RABBI PAUL – THE MOVIE
This just popped up at DoneDeal.
Title: Rabbi Paul
Log line: The life story of Saul of Tarsus who, due to divine intervention, turns his life around and becomes the founder of Christianity and the Apostle Paul.
Writer: Bruce Chilton (author)
Agent: n/a
Buyer: Mandalay and Prelude Pictures
Price: n/a
Genre: Bio-Drama
Logged: 2/2/06
More: Biography. Alan Riche, Peter Riche, Mandalay Integrated Media Entertainment’s Christian Tureaud, and Prelude’s Mark Koch, Daniel de Liege & David Salzberg will produce.
I assume this writer is the same Bruce Chilton who is a professor of religion at Bard College and an Episcopal priest, who authored and has penned Rabbi Paul: An Intellectual Biography, Rabbi Jesus: An Intimate Biography, and Mary Magdalene: A Biography.
Here are summaries and reviews of Rabbi Paul at Amazon.
FOCUS ON THE FAMILY DODGES SPEARS
Focus on the Family is dealing with angry Christians over the hiring of a gay actor for End of the Spear role. And The New York Times reports it.
“Has Focus on the Family made a strong statement against homosexuality? Absolutely,” [Bob Waliszewski] said. “But what is the message of the product? And do we at Focus feel compelled to check on the sexual history of everyone in a movie? Did they have a D.U.I.? Did they pay their taxes?”
APPARENTLY, CHRISTIANS ARE SOUL-KILLING SEX-HATERS
A sharp summation of the heart of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and its distortion of Christianity. Thanks.
SORKIN’S NEW SERIES
The new series from the mind behind Sports Night and The West Wing, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip now boasts Matthew Perry and Amanda Peet in the cast according to AICN.
Very good piece on Pullman, though he’s also accused Lewis of being racist (on the BBC site, I believe).
As for the notion of sex being somehow intrinsically bad, well – once Gnosticism crept into the church, it had a profound influence (Saint Augustine comes to mind, also Thomas Aquinas). They were great men, and Western civilization is greatly in their debt. But the identification of sex (and women) as something to be shunned has had very painful consequences throughout much of church history, including the here and now.
Actually, the Pullman quote was originally published in The Obeserver. Here’s a snippet, plus link:
>>Pullman believes that Lewis’s books portray a version of Christianity that relies on martial combat, outdated fears of sexuality and women, and also portrays a religion that looks a lot like Islam in unashamedly racist terms.
‘It’s not the presence of Christian doctrine I object to so much as the absence of Christian virtue. The highest virtue, we have on the authority of the New Testament itself, is love, and yet you find not a trace of that in the books,’ he said.
The Narnia books, Pullman said, contained ‘…a peevish blend of racist, misogynistic and reactionary prejudice; but of love, of Christian charity, [there is] not a trace’.<<
There rest is here
I also came across this item on a Pullman fan site. Here’s another snippet:
Mark Lawson (Presenter): You appear, from what I hear, to be writing a book about Jesus? Is that right?
Pullman: I’m very interested in the Jesus figure and the Jesus myth. That the man who was a sort of itinerant Rabii in the palace [?] of that time, who was executed for political reasons, and who subsequently became, something utterly different. He probably didn’t even contemplate himself. The creation of a new figure who was to be worshipped. It’s an extraordinary transformation, a very very strange thing came over the early Christians, as we now call them. It was probably John or it was probably Paul. It was probably a combination of the two of them. It was that slew of intense, passionate, strange feelings, weird little cults, springing in to existence and then fading out again. Some of them lasting longer than others. It’s pure chance really that it was Christianity that survived and not Mytheryism [sp?], or something else. But it did, and we’re not living with two thousand years of the consequences.
. . . Mytheryism [sp?] . . .
Presumably Mithraism. Which, incidentally, some say was a greater influence on Aslan’s sacrifice than Christianity.
Presumably Mithraism. Which, incidentally, some say was a greater influence on Aslan’s sacrifice than Christianity.
But what is the ultimate source of Gopnik’s comments here, I wonder? It would be funny if it was the Wiki talk page for Mithraism! (And I’m supposing that it might well be..)
Me and Lamott, we got this love/hate thing goin’. I like a lot of the things she says: “The opposite of faith is certainty.” I think that just might be brilliant, although I’m not certain. I wish I’d thought of it, though.
And it’s good to hear that she reads Lewis and Yancey. Pretty much figured she’d read Buechner, but I didn’t know about the other two.
However, I wanna give her a root canal when she starts talking about theology and the Bible. Oy vey! I hope it’s not too gauche to link to my own blog, where I posted some thoughts in response to a radio interview she gave a few days ago.
It’s really tiring to keep hearing this woman referred to as a Christian. Nothing I’ve ever read about her leads me to think she’s a Christian the way the Bible defines it.
Ummmm… have you read her books?
Have you read about her conversion?
Her involvement in the church?
Have you read “Traveling Mercies”?
Ya see Mo, that’s the problem.
The Bible DOESN’T come right out and define what a Christian is. She may not be a Christian the way YOU define it, but that’s a different kettle of fish.
So, as much as it grates on me when she gets on the radio and misquotes the Bible, I would never accuse Lamott of not being a Christian. Plenty of Christians have misquoted the Bible. I’m sure I’ve done it myself at some point.
I would love to know what she means by “The opposite of faith is certainty.” If she means that we can never truly know that what we believe is true, then I may have an issue with that line of thought. I have never read any of her books, so I won’t jump to any conclusions. For those that have read her books, would you be able to clarify what she is trying to say. Thanks.
Well, I don’t think she means what you’re inferring. She’s just addressing the idea that where proof exists, no faith is necessary. It’s been said in less controversial ways by others. In the Bible:
“I believe; help thou my unbelief.”
and
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Frederick Buechner:
“Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”