Those leaders who lauded 'Passion' owe apology, too

From the Washington Post via the Houston Chronicle:

Mel Gibson has apologized for his reported anti-Semitic remarks. Will Christian leaders, including some prominent Catholic bishops, apologize for applauding and recommending his earlier, more far-reaching expression of anti-Semitism, the movie The Passion of the Christ?

The movie exhumed and restaged some of the ugliest features of the pre-1980, notoriously anti-Semitic Passion play of Oberammergau, Germany. The movie was internationally distributed and continues to be marketed today as a DVD and used as a spiritual teaching tool. Just as in the old Oberammergau play, Gibson's Pilate was a civilized, even sensitive, soul — in contrast to the moviemaker's stereotyped Jewish priests, among whom a personified Devil comfortably moved with a smile of satisfaction, as if among friends.

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What a great idea! Now that we know for sure that The Passion of the Christ is definitely anti-Semitic, I think pretty much everybody who endorsed the movie, from politicians to preachers to misguided family members, owes the world an apology. Hell, I've got an unwatched DVD copy of this latter day Triumph of the Will myself, secretively shoved in my suitcase by my mother before I returned to Baton Rouge a couple of Christmases ago. I know she meant well, believing, like the Southern Baptist she is, that somehow all the flying bloody flesh and sadism would make me reconsider my rejection of Christianity, not realizing that the Bible's inherent violence is one of the things that drove me away in the first place. Okay, my mother doesn't have to apologize, but it would be nice to hear her say something to the effect of "Wow, Ronald, you were right about that Mel Gibson!"

If there's any lesson to be learned by all this, it's that Americans become childishly naive toward people who speckle their speech with Bible verses and attribute their motivations to Jesus. As the torture-loving and Israel-brutality-supporting, but otherwise pretty liberal, Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz once said, "The Bible can be used to prove any proposition." It would be really nice to hear lots of Christians publicly admit that Mel Gibson took them for a ride. That, in itself, would be good cause to see hope for fundamentalists and normal Americans getting along someday.

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