I haven't seen Gibson's The Passion of the Christ yet, but I've been reading about it and listening to thoughts from those who have.
Joy recently posted her pastors article on the topic: karagraphy: Pastor Bixby’s protest against the evangelical ecstasy over the Passion movie. I'll be reading through that soon.
Yesterday I used some time to read two short articles from Time Magazine on the topic. You can use the links below for a limited time (Time Magazine charges for archives).
Discussion is welcome.
More thoughts to come.
ben i can't read the articles cause i am not a time member...any way you could summarize the articles for us w/o us having to sell our souls to them as payment?
Posted by: hill at March 8, 2004 10:54 PMThe first article summarized the movie and gave some thoughts about its relevance and cultural context. The most interesting line from the first article was (not an exact quote), "the movie has a very narrow audience: Christians with cast iron stomachs."
The second, gave some interesting insight into the history of facination with Christ's suffering during the Passion week. They traced it back to the 1300's during the time of the black plague. The article stated that meditating on the pain Christ went through was possibly intended to ease the focus on ones own suffering.
Niether of the articles seemed anti-Christian. In fact the first mentioned that the move was decidedly *not* anti-semitic, but rather anti-Sanhedrin. They would both be good reads if you can get a copy at the periodicals room of a library some where.
I got Time magazine free, and I completely understand about not wanting to sign up for their site.
Posted by: Benjamin at March 9, 2004 11:31 AMPlease note: Comments will not appear immediately. Your comment will appear upon approval by the blog's editor. We had to implement this to decrease the amount of spam that our site receives. Please forgive the inconvenience. We are looking into other, friendlier options.