The Passion and the fury: why has a reverent movie about Jesus Christ become one of the most controversial films in history?

But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.

--Isaiah 53:5

Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ begins with a black screen and the above-quoted passage of Holy Scripture from the prophet Isaiah. It ends with a scene of the resurrected Jesus Christ stepping from the tomb. In the two hours of film that run between those two bookends, writer-director-producer Mel Gibson has focused on the last 12 hours of Christ's life on earth: The Passion--His arrest, torture suffering and execution.

Gibson's approach to the subject is not subtle, to say the least. He has crafted an unflinching and brutal portrayal of the central event in human history, the ultimate redemptive act of the man Christians believe to be God incarnate. The result is one of the most powerful--and controversial--achievements in the history of film.

But why has there been such fierce and long-running controversy over this project? And why does it continue? It is, after all, only a movie. Every year Hollywood disgorges hundreds of celluloid confections featuring every sort of outrage and depravity imaginable, with no reaction even remotely comparable to the seismic eruption caused by The Passion. Why is that? What, hat is it about this movie that has incited such an unrelenting torrent of vitriol against it and against Mr. Gibson himself? Indeed. the viciousness of the attacks on Gibson. one of Hollywood's most successful and popular stars, must surely be unprecedented in the history of filmdom.

Perhaps no affair more potently delineates the battle lines in the struggle for the soul of America than the year long raging furor over The Passion of the Christ. The critics who have been so savagely attacking the movie and its creator would have us believe they are righteously combating the bigotry and violence that they claim saturates the film's every frame.

Their charges, however, are a smoke screen for a very different agenda. The people sending up the smoke screen are the cultural elitists who hold sway in Hollywood and in the major media. They are anti-Christian and anti-God. They ate nihilists and hedonists who shamelessly use their dominance of our cultural organs to undermine basic Judeo-Christian values and to create moral anarchy. They will support, exalt and promote the most degenerate, sadistic and blasphemous "art" conceivable, but they will not tolerate a major Hollywood-type production that approaches the subject of Jesus with respect and faith instead of mockery and derision.

An independent observer watching from another planet would surely marvel at the tempest raised by The Passion. After all, what passes for "popular culture" in our society today is a toxic Petri dish overflowing with noxious pathogens. Billboards, magazines, newspapers, movies, television, radio, Internet sites, videos and product covers relentlessly assault our eyes and ears with messages of banality and carnality. "Tolerance" is the watchword in our "post-Christian" era where "anything goes." Anything that leads toward the infernal abyss, that is.

No subject is taboo. No censorship must be allowed to stand in the way of modern man's "freedom" and his pursuit of sensual gratification. Nothing is so profane or iniquitous that the self-appointed arbiters of cultural excellence will not find a way to laud it. Homosexual savants dictating American fashion and style on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? Cool! Lesbians engaging in R-rated TV romps on The L Word? About time! Uma Thurman splattering buckets of blood across the screen in Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino's latest celluloid slaughterfest? Dazzling virtuosity! Best-seller The Da Vinci Code's claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were secret lovers who spawned a line of European royalty? Stunningly brilliant scholarship! And woe unto any unenlightened boor who alares to contradict these verdicts from the tolerance police!

But with The Passion different standards apply. Tolerance has gone out the window.

The Anti-Semitic Card

Anyone who has not been hermetically sealed in a cave must be aware that one of the major charges leveled against Gibson by his detractors is that his film is venomously anti-Semitic. "Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II," declared New York Daily News film critic Jami Bernard.

Nazi propaganda? It's pretty hard to condemn a film in terms more serious than that. Ms. Bernard continues the assault, charging that "The Passion feels like a propaganda tool rather than entertainment for a general audience." "Is it anti-Semitic?" she asks. Her answer: "Yes. Jews are vilified, in ways both little mad big, pretty much nonstop for two hours, seven minutes."

The New York Times" Maureen Dowd was no less incensed. After seeing the film, she is sure it will lead to wholesale violence against Jews. She rants that "this is a Mel Gibson film, so you come out wanting to kick somebody's teeth in." Dowd continues:

   In Braveheart mad The Patriot, his
   other emotionally manipulative historical
   epics, you came out wanting to
   swing an ax into the skull of the nearest
   Englishman. Here, you want to
   kick in some Jewish mad Roman
   teeth. And since the Romans have
   melted into history....

The ellipsis in the quote above is not our editing; that's Ms. Dowd's. The implication is obvious: Moviegoers ate going to come out of The Passion so enraged that they are going to be looking for Jewish teeth to kick in.

Similar accusations have been flying from other film critics--from liberal-left theologians, from spokesmen for some (mostly left-wing) Jewish organizations, mad from the editorial pages of some of the nation's most powerful newspapers. If the accusations were even close to the mark, Gibson's film would deserve the lambasting it has been getting. But are they even close? Millions of people have now seen The Passion mad the overwhelming answer seems to be a resounding "No!"

We have been following closely all news concerning the movie and we have not seen any indication that viewing the movie arouses animosity toward Jews or any other group. This writer attended two showings of The Passion on different days in two different theaters with very different audiences. In both cases, I witnessed much the same phenomenon that has been reported in theaters all across the country. People wept. People were profoundly moved. The reaction from the audiences when the movie was over was mostly one of stunned silence. They pointed no fingers of blame--except at themselves.

I heard people saying things to one another like: "I knew Jesus died for my sins, but it never really hit home to me, before this, how much I had caused him to suffer"; "I'll never read the Gospels the same way again"; "After seeing this, I really never want to sin again."

Not your usual after-movie banter. Not your normal popcorn-munching flick. People did not rush off to burn down synagogues. Nor did they head for the video arcades, bars or other entertainment. They walked off slowly and silently or stood around in small groups conversing thoughtfully for quite some time.

Those are precisely the reactions that James Caviezel, the actor who so brilliantly portrayed Jesus in the movie, hoped the production would evoke. "All I want them [viewers] to see is Jesus Christ," Caviezel said in a Newsweek interview. "We're all culpable in the death of Christ. My sins put him up there. Yours did. That's what this story is about."

In many interviews, Gibson himself has repeatedly stated the Christian position that Jesus died for the sins of all mankind and that the crucifixion "is not about playing the blame game." In an interview with Reader's Digest, Gibson said: "We're all culpable. I don't want to lynch may Jews.... I love them. I pray for them."

What's his movie really about? "It's about obsessive love," he told Reader's Digest. "It was the whole point of Christ's incarnation--God becoming man. The purpose of the sacrifice was to expiate the transgressions of all mankind.... He became the whipping boy so that we have a chance--because, you know, we can't make it on our own."

Some of the most spirited defenses of Gibson have come from Jews who see many of his accusers wielding the charges of anti-Semitism for ulterior purposes. Syndicated columnist Don Feder, an Orthodox Jew, has jumped four-square into the fray. "As a Jew, I take anti-Semitism very seriously," says Feder. But he does not believe Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite or that The Passion qualifies as Nazi propaganda. One of his recent columns on the subject ran under the title: "More Power to Mel Gibson: The Passion Is an Act of Faith, Not Bigotry."

"Jesus isn't part of my religion," Feder explained. "With all due respect to my Christian friends--who are legion--I do not believe that Jesus was God incarnate. (hi the words of The Shema, I believe God is One.) I respect those who believe otherwise, as I hope they respect beliefs of mine with which they disagree." But with all of the "raw sewage being pumped out" of Hollywood, he noted "it's ironic that some have chosen to attack a film that dramatizes sacrifice and redemption." Far from condemning Gibson, Feder is cheering: "More power to Mel, say I. It's rare to see a man with such power and influence willing to stand up for his faith in the face of a hostile culture."

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, an Orthodox rabbi and popular radio talk-show host, has also repeatedly defended Gibson and The Passion. Rabbi Lapin points out that it is not Gibson's movie, but the irresponsible and vehement accusations coming from Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and other self-appointed Jewish leaders that are most likely to cause anti-Semitism.

From audiences around America, I am encountering bitterness at Jewish organizations insisting that belief in the New Testament is de facto evidence of anti-Semitism," Rabbi Lapin says. "Christians heard Jewish leaders denouncing Gibson for making a movie that follows Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion long before any of them had even seen the movie. Furthermore, Christians are hurt that Jewish groups are presuming to teach them what Christian Scripture 'really means.'"

But so-called Catholics and Protestants ate also presuming to reinterpret, rewrite or even defame the Gospels. Take James Carroll, for example, whom Don Feder pungently describes as "one of those 'Catholic scholars' whose stock in trade is denying the essence of Catholicism." Writing in The Boston Globe, Mr. Carroll claimed that "Even a faithful repetition of the Gospel stories of the death of Jesus can do damage exactly because those sacred texts themselves carry the virus of Jew-hatred." If this is true, observed Mr. Feder, it certainly "raises an intriguing question: How can a text both be sacred and carry the seeds of anti-Semitism?"

Newsweek's Jeff Jenson may not be as blatant as Mr. Carroll concerning the viral threat contained in the Bible, but he apparently thinks it's dangerous to allow common folk to read it. Jenson writes in his February 18 Newsweek article that "much of [Gibson's] movie is a literal-minded rendering of the most dramatic passages scattered through the four Gospels." Then he adds: "But the Bible can be a problematic source. Though countless Christian believers take it as the immutable word of God, Scripture is not always a faithful record of historical events; the Bible is the product of human authors ... with particular points to make and visions to advance." And, he says, "the roots of Christian anti-Semitism lie in overly literal readings ... of many New Testament texts."

Likewise, the ADL's Abe Foxman warns: "You know, the Gospels, if taken literally, can be very damaging." The same Mr. Foxman, whom Don Feder has appropriately dubbed "the kosher Chicken Little," has said that Gibson's Passion "can fuel, trigger, stimulate, induce, rationalize, legitimize anti-Semitism."

Rabbi Lapin says that "instead of helping the Jewish community," leaders like Foxman "have inflicted lasting harm." "By selectively unleashing their fury only on wholesome entertainment that depicts Christianity, in a positive light," he says, "they have triggered anger, hurt, and resentment.... I consider it crucially important for Christians to know that not all Jews ate in agreement with their self-appointed spokesmen."

One of the most persuasive Jewish defenders of The Passion debunks the accusers with her presence more than with her words. She is Maia Morgenstern, the Jewish actress who turns in a haunting, soul-stirring performance as the Virgin Mary in Gibson's production. Morgenstem's father is a Holocaust survivor. She and her father read The Passion script together and both found it to be "beautiful." She believes the anti-Semitism label has been falsely applied to the film and Gibson. "Despite the blood and the violence, it's a beautiful film," says the actress. "I believe it brings an important message, a peace message."

Too Much Violence?

The "blood and violence" Morgenstern alluded to is the other big issue that has dogged The Passion. And it is an important matter that is open to legitimate criticism. What is interesting in the controversy over this movie, however, is the quarter from which the most vocal attacks ate coming related to this concern. Critics and commentators who normally applaud the most vile and gratuitous mayhem on the silver screen suddenly see the brutal realism of The Passion as "sadistic," "pornographic" and "obscene." Their protests might be taken more seriously if they were not at the same time promoting some of the worst examples of mindless movie bloodletting.

Jami Bernard, the Daily News critic we quoted earlier on the supposed "virulent" anti-Semitism permeating The Passion, also found it to be unacceptably violent. "It is sickening, much more brutal than any Lethal Weapon," she avers. "The violence is grotesque, savage and often fetishized in slo-mo." Interesting. From her reviews of other movies, one might think that's exactly the kind of film she adores. She's big on Quentin Tarantino, the darling of Hollywood who has directed "cutting edge" ultra-violent fare such as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers, Kill Bill 1 and Kill Bill 2. In fact, Bernard has written an admiring biography of the director entitled Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies.

Ms. Bernard's hypocrisy is all too typical of the entire media chorus that is in such a heated lather over Gibson's biblical epic. There was no comparable wringing of hands, for example, when the acclaimed Mr. Tarantino recently was named to preside over the Cannes Film Festival. To the contrary, accolades and huzzahs greeted the announcement. Which is not to say that all those who find The Passion to be excessively gory are hypocrites, indeed not. Although The Passion has been embraced and praised by a remarkably broad range of Christian leaders and believers, not all devout Christians are happy with Gibson's artistic license and his unsparing emphasis on the brutality of Christ's suffering.

"I wanted to impress on the viewers the enormousness of this sacrifice, the willingness--and the horror of it," says Gibson. "I wanted to overwhelm people with it. But it has escape hatches. There are little places of respite within the film where you can escape from the violence and find lyricism and beauty."

All well and good. But is it absolutely necessary to dwell on the violence so graphically and at such excruciating length? Obviously not. Yet that is how Gibson--a very graphically visceral auteur--has chosen to present this story. People of good will can legitimately argue, from moral as well as artistic concerns, that the film has exceeded the acceptable gore quotient. (I admit to being conflicted on this score myself.)

Cultural Crossroads?

Many enthusiastic viewers of The Passion believe that this movie may herald a defining moment in our country's history, that it may help spark a moral-spiritual revival in our nation. After one preview of the movie for evangelical ministers, it was reported that an excited pastor stood up and loudly declared, "This movie was made by God!" Most Christians would not go that far with such enthusiastic praise.

But many are hoping and praying that the outpouring of popular support for The Passion and the profound effect it already has had on many viewers is an indication that America is awakening from the moral torpor that has allowed us to drift so near to the brink of catastrophe. With the Ten Commandments being removed from our public buildings, "under God" under attack in the Pledge of Allegiance, marriage and the Boy Scouts under attack by the militant homosexuals, and prayer and mention of God evicted from our schools, the astounding box-office success of The Passion offers plenty of reason to stand up and cheer.

Connecticut Governor John G. Rowland, commenting on the sensational response to the movie, said: "I think there is an explosion of faith taking place in our country. And it is an explosion of faith because evil is everywhere."

Even though moral Americans may disagree regarding the artistic license and other particulars of Mel Gibson's depiction of The Passion, it is difficult to overstate the significance of the movie's commercial vindication. Just a few months ago, the cultural elite were confidently predicting that The Passion of the Christ would be a colossal failure. The American public will not pay to see serious movies, they said. Especially ones about religion. And especially about Jesus Christ. On top of this, they insisted. Mel Gibson filmed it in two dead languages, Latin and Aramaic, with subtitles and no big-name actors. No studio would touch it. In what certainly must be the gutsiest move in Hollywood history, Mel Gibson committed to writing, directing, producing and financing the project himself. He reportedly spent around $30 million of his own funds on the project. That's real commitment.

Instead of applauding such grit, the powers that be have tried to sabotage the film from the start. Soon after Gibson began filming in Italy, the public attacks were launched in the media. Hollywood players were told any involvement with the project--even talking about it--would be bad for their careers. When, against all odds, Gibson completed his magnum opus, the same liberal-left, anti-Christian militants tried to keep him from showing the movie. The same forces, who cry "Censorship!" at any attempt to enforce any standards of decency, engaged in one of the most shameless acts of Stalinist censorship to keep The Passion out of theaters.

But Gibson pulled another first: He outflanked the would-be saboteurs and organized a massive, independent distribution and promotion effort. Taking his film to church groups, Christian organizations, and conservative leaders, he has scored a major coup. The detractors who a few months ago were predicting that this movie would be a "career killer" for Gibson are now dumbfounded. The Passion has set all kinds of box-office records: best opening ever for a religious film, for an independent film and for a foreign language film, and best opening in February for any film. By the end of its first weekend, it took in more money ($125 million) than any film debuting on a Wednesday. Far from being washed up, Gibson is now in a very strong position to take on other "politically incorrect" film projects, should he choose to do so. Other actors, directors, writers and producers, who may share some of his moral and spiritual convictions, but who have lacked his courage or his clout, will also be in a stronger position to challenge Hollywood's ruling nihilist, hedonist ethos.

Other denizens of Tinseltown, who care only about their own fame and fortune, are also getting the message. Of that, you can be certain. Although The Passion is the most up-front and militant challenge to our would-be cultural commissars, the boffo box-office performances of other morally uplifting films--The Lord of the Rings, Seabiscuit, Finding Nemo, Master and Commander--is certain to make it easier for more wholesome entertainment to be made. For, as Rabbi Lapin has noted, many of the folks in the industry "are prostitutes, and they will go wherever the money is."

Rabbi Lapin also thinks James Caviezel should at least be nominated for a "Best Actor" Oscar for his performance as Jesus. "If not, [Hollywood] will leave itself open to charges of antireligious prejudice," he says. Talk about storming the gates of Mordor! But why not? For all their bluster, the Hollywood-Big Media elite are no more invincible than J.R.R. Tolkien's Dark Lord Sauron and his malevolent hordes of orcs and trolls. C'mon hobbits, it's time to put them to flight and roll back the darkness.