Here in my little corner of the Bible Belt, it seems that The Passion of the Christ has sparked a game of “My Savior was scourged worse than your Savior!” among our local churches. TV and print ads for churches around here are displaying increasingly nauseating images of Christ in various stages of suffering and torment.
As an example, just the other day a new billboard went up on the route I take from work. It displays a grisly image of a horribly mutilated and bloody hand and forearm lying on a piece of wood. Lots of intense red colors. At first, I thought it was an ad for a Sam Peckinpah film retrospective. The caption on the billboard described the church as “A Lively, Loving Blood-Bought Family”
What could I do? I had to pull over and throw up.
I’m not necessarily picking on anybody here. I’m Catholic, and I can attest some of our churches feature quite gory Crucifixion images. I’m just not convinced that such images are really what you want for an ad campaign. Call me old-fashioned.
I’m just wondering if this phenomenon is being observed nationwide, or if this is just one of those Southern religious things I haven’t quite gotten accustomed to, even though I’ve lived here all my life. Any thoughts?
Don’t know what to tell you. This whole Passion…er…passion has struck me as borderline mass hysteria. It seems a large number of “Christians” have missed the entire point of their religion. Jesus was not unique for his suffering and death. Crucifixion was a common form of execution in Roman times. The whole point of the religion is Jesus’ life and resurrection. Tens of thousands of people were scourged and crucified. Only 1 got up three days later.
Of course, ascribing common sense to fundies is useless.
I guess you can call me inconsistent as well as old-fashioned, JS. And I don’t mind a good horror flick every now and then, either. I was more curious as to whether or not other folks are noticing an increase in these types of religious ads in their neighborhoods.
Oh, and my vote for Mel’s next movie: “The Passion of 2nd Macabees”
I saw a brilliant ad at a local church just this afternoon. They had ‘Passion’ posters in all the windows, and a banner on the front lawn. But what really made me look twice was the backlit marquee that read “Meet the cast this weekend”.
I literally did a double take…then the penny dropped. Ahhhhh…
My pastor (and boss) told people that before they went to see the movie they should read the book. Someone actually asked him if it was at Borders.
I think the excessive gory church advertisements are southern. Around here (Ohio) the church signs say things like: “Seen the Passion? Come in and get your questions answered,” or “Jesue Christ has a passion for you.”
I overheard someone at the hair salon last week saying, “You wouldn’t let your kids see an execution; why are people letting their children see an R-rated movie which is basically an execution?”
When Kitten Blue told me that the whipping scene was about 4 minutes too long I knew I wasn’t going to be able to see the movie.
Jesue sounds like a good Southern name for the Second Coming.
“Howdy y’all. Sorry it took so long. All sorts of things kept croppin up, if’n you know whut I mean. I’m fixin’ to reward the faithful and extract vengence on the sinners, I’ll tell you whut.”
Will bike riding past a local movie theatre today, I noticed that if someone took a picture of the title board and cropped it correctly, it would look like they were showing The Passion of Scooby Doo.
In fact, I’d venture to say that most of the people executed by Vlad the Impaler suffered worse than Jesus. I mean, Jesus didn’t even get get anything shoved through his butt!
