posted March 02, 2004 11:11 PM         

What REALLY irks me though is how stupid we are as a "civilisation"! The amount of money spent on "defense" (and war in general) compared to science that can help heal or get us off this planet if needed is pathetic.

Dean.

posted March 04, 2004 02:41 AM         

Divine Words
A missive from the main character of The Passion to director Mel Gibson.

By Tony Hendra
Web Exclusive: 3.2.04
Print Friendly | Email Article

TO: Mel Gibson
FROM: Jesus the Christ

RE: My Passion

Mel, Mel, Mel,

http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2004/03/hendra-t-03-02.html

This is kinda interesting.....

posted March 05, 2004 11:33 PM         

As for the issue of Jewish culpability ... (1) read the Bible or (2) read "The Prophet of the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Upton C. Ewing.
The Newsweek issue dated February 16, 2004 also has a pretty interesting story. Here are some quotes:

* "They've arrested him she cried."
The Movie: Magdalene tries to get help from Roman soldiers when Jesus is taken away to be tried by the Jewish priests.
The Facts: The scene, which could suggest greater Jewish culpability and control, is not in the Gospels.

* "There is trouble within the walls."
The Movie: Caiaphas and other priests ("the Jews" in the Gospels) are in charge, convicting Jesus of blasphemy in a trial the Romans do not appear to know about.
The Facts: Caiaphas was Pilate's subordinate, only Rome could execute, and the Gospels' trial scenes do not justify the 'blasphemy' charge against Jesus.

* "Can you explain this madness?"
The Movie: Gibson portrays Pilate as a sensitive ruler who is pushed into crucifying Jesus by a chanting Jewish mob.
The Facts: Pilate was a bullying, bloody-minded prefect who, a contemporary noted, was of 'inflexible, stubborn and cruel disposition' who executed untried Jews.

* "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."
The Movie: Jesus told Pilate that Caiaphas bore the 'greater sin' for delivering him over to a Roman execution.
The Facts: The sentence was Pilate's to hand down, and the Roman Catholic Church holds that while 'Christ underwent his passion freely,' all sinners are culpable.

The entire article is quite interesting. However, I still haven't made up my mind about Mel Gibson (though frankly it doesn't really make that big a difference to me since his opinion doesn't affect how I feel). He repeatedly talks about how he is not anti-semitic ... then is quoted as saying (in response to the question, "Who opposes Jesus?") "They are either Satanic or the dupes of Satan." I dunno' ... perhaps he is just anti-anyone-who-is-not-Christian? I hope that doesn't offend anyone, because I really mean it as a joke. Seriously now, either you believe in/follow Jesus or you are Satanic or are being fooled by Satan? LOL That's ridiculous and quite intolerant in my eyes, but I've heard many Christians I know voice the same opinion. Ah well, at least it is just their opinion.

posted March 08, 2004 08:52 PM         

That's all I can say. I am aghast. The picture worked just fine, I can see it.

That is frightening beyond all words.

Is this recent? Where?

posted March 08, 2004 08:58 PM         

i like the fact that it's in Latin and Aramaic - at least that will make people have to think - but what is Gibson's true purpose in making this film? is this the way the church is going to lure in young believers?

no one seems to want to go out and spraypaint the walls of a German deli after seeing a holocaust movie, but folks do still get riled up about the "Jews killed Jesus" thing - 2,000 years and counting.

and this movie isn't happening in a vaccuum. besides the christian contingent, there are fundamentalist islamic schools (and TV shows!) that still teach this stuff about Jews being of the devil as if it's true. what happens when this movie comes out over in that part of the world where the tensions are already so high? it doesn't help either side - the Jewish people, obviously, or the Muslims who get the backlash for the beliefs of a percentage of their co-religionists.

harpyr - i agree with you on two points. one, that people are more likely to project their demons onto an "other" than onto themselves, and two, that Gibson's movies make people want to toss each other around. i was living in the UK when Braveheart came out, and a few acquaintances up in St. Andrews got the &*@$ beat out of them for being English. granted, scottish men don't seem to need a whole lot of an excuse to start swinging, but neither do a lot of college students in this country these days (hello, superbowl car flip, anyone?) - we'll have to wait and see if there's a backlash.

on the sunnier side, maybe you guys are right and this will engender more needed interfaith dialogue. *sigh* - Gandhi said, "You must become the change you want to see in the world." the changes i'm seeing are scaring me. i feel like i'm seeing more dualities than i ever remember seeing before. this movie only adds to the list.

what do y'all think of this movie comes at the tail end of the piscean age - bringing it all full circle down to those last twelve hours of the myth. (who's the aquarian hero-god going to be - harry potter? frodo???)

posted March 08, 2004 09:08 PM         

i know this is not the view of 99.9% of Christians - always a few idiots have to ruin the party for everyone else - but it's out there, along with all the other anti-this-that-andtheotherthing. i guess it's the making money off of it part that really irks me.

posted March 09, 2004 10:48 AM         

LONDON (Reuters) - Four Church of England parishes are trying to boost their congregations by offering free cinema tickets to watch Mel Gibson's controversial movie "The Passion of Christ."

Four churches in the Archbishop of Canterbury's diocese in the southeastern county of Kent have block-booked 20,000 pounds ($37,020) of tickets to give away for the graphic film depicting the torture and death of Jesus Christ in an effort to drum up new recruits.

"Gay bishops being thrown out of the Church is not the sort of publicity we need," Russ Hughes, director of worship and prophecy at St Luke's -- one of the four churches involved in the scheme -- told the Times newspaper Tuesday.

"Hopefully this will put the emphasis back on Christ. We are competing for people's attention with things like the 9/11 disaster and Kylie Minogue's rear end, so we are not going to get people in by running a jumble sale.

"This is the greatest opportunity for the Church in the last 30 years and if we did not use it we may not get such an opportunity again."

The film opens in Britain later this month and the free tickets are being offered to selected non-churchgoers.

posted March 10, 2004 09:13 PM         

Love you all,
Dean.

posted March 13, 2004 01:22 AM         

We saw the movie tonight, and it HURTS your heart.

It is actually very timely. Leave religion out and think about it. It is about the human experience, our needs, strengths, weaknesses and ignorance. And how we will kill out of fear. Not much has changed in our history, as this continues in the middle east, africa, haiti, china, yugoslavia etc...

The shock value worked for me, I now HAVE to BE a better person. The violence is stunning, yet it happens everyday........

Cindi

posted March 14, 2004 03:33 PM         

Off to see it now.

Am looking forward to seeing if it triggers any past life memories for me...

Will comment further later.

Alright... now that I'm back (it is 7:05pm here now) I think I need to reserve my commentary until I have time to process.

Definitely not for the faint of heart, but I think worth going to see.

It did give me alot to think about, and I believe some insight into the "tearing down of the Temple and rebuilding it in three days."

As Mr. Spock would say... "Fascinating."

Blessings...
A

posted March 21, 2004 12:59 PM         

I got to see the movie last night and all I can say is... for a guy like me,I'm still heart-felt by it.

OK,Hollywood is mostly ran by Jews and is broadened by it's Jewish critics, but if they think can clearly and repeatedly prime the guilt of things like the "Holocaust" to the Christains and snub they're noses at them for it and then sweep the Christain belief whatsoever under the rug,then I ask "Who's the bigot now"?

The truth to that is,"The Passion" is not a movie that teaches us all (who ever may see it), politics,anti-seminism or even not taking a bite out of another slice of pizza ever again"...because Italain's ancesters are EVIL!" It's a movie that teaches that a messager of God's came to Earth from Heaven and then died for our sins(for the believer)and/or a man that tought all the goodness of Heaven to multitudes of people and told them how to get there(he did this for three in a half years)and after talking the talk,for THREE days(not 12 hours),he walked the walk,knowingly right to his death(that's for the non-believer).

In spite of what was said and done in the film, anybody that knows the Bible,KNOWS that this was true,those who know History ALSO known that this was done to Jesus as well and not only Jesus,but to many others as well! Which has tought me that they're are alot of great Men AND Women who have sacrificed they're lives and efforts to bring to us a kind of world that we today so much take for granted and DON'T really apreciate much of it and Jesus just so happens to be one of them!

posted March 31, 2004 11:15 PM         

No metaphor in American letters has had a greater influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between Church and State.” Many Americans accept it as a pithy description of the constitutionally prescribed Church-State arrangement, and it has become the locus classicus of the notion that the First Amendment separated religion and the civil state, thereby mandating a strictly secular polity.

More important, the judiciary has embraced this figurative phrase as a virtual rule of constitutional law and as the organizing theme of Church-State jurisprudence, even though the metaphor is not found in the Constitution. Writing for the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948, Justice Hugo L. Black asserted that the justices had “agreed that the First Amendment’s language, properly interpreted, had erected a wall of separation between Church and State.” Our democracy is threatened, Justice John Paul Stevens warned last term, “[w]henever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government.”

What is the source of this figure of speech, and how has this symbol of strict separation between religion and public life come to dominate Church-State law and policy? I address these questions in my new book, Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State (2002).

On New Year’s Day, 1802, President Jefferson penned a missive to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. The Baptists had written the new President a fan letter in October 1801, congratulating him on his election to the “chief Magistracy in the United States.” They celebrated his zealous advocacy for religious liberty and chastised those who had criticized him “as an enemy of religion[,] Law & good order.”

In 1800, Jefferson’s Federalist Party opponents, led by John Adams, dominated New England politics, and the Congregationalist Church was still legally established in Connecticut. The Danbury Baptists were outsiders—a beleaguered religious and political minority in a state where a Congregationalist-Federalist establishment dominated public life. They were drawn to Jefferson’s political cause because of his unflagging commitment to religious liberty.

In a carefully crafted reply endorsing the persecuted Baptists’ aspirations for religious liberty, the President wrote:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

The missive was written in the wake of the bitter presidential contest of 1800. Candidate Jefferson’s religion, or the alleged lack thereof, was a critical issue in the campaign. His Federalist foes vilified him as an “infidel” and “atheist.” The campaign rhetoric was so vitriolic that, when news of Jefferson’s election swept across the country, housewives in New England were seen burying family Bibles in their gardens or hiding them in wells because they fully expected the Holy Scriptures to be confiscated and burned by the new administration in Washington. (These fears resonated with Americans who had received alarming reports of the French Revolution, which Jefferson was said to support, and the widespread desecration of religious sanctuaries and symbols in France.) The Danbury letter was written to reassure pious Baptist constituents of Jefferson’s continuing commitment to their rights of conscience and to strike back at the Federalist-Congregationalist establishment in Connecticut for shamelessly vilifying him in the recent campaign.

Jefferson’s wall, according to conventional wisdom, represents a universal principle on the prudential and constitutional relationship between religion and the civil state. To the contrary, this wall had less to do with the separation between religion and all civil government than with the separation between federal and state governments on matters pertaining to religion (such as official proclamations of days of prayer, fasting, and thanksgiving). The “wall of separation” was a metaphoric construction of the First Amendment, which Jefferson time and again said imposed its restrictions on the federal government only (see, for example, Jefferson’s 1798 draft of the Kentucky Resolutions). In other words, the wall separated the federal regime on one side from state governments and religious authorities on the other.

How did this wall, limited in its jurisdictional application, come to exert such enormous influence on American jurisprudence? The political principle of separation between religion and politics began to gain currency among Jeffersonian partisans in the campaign of 1800, not to promote liberty but to silence the Federalist clergy who had denounced candidate Jefferson as an infidel and atheist. In the Danbury letter, Jefferson deftly transformed the political principle into the constitutional principle of separation between Church and State by equating the language of separation with the text of the First Amendment. The constitutional principle was eventually elevated to constitutional law by the Supreme Court in the mid-20th century, effectively recreating First Amendment doctrine.

By late January 1802, printed copies of Jefferson’s reply to the Danbury Baptists began appearing in New England newspapers. The letter, however, was not accessible to a wide audience until it was reprinted in the first major collection of Jefferson’s papers, published in the mid-19th century.

The phrase “wall of separation” entered the lexicon of American constitutional law in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Reynolds v. United States (1879). Opining that the missive “may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First A]mendment thus secured,” the Court reprinted a flawed transcription of the Danbury letter. Most scholars agree that the wall metaphor played no role in the Court’s decision. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite, who authored the opinion, was drawn to another clause in Jefferson’s text, but he could not edit the letter artfully to leave out the figurative phrase. The Chief Justice relied on Jefferson’s statement that the powers of civil government could reach men’s actions only, not their opinions. The Reynolds Court was focused on the legislative powers of Congress to criminalize the Mormon practice of polygamy and was apparently drawn to this passage because of the mistranscription of “legitimate powers” as “legislative powers.” But for this erroneous transcription, the Court might have had little or no interest in the Danbury letter, and the wall metaphor might not have entered the American legal lexicon.

Nearly seven decades later, in the landmark case of Everson v. Board of Education (1947), the Supreme Court “rediscovered” the metaphor and elevated it to constitutional doctrine. Citing no source or authority other than Reynolds, Justice Hugo L. Black, writing for the majority, invoked the Danbury letter’s “wall of separation” passage in support of his strict separationist construction of the First Amendment prohibition on laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” “In the words of Jefferson,” the Court famously declared, the First Amendment has erected “‘a wall of separation between church and State’. . . . That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” Like Reynolds, the Everson ruling was replete with references to history, especially the roles played by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia disestablishment struggles. Jefferson was depicted as a leading architect of the First Amendment, despite the fact that he was in France when the measure was drafted by the First Federal Congress in 1789.

Black and his judicial brethren also encountered the metaphor in briefs filed in Everson. In a lengthy discussion of history supporting the proposition that “separation of church and state is a fundamental American principle,” an amicus brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union quoted the clause in the Danbury letter containing the “wall of separation.” The ACLU ominously concluded that the challenged state statute, which provided state reimbursements for the transportation of students to and from parochial schools, “constitutes a definite crack in the wall of separation between church and state. Such cracks have a tendency to widen beyond repair unless promptly sealed up.”

The trope’s current fame and pervasive influence in popular, political, and legal discourse date from its rediscovery by the Everson Court. Shortly after the ruling was handed down, the metaphor began to proliferate in books and articles. In a 1949 best-selling anti-Catholic polemic, American Freedom and Catholic Power, Paul Blanshard advocated an uncompromising political and legal platform favoring “a wall of separation between church and state.” Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (today known by the more politically correct name “Americans United for Separation of Church and State”), a leading strict-separationist advocacy organization, wrote the phrase into its 1948 founding manifesto. Among the “immediate objectives” of the new organization was “[t]o resist every attempt by law or the administration of law further to widen the breach in the wall of separation of church and state.”

The Danbury letter continued to be cited frequently and favorably by the Supreme Court. In McCollum v. Board of Education (1948), the following term, and in subsequent cases, the Court essentially constitutionalized Jefferson’s phrase, subtly and blithely substituting his figurative language for the literal text of the First Amendment. In the last half of the 20th century, the metaphor emerged as the defining motif for Church-State jurisprudence.

Metaphors are a valuable literary device. They enrich language by making it dramatic and colorful, rendering abstract concepts concrete, condensing complex concepts into a few words, and unleashing creative and analogical insights. But their uncritical use can lead to confusion and distortion. At its heart, metaphor compares two or more things that are not, in fact, identical. A metaphor’s literal meaning is used nonliterally in a comparison with its subject. While the comparison may yield useful insights, the dissimilarities between the metaphor and its subject, if not acknowledged, can distort or pollute our understanding of the subject. Metaphors inevitably graft onto their subjects connotations, emotional intensity, and/or cultural associations that transform the former understanding of the subject. If attributes of the metaphor are erroneously or misleadingly assigned to the subject and the distortion goes unchallenged, the metaphor may reconceptualize or otherwise alter the understanding of the underlying subject. The more appealing and powerful a metaphor, the more it tends to supplant or overshadow the original subject, and the more we are unable to contemplate the subject apart from its metaphoric formulation. Thus, distortions perpetuated by the metaphor are sustained and magnified.

The judiciary’s reliance on an extraconstitutional metaphor as a substitute for the text of the First Amendment almost inevitably distorts constitutional principles governing Church-State relations. Although the “wall of separation” may felicitously express some aspects of First Amendment law, it seriously misrepresents or obscures others. In Thomas Jefferson and the Wall of Separation Between Church and State, I contend that the wall metaphor mischievously misrepresents constitutional principles in at least two important ways.

First, Jefferson’s trope emphasizes separation between Church and State—unlike the First Amendment, which speaks in terms of the nonestablishment and free exercise of religion. Jefferson’s Baptist correspondents, who agitated for disestablishment but not for separation, were apparently discomfited by the figurative phrase. They, like many Americans, feared that the erection of such a wall would separate religious influences from public life and policy. Few evangelical dissenters (including the Baptists) challenged the widespread assumption of the age that republican government and civic virtue were dependent on a moral people and that morals could be nurtured only by the Christian religion.

Second, a wall is a bilateral barrier that inhibits the activities of both the civil government and religion—unlike the First Amendment, which imposes restrictions on civil government only. In short, a wall not only prevents the civil state from intruding on the religious domain but also prohibits religion from influencing the conduct of civil government. The various First Amendment guarantees, however, were entirely a check or restraint on civil government, specifically on Congress. The free-press guarantee, for example, was not written to protect the civil state from the press but to protect a free and independent press from control by the national government. Similarly, the religion provisions were added to the Constitution to protect religion and religious institutions from interference by the national government, not to protect the civil state from the influence of, or overreaching by, religion. As a bilateral barrier, however, the wall unavoidably restricts religion’s ability to influence public life, and, thus, it necessarily exceeds the limitations imposed by the Constitution.

Herein lies the danger of this metaphor. The “high and impregnable” wall constructed by the modern Court has been used to inhibit religion’s ability to inform the public ethic, deprive religious citizens of the civil liberty to participate in politics armed with ideas informed by their spiritual beliefs, and infringe the right of religious communities and institutions to extend their ministries into the public square. The wall has been used to silence the religious voice in the public marketplace of ideas and to segregate faith communities behind a restrictive barrier.

If, as I have argued, the wall is a profoundly flawed metaphor for First Amendment doctrine, then should we search for a better, alternative metaphor, such as James Madison’s “line of separation”? I think not. Although other tropes may yield interesting insights, we are best served by returning to the First Amendment itself.

posted April 13, 2004 10:48 PM         

people i have known for a long time drool over the movie, and then turn personally viscious, assuming a war fever like you wouldn't believe--"support our president" right or wrong...it doesn't make any difference if he's wrong {{{(O.o)*}}} duh

i barely recognize them as the same people they once were. SOMETHING has gotten into them, that's for sure...even on this site, it seems hostility reigns with some people.
we wonder how 'christians' could burn women alive, or conduct the inquisition, but just wait, and you will see, i am afraid. i see it and i feel it--an intangible presence that continues to make the term "compassionate conservative" an oxymoron

--and they become totally indifferent to the suffering of our fellow planetarians--the iraqi people, callously refusing to even look at the photos of dead babies--ones WE KILLED. people who would normally care about that are "okay with that" as long as we're getting saddam...[they don't remember who osama is...]

i do not understand how they can get this message from the most peaceful man who ever lived...if anything, wouldn't the christ take up his whip and drive out the money changers at the theatres? i cannot picture him targeting mosques or showing such indifference to the the people he surely loves as much as he loved every creature

the woman who hosted a site on people's responses to the movie as well as a site full of "christian love and charity" wrote this today: "they think nothing of strapping explosives onto a child and sending them to be a suicide bomber" and then she went on to justify how that makes it somehow okay to bomb the hell into those same children...and i suspect there are people in this forum who wonder what the problem is. they don't see anything wrong in this either.

pity my rush-limbaugh-devotee brother who referred to "those blood-thirsty christians" back when they were clamboring for blood in Texas executions. poor guy now finds himself aligned with them...

yes, i agree with the person who wrote that the blood and gore is a mere projection of what is in the hearts of the people, and it is coming out, sad to say.

on rewind, i would not have seen the movie, and i do not recommend it for anyone. violence is violence and it begets violence.
whatever one's commitment to christ, in my opinion it is unlikely that any lasting faith-lift will result.

one good thing about the movie is that it does not take place in english. that might jolt a few sectarians into expanding their tight little worlds a bit. "god is bigger than any one religion" but there are people who think that saying is ridiculous. they serve a small god indeed, nicely boxed up in a coffin