Category Books

After the Passion Is Gone: American Religious Consequences »

Authors: Michael Berenbaum, Michael Berenbaum
ISBN-13: 9780759108141, ISBN-10: 0759108145
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Date Published: January 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)

Author Biography: Michael Berenbaum

Book Synopsis

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ topped box office charts and changed the American religious conversation. The controversies it raised remain unsettled. In After 'The Passion' Is Gone: American Religious Consequences, leading scholars of religion and theology ask what Gibson's film and the resulting controversy reveal about Christians, Jews, and the possibilities of inter-religious dialogue in the United States.

	Introduction	1
Pt. I	The context of The passion	19
Ch. 1	Almost a culture war : the making of The passion controversy	23
Ch. 2	Passionate blogging : interfaith controversy and the Internet	35
Ch. 3	Living in the world, but not of the world : understanding evangelical support for The passion of the Christ	47
Ch. 4	The passion paradox : signposts on the road toward Mormon protestantization	59
Ch. 5	Is it finished? : The passion of the Christ and the fault lines in American Christianity	75
Pt. II	The passion in context	89
Ch. 6	The journey of the passion play from medieval piety to contemporary spirituality	93
Ch. 7	The Gibson code?	105
Ch. 8	"But is it art?" : a prelude to criticism of Mel Gibson's The passion of the Christ	115
Ch. 9	Antisemitism without erasure : sacred texts and their contemporary interpretations	125
Ch. 10	Theologizing the death of Jesus, Gibson's The passion, and Christian identity	137
Ch. 11	Manly pain and motherly love : Mel Gibson's big picture	149
Ch. 12	Imago Christi : aesthetic and theological issues in Jesus films by Pasolini, Scorsese, and Gibson	159
Pt. III	Jews and Christians : reframing the dialogue	173
Ch. 13	Theological bulimia : Christianity and its dejudaization	177
Ch. 14	A march of passion; or, how I came to terms with a film I wasn't supposed to like	193
Ch. 15	The exposed fault line	207
Ch. 16	Crucifying Jesus : antisemitism and the passion story	219
Ch. 17	Five introspective challenges	229
Ch. 18	No crucifixion = no Holocaust : post-Holocaust reflections on The passion of the Christ	243
Ch. 19	The passionate encounter : the ethics of affirming your faith in a multireligious world	255
Ch. 20	Reframing difference : evangelicals, scripture, and the Jews	267
	Afterword : the passion of war	279