I have had a largish (15-20 items) mailbag from Christians who saw THE

PASSION and hated it. Sample:

“I regret to inform you that I just walked out of The Passion of the Christ

after 90 minutes because my time is valuable. All the controversies about

it have obscured the fact that it is simply, qua movie, a lousy movie. It

is violent in a meat-cutter sort of way that quickly becomes banal,

melodramatic, over-acted, clumsy, illogical, tasteless, crude, weird,

heavy-handed, badly lit, and badly scored. If it were about any other

subject, it would not get a moment’s notice.

“Please do not let your devotion to the Gospel make you think you must

praise any attempt to put it on film. The elevation of the subject matter

should make us demand more, not less, of its renderers.

“This film is a pure product of our debased contemporary culture, not an

antidote to it. The only people who have anything to gain from seeing this

are liberal Christians who are so sentimental that they have never faced the

fact that, yes, Jesus was brutally executed.”

“Regards, [Name]

“P.S. Concerning anti-Semitism: no, though it is obviously easy to twist

this story that way if you really want.”