This context makes Gibson’s current unprovoked explosion of crude and appalling anti-Semitic sentiments all the more shocking. ~Michael Medved

It is also a defining moment for American Christianism. Christianists protected, promoted, lionized and harbored this Jew-hater. And they need to be held account for it in a terribly dangerous time. ~Andrew Sullivan

Prompted by the salsa-dancing Michael Brendan Dougherty and encouraged by the Big Lebowski-watching Chris Roach, I am wading into the morass of commentary on Gibson himself after having gone over the reasons why the charges of anti-Semitism against his film are nonsense.  Medved’s otherwise predictable column does make one very interesting point: Gibson had never exhibited, so far as anyone knows, attitudes or behaviour anything like this before now.  All of which tends to suggest that there is something else going on here rather than the expression of deep-seated prejudice, unless we are supposed to believe that he managed to conceal his attitudes for his entire life from public scrutiny. 

It would hardly surprise me if the white-hot hatred of him and his movie in the American Jewish community had not given him a bad attitude about the individuals who came after him that gradually grew into a general resentment.  I remember a comment he made to WorldNetDaily once that if he had not removed the potentially inflammatory language, His blood be on us and on our children (Matt. 27:25), he feared for his safety:

I wanted it in. My brother said I was wimping out if I didn’t include it. But, man, if I included that in there, they’d be coming after me at my house. They’d come to kill me. 

Perhaps that was hyperbole (though given the poisoned atmosphere around the run-up to the movie, maybe it wasn’t that hyperbolic), perhaps it was an attempt to increase controversy and interest in the movie, or perhaps that was an expression of the level of hostility being aimed at him personally about which we in the public know (or remember) far less.  Men tend to take a dim view of being threatened like that, and there’s no telling how much that experience embittered him.  Considering the abominable, despicable prejudice against Christians and Christianity that has always been driving the war against The Passion and Gibson, it is not surprising, though it is unfortunate, that Gibson might respond to his critics’ vitriol and hate in equal measure.  However, Christ commands us to forgive and pray for our enemies, not answer their slights with our own.

That being said, Sullivan’s never-ending quest to disparage all Christians who actually practice some form of normative Christianity, and who believe the Faith has something to do with real life outside of the realm of opposing torture on your blog, has just managed to reach a new low.  Now the Christianists, always subverting the American way of life, must be held to account for harbouring a “Jew-hater.”  Should Sullivan then be held to account for being a hater of most other Christians?  For that matter, when will we be drumming all the Christian-haters out of the media, academia and government?  I realise it might create a brief personnel crisis, but I think we should take a stand against bigotry.  Or would that be a little too even-handed and fair?