Passion of Christ

This response from Dr Lorraine Parkinson

Chair of the Working Group on Christian Jewish Relations of the Synod of Victoria and Tasmania.

'Mel Gibson's film 'The Passion of the Christ' uses unrelenting and excessive physical savagery to make its point. The point seems to be that it was the Jews who were totally responsible for placing Jesus in the hands of his Roman executioners. Some Jewish leaders were opposed to his popular movement on the grounds of its potential for putting them out of favour with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. At the same time many of the Jewish people approved of Jesus and followed him.

The film contains a hate-filled portrayal of the Jewish leadership, plus almost all members of the Jewish public apart from Jesus' own group. On the other hand, Pilate and the Roman commanding officer are depicted as sensitive gentlemen.

Whereas John's Gospel is definitely anti-Jewish, written in a context of conflict between the Christ followers and mainstream Judaism, Gibson's film is undoubtedly antisemitic in its portrayal of the Jews. Almost to a man (and woman, and child) they are represented as uncouth, or ridiculous, and/or extremely hard-hearted and bloodthirsty.

All of this ignores the many years of work by Christian churches to discredit the old 'blood libel' in which Christians historically blamed Jews (collectively) for the death of Jesus.

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There is a great deal of potential for a renewal of Christian antisemitism among the uninformed as a result of this unfortunate film.

Spiritually the film has little or no redeeming features, the unrelenting savagery preventing the viewer from engaging emotionally or spiritually with the story and the characters.'