My position on the
Passion of Christ
I usually write something on whatever is “hot” among evangelicals.
I spent a full year grumbling about the church
growth movement when it flooded evangelical thinking. And when Promise-Keepers refused to
let Women attend their minister’s conference I spoke up. When we were all getting email warning us of
the latest trick M. M O’Hair was up to I addressed that too. Just when
evangelicals thought they’d win the world to Christ with W.W.J.D.
bracelets I wrote a column telling us all that it was a fad already dying
out. When
So why not say something about Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Because it is too early.
The dust has not settled yet. All I have is my reactions to the visual experience—I still can’t guess the unintended consequences of it all: peace with Roman Catholics? Renewed unity with the Roman Catholics? Return to the stations of the cross among Protestants? The elevation of Mary to her place as the “mother of God—or at least halfway there? Is this the end to the “Jesus is my boyfriend” relationship some women have with Christ so that he now becomes the bloody redeemer? A change among some Christians outright rejection of all “R’ movies to a new policy of discretion (historical violence is OK but not historical Sex?). A significant increase in males relating to the gospel—men who prefer the bloodier side of things than the caring tender side of the story? Renewal of the meaning of Holy Communion? A new sensitivity to anti-Semitism? Acceptance of oral tradition as a source for what happened to Jesus—something outside the gospel but part of tradition or sourced in visions and dreams?
Something else I have not listed here? Or nothing at all—in ten years it will have been an excitement blip like “Key ‘73” that few will even remember 30 years later? Who knows? I don’t.