Thank you dear Michael for your very penetrating analysis.
I endorse your views completely.
For a while now, I have decided NOT to watch this movie for many reasons; as you say it could be part of dialectic to draw us into the system's videodrome. In addition, however, the movie also possibly draws on carnal deluded and imagined descriptions of our Savior's crucifixion by deceived medieval nuns who had already succumbed to the heresy of papism. Carnal images dwelling on the physical suffering of Christ tend to overshadow the much greater mental suffering of the God-man who was betrayed and rejected by His own; He Who took them out of Egypt, Who gave them manna to eat, and Who brought them to the promised land, is mocked, spat on, beaten, and crucified. The spiritual dimension of our Lord's voluntary death and victory over the devil is possibly being eclipsed in Mel's movie by stressing His human physical suffering. If this is the case, then Mel is wittingly or unwittingly working FOR the forces of antichrist. I want nothing to do with it. No matter how "good" this movie is, it will not advance my spiritual understanding of the Gospel if it draws on heretical sources; for instead of those, I have the clear and Spirit-filled waters of the Holy Fathers and Saints of the Church to teach me about Who Christ is and what His Gospel is really about. The enemy of my enemies is not necessarily my friend; he is only potentially my friend if he would grasp the Orthodox understanding of the crucial questions of anyone's existence and quest for Truth and Salvation. That question is and always has been: Who is Jesus Christ, who are His real followers, and where is His Church?
In defense of Mel's work however, and in case his movie is faithful to the Gospel, it may help sincere seekers who are hungering and thirsting for the True God. The emotional impressions made on them through this movie would hopefully give them the incentive to seek the divine fullness of the Gospel in Christ's One Holy Catholic Apostolic True Orthodox Church.
The fact remains that the Jews of Christ's time split into two diametrically opposing camps; the minority who believed in Him and died martyr's deaths for His sake, and the majority who rejected Him and became enthralled to Satan. If such a hypothetical "dissenting protester" was objecting the Sanhedrin's plot and murder of Jesus, he would have found his way to the company of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who were also from the tiny minority of the Sanhedrin who believed in Christ and risked everything in following Him. It is completely moot to say that such a hypothetical "dissenting protester" was a jew; he was not a jew anymore according to today's understanding of who jews are, but a CHRISTIAN jew. The good believing jews became christians, the unbelieving jews eliminated the Christ.
I am counting on you to give us a detailed dissection of the movie in 26 days. God be with you Michael.
In Christ our Lord, God, and Savior,
Reader Jerjis
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael A. Hoffman II [mailto:hoffman@hoffman-info.com]
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2004 11:23 AM
To: HoffmanWire@topica.com
Subject: Marketing Mel's Movie
THE HOFFMAN WIRE
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Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor
Jan. 30, 2004
Marketing Mel's Movie: The Role of Judeo-Churchianity
Editor's Note:
Here below is another view of Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the
Christ," in this case a look at how it is being promoted by
Fundamentalist mega-churches.
Frankly, I am troubled by how easily Mr. Gibson's movie has been
accepted in preview screenings by tens of thousands of people who have
been "part of the problem" in America for some time now. I am referring
to the followers of "Churchianity," the false religion that has
watered-down the Gospel and served as an unshakeable support for the
Israeli holocaust against the Palestnians and most of the rest of George
Bush's murderous Skull-and-Bones agenda, at home and abroad. Suddenly
these Judeo-Churchian miscreants are transformed into fellow believers
seeking to advance the Gospel through Gibson's film? I don't buy it.
There's something out of kilter here.
It is also passing strange that Gibson has cozied up to these
Sharon-worshippers. Perhaps it's merely a case of politics and
marketing, but Mel's wing of "traditional" Catholicism has nothing but
contempt for Protestantism, believing it to be only slightly less evil
than Judaism and Freemasonry, yet here's Mel consorting with Protestant
Fundamentalists in precisely the kind of grand ecumenical effort which
his sect condemns when popes and cardinals do it.
Here also is the peril of being sucked into the vortex of the
Establishment's chess game dialectic. Many of us are in favor of
Gibson's film and look forward to viewing it almost solely because the
ADL and some other powerful Zionist pressure groups are against it. But
these groups are so chauvinistic and delusional, they will oppose any
work of art that deviates a scintilla from their claustrophobic party
line. It may not be that "The Passion of Christ" is necessarily any sort
of indictment of rabbinic Judaism just because ADL crazies object to it.
It may be that in simply reacting to their opposition, we are being
enticed into a larger dialectic that is a covert function of the
System's Videodrome. It certainly gives one pause to consider that most
of the notorious neocon lapdogs of Judaism and Zionism, from Peggy
Noonan to Joseph Farah, are wildly enthusiastic about "The Passion..."
On http://www.pastors.com/article.asp?ArtID=5340, the website of the
main Fundamentalist group promoting the film, it is stated: "The movie
faithfully depicts...a dissenting protester on the Sanhedrin, who
objected to the late-night kangaroo court proceedings instigated to
railroad Jesus."
Say what? Not only is there not a shred of evidence for such a
"dissenter," it is completely out of character for the ultra-Orthodox
Judaic mentality, which to this day represents one of the most
all-encompassing religious dictatorships on earth, surpassing the
farthest-out militant Islamic sects in fanaticism and tyranny. Did Mel
really insert such a falsified scene? We'll know in 26 days.
A Tie-In Made in Heaven
Los Angeles Times | January 30, 2004
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines
Mel Gibson has tapped into a church-based marketing network that has
been waiting for a religious film like his 'Passion of the Christ.'
By Bob Baker and William Lobdell, Times Staff Writers
In Plano, Texas, two members of a Baptist mega-church bought out a
20-screen multiplex so 6,000 people could watch the premiere of Mel
Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" next month. In Costa Mesa, a
nondenominational church is canceling services on opening weekend and
has rented 10 movie theaters. In Dallas, a NASCAR sponsor plans to
redesign its race car's exterior to promote the film. In Riverside,
another Baptist church, energized by the film's coming, designed an ad
("You've got questions. We've got the answer.") to be shown on all 18
screens of a multiplex for three months.
Just what kind of box office "The Passion" will do when it opens Feb. 25
is impossible to predict. But it is clear that Gibson has tapped into a
network of Christian church-based marketing that has been maturing for
decades and that has been waiting, with almost biblical patience, for a
high-profile, celebrity-backed religious picture to capture the nation's
attention.
"This is so far beyond anything I've seen in terms of putting the word
out," said Chapman Clark, an associate professor at Fuller Theological
Seminary in Pasadena. "But nobody's ever done what Mel's done: take a
huge, personal risk out of a huge, personal conviction that this story
needs to be told."
Gibson, who belongs to a splinter Roman Catholic group that rejects the
last 40 years of modernizing within the church, put up about $25 million
to make "The Passion," which covers the last 12 hours of Jesus' life,
culminating in an exceptionally graphic representation of the
crucifixion. The movie has been criticized by some Jewish leaders, who
fear it will spark anti-Semitism among bigots and those raised with the
stereotype that Jews were "Christ-killers." Defenders say the subtitled
movie, in which characters speak Latin and Aramaic, is the first film to
communicate Christ's true measure of sacrifice. The movie makes clear,
they argue, that Christ's death was not the result of Jewish persecution
but of man's sin making everyone responsible.
Gibson's production company, which will open the movie on about 2,000
screens, is courting the market by hiring several Christian marketing
companies to work various segments of the potential audience. The best
known is a Vista, Calif., company called Outreach Inc., whose more than
100 employees offer advice to churches seeking to boost membership. The
greatest proportion of clients are evangelical Christian churches, which
see attracting the "unchurched" as part of their mission.
On a page linked to "The Passion's" website, Outreach founder Scott
Evans, who quit a job with a high-tech company a decade ago to become a
missionary, encourages churches to exploit "perhaps the best outreach
opportunity in 2,000 years. I encourage you to prayerfully consider how
to make the most of this moment. Ask God: How will we as a church
encourage people to experience this film?"
The website is full of suggestions: Buy a block of movie tickets and
invite members and their friends to attend; ask the theater owner if a
pastor could address the audience after the screening; give a
"Passion"-related sermon on themes such as forgiveness or everlasting
life; distribute "Passion"-themed New Testaments; hold a "Passion"
question-and-answer session at church addressing questions such as
whether Jesus was a great man, or actually God; blanket a neighborhood
with "multiple prayer teams"; and leave "Passion" door-hangers at each
home.
This week, supporters of the film announced plans for a
satellite-broadcast "training event" for churches on Feb. 7 featuring
Gibson and promising "a complete 'boot camp' of information and insights
on how to be involved with outreach opportunities tied into 'The
Passion.' "
The outreach has not extended to some of those who have been most vocal
in their concerns about the project. For example, Abraham H. Foxman,
national director of the Anti-Defamation League, resorted to sneaking
into a screening at a pastors' conference in Florida. But the movie has
been in plain sight to many Americans, with numerous screenings before
church groups and even a showing for a conference of self-professed film
geeks. The movie also has been shown to the pope, setting off a debate
over whether the pontiff in effect endorsed the movie's historical
accuracy. All of this has stirred Hollywood's most valuable box-office
currency: word of mouth.
Church-based marketing has grown increasingly sophisticated, especially
in the last decade, under the influence of evangelical Christians, who
have used rock 'n' roll, videos, movies and the Internet to deliver
Gospel messages. This formed two parallel entertainment worlds secular
and Christian that rarely met. It also stirred among evangelicals the
dream of crossover Christian entertainment. Often, however, Christian
offerings have been of a lesser quality or creativity than leading
entertainment-industry fare. This has been true particularly in movies.
"There have been zillions of Christian movies, and they have all been
terrible," best-selling Christian author Frank Peretti told a religion
news service two years ago. The next year, Peretti's "Hangman's Curse"
was released on film and described by one reviewer as "perhaps the
world's first Christian paranormal teen horror film" grossed only
$150,000.
Affinity marketing produces rare word-of-mouth film successes "My Big
Fat Greek Wedding" first targeted Greek Americans at parades around the
nation and employed an e-mail campaign directed at people of Greek
heritage. But the combination of Gibson's fame and reverential
testimonials by churchgoers and clergy who have seen preview screenings
has convinced many observers of religion and cinema that "The Passion"
is a singular phenomenon. The word of mouth has been so great that
Gibson, whose marketing representative did not return a phone call
seeking comment, may make back his investment during the opening
weekend, said Ralph Winter, a producer of secular and Christian films
who has yet to see the movie.
Some clergy described a spellbound effect when 4,500 pastors attended a
screening this month at Saddleback Church in the Orange County suburb of
Lake Forest. "When it finished, there was dead silence for five
minutes," said Ric Olsen, senior associate pastor at Harbor Trinity
Baptist Church. "They let people kind of absorb it."
"It blew me away," said Michael Pierpoint, pastor of evangelism at
Magnolia Avenue Baptist Church in Riverside, whose church bought seats
for two screenings and purchased the "You've-got-questions" ad at a
local multiplex. "I'm not an easy believer but to watch it depict the
crucifixion so clearly it brought a new level of my understanding the
depths God was willing to go to have a relationship with me."
One problem for movie marketers is that the Christian marketplace is not
a monolith. For "The Passion," one group evangelicals fits easily into
the role of promotional missionaries for the film. Not only does the
movie line up closely with their theology, it also offers an opportunity
to re-energize the faithful and evangelize to family and friends by
simply inviting them to "a Mel Gibson movie."
Repeated endorsements from the unofficial leaders of the evangelical
world Billy Graham, Focus on the Family's James Dobson and Saddleback
Church Pastor Rick Warren, for instance carry a multiplier effect
through the ranks of thousands of pastors. Warren, whose church recently
bought 17,000 tickets, has promoted the movie heavily on his
http://www.pastors.com website and will send out a special newsletter to
115,000 pastors next week encouraging them to promote the movie and use
it in their teaching.
Catholics, however, have been more tentative in their embrace. The
reasons include a general institutional disdain for promoting commercial
ventures, an uneasiness over reigniting a centuries-long prejudice
against Jews, and Gibson's heretical brand of Catholicism.
A screening last summer was well received by more than 300 Jesuit
priests at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, members of an
order known for intellect and independent views. But it would be
antithetical to Catholic tradition for the Jesuits and other clerics to
set up websites or sell tickets to movie theaters they reserved.
Nelvin Vos, executive director of the Society for the Arts, Religion and
Contemporary Culture in Maxatawny, Pa., a group of artists and
theologians, said many Catholics are wary of definitive interpretations
of Scripture. "It's difficult to get it balanced," said Vos, who has yet
to see the movie. "Gibson tries to be totally objective. That's part of
the movie's strength and part of its problem."
Still, some conservative Catholics have shown enthusiasm for "The
Passion." "It will move you the way no [other] movie ever has or will,"
William A. Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights, wrote in a review sent to his group's
350,000 members. "To be sure, it is tough to watch at times, but then
again there is no way to sugarcoat a scourging and a crucifixion, and
Mel Gibson is not a sugarcoating kind of guy."
Few Jewish leaders have been invited to screenings, and that has left
many rabbis frustrated and unable to comment on "The Passion." Leaders
from two Jewish organizations who recently have seen the film denounced
it, saying it had the potential to inspire anti-Semitism. However, the
chance of a boycott supported by Jews is unlikely, observers say.
"The last thing we want to do is promote an action that undercuts
American values" of free speech, said Rabbi Marc S. Dworkin, executive
director of the American Jewish Committee's Orange County chapter. His
group will pair rabbis and priests to see the film and discuss it with
Catholic and Jewish congregations.
Rabbi Mark Diamond said what's important isn't who sees "The Passion"
but how they discuss it later. "We don't want the movie to stand in the
way of 40 years of progress between Jews and Christians," said Diamond,
executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.
"We have too much invested."
Daniel Frankforter, a professor of medieval history at Penn State Erie,
said the fusing of a movie star and organized religion breaks with
historical distrust.
Through the 1950s, "Hollywood self-censored its products to ensure that
churches would not urge their members to boycott," Frankforter said.
Beginning in the late '60s, though, filmmakers were more daring about
portraying Jesus' humanity and did well enough at the box office to
dispel "the myth of the church's power over the ticket-buying public."
The rise of the evangelical churches set the stage for a project such as
"The Passion."
"I'm not at all surprised that when Gibson throws them a piece of raw
meat like this, they jump on it," Frankforter said.
Gibson's movie figures to be successful, Frankforter said, because it
contains the violence and gore of contemporary pop cinema and "serves
the old conservative agenda of persuading viewers of the literal
historicity of the gospels."
Yet he and other observers wonder whether the film will be successful as
an evangelical tool or merely a devotional work for the faithful.
"It's fascinating that Christian churches are shelling out thousands and
thousand of dollars to purchase tickets for an R-rated movie," said
Jonathan Bock, president of Grace Hill Media, which markets mainstream
movies to faith groups. "The question is, is this going to be an
isolated event or are churches going to be the force in the marketplace
that they should be?"
Jacob Bonnemas, 26, who, along with his father, Arch, paid $42,000 for
6,000 tickets to "Passion" for the 22,000-member Prestonwood Baptist
Church in Plano as well as thousands of interested strangers, has no
doubts.
"This is a life-altering movie, and I think that when Hollywood sees
people coming to this movie in this volume they'll see a gigantic
marketplace looking for real meaning in life," he said.
Correspondent Dana Calvo contributed to this report from Texas.
END QUOTE
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I think the Jewish issue is a good issue in which to remember the phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin". Or, love the heretic, hate the heresy.
