, Winter 2005. Temporarily online at http://www.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/logos/current/rhonheimer.pdf
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Copyright © 2004 & 2005 by Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
Originally written: 2004-FEB-24
Latest update: 2005-MAR-13
Author: B.A. Robinson
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