Moscow Times - 06.21.2004

The Moscow Times

Russian church stands up for "The Passion of The Christ"


MOSCOW. June 21 (Interfax) - A plan by a Russian rights group to file an anti-Semitism suit against Mel Gibson, director of "The Passion of The Christ," and against the Russian distributors of the film, is an attempt to pass judgment on the Gospel, Russian Orthodox clerics argued on Monday. 

"Some Jewish organizations and private individuals have appealed to us in the belief that this film fans ethnic hatred and cultivates xenophobic myths that the entire Jewish race is guilty of the crucifixion of Christ," Alexander Brod, director of the Moscow Human Rights Bureau, told Interfax earlier. 

The Bureau was considering a lawsuit, he said. 

At a news conference in Moscow on Monday, Deacon Andrei Kurayev, professor at the Svyato-Tikhvinsky Theological Institute, said he was "convinced" that the suit would be "an indirect attempt to put the Gospel on trial." 

Archpriest Valentin Asmus said "the intended suit against the author and distributors of the film, which reproduces Gospel events with complete historical, even archeological, accuracy, does, of course, mean that it will be a suit against the Gospel itself. And it is not only the Gospel that will go on trial but all of Christendom as a whole; in other words, all Christian denominations that seek to follow the Gospel are accused of preaching anti-Semitism."