Schools use Gibson's film as discussion springboard

Locally and nationally, Mel Gibson's movie about the suffering and death of Jesus is exciting an extraordinary amount of interest and controversy among local educational and religious institutions.

On Sunday, Boston College completed a three-part symposium on "portraying the passion" with a lecture on how Jesus's death was portrayed in the films of the 20th century.

Brandeis University is putting together a panel to discuss the controversy over depicting Jews at the time of Jesus; Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge is holding a movie-inspired discussion of Jesus and Judaism; and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an evangelical Protestant institution in South Hamilton, plans to use the film to launch discussion groups in a leadership training program.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, which has invested considerable energy over the last several years in training pastors and other ministers on how to present passion plays that do not blame Jews for Jesus's death, plans this year to distribute materials to its educators reiterating the church's official teachings in the light of the movie. The archdiocese is also holding special training sessions for Catholic schoolteachers and religious education instructors on how to portray Jesus's death.

In Boston, Temple Israel, the largest Jewish synagogue in Massachusetts, and Trinity Church, one of the largest Protestant churches, are scheduling panels at which Jewish and Episcopal clergy will critique and discuss the film. Rabbi Ronne Friedman, the synagogue's senior rabbi, gave his first sermon questioning the movie in November, declaring Gibson "grossly insensitive to the anti-Semitic implications of his work."

At Grace Chapel, an evangelical Protestant congregation in Lexington, clergy plan to speak about the life of Jesus every Sunday in March.

"We want to leverage the attention that the movie is calling to Christ and his death," said the senior pastor, the Rev. F. Bryan Wilkerson.

MICHAEL PAULSON