Return of the Passion story: Hey, it was a movie

July 22, 2004 By

gibson_passionRelax. I don’t think this wave of “Passion” coverage is going to be anywhere near the size of the last one. Just a few ripples.

Nevertheless, the upcoming release of the DVD of Mel Gibson’s bloody epic — gosh, it brings back memories to type those words again — seems to be inspiring some second looks at the issues raised during that media storm. There are few conclusions, but Roy Rivenburg of the Los Angeles Times recently rounded up some of the usual suspects for a much-needed post-Passion feature called “The Furor, the Fizzle.” The Dallas Morning News also did a short story on this topic.

And here’s the news. Very few people made professions of faith in Jesus at their local theaters. The nation’s synagogues appear to be surviving. Oh, and future evangelical churches may have crosses on top of their steeples as well as plasma screens in the front of their sanctuaries (make that “worship spaces”).

Out on the left coast, some Hollywood insiders think it may be a good thing to make a few more movies that sell tickets to millions of believers. And there may even be a few more highly artistic movies that are drenched in traditional Christian imagery — if Gibson uses some of his windfall to make them. And one more thing. Rivenburg noted that: “Actor Caviezel, who starred as Jesus, encountered another kind of audience reaction. … During a recent trip to Mexico, villagers asked him to perform miracles.”

However, some critics still believe that there may be trouble ahead — which means more press coverage. But did the film have any negative impact? The numbers appear to be mixed or vague or even pro-Gibson.

A poll taken after the film’s release indicated the movie had spurred an uptick in anti-Jewish attitudes. The Pew Trusts survey found that 26% of Americans believed Jews were responsible for Christ’s death, up from 19% in a 1997 ABC News poll.

However, an ADL poll done just before the movie’s debut reported the same numbers. And other post-movie surveys suggest a decrease in anti-Semitic beliefs.

But Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman is worried about the impact of that DVD.

“Ask me a year down the road,” Foxman says, noting that the movie will be out on DVD Aug. 31 and will be used by churches on youth retreats. “People who saw it in theaters saw the movie in an atmosphere of national debate and discussion” that diluted the film’s anti-Semitic impact, he says. With the DVD, that calming influence will be gone, he adds.

Meanwhile, conservative Christians who expected viewers to be slain in the spirit by spiritual magic bullets are also having to admit that some of their lofty evangelistic predictions may have been premature. But wait! Perhaps the DVD format is better for showing the film to lost friends in private and then quietly discussing it over a copy of the Four Spiritual Laws?

Then again, perhaps it is hard for one mass-media signal to change the lives of many people who keep getting baptized — daily, multiple times — in other forms of mass media. One of the top researchers in the Protestant world suggested that, hey, this was just one movie. Maybe it takes lots of movies to shape worldviews.

According to a nationwide poll released last week by the Barna Group, a Ventura firm that researches faith trends, less than one-tenth of 1% of those who saw the film accepted Jesus as their savior because of it.

“It is rare that a single media event will radically transform how someone thinks and reacts to the world,” poll director George Barna says. ” ‘The Passion’ was well-received and stopped many people long enough to cause them to rethink some of their basic assumptions about life. But within hours, those same individuals were exposed to competing messages that began to diminish the effect of what they had seen.”

As for me, I think the biggest story that could come out of the Passion is a business story — a massive growth of Gibson’s Icon company into a full-blown studio. It should be noted that Gibson has, after the blitz of PR work he did to sell the film, returned to silent mode.

When he breaks that silence, then there will be a story to cover. Perhaps even a big story. I am sure that his critics will agree.

Filed Under: Film

With God, and the Times, on his side (Creeping Fundamentalism XI)

July 21, 2004 By

seccomAs you may have noticed, your friends here at GetReligion.org rarely, if ever, comment on op-ed columns. We’d need to open an entire second site if we started chasing religion into the editorial pages.

But sometimes, a columnist such as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times creates news as well as comments on the news, such as his stunning work on the genocide in Sudan. He has also, in recent years, gone out of his way to probe the global role of faith in public life, even aiming a few shots of praise at evangelical Christians.

Thus, it was of more than passing interest recently that Kristof lashed out at the pop theology of the “Left Behind” novels and, to get specific about it, offer his opinion that its vision of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was bloody dangerous to the world as the New York Times understands it.

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is “Glorious Appearing,” which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It’s disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of “Glorious Appearing” and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it’s time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

Truth is, millions of traditional Christians — especially Arab Christians — share some of his anger at Christians whose beliefs fit inside the large “Left Behind” tent. But Kristof is, in this case, painting with a much larger brush. He comes very, very close to condemning the very heart of traditional Christian faith in both the Second Coming and the belief that salvation is found through Jesus Christ, alone. At one point he asks:

These scenes also raise an eschatological problem: Could devout fundamentalists really enjoy paradise as their friends, relatives and neighbors were heaved into hell?

Now, these beliefs are controversial to many and clearly clash with other world religions, which is why the word “infidels” is so popular with radical Islamists. There is no need to ignore the obvious (or beheaded missionaries).

But Kristof seems unaware that the “Left Behind” books are only one take on these hot doctrines. Last time I checked, the likes of Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II and perhaps even George W. Bush and John Kerry were not saying the Nicene Creed with their fingers crossed. Unless a flock has lapsed into heresy, this creed does proclaim belief in “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God” who will “come again, with glory, to judge both the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.”

It is one thing to criticize believers because the specifics of their doctrine can somehow be shown to have affected their political views and actions. This is what is going on with the folks on the political and religious left who seem convinced that Bush’s alleged evangelical convictions are shaping his actions in the Middle East. There are those — people with documentary cameras, even — who seem convinced that Bush either believes that his policies can speed up the Second Coming or he is willing to pretend that he does, to excite, well, millions of people who read “Left Behind” novels. This seems to have soaked into Kristof’s view of traditional Christian theology.

Or check out another op-ed exploration of this theme — by Mark Morford in San Francisco. It was called “Hello, God? It’s Me, Dubya” and included the leader of the free world asking his Heavenly Father:

Look, I’ve done everything you asked. I’ve been good. Haven’t I? I take the message to the people, don’t I? I spout that evangelical born-again crap in pisswater Podunk conservative churches across this burned-out fear-drunk nation like I was emceeing a freakin’ rodeo in Crawford. And they eat it up, Lord. They eat that stuff up. Hell, I even believe a lot of that fire-breathin’ Second Comin’ evildoer-hatin’ stuff myself.

Kristof did not go that far, of course, in the sacred pages of the blue-state Bible. He stressed that he had reservations about writing the column because he didn’t “want to mock anyone’s religious beliefs, and millions of Americans think ‘Glorious Appearing’ describes God’s will. Yet ultimately I think it’s a mistake to treat religion as a taboo, either in this country or in Saudi Arabia.” Still he believed that he needed to speak out against hatred and intolerance.

I would offer journalists one suggestion if they are trying to be fair to believers on the various sides of these complicated doctrinal disputes. Try, try, try to separate those who believe that they are supposed to proclaim their gospel using free speech from those who believe they should do their evangelizing with bombs, swords and guns. Yes, there are people on all sides who have crossed that line. We can have journalistic arguments about how many believers in various faiths have crossed that line. But reciting the Nicene Creed, leading an evangelistic crusade or even handing a friend a copy of a “Left Behind” novel is not the same thing as flying an airplaine into a building.

Kristof knows that. Sort of. Maybe.

But he is certain that he has God on his side in the debates over salvation and Christology, along with, of course, the New York Times.

People have the right to believe in a racist God, or a God who throws millions of nonevangelicals into hell. I don’t think we should ban books that say that. But we should be embarrassed when our best-selling books gleefully celebrate religious intolerance and violence against infidels. That’s not what America stands for, and I doubt that it’s what God stands for.

UPDATE: The Dallas Morning News published the Kristof column and also offered this response by Robert Spencer of JihadWatch.org.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism, Politics

The peacemaker with a PR firm

May 11, 2004 By

drkapaulMichelle Cotelle of The New Republic has written a thoughtful cover profile of K.A. Paul, an evangelist from India who is building a reputation as a geopolitical (or, if you prefer, theopolitical) troubleshooter. Paul does his work through Gospel to the Unreached Millions and the more web-savvy Global Peace Initiative.

Cotelle repeatedly returns to the theme that Paul’s primary interests — promoting himself, helping people in the Third World and persuading power-mad leaders to give their lives to God or to step aside — leave him an outsider among evangelicals who are more interested in culture-war issues:

The public face of religion in the United States, Paul and his supporters have found, looks nothing like that of a peculiar, self-promoting Indian minister. Americans tend to prefer their humanitarian and spiritual leaders humble and self-deprecating, à la Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham. Paul, by contrast, is so desperate to convince you of his influence that he can come across as either a liar or a crank. And even those who aren’t turned off by Paul’s self-aggrandizement are often unmoved by his cause. Rescuing widows and orphans may be big news in the Third World, but the subject doesn’t exactly grip the American imagination, which is preoccupied with culture-war standards like abortion, gay rights, and school prayer. Focused as he is on Third World hunger and other apolitical issues that don’t get you on “Crossfire,” Dr. Paul simply may never fit the American image of a Spiritual Leader. But such challenges simply make the indefatigable peace crusader even more determined to try.

The New Yorker published a Talk of the Town item about Paul in September 2003, after he convinced Liberian President Charles Taylor to resign and leave the country. The New Yorker‘s piece said Taylor gave due credit to Paul in a letter he sent to The New York Times, but the Times declined to publish it. Both pieces mention that Paul has hired the New York PR firm of Rubenstein Associates to help him spread the word about what he’s doing.

Paul also has surrounded himself with some rich, famous or powerful Americans: Nelson Bunker Hunt (The New Yorker adds: “of what Dr. Paul calls ‘the Hunt brothers silver deal’”), Evander Holyfield, Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and some former members of Congress.

Cotelle provides a sensible explanation of why Paul has not appeared in many American newspapers or magazines:

Paul’s preference for speaking in absolutes (meeting with every terrorist and rebel group in 89 countries, building the world’s largest orphanage, drawing every politician in a region to his rallies) suggests a tendency toward exaggeration, even when the claims are basically true. He must be grilled on every story in order to separate narrative embellishment (he once “beat up” the head of his college) from reality (he threw a couple of punches at the guy), and, even then, it’s wise to confirm with outside sources. For naturally skeptical journalists, all this is hardly worth the trouble for a story about some odd little preacher no one has ever heard of anyway.

Beneath all Paul’s self-promotion, it seems, are some legitimate news stories waiting to be written. The New Republic and The New Yorker have done a service by writing two of them.

Filed Under: People

One dictator's journalist is another's evangelist (think about it)

April 29, 2004 By

freedom_houseWhile this may seem out of place on a God-beat blog, let me call attention to a new study released by the human-rights think tank Freedom House. It’s called “Freedom of the Press 2004: A Global Survey of Media Independence” and was released to mark the upcoming World Press Freedom Day on May 3.

I bring this up for the following rather obvious reason — free speech is free speech and one dictator’s journalist is often another’s evangelist. And vice versa.

Freedom of the press and freedom of religion are wedded at the hip. It’s hard to silence the evangelists without silencing other people who want to offer provocative commentary on how people are supposed to live their lives. Think about it. A summary of the findings included this money paragraph:

Of the 193 countries surveyed (including the Israeli-Administered Territories/Palestinian Authority), 73 (38%, representing 17% of the global population) were rated Free, with no significant restrictions on the news media; 49 (25%, 40%) were rated Partly Free and are characterized by some media restrictions; and 71 (37%, 43%) were rated Not Free, with state control or other obstacles to a free press.

Some of the most serious setbacks for press freedoms took place in “countries where democracy is backsliding, such as in Bolivia and Russia, and in older, established democracies, most notably Italy.” And few were surprised that the Middle East-North Africa region once again received the lowest marks — with 90 percent of the region’s countries getting a “Not Free” rating. Only one country — Israel — was rated “Free.”

Freedom House has a long history of old-fashioned liberalism (founded by Eleanor Roosevelt) on these issues and has been at the forefront of efforts to push the U.S. government to do more to protect the freedoms of religious minorities. This has led to some interesting political partnerships in the past decade or so. During Clinton-era debates over China trade policies, it was not unusual to see the likes of Gary Bauer embracing Richard Gere at a protest rally. (The map with this post covers basic political freedoms.)

It may help to keep that in mind when reading some of the more provocative findings in this study. Take, for example, the reference to the changing environment in Iraq:

With the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime in April, hundreds of new publications are covering a wide range of opinions. Iraqis were able to gain unfettered access to the Internet and to uncensored foreign television broadcasts. Nevertheless, a continuing lack of security, the murders of at least 13 journalists, and an ambiguous legal and regulatory media framework kept Iraq in the ranks of the Not Free countries despite its impressive numerical gains, as noted in the survey’s rating system.

Filed Under: Journalism, Social Issues

Creeping Fundamentalism VI: Fundamentalist/Premillennialist/Reconstructionist/Whatever in Chief

April 5, 2004 By

bushwithhornsThree cheers for a Boston Globe essay that may calm some fears of George W. Bush as the End Times President. The essay is by Alan Jacobs, an English professor at Wheaton College, which may be enough to disqualify him in certain provincialist circles. (Recall how only last month the Globe’s competition, the Boston Herald, instructed its readers that Wheaton “counts holy roller Billy Graham among its alumni.”)

Jacobs responds to a scathing essay by Joan Didion in the October 2003 New York Review of Books (available for purchase from the Review‘s web archives). Didion’s essay would have left evangelical-fearing readers with the impression that Bush gleans his foreign policy from each new bestselling novel in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins.

From Didion’s perspective, Bush is scary because he believes in the same God as the religious right. She writes, by way of illustration:

The fundamentalist approach to information, whether that approach is innate or learned, does not encourage nuanced judgments. Bill Keller, in The New York Times Magazine, reminded us that “Bush bonded with Vladimir Putin over the Russian’s story of a lost crucifix.” (“I was able to get a sense of his soul,” Bush himself said after his first ninety-minute meeting with Putin.)

Jacobs mentions Didion’s essay, kindly describing it as evidence that “some pretty smart people” disagree with his sense that Bush’s faith has minimal effect on the administration’s policies. And he mentions a speech in which Mark Crispin Miller worries that Christian Reconstructionists have Bush’s ear.

Jacobs writes:

In fact, it is precisely because they don’t believe in an imminent Second Coming that Reconstructionists are so determined to use Biblical law as the foundation for civilization. They’d like to build a world that Jesus would want to return to.

President Bush could scarcely be a premillennialist and a Reconstructionist at the same time — at least not with any consistency. “Aha!” you may reply, “but is someone like Dubya likely to be consistent? I think not.” And I think not, also. But that’s precisely why I don’t share the fears of Didion and Miller. The scenarios they construct require Bush and his key advisers to be people who read the Bible in light of a coherent theology that yields a specific political program (rather than politicians whose chief concern is getting reelected). The danger would lie in consistency itself — in Bush’s willingness to get policy from theology as a mathematician derives an equation. Yet even if that were true — even if Bush’s mind worked that way — these fears could only be realized if he were a premillennialist in foreign policy and a Reconstructionist on the domestic front.

Harvey Cox reported, way back in 1995, that postmillennialism dominates at Pat Robertson’s Regent University, but that’s still another story. For a lively discussion of the dominant views of the End Times, see The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views.

Rolling Stone managed to confuse premillennialists with Reconstructionists in covering LaHaye. “LaHaye is a strict biblical reconstructionist — taking the Good Book as God’s literal truth,” Robert Dreyfuss wrote. “His books depict a fantastical, fictional version of what he and his followers think is in store for the human race.”

And behold how Dreyfuss attempted, despite scant evidence, to transform Bush into a true believer of LaHaye’s views on the End Times:

LaHaye professes no knowledge of whether President Bush buys into his views. “I have seen nothing from this president that would indicate that he is influenced one way or the other by my prophesy teaching,” he says. But for Bush, an emotional, evangelical president who has repeatedly described the struggle against Saddam as a conflict between good and evil, LaHaye’s views resonate with his. And though it’s not known whether Bush has read any of the Left Behind books, he is a regular consumer of writing by other evangelists.

There’s a technical term for that kind of writing: guilt by association.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism

Is the NBA ready for CCB? Contemporary Christian Basketball?

March 30, 2004 By

When the Kobe Bryant sex scandal first hit the headlines, one of the first things that NBA insiders began discussing was its impact on his multi-million-dollar endorsement contracts. But the discussions had a twist. While some worried that a sexual-assault rap might hurt him, others decided that this might actually boost his stock “on the street,” in the urban marketplace of hip-hop, macho credibility.

Clearly, the NBA is a highly tolerant environment, when it comes to the personal lives of its superstars.

But what if a hoops phenom was a born-again Christian, one who saw the court as a platform for evangelism and, oh my God, even the advocacy of conservative moral beliefs? How would this affect sneaker sales? Will this hurt the NBA brand name? What’s next? An “I love this game” NBA ad featuring Franklin Graham?

This was the issue raised in a feature over at ESPN.com focusing on this year’s high-school verson of LeBron (King) James. Dwight Howard is a 6-10 power forward and everyone agrees that this young man is a star on the rise. But what about those hymns he sings? What about that 10 Commandments poster in his room? Is the NBA ready for a stud who says things like: “I want to be able to speak to non-Christians so that I can get them saved or change their lives around.”

This is not a new issue. There have been stories in the past about born-again tensions in major-league baseball locker rooms. People have asked if a linebacker can be as tough as he needs to be when he is involved in Promise Keeper rallies on Saturday with some of the players that he needs to crush on Sunday. But it is Howard’s openness about his evangelistic goals that has some people freaking out. Can the NBA tolerate this kind of intolerance? The ESPN.com feature notes:

“This is the first time an athlete will be able to overcome what (former San Antonio Spurs center David Robinson) couldn’t do,” said Sonny Vaccaro, the Reebok executive. . . . “David was a leader in the crusade of being religious and being a great athlete, but Dwight’s plan could work because we’re in an era of niche marketing. He’s taking a stand saying, ‘I’m going to do this and some company is going to buy into it,’ and that fact is that these companies have millions and billions of dollars to brand Dwight as their hero.

“If he’s as good as I think he will be, he’ll be the perfect role model for this segment of the population.”

To state it crudely, does the NBA need to consider the impact of those box-office numbers for The Passion of the Christ? Can professional sports afford to be “Left Behind” in this age of niche marketing?

Maybe that would work. But maybe, notes ESPN reporter Darren Rovell, it would not. Everyone knows that there are believers out on the court. But the jury is still out on whether that is good for marketing.

About 50 percent of the league’s players attend at least one service during the season and seemingly every team has a player who considers himself a devout Christian, said former ABA and NBA guard Claude Terry, executive vice president of the Pro Basketball Fellowship, which oversees the NBA teams’ chaplains.

“I would hope that Dwight’s beliefs wouldn’t hurt his chances to market products,” Terry said. “I would think that marketers would want to embrace someone with such values. At the same time, I can understand that we live in an age where people are supposed to be tolerant of the choices others make and it could be interpreted that he is imposing his beliefs on them.”

Filed Under: Sports

Robertson, Rooney and Ebert, oh my!

February 24, 2004 By

Surely it says something about the Passion media storm that even the folks at E! Online News are being driven to dig out some sources in havens of mainstream faith such as Grand Rapids, Mich.

I mean, Grand Rapids is to the Dutch Reformed what Waco is to Dr Pepper.

This lively little story by Joal Ryan also contains one of the day’s most off-the-wall summary paragraphs.

In the runup to release, the movie has been derided as anti-Semitic and praised as important. Gibson has been called “crazy” by 60 Minutes’ Andy Rooney and a “talented genius” by evangelist Pat Robertson, also slammed in Rooney’s commentary on Sunday’s broadcast.

Clearly the critics are divided. While some are lashing out at the director and his motives, others are finding ways to praise the film — even if it makes them nervous. E! notes that the movie review site RottenTomatoes.com had tracked 33 critiques — 17 positive; 16 negative.

Meanwhile, one of the most influential populists gave it a thumb’s up:

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert called The Passion “the most violent film I have ever seen,” which was more warning, than criticism. In a four-star review, Ebert said he was “moved by the depth of feeling, by the skill of the actors and technicians.”

Filed Under: Film

Creeping fundamentalism

February 18, 2004 By

Jane Lampman of The Christian Science Monitor writes today about what she calls “rapturist” theology, and she clearly grasps most of the subtexts as Christians debate how Jesus will return to Earth.

Inevitably, she describes most Christians who expect a pre-Tribulation rapture — in which Jesus rescues believers from looming plagues of Old Testament proportions — as fundamentalists, though she grants that “the interest in end-times prophecy has spread beyond their circles.”

Premillennialists’ other flaw is — wait for it — literalism. Lampman writes that Barbara Rossing of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago and other critics aim to “demonstrate that [premillennial theology] is a modern literalist interpretation based on selective passages taken out of context.”

The real issue is whether Revelation ought to be considered prophecy applying to contemporary world events, prophecy already fulfilled centuries ago or, as apocalyptic literature, never intended as prophecy.

Christians who care about end-times thinking could tell any reporter that there are four contending views, including amillennialism. But for Christians who consider Revelation prophetic, reading strictly as poetic language is not an option. They may be guilty of category confusion, but literalism is not the primary culprit.

Lampman does an admirable job of showing that premillennial theology leads some Christians deeper into their faith, rather than into abandoning a world they consider doomed. She first offers this adjective-laden and imprecise introduction:

Barbara White, a Jewish African-American mortician from Buffalo, N.Y., was “saved” at age 7 by a pastor “who was heavy on the rapture.” It shapes her whole life.

“The priority is time — every day I cram five days into that day because of the sense of urgency,” she says. “I feel I have to love every day, encourage someone every day.” She has also become pastor of an interdenominational church.

Lampman could have filled out her coverage with quotes from the Center for Millennial Studies. Because she writes that premillennial thought has “been avidly promoted by televangelists and on Christian radio for decades,” she might have pointed out that not even all TV evangelists embrace a “rapturist” understanding. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, for example, affirms the rapture without the trappings of premillennialism. Ah, but isn’t Pat Robertson a grand champion fundamentalist, if not (in one fundy-bashing joke) the Antichrist? It’s enough to make your head hurt.

And she cites this example of how premillennialists are supposedly exerting an influence on the foreign policy of President Bush:

When President Bush started to call on Israel to pull the military back from Jenin refugee camp in 2002, they helped mobilize 100,000 e-mails to the White House; the president never said another word in public.

Who would have thought that email packed such a political wallop? If this is a movement closing in on raw political power, amillennialists have nothing to worry about.

Filed Under: Creeping Fundamentalism