Landres, J. Shawn, and Michael Berenbaum, eds.  Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2004.  xiii + 348 pp.,  $24.95 (USD).  ISBN: 0-7591-0815-3.

[1] Although J. Shawn Landres and Michael Berenbaum, editors of After The Passion is Gone: American Religious Consequences, clearly have reservations about Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, it is not the film itself that they find most disconcerting.  What troubles them is the way the controversy over the film’s alleged anti-Semitism amplified cultural and religious divisions in society by separating people into opposing factions, leaving little room for reasonable and charitable discussion over important disagreements.  The debate, focused as it was on the film’s alleged anti-Semitism, failed to address the larger challenges the film posed to “Christian theology and to Christian-Jewish relations” (5). Addressing these larger issues through “reasoned scholarly discussion” (10) is the stated purpose of this book.  

[2] Landres and Berenbaum draw together a diverse group of scholars and religious leaders in the hope of modeling “how diverse, conflicting, and controversial views can be presented in a context that permits serious exchange and deep discourse” (11).  The book includes essays by critics and defenders of the film, historians, philosophers, theologians, and many others.  The individual essays, although each is concerned with the larger questions posed by the film, vary considerably in content, perspective, and opinion. 

[3] The book is divided into three parts.  The essays in Part I, “The Context of The Passion,” discuss the immediate cultural and religious factors that contributed to the controversy over The Passion of the Christ.  Each essay explores a particular aspect that contributed to the controversy, from the role the media and the internet played in fueling the debates to the variety of Mormon and Christian responses to and understandings of the film and its significance.  What emerges from these different essays is the sheer complexity of the controversy over the film, a complexity that defies mere reduction to questions concerned with anti-Semitism alone.  The essays in Part II, “The Passion in Context,” set the film in its wider cultural and religious context, discussing it as, among other things, “a cinematic offering, an argument about history, a spiritual form, a theological statement, a work of art, and an expression of the psychology of our generation” (89).  By viewing The Passion of the Christ through these lenses, the authors go beyond simple judgments concerning the film and its content.  Instead, these essays grapple with the reasons behind the content of the film, seeking explanations for how and why the film is the way it is.  The essays in Part III, “Jews and Christians: Reframing the Dialogue,” build on the first two parts by focusing on the state of Jewish-Christian relations in the aftermath of The Passion of the Christ.  The authors disagree about the film’s contribution to constructive inter-religious dialogue, and often raise more questions than they answer.  However, these essays generally seek to keep such dialogue open despite obvious disagreements between Jews and Christians of all types. 

[4] The book is not without its limitations.  First, the essays are short, averaging around twelve pages including endnotes.  While this makes for easy, quick reading, some of the essays do not go into as much detail as I would have liked.  Certainly, there is always room for an author to say more on any given topic, especially in a short essay for an edited volume.  But here the limited discussion of many key themes in the individual essays often leaves the reader wanting more.  Moreover, this lack is not made up in other essays, a consequence of the considerable differences between the essays.  Many of the essays read like monologues on selected themes and often do not seem to produce the dialogue the editors intended.  Second, although there are many perspectives represented in this book, African-American scholars and theologians are absent from the list of contributors.  Also left out are voices representing religious traditions other than Judaism and Christianity, reflecting the view that the controversy was largely “an intramural issue” (13).  Landres and Berenbaum do acknowledge these drawbacks and hope further discussion will extend beyond the pages of After The Passion is Gone, but the deficiency is worth noting here.

[5] Despite these criticisms, this book remains a valuable resource that I recommend.  It will appeal and prove useful to various audiences.  The overall lack of disciplinary jargon, the lucid explanations given to the issues addressed in the individual essays, and the diverse perspectives from which the subject matter is engaged make this book accessible to scholars from various fields and to a more general readership.  Students of religion and culture will find this book particularly helpful as an example of how religion and popular culture can engage each other from a variety of perspectives and for showing the complexity of the relationship between the two.

Hollis D. Phelps IV
Claremont Graduate University
Claremont, CA
hollis.phelps@cgu.edu