A Bloodthirsty Salvation: Behind the Popular Polarized Reaction to Gibson\u27s The Passion

Focusing on viewer response to Mel Gibson\u27s The Passion of the Christ, this article interrogates the process of viewers\u27 absorption of the film\u27s dominant atonement images, penal substitution, christus victor and sacrifice in order to more deeply understand just how these images operate in popular culture, how they influence values, practices and beliefs, and to question the social impact of the discourse of violence and redemptive dynamics imbedded in the religious images themselves

Sacrifice and U.S. War-Culture

What would we say about the losses associated with war if we did not describe them as sacrifices? What would we say about Jesus’ life and death if we did not associate the gospel narratives with a cosmic framework of sacrificial self-giving? The “the necessity of sacrifice” operates as an electrical exchange between the institutionalization of “war-culture” in the United States and the understandings and practices of popular Christianity. This leads to an important and difficult question: is there any way to rehabilitate understandings of sacrifice forChristianity without at the same time aiding and abetting war

Memoir as Contemplative Practice for Peace and Justice

In this paper we examine the relationship between mindfulness, memoir, and critical pedagogy.  We propose that memoir links critical pedagogy and contemplative practice, furthering the goals of both.  This proposal is rooted in an analysis of three years’ worth of memoirs prepared by students in a Peace and Justice Studies course.  Our study shows that the pedagogical strategy we have employed assists students’ increased self-awareness as well as insight regarding their inter-connectedness with other living beings.  Both the study and contemplative practice of memoir root this awareness in the specific places, relationships, and situations that form our students' lives.  Students are thus situated for deeper reflection regarding the ways their own lives are linked with the destiny of a much larger world reality, and specifically, with questions of peace and justice