‘Last Temptation’ Views Still Coming In : Boycott of ‘E.T.’ Among Religious Reactions to Controversial Movie

Even as the battle over “The Last Temptation of Christ” has dissipated into local skirmishes in cities where the film is showing, more assessments from organized religion trickle in:

The comments range from a suggestion to make the lovable cinematic alien “E.T.” pay for Universal Pictures’ sins to the lament of a liberal Protestant magazine editor that the movie was boring mainly because it stuck too closely to Scripture.

Southern Baptists, like their evangelical and fundamentalist colleagues in other churches, tend to judge “Last Temptation” as offensive “because of its portrayal of Jesus as indecisive and uncertain, the heroic portrayal of Judas . . . and its inaccurate portrayal of many New Testament characters and events.”

Those are the words of Larry Braidfoot of Nashville, general counsel for the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission and, as such, a spokesman on the issue for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. More than 14 million Southern Baptists nationwide contribute $145 million annually to the denomination’s missions, seminaries and agencies.

Making E.T. pay was one of Braidfoot’s suggestions for action. “The product which Universal really expects Southern Baptists to buy is the home video release of ‘E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,’ ” he said, referring to the planned fall release of the popular family film by Universal.

“ ‘E.T.’ is the most visible product we can boycott to express our displeasure,” Braidfoot said.

Aware of the extra publicity that “Last Temptation” received because of Christian picketing, Braidfoot advised local church members to decide what protest might be most effective.

Not all Southern Baptists should avoid the movie, he added. “When the movie opens in a new city, some Southern Baptists should see the film,” Braidfoot said. Criticism of the film is more credible from those who have seen the film, he indicated.

In contrast to conservative Christian criticism that the film deviated too much from the Gospel accounts of Jesus, editor James M. Wall of Christian Century magazine argued that “Last Temptation” was lifeless because it tried to include too many miracles and Gospel incidents in a literal fashion.

Catholic-educated director Martin Scorsese and Calvinist-schooled Paul Schrader, the screenwriter, “have let their pietistic upbringings interfere with their creativity,” said Wall, who has written frequently about religious themes in motion pictures.

Saying that he wanted to like the film, but did not, Wall declared that Scorsese and Schrader “reproduced the standard ‘beards and bathrobes’ imagery of many previous literal renderings . . . on film.”

Wall observed that the film’s ending at the Crucifixion and not with the Resurrection (consistent with the Nikos Kazantzakis novel on which the film was based) fit the director’s trait of having “his hero tough it out to the death.” That ending may be the biggest disappointment theologically, Wall indicated, since Jesus is presented as “driven by a God who makes strange demands on his followers.”

In a footnote to his editorial, Wall urged that letter writers to the magazine limit their comments to 350 words and imposed another requirement: “Writers must show evidence that they have actually seen the film (send ticket stubs if possible).”

The newest denomination, the 5.2-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, issued a statement saying that although “Last Temptation” is provocative and controversial, it “is not an attack against the Christian faith,” a frequent charge from evangelical opponents of the film.

Officials of the Chicago-based denomination declined to say whether Lutherans should or should not see it--a policy on individual films they said was consistent with positions taken before Jan. 1 by the merging bodies, the American Lutheran Church, the Lutheran Church in America and the Assn. of Evangelical Lutheran Churches.

“These are matters which are decisions of conscience,” said Lita Johnson, executive assistant to Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom. A review of the movie will appear next month in The Lutheran, the denomination’s magazine.

With not a little sarcasm, The United Methodist Reporter told its 500,000 subscribers that Universal Pictures deserved credit for taking advantage of “a history of predictable overreaction by some well-meaning religious leaders.”

Declaring that Universal should get an Oscar for “best hornswoggle,” the Dallas-based newspaper said Christians who protested most quickly and most vocally “bear no small measure of responsibility” for the film’s initial box-office success.

“To our discredit, many Christians have shown a tendency to swallow and spread unfounded rumors about supposed threats to our faith,” the newspaper said.

The unsigned editorial cited the decade-long rumor that continues to prompt tens of thousands of Christian letters to the Federal Communications Commission in protest of a supposed proposal by atheists to ban all religious broadcasting. The rumor is false but has persisted despite repeated disclaimers in the religious press.

One group that spread some misleading information about the film was the Salvation Army, which is both a respected charitable organization and an evangelical denomination.

The Aug. 27 issue of its magazine, The War Cry, which arrived this week, cites three scenes from an early script of the film that had been circulated surreptitiously by evangelical protesters before the movie’s Aug. 12 release.

In one scene, Jesus shoos away a group of poor and sick, telling them they are selfish and full of hate. That was in the movie, but two scenes in the closing “dream sequence” were deleted: one in which Jesus agrees to let a guardian angel watch him engage in sex with Mary Magdalene and a point in the dialogue where Jesus tells her, “I worship you. God sleeps between your legs.”

The magazine quoted Commissioner Andrew S. Miller, the organization’s national commander: “I find the script appalling. It recreates Jesus into a confused, bawdy, bitter tangle that would tend to deface and disguise the historical, biblical Jesus.”

Reached by telephone, Lt. Col. Henry Gariepy, editor in chief of The War Cry, said the deletions “would not diminish our strong opposition to the obscenity of the film.” Gariepy said he was not interested in seeing the film, based on the tenor of the movie.

Despite an appeal from a Jewish leader to condemn the anti-Semitism associated with some protests against “Last Temptation,” Pat Robertson says it would do more to defuse the controversy for Jewish leaders to use their “influence” with the film distributor.

The difference of opinion between the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, was made public in a New York Times story that quoted correspondence between them.

Foxman wrote to Robertson in early August expressing concern that some Christians were making “scapegoats of Jews” in the controversy over the film. In response, Robertson suggested that B’nai B’rith officials “exercise your influence with (Chairman) Lew Wasserman and others at MCA (the film distributor) to eliminate this affront to Christianity before the trouble begins.”

The CBN founder, who is co-host of its “700 Club” program, further suggested that if B’nai B’rith “condemns MCA for a tasteless, un-American attack on cherished religious beliefs of a large group of our citizens, you will have said to all Americans that you are not a part of this movie and that it does not have the endorsement of the Jewish leadership in America.”

For his part, Foxman replied that he was “flabbergasted” at what he termed an “outrageous” suggestion by Robertson. After the newspaper story appeared, Robertson issued a statement saying, “I was advising a dear personal friend of what I felt to be the most effective strategy in this particular situation to stop anti-Semitic rhetoric and sentiment about this film before it ever began.”