The Test of ‘The Last Temptation’

Universal Pictures is right in resisting moves to suppress its forthcoming motion picture, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” As the studio said, bowing to pressure of this sort “would threaten the fundamental freedoms of religion and expression promised to all Americans under our Constitution.”

There is no doubt that the film is controversial. Some religious representatives who have seen it in private showings have expressed grave reservations. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has under consideration a proposal to classify the film as “morally offensive to everyone and should be avoided.” Such opprobrium is not unusual, especially when religious matters are the issue, and critics have every right to express their views and to urge those who share their views to stay away.

Some religious leaders have not been content with expressing their opposition to this film, however. Bill Bright, founder and president of the Campus Crusade for Christ, has offered the film’s producers payment of all their costs to kill it. Others have threatened economic coercion intended to suppress the film. Such actions breach the constitutional guarantees of free expression.

To make matters worse, some of the Christian religious figures, who say that they are offended by the film, have introduced anti-Semitism into the controversy. One minister has been quoted as saying that “Jewish producers with a lot of money are taking a swipe at our religion.” While demonstrators gathered at the Universal studios, a plane flew overhead with a banner asserting that Lew Wasserman, head of MCA, Universal’s parent corporation, had incited “Jew hatred” by producing the film. That is grossly unacceptable behavior. It is they, not Wasserman, who have incited religious prejudice. There is not a shred of evidence that the film represents an attack by members of one religion on members of another. The film is based on a book by Nikos Kazantzakis and was directed by Martin Scorsese, who was raised in the Catholic tradition. To introduce the religious affiliation of some of the executives of MCA and Universal into the dispute is malicious, reprehensible and noxious.

In the American tradition the public, by what it reads and views, decides what ideas prevail. That extraordinary freedom can shelter abuses and excesses. But the sum of the experience leaves no doubt about the wisdom of those who drafted these guarantees and their confidence in the value of an open competition of ideas. There is no good reason to fear that test.