Mel Gibson
“Please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite.”
With these words, Mel Gibson tried to apologize for anti-Semitic remarks he made upon being arrested for drunk-driving. He went on to ask for a meeting “with leaders in the Jewish community with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.... I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display.”
I hope these words are more than just PR.
Where to begin that journey to healing? Gibson need look no further than the critique he received from his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. Many thoughtful commentators, both Jews and progressive Christians, commented at the time on the implicit anti-Semitism in that film. Gibson rejected that criticism. “My detractors would say that [the movie] is going to promote hatred. I think that's utter nosense. The absurdity of that staggers me.” Hello! It was the same hateful theology reflected in that film that expressed itself in Gibson's druken rage.
Here’s the essence of the problem: Anti-Judaism is embedded in the Christian narrative. No, the teachings of Jesus were not anti-Semitic; Jesus was a faithful first-century Jew. But as the Christian movement moved away from traditional Judaism, theological conflict developed. This conflict was expressed in texts written during the first century. But when later readers studied those texts, they read the text out of its original historical context. They read a story that [unhistorically] gave first century Jews primary responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus.
When the emporer Constantine subsequently made the cross the center of his imperial church’s orthodoxy, the anti-Jewishness of the passion narrative became wedded to the heart of christian theology. Millions of faithful Christians uncritically accepted the story and, along with it, the historical untruth that “the Jews killed the Son of God.” There’s a straight path of causality leading from this to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and to countless hateful actions committed against the Jews. The Passion of the Christ is yet another example of what happens when Christians uncritically accept the passion narrative as transparently historical.
Gibson trusted that his dad, who taught him the faith, didn't lie to him. Mr. Gibson, you dad didn't lie to you. He was just unquestioning of what he had been taught. Your dad is yet another uncritical believer who refused to question an anti-Semitic tradition. Like father, like son?
Gibson once expressed the belief that the holocaust never really happened. Mr. Gibson, you really need to ask yourself some hard questions: Where did that belief come from? Why was it so important for you to deny that Jews suffered so terribly at the hands of the Nazis?
You have apologized for what you said to the arresting officer. You have stated a desire to begin your process of healing. Please know that it will not be easy. You will have to go deep, deep to the heart of your faith. You will have to be willing to examine your assumptions. You will have to begin to question what you have been taught from the day you were born. You said it was absurd to think that your ultra-orthodox faith could lead to hatred. Maybe it’s not so absurd after all.
With these words, Mel Gibson tried to apologize for anti-Semitic remarks he made upon being arrested for drunk-driving. He went on to ask for a meeting “with leaders in the Jewish community with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.... I am in the process of understanding where those vicious words came from during that drunken display.”
I hope these words are more than just PR.
Where to begin that journey to healing? Gibson need look no further than the critique he received from his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. Many thoughtful commentators, both Jews and progressive Christians, commented at the time on the implicit anti-Semitism in that film. Gibson rejected that criticism. “My detractors would say that [the movie] is going to promote hatred. I think that's utter nosense. The absurdity of that staggers me.” Hello! It was the same hateful theology reflected in that film that expressed itself in Gibson's druken rage.
Here’s the essence of the problem: Anti-Judaism is embedded in the Christian narrative. No, the teachings of Jesus were not anti-Semitic; Jesus was a faithful first-century Jew. But as the Christian movement moved away from traditional Judaism, theological conflict developed. This conflict was expressed in texts written during the first century. But when later readers studied those texts, they read the text out of its original historical context. They read a story that [unhistorically] gave first century Jews primary responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus.
When the emporer Constantine subsequently made the cross the center of his imperial church’s orthodoxy, the anti-Jewishness of the passion narrative became wedded to the heart of christian theology. Millions of faithful Christians uncritically accepted the story and, along with it, the historical untruth that “the Jews killed the Son of God.” There’s a straight path of causality leading from this to the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and to countless hateful actions committed against the Jews. The Passion of the Christ is yet another example of what happens when Christians uncritically accept the passion narrative as transparently historical.
Gibson trusted that his dad, who taught him the faith, didn't lie to him. Mr. Gibson, you dad didn't lie to you. He was just unquestioning of what he had been taught. Your dad is yet another uncritical believer who refused to question an anti-Semitic tradition. Like father, like son?
Gibson once expressed the belief that the holocaust never really happened. Mr. Gibson, you really need to ask yourself some hard questions: Where did that belief come from? Why was it so important for you to deny that Jews suffered so terribly at the hands of the Nazis?
You have apologized for what you said to the arresting officer. You have stated a desire to begin your process of healing. Please know that it will not be easy. You will have to go deep, deep to the heart of your faith. You will have to be willing to examine your assumptions. You will have to begin to question what you have been taught from the day you were born. You said it was absurd to think that your ultra-orthodox faith could lead to hatred. Maybe it’s not so absurd after all.
posted by David Ourisman at 5:00 PM
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