Well, all right, maybe Hitchens wouldn't have been my choice for the job. Still, he is a skilled writer, witty, trenchant, and acerbic, with a sharp-edged style that can be described as either droll or snide, depending on one's taste.

His article is titled "The Gospel According to Mel," and the editor has given it an inflammatory sub-heading: "For his controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, which seeks to convey the true horror of Christ's torture and death, Mel Gibson has been charged with anti-Semitism. But, the author argues, neither Jews nor Christians have confronted the full implications of the director's illogical, ignorant, and brutal vision."

So there we have it - anti-Semitism, illogic, ignorance, and brutality. A more comprehensive assault on a movie, any movie, is hard to imagine.

Hitchens seeks to establish his scholarly bona fides by critiquing the accuracy of Gibson's film, which he has somehow managed to see prior to its release. He complains, "Gibson appears to believe, from the many interviews he has given, that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses and that this is all the research he needs. It may come as a shock to him to find that the Gospels were composed a long time afterward, by many hands, and in Greek ..." I'm not sure what being written in Greek has to do with anything, since Greek was the lingua franca of the Middle East at the time. As for the dates of composition, no one knows. Some authorities cite an early date, others a later one, but all such opinions are educated guesses.

Were the Gospels written by committee ("by many hands")? The endings of Mark and John were added later, but these amount to only a few verses - though in the case of Mark, highly important verses. The story in John of the woman taken in adultery is widely thought to be a displaced fragment from Luke. Many of Jesus' parables and aphorisms may have been derived from a hypothetical list of his sayings, which scholars call "Q." Still, there is wide consensus that each of the four Gospels was written predominantly by a single individual, even though these individuals were probably not "eyewitnesses" and, like any reporters or historians, would have relied on multiple sources.

Continuing his critique, Hitchens finds even the film's graphic violence insufficiently authentic. Jesus, he says, "doesn't shriek or beg or defecate during his martyrdom, which means that for all the special harrowing whipping-and-nailing effects the thing is only pseudo-realistic." Presumably the spectacle of a shrieking, defecating Jesus would be more spiritually elevating.

Salvos against Passion's authenticity are merely a prelude to a more serious attack. Hitchens goes to great lengths to smear Gibson as an ignorant yahoo and weirdo, crippled by bad taste and bad judgment. "Mel Gibson," he writes, "is an odd man, and has been getting odder. In Signs, which would be on any list of the 10 worst films of the past decade, he played an ex-priest who recovers his faith after seeing little green men" - a laughably oversimplified synopsis of an interesting, if flawed, film. For Hitchens, Passion "is a clumsy, melodramatic attempt at the vindication of biblical literalism" driven by Gibson's "attachment to crude theocratic dogma." Gibson is evidently too ignorant to know that his subject matter is merely a "legend ... a quasi-mythical account." But what can you expect from someone whose "father is a renowned Catholic-extremist crackpot who speculates wildly about the untruth of the Holocaust and who believes that the current Pope is a heretic"? All movies about Jesus are lousy anyway - a "fluctuation of sinister bad taste and kitsch good taste (of which [Monty Python's] Life of Brian is the undoubted moral summit)."

Throughout, Hitchens retails the charges of anti-Semitism that have been laid against Gibson, without ever quite endorsing or refuting them. Not having seen The Passion of The Christ (which, at this date, hasn't yet been released), I can't comment on this contentious matter, but I have the distinct impression that Hitchens is concerned with anti-Semitism less as a serious issue than as yet another blunt instrument with which to bludgeon the movie and its director. His animus toward the project, it seems, stems mainly from his disdain for any realistic, serious, and reverent treatment of Jesus. Why would he regard Life of Brian as the "moral summit" of the genre, if not because the Monty Python movie treats its subject as a joke?

Gibson, of course, does not treat his subject as a joke, and therein, I think, lies his real crime in the eyes of Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair, and the elitist, secularist, and increasingly militant vanguard they speak for. Passion, whatever its specific content, is distressing to these critics because it dares to imply that their worldview - archly cynical, nihilistic, amoralist, and jaded - is wrong. Worries about historical inaccuracies or anti-Semitism or excessive violence or the color of star James Caviezel's eyes (blue, hence incorrect for a Nazarene Jew) are only a smokescreen, as are diatribes against Gibson's elderly father, whose contemptible misrepresentations of the Holocaust appear to be nothing but a source of embarrassment to his son.

Admittedly, Mel Gibson - who seems as temperamental as any other creative person - has said some tactless and foolish things that have hurt his cause, though one might argue that he was goaded into these statements by the pressure of constant criticism. But I don't think Hitchens' objections to the film have much to do with any public relations missteps on the part of its director. The real issue is more fundamental and, in my view, involves Hitchens' view of religion itself.

"By its own narrow and fanatical standards," he writes, "the Sanhedrin was quite right to [have Jesus put to death by the Romans], just as the Christian authorities were acting consistently when they used the whip and the pyre and the rack and the wheel on millions and millions of non-Christians and heretical Christians in the years thereafter. (Rome was merciful compared with the Crusades and the Inquisition and the conquistadores ...)"

Leave aside the questionable claim that Imperial Rome was "merciful" in imposing horrific executions by crucifixion, gladiatorial combat or ravenous lions. What's more relevant is the claim that torturers and killers "were acting consistently" with Christianity. Hitchens seems to regard Christianity as a "narrow and fanatical" system of repression, and its entire two-thousand-year history as one of brutalization and mass murder. There is no acknowledgment of the vast improvements Christianity brought about in the treatment of women, children, slaves, and noncitizens, all of whom had few if any rights in pagan Rome. (More details on this can be found in my essay "Why I'm Not a Skeptic.") There is no acknowledgment that Christianity introduced the concept that every human being, regardless of race, sex, or social status, is equally valuable in God's eyes -- an idea that led eventually to the end of slavery and to representative democracy.

No, there are only the familiar broadsides against the Crusades (which began as defensive wars), the Inquisition, and the conquistadores. To the sector of society that likes to think of itself as the elites, all of that old-time religion has contributed nothing of value to our history or culture. At best, it's just so much annoying claptrap; at worst, a real threat. Dangerous if taken seriously, it must be laughed to scorn.

Meanwhile the less enlightened portion of the population - those of us, whether Christian or not, who respect Western civilization's religious heritage - find ourselves increasingly isolated and alienated from the official dogmas of our culture. Contemporary America is split down the middle between these two sides -- the traditionalists and elites. Almost every social, aesthetic, academic, and political controversy bifurcates neatly between these warring factions, and the ruckus over Passion is no exception. Gibson, regardless of any personal quirks or failings, is clearly on the traditionalists' side. If Quentin Tarantino is the epitome of the slick, amoral, self-referential, slyly cynical, semi-intellectual pop artist, appealing mainly to the elites, then Gibson is the anti-Tarantino - a devout Catholic with seven children, who is building a church at his own expense, and who has self-financed a movie about Jesus because he wants to express his deeply held beliefs.

As for me, I'm not a member of any church or an adherent of any particular religious doctrine, but my sympathy for the traditionalists' point of view is enhanced every time the ACLU, spearhead of the elites, takes down another Christmas display or litigates to remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. And I'm afraid I don't see the terrible moral or artistic crime involved in a serious filmic treatment of Jesus. When millions of dollars are spent on movies that glamorize street gangs and drug dealers, revel in machine-gun violence, and celebrate a lifestyle of hedonistic narcissism, is it so awful for a man to finance, out of his own pocket, a movie that is a testament to his personal faith?

To the elites, yes, it is "so awful." They do not want any testaments to religious faith. They do not want religion, period. Religion tells them there is something greater than themselves, a message they view as both a reproach and a threat. If it stays out of sight, religion can be tolerated, or at least ignored. But when it invades the world of entertainment and art and culture - their world, their territory - it must be fought and suppressed. So they bring out the big guns, the harsh accusations, the personal attacks, the caustic sarcasm, the dismissive world-weariness, the contempt - the full Vanity Fair treatment.

Hitchens concludes his essay by pronouncing "the open secret that religion is man-made ... The 'truth' [he puts the term in quotes, since for a fashionably cynical modern journalist there is no truth] is that religious Christians and Jews could still both be wrong. Jerusalem may not be a 'holy city' at all, but just an archeological site that inspires bad behavior. There could be an afterlife and no god, or a god and no afterlife. [He leaves "god" uncapitalized to show his contempt for the concept.] Even an alleged resurrection doesn't prove, in itself, that the teachings of the resurrected one are true ... Miracles prove nothing on their own." The strain of anti-Semitism in the New Testament, he says, cannot be exorcised "because, if the Jews are not implicated in those events, then why should anyone else be? And if succeeding generations cannot be bound by a quasi-mythical account of a ritual killing, then the entire business collapses."

There's little doubt Christopher Hitchens would like to see "the entire business" - i.e., Christianity - collapse. Mel Gibson, on the other hand, wants to keep it standing. This is the real divide between the director and his critic - a divide that mirrors a larger divide in our culture today. And this, I think, is the real reason for the passion stirred up by The Passion of the Christ.

--------------------

Update, March 13, 2004: In case anyone thought I was exaggerating Hitchens' antipathy to this movie, to Mel Gibson, and to religion in general, I append a few of his more recent comments on the subject.

"[A]n associate of [Mel Gibson's] had once told me, in lacerating detail, that an evening with Mel was one long fiesta of boring but graphic jokes about anal sex. I've since had that confirmed by other sources. And, long before he emerged as the spear-carrier for the sort of Catholicism once preached by Gen. Franco and the persecutors of Dreyfus, Mel Gibson attained a brief notoriety for his loud and crude attacks on gays. Now he's become the proud producer of a movie that relies for its effect almost entirely on sadomasochistic male narcissism. The culture of blackshirt and brownshirt pseudomasculinity, as has often been pointed out, depended on some keen shared interests. Among them were massively repressed homoerotic fantasies, a camp interest in military uniforms, an obsession with flogging and a hatred of silky and effeminate Jews. Well, I mean to say, have you seen Mel's movie? ...

"[Gibson is a] coward, a bully, a bigmouth, and a queer-basher. Yes, we have been here before. The word is fascism, in case you are wondering, and we don't have to sit through that movie again." (Christopher Hitchens, "Schlock, Yes; Awe, No; Fascism, Probably," Slate, Feb. 27, 2004; online here)

"[Gibson] has made a film that principally appeals to the gay Christian sado-masochistic community: a niche market that hasn't been sufficiently exploited. If you like seeing handsome young men stripped and tied up and flayed with whips, The Passion Of The Christ is the movie for you ...

"[W]hen the film is later shown, in Russia and Poland, say, or Egypt and Syria, there will be a ready-made propaganda vehicle for those who fancy a bit of torture and murder, with a heavy dose of Jew-baiting thrown in. Gibson knows very well that this will happen, and he'll be raking it in from exactly those foreign rights to the film. So my advice is this. Do not go. Leave it to the sickoes who like this sort of thing, and don't fill the pockets of the sicko who made it." (Christopher Hitchens, "I Detest This Film ... With a Passion," The Mirror, Feb. 27, 2004; online here)

Hitchens was also interviewed on the MSNBC talk show Scarborough Country (March 11, 2004).

Hitchens: Look, the fact that Americans are decent and tolerant and have been in many ways educated, immunized out of bigotry does not forgive Gibson for making a film that is anti-Jewish and bigoted and superstitious and fanatical in its intention ... His sadomasochistic, Leni Riefenstahl-style of directing reminds me very much of fascist propaganda, not least of its extreme homoeroticism in the idea that it's real fun to watch [a] fairly good-looking young man really get the treatment over a long period of time, with a lot of leering Jews appearing to take even more pleasure in it ... [A]nd did I add that someone who hates homosexuals as much as Gibson ... is usually in some kind of trouble. And that was also the case with a lot of the charming young men who like[d] to swagger around in black and brown shirts. Yes, he's a fascist and he's an ignorant peasant and a superstition monger ... I am [an] atheist.  I'm not anti-Catholic. I am not anti-Protestant. I‘m not anti-Greek Orthodox or anti-Judaism or anti-Islamic. I just think that all religious belief is sinister and infantile and belongs to the backward childhood of the race and that the great thing about the United States is that it's a secular country with a godless Constitution. 

Later in the program, religious journalist Raymond Arroyo made an interesting point about Hitchens' claim that Mel Gibson is obsessed with homoeroticism.

Arroyo: [H]omoeroticism was not the first thing that leapt to my mind after watching this movie. Kinky sex play was not quite what I had running through the old gray matter after this thing. And I doubt if many Americans had that reaction ... I have always thought the critic reveals more in his criticism about himself and a projection of what is inside than he does about the art sometimes he is talking about ... [Hitchens] said Mother Teresa was [a] necrophiliac obsessed by death. She liked to watch people die and was turned on by it. Now he's saying Mel Gibson is turned on by the homoerotic flogging of a young man. Assigning these strange psychosexual motives to people who say they are motivated by faith is questionable for me. 

Dana Kennedy, NBC Entertainment Editor, may have put her finger on what Hitchens is really all about.

Kennedy: [E]verybody knows that Christopher Hitchens is a professional contrarian.  I think he's a good writer and he‘s very intelligent, but he's definitely found a niche in attacking sacred cows, like Mother Teresa, like this movie about the passion. 

The complete transcript can be read here.

Update, March 16, 2004: The Associated Press ran an interesting story on The Passion and the worries that it would incite anti-Semitism. "A nationwide survey conducted for the Institute for Jewish and Community Research finds that 83 percent of Americans familiar with the film say it's made them neither more nor less likely to blame today's Jews for Jesus' crucifixion," the story reports, adding, "Nine percent said Mel Gibson's film actually has made them less likely to blame today's Jews, while less than 2 percent said they're more likely to fault modern Jews or Jewish institutions."

According to this poll, then, 92% of the public feels that the film has had no anti-Semitic effect, while fewer than 2% felt otherwise. (Presumably the other 6% had no opinion.) One can certainly argue that this poll shows the incessant accusations of the film's anti-Semitism to have been unfounded.