{"id":646,"date":"2004-02-26T21:04:50","date_gmt":"2004-02-27T05:04:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/02\/26\/fundamentalist-obsession-with-the-crucifixion-why-are-some-people-obsessed-with-the-crucifixion-pt-2\/"},"modified":"2004-02-26T21:04:50","modified_gmt":"2004-02-27T05:04:50","slug":"fundamentalist-obsession-with-the-crucifixion-why-are-some-people-obsessed-with-the-crucifixion-pt-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=646","title":{"rendered":"Fundamentalist obsession with the Crucifixion (Why are some people obsessed with the Crucifixion?, pt. 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeanne D’Arc at Body and Soul expressed surprise<\/a> over my earlier post<\/a> wondering why some people are so obsessed with the crucifixion of Jesus. As she said, “Blow me over. I always thought that was a Catholic thing.”<\/p>\n

She may have been surprised by my post because she thought it was only Catholics who were obsessed with the crucifixion; I’ve been surprised by the comments to my post that reveal how wrong I was in thinking that this was a predominately Protestant thing. In my mind I had it that the Catholics had the traditions surrounding the crucifixion–the Easter Day reenactments, the bloodied Jesus hanging on the wall–but the Protestant fundamentalists were the ones who really liked to dwell on the violence in their everyday speech and in their weekly sermons. Perhaps I’m wrong in that, but I don’t know that there are is a growing number of Protestants who are focused on the violent aspects of the crucifixion. As many have pointed out, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ<\/i> is a movie steeped in Catholic imagery that has the Bible Belt Christians embracing it wholeheartedly.<\/p>\n

There’s a reason for this.<\/p>\n

Before I can explain what this reason is and where it comes from, I’ll need to describe two other groups I often encountered among the conservative Protestant set. These groups are the martyr-obsesed and the Revelation-obsessed. When it comes to Protestantism, the martyr-obsessed tend to be a subset of the crucifixion-obsessed, while the crucifixion-obsessed tend to be a subset of the Revelation-obsessed.<\/p>\n

Like the crucifixion-obsessed, the martyr-obsessed tend to be male, outwardly devout, and leaders in their congregations and Bible study groups. Also like the crucifixion-obsessed, the martyr-obsessed have a tendency to make torture the subject of their Bible studies and bring up violence in their casual conversation, but unlike the crucifixion-obsessed the martyr-obsessed have broadened their area of interest to include every Biblical figure who was tortured and\/or slain for his or her beliefs rather than focusing specifically on Jesus.<\/p>\n

I knew one such martyr-obsessed man by the name of Bob. He was an ex-marine who had been converted to Christianity when he was in his thirties by a branch of the Crossroads Project. Because he had three teenagers, Bob was heavily involved in the youth group and was a member of the Bible study that eventually became the de facto youth group Bible study due to the number of families with teenagers who belonged to it. I was good friends with Bob’s sons and an active member of the youth group, so I had plenty of opportunities to interact with Bob and to participate in classes and devotionals lead by him. His favorite discussion topic was “How to resist the temptations of the secular culture,” almost always taught by way of a Biblical figure who stood up for God even in the face of potential or actual punishment. I can remember one particular lesson revolving around Stephen, the first Christian to by martyred in the New Testament after Jesus’ resurrection.<\/p>\n

Stephen was stoned to death for his beliefs. His story is told in the book of Acts. It begins with Stephen in Jerusalem performing miracles and teaching the Gospel. A group of Jews were unable to argue him down so they conspired to have Stephen brought before the Sanhedrin where false witnesses would testify against him. There Stephen gave a speech denouncing the Jews for never having listened to a prophet of God and for having betrayed and murdered Jesus. This so enraged the Sanhedrin and the people present that they took Stephen outside the city to stone him. After begging God not to hold this sin against the people Stephen was blessed by God such that he fell asleep while being stoned so that he wouldn’t feel the pain of the rocks being tearing his body and crushing his bones. The important part of this story to Bob as he lead the Bible study, was not the bit about the evil Jews or the bit about the stupid Jews or the lesson underneath the anti-semitism that it’s important to do as God commands or the lesson about standing up for what you believe or that God rewards those who forgive others; rather, the most important part of the story to Bob were the rocks, the torn body, and the crushed bones. What Stephen said, how he said it, why he said it, and the fact the he stood up for his beliefs were all secondary. What mattered was how much it hurt.<\/p>\n

So the lesson consisted of descriptions of what happened to various organs when hit by rocks, how the skin would split more from pressure than from jagged edges, how the bones would break, when the skull would crack and what would happen to the brains once held inside. I don’t know how accurate his information really was, but Bob knew how to speak in such a way that left people squirming uncomfortably. I can’t recall know if it was he who brought a large rock in as a prop for the lesson, or if that was someone else at a different time, but I do recall being asked to imagine how it would feel to have that rock thrown into my chest or head. The implication was that if I wouldn’t be willing to take that, my faith wasn’t strong enough.<\/p>\n

There were other lessons about other martyrs from Bob and people like him. After the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came over the twelve disciples shortly after Jesus’ ascension into Heaven, the Twelve divided to spread Christianity to other parts of the world. We got lessons about what happened to them: Peter was crucified, according to tradition he was crucified upside down; John died a prisoner on Patmos island shortly after writing the book of Revelation; others were burned or boiled alive. What happened to the disciples reads like an anthology of torture. We also got lessons on the prophets: Isaiah was cut in half with a timber saw, starting at the crotch so that he’d take longer to die; Ezekiel was ordered by God to tie himself to the ground and literally eat shit. Then there were the early Christians: Paul, who was beheaded; the nameless others who were fed to lions, killed in the Colosseum for sport, or impaled on spikes to be doused with oil and used to light the city.<\/p>\n

There were object lessons in this. Hold your hand above the candle and see how long you can take it. Can you feel how it burns? Now imagine that that’s going over your entire body and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Hold your arms out to either side. I’m going to read the account of Jesus being crucified, or I’m going to talk about Peter being crucified, and I want you to hold your arms out for as long as possible. That was only twenty minutes; imagine doing that for six hours. Kneel down here and put your neck on this block. See that basket in front of you? Imagine that it’s filled with heads and that the block is slick with blood. This would be the last thing you’d see in life.<\/p>\n

The implication behind these lessons was the same was the implication behind Bob’s lesson about Stephen: if you couldn’t take that–the heat, the blood, the heads, the cross–then your faith wasn’t strong enough. Your faith needed to be strong, not just because you could walk out that door and get hit by a bus, but because Jesus could come back at any moment.<\/p>\n

That line, that bit about Jesus coming back, is the fixation of the second group of people I’ve set to describe to you: the Revelation-obsessed. If you’ve been following the culture war for long, they really don’t need much of an introduction. I’m not sure how many of these people there really are since the sales for something like the Left Behind<\/i> book series aren’t a very reliable counter, but I do know that their numbers are growing and their voice is getting louder.<\/p>\n

The central belief of the Revelation-obsessed is that the world is soon going to end as it’s described in the Bible. I’ve decided to refer to this group as the Revelation-obsessed as the book of Revelation is the Biblical part most often associated with the end of the world. However, the Evangelical view of the world’s end is descended from the original Catholic view of the apocalypse which was cobbled together from different parts of the Bible including Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Second Peter, the Gospels, and Revelation. So things like the Rapture (when all of the true Christians are taken bodily from the Earth in a single instant), which is taken from a vaguely-worded section of Second Peter, and the assault on Jerusalem by Gog and Magog (a coalition of countries) prior to the Rapture, which is taken from Ezekiel, aren’t necessarily agreed on by all. Some say that the Rapture will not occur at all, others say that the Rapture will occur at some point late in the apocalypse, while others take the view that the Rapture will be the first sign of the end times. Therein lies the problem.<\/p>\n

The Revelation-obsessed are a people convinced that the end of the world is coming soon, but there is no consensus as to when the world will end and what signs will precede it, meaning that the faithful are left debating whether the end times are set to begin at any moment or if they have already begun. Either the clock is ticking toward midnight or is ticking past midnight, but in any case: the end has come. Because of the conflicting ideas about what elements, exactly, would make up the apocalypse it’s hard to give an impression of what the Revelation-obsessed are fearing, but there’s a generic story-arc that fits all of the interpretations of Revelation et al. that I’ve heard so far. At some point in time, a single figure who is Satan incarnated in human form will rise to power and will establish by way of war and trickery an empire that covers the whole of the planet. This figure is the Antichrist. At the same time that the empire of the Antichrist is being established, a new religion that is a corrupted version of Christianity will become the single dominant religion. Eventually this religion will hold up the Antichrist as the holiest of holy figures. During the reign of the Antichrist, Christians will be rounded up and tortured to death or executed for sport as they were in ancient Rome. After a period of time, Jesus will come down out of Heaven, wage a holy war on the Antichrist, and then cast the Antichrist into Hell. At this point some believe that Jesus will establish an earthly kingdom for a period of time, or will simply end the world right then, but in any case that’s the end of time.<\/p>\n

So what does all of this have to do with Evangelical support for The Passion of the Christ<\/i>, and what does it have to do with the growing number of Protestants who are crucifixion-obsessed?<\/p>\n

Many of the martyr-obsessed and crucifixion-obsessed fundamentalists I’ve met have been of the opinion that the end of the world was either about to kickoff or had already been running for awhile and that Christians would soon suffer through a Holocaust of their own. These people also tended to be of the opinion that Christians were already and oppressed minority in the United States, making it that much more likely, in their view, that we may soon begin to see modern-day Stephens stoned to death in the wake of show trials.<\/p>\n

These visions of immanent persecution have, I believe, led many fundamentalist Protestant Christians to become interested in the persecution of Christians and\/or prophets of the past. The question or whether or not your faith is strong enough for you to hold your hand over the candle or be burned alive is a pressing question to these people because it’s something they may have to literally face in their lifetime. This idea that the world will soon be ending, and with the end times there being mass slaughter of Christians, has led to the rise of the martyr-obsessed and crucifixion-obsessed among the Protestant fundamentalists.<\/p>\n

This fixation on the end of the world is also a contributing factor to the widespread Evangelical support for The Passion of the Christ<\/i>. With the end times approaching, many fundamentalist Protestants feel that a battle line has been drawn in the sand and that something must be done about the heathen culture of the United States before the end times. Some feel that if the culture is repaired that the apocalypse will not come, others feel that it is their duty to convert as many people to a righteous lifestyle, by force if necessary, before the world ends, while still others feel that they need to build up the United States as a base of Christian support for the coming war with the rising Antichrist. The Passion of the Christ<\/i> is one of the things on that line in the war for America’s soul. Regardless of how pre-Reformation the depiction of the crucifixion is in that movie, it’s a movie about Jesus and a criticism of the movie is a criticism of Christianity at large. For some, not seeing The Passion of the Christ<\/i> or questioning its motives and religious merits is a fundamentally anti-Christian act.<\/p>\n

It does not help, of course, that many fundamentalist Christians really do feel that the Jews killed Jesus. It also doesn’t help that for some people, this movie is an object lesson not entirely unlike holding your hand above a candle flame. When watching the movie, they might say, think about what Jesus did for you and ask yourself if you could do that for Jesus. You may have to when the end comes.<\/p>\n

There’s one more point I’d like to add, and it’s very important: I’ve been careful to try to use the term “fundamentalist” as often as possible because I’m trying to make a vital distinction between the people who believe this and the majority of Christians in the world. Not every person who is a Christian believes that the world is going to end in the next couple of years and so everything must be done to pull the United States back from the brink of Hell. There are Christians who support same-sex marriages and Christians who would like to kick in Jerry Falwell’s teeth but won’t because it violates their beliefs or because they just haven’t had the chance yet.<\/p>\n

The people I’ve discussed in this post are not the majority of Christians, and so you should not hold these beliefs against all Christians. On the other hand, the people I’ve discussed have done a good job of cowing less fundamentalist Christians into following their lead, which is really what the ascendancy of the Religious Right has been all about: a small group of fanatics who have done everything they can to force their definition of Christianity on other Christians and non-Christians in the country, while convincing those Christians who disagree with them that disagreement will hurt Christianity as a whole.<\/p>\n

They’re not the majority of Christians, just the most vocal..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeanne D’Arc at Body and Soul expressed surprise over my earlier post wondering why some people are so obsessed with the crucifixion of Jesus. As she said, “Blow me over. I always thought that was a Catholic thing.” She may … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}