‘Passion’: Christians join the call

With the release of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” just two weeks away, an influential group of evangelical Christians has launched an Internet-based campaign they hope will prompt the filmmaker to append a repudiation of anti-Semitism to the movie’s final cut.

“I believe there is a serious crisis building here,” said Mike Evans, a Dallas-based evangelical minister and writer active in promoting good relations between Jews and conservative Christians. “Without an addition of the kind we’re urging, this film will be used to fuel anti-Semitism around the world.”

The effort is significant, in part, because it parallels an initiative launched last month by the Anti-Defamation League. Its director, Abraham Foxman, sent Gibson a letter saying that many of the organization’s reservations about the film could be overcome by adding a postscript rejecting any anti-Semitic interpretation of the Passion narrative.

Evans and others say that Gibson agreed to add such a one-sentence postscript following a private screening of the film on Aug. 9 in Dallas. According to participants, the audience of about 30 invitees that night included Don George of the Assemblies of God, Jack Graham of the Southern Baptist Convention and Evans, an evangelical Christian who heads the pro-Israel Jerusalem Prayer Group and the Netherlands-based Corrie ten Boom Foundation, which combats anti-Semitism.

Members of the theologically conservative audience -- who were not asked by the filmmaker to sign confidentiality agreements, as others have been -- say that Gibson’s film itself received a generally favorable response. However, in the discussions afterward, the director said that various Jewish groups had raised objections to early cuts of his movie. “He wanted to know what we thought,” Evans said in an interview this week, “and said he would take any concerns we had to heart.”

According to Evans, “I told him I had concerns. I told Mr. Gibson that I’m not concerned about reaction here in the United States, since Protestant evangelicals here are not anti-Semitic and are among the world’s strongest supporters of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.”

What worried Evans was what might occur if the film were used as a tool to proselytize abroad, particularly in Europe, the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. “That’s exactly what’s about to happen,” he said in the interview. “I told Mr. Gibson that night that ‘I don’t want my savior to be used as a sword to injure Jewish people.’

“He appeared genuinely moved and I sensed his pain when he looked at me asked, ‘Well, what can I do?’ ”

According to Evans, he then suggested that “following the last scene, these words roll across the screen: During the Roman occupation, 250,000 Jews were crucified by the Romans, but only one rose from the dead.” Simply acknowledging the historical reality of Jewish suffering, Evans argued, would deflate any anti-Semitism.

“The truth does not threaten my faith,” Gibson replied, according Evans. “This is it. I’ve been looking for something like this and I’m going to do it.” (Gibson’s office did not respond to calls about this story.)

To many, the addition of that sentence may seem inconsequential. But in the dark labyrinthine history of anti-Semitism, any admission of Jewish suffering anywhere at any time is inadmissible. In large part, the entire grisly edifice of Jew baiting is erected on a mythology of conspiratorial invulnerability. The simple statement that Jesus of Nazareth was one Jew among many thousands who cruelly suffered under Roman occupation makes any work of art or document to which it is attached useless, even repugnant, to anti-Semites.

Evans said he decided last week to publish an account of the meeting with Gibson on the website WorldNetDaily.com, after reading accounts of Anti-Defamation League officials’ dismay over a cut of the film they saw during a screening for Protestant clergymen in Orlando, Fla. When no response from Gibson or his representatives was forthcoming, Evans said he “became concerned. Mr. Gibson has never communicated to me that he had changed his mind.”

Over the weekend, Evans and his group set up a website, www.melj.net, that invites like-minded Christians to “thank acclaimed actor-director Mel Gibson” for “working closely with leaders concerned about anti-Semitic tones in the movie ‘The Passion of the Christ.’ ” Readers are then asked to read, sign and return a copy of a letter Evans and the Jerusalem Prayer Team plan to forward to the filmmaker. It reads:

“Dear Mr. Gibson, As one who opposes anti-Semitism, I wish to thank you for your willingness to consider adding the ... statement to the end of your movie.... This is an extremely important change because it will clarify your intent to promote Christ’s life-saving message of hope without promoting anti-Semitism around the world. I don’t want Jew-haters to use the story of my Lord’s suffering to incite anti-Semitism as they have in the past. I realize that great numbers of Jew-haters will attempt to persuade you not to put this simple statement in the final cut. However, no anti-Semitic country, regime or group will use the movie for evil purposes if they know the film ends with the terrible suffering that the Jewish people have experienced.”

As of Tuesday, according to the website, nearly 17,000 readers had responded.

According to people who have seen cuts of the film as recently as Monday, Gibson continues to edit the version that was screened for Protestant clergymen in Orlando and which alarmed the Anti-Defamation League’s Foxman. Since then, the director has excised the passage from Matthew’s Gospel in which collective responsibility for Christ’s execution is imputed to the Jewish people. That notion, the historic source of theological anti-Semitism, was officially rejected by the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council.

“I don’t believe that Mel Gibson is an anti-Semite,” Evans said in the interview. “I just don’t think he’s adequately researched the connection between this story, the account of Christ’s Passion, and Jew hatred through history. There’s no doubt that traditional Passion plays had a role in fueling hatred of Jews, including violence like the pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Today, there are people throughout the Muslim world teaching their children the same evil myths about Jews that Hitler used. They’re even doing it in schools.”

His great anxiety, Evans said, “is that once this movie is released, you can’t take it back. It’ll be reproduced endlessly and go on forever.”