should I be looking out for angry Christian lynch mobs?

"The Passion," in its confused way, confirms the old justifications for persecuting the Jews, and one somehow doubts that Gibson will make a sequel in which he reminds the audience that in later centuries the Church itself used torture and execution to punish not only Jews but heretics, non-believers, and dissidents.

From the New Yorker's review of "The Passion"

and later

Gibson can brush aside the work of scholars and historians because he has a powerful weapon at hand—the cinema—with which he can create something greater than argument; he can create faith.

This sounds very like the way in which his other big blockbuster "historical" films--Braveheart and The Patriot--ignored, twisted, or invented "history" to suit their polemical ends. As Randall Wallace, the writer for Braveheart (and other travesties, like Pearl Harbor), is fond of saying, facts can get in the way of the truth. A funny way of looking at the truth, but what do I know? I'm only a historian.

also, from the MSN review of The Passion

The surprising alliance between Gibson, as a traditionalist Catholic, and evangelical Protestants seems born out of a common belief that the larger secular world—including the mainstream media—is essentially hostile to Christianity.

Perhaps Gibson's antiVatican Catholics can make common cause with the antiEpiscopal Church Episcopalians and the fundamentalist evangelical Christians (like the guy I heard interviewed on NPR last night who asserted that the Bible--presumably the KJV--is the literal, immutable and inerrant word of G*d, that both the Old and New Testaments are wholly relevant to the world today and are the guide for every action in his life--I'm assumng he stones his neighbors to death if they take the Lord's name in vain.

most amusing

Why gay marriage is bad.

another perspective on civil union for all versus marraige for the religious

"...I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is the quite different question--how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mahommedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not."
~ C.S. Lewis - Mere Christianity

with thanks to chastmastr for the quotation