Oldie but goodie: Ched Myers on Christian anti-Semitism
The most concise thing I can say about my reaction to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is: I loved the book, but hated the movie.
As an activist theologian, I feel some responsibility to defend the gospel against contemporary representations or reproductions that I judge to be particularly wrongheaded or dangerous. The problem is, there are too many of these to respond to. Given the (admittedly intriguing) pop cultural phenomenon surrounding this film, however, I have reluctantly been drawn into the fray.
There is much to be perplexed and/or enraged about in Gibson’s cinematic version of the trial and execution of Jesus. And there is plenty to deconstruct concerning the filmmaker and his psyche, not least his fascination for “ Braveheart -type” victim-heroes who suffer injustice and indignity, but ultimately wreak righteous and intensely violent payback on their adversaries. (One can speculate that such cosmic retribution would be the presumed “eschatological sequel” to Gibson’s Passion film; let us hope he never makes it!) But the public issue most stimulated by the film has been whether or not it would rekindle old and persistent embers of anti-Semitism, and that is far more important to address than Gibson and his theology.
In a recent forum in Oakland I did with Rabbi Michael Lerner and Victor Lewis on the film, Lerner rightly called on Christians to stand in solidarity with Jews in educating the public about the long and murderous history of Christian anti-Semitism. Of particular concern in this case is the medieval European legacy of pogroms that often followed on the heels of performances of a “Passion Play.” I write in the midst of Passover/Holy Week, and while no one thinks that we will see an increase of overt acts of anti-Semitism in North America right now, the shaping of prejudice is incremental and mysterious, and this film influences in the wrong direction. There are many things we can do to work against this film functioning as a “ Lethal Weapon V.” One is to try to set the record straight.
charles:
Is this from a few years ago ?
STAN: yes
21 August 2008, 3:52 pmDavid:
“the storyline inevitably becomes conflated into “Jews are Christ-killers.”
You know, I really didn’t see that when I watched the movie. Are you sure you’re not putting it there by looking for it too hard?
STAN: I didn’t put anything there. Ched Myers wrote this. Ched’s point is that the history of Christian anti-Semitism (shared by Catholics and Protestants alike) goes back to Passion Plays, where the story of torture and execution begins only with Jesus’ confrontation in Jerusalem with Jewish religious authorities, leaving the impression that Jews killed Christ. This motif has tremendous resonance, but it is a motif that doesn’t tell the whole story… just the bloody bits, with comprador Jewish religious authorities in a leading role as heavy (even though this was a thoroughly Roman set-up). The story building up to that is one where Jesus and Friends are themselves reverent Jews who are padding the dusty roads of a (foeriegn) militarily-occupied land. Unless the whole story of the gospels is examined, the meaning of the cross remains not merely untintelligible, but turned into its opposite. The snare that Christ sets for the zeitgeist that was personified as “Satan” was the exposure of Satan’s most effective tool: retribution. If one wants to live a life of discipleship, then the key first step is abandonment of retribution… in every aspect of life from the microcosm of personal relaitonships to the macrocosm of politics. His followers, who all (ahem… except the women) had abandoned him before Golgotha, were confused because they had never quite gotten their heads around this pivotal point within the ministry and movement of Jesus. When the Romans crucified him, he asked God to “forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing.” At that point, there comes an earthquake (a metaphor for what is experienced in the mind of the Centurian who says upon hearing this forgiveness, this is truly The One). I think here of African American Civil Rights marchers confronted by hostile Southern police, asking the police to pray with them in the street. That’s how Christ(ians) can trip up the devil (the spirit [system] that seeds domination and retribution). They call the triune God (which Paul calls Love, Grace, and Fellowship) in to disrupt the cycle with the doctrine of spiritual equality (each and all are children of God, beloved of God, and therefore availed of the possibility of redemption). Oddly enough, even as the Greek scriptures used the masculinized idiom of their day, this is really the ethos of a Good Mother… nurturing, patient, relational, with plenty of start-overs.
25 August 2008, 12:34 am