Religious leaders suggest reading up on the Bible before seeing “The Passion of the Christ.”
LEWISTON – Folks looking for a sacred experience while watching Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” may be let down, say local religious leaders. They also may be led down.
Christian leaders said Sunday that the blockbuster movie is too filled with interpretation and changes too many historical facts.
Meanwhile, members of the local Jewish community – including Cantor Hillel Katzir of Temple Shalom – found some images in the movie to be anti-Jewish.
“Mel Gibson is not my teacher,” said the Rev. Jerry Begin, pastor of the Spirit of Fire Evangelistic Ministries in Lewiston.
In its broad strokes, the movie about Christ’s crucifixion works all right, said Begin, whose church bought 100 movie tickets for its members.
“However, there are a lot of things that I did not like,” said Begin, who found the movie to be too gory. And though he did not feel the film was anti-Jewish, it’s a concern, he said.
If Jews feel hatred from the movie, then it needs to be discussed, said the minister.
The Sunday afternoon discussion was organized by Cantor Katzir and sponsored by the Lewiston-Auburn Interfaith Clergy Association and the Many and One Coalition. About 50 people attended.
“No one wants to be accused of killing God,” said Katzir, “And I, for one, am just about Passioned out.”
Yet, response is needed, he said.
“At bottom, I don’t really care if Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite or not,” Katzir said. “What I do care about is this: We all have to live together in the here and now and Mr. Gibson’s film is part of our culture.”
Katzir and the Rev. Begin were joined by professor Abraham Peck, president of Interfaith Maine and director of the Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian, Jewish and Islamic Studies. Also on the panel were Ted Campbell, a retired professor of Old Testament studies at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago and professors Robert Allison and Marcus Bruce, both of Bates College.
Panelists agreed that the movie falls far short of Gibson’s aim: to be a true representation of Christ’s death.
“It was not historically accurate,” said Allison. “It seemed so obvious to me.”
Some events from the movie, as when a crow pecks out the eyes of a man on a cross, are entirely made up, Allison said. Some are distorted from scripture, he said. Still others are matters of choice.
For example, opportunities to temper the depiction of Jews using events from the New Testament were missed, he said.
Never is Jesus shown to be the popular leader that the Gospels portray, Allison said.
In that absence, Jewish priests seem to speak for the larger Jewish population. When the priests fail to rescue Christ from Roman condemnation, they seem to represent the entire people.
Audiences ought to know the difference between what is written and what Gibson shows, said Allison.
Professor Bruce, who teaches a class on religion in film, says the movie has become a “teaching moment,” fueling lively class discussions.
Meanwhile, he teaches his students to be aware of the filmmaker’s storytelling techniques, whether it’s Gibson’s movie or Martin Scorsese’s 1988 film, “The Last Temptation of Christ.”
About the recent movie, Bruce points out that the Satan character looks surprisingly like the evil emperor in the “Star Wars” movies.
The conventions of modern filmmaking are present throughout the film, he said. One needs only to be aware.
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