{"id":446,"date":"2004-02-21T11:55:11","date_gmt":"2004-02-21T18:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=446"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"millet-on-the-passion-r-rated-movies-and-evangelicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/02\/millet-on-the-passion-r-rated-movies-and-evangelicals\/","title":{"rendered":"Millet on “The Passion,” R-rated Movies, and Evangelicals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another one of those typical “what-do-the-Mormons-think?” articles this morning in the Deseret News<\/a>, this one<\/a> on “The Passion of the Christ” and the supposed challenge which its R-rating poses for members of the church. (I always love these articles by the way, because they differ not a whit in their form from the sort of articles we often had to write back at The Daily Universe<\/a>: call up some random religion professor–it was usually a religion professor–and get them to talk on the record about what everybody had already beaten to death in elder’s quorum the week before. The more straightforward Deseret News article on showings of “The Passion” in Utah is here<\/a>.) This one has some notable nuggets in it though, because Professor Robert Millet (the BYU religion professor they managed to get on the phone) was willing to elaborate at some length on why he’s going to see the movie.
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\nMillet–who, he says, doesn’t “normally” see R-rated movies– is going to a preview showing next week, with other Utah clergy, including other LDS leaders (I wish the article had said who). He calls it “a sincere effort by people, both Christian and non-Christian, to show there was a tremendous price paid by Christ for our sins,” and adds: “It seems to me that a mature approach to this issue would entail thinking through the principles that the leaders of church have taught us concerning what we ought to view and not to view…This isn’t Freddy Krueger. This is Jesus Christ.” What I found most interesting though, were his comments on evangelicals. He’s quoted as saying: “If evangelicals are right, this will impact the Christian world in a way few things have, so for us to ignore it is a bit of a slap in the face.” I find that a wonderfully ecumenical statement, in the best sense: it shows a willingness to recognize that our own standards and decisions in regards to expressing and preserving our “Mormonness” should not be made without a concern for recognizing and respecting the views of other believers. Evangelicals too often get a bad rap in certain Mormon forums, perhaps because the worthy and important efforts of FARMS has unfortunately made it easy to think that every Protestant who disagrees with us must be shouting from the anti-Mormon barricades. But they aren’t; and being willing to participate along with evangelicals and others in what is shaping up to be a major cultural event in the lives of a huge number of American Christians shows, I think, sensitivity and good sense. I have had (for reasons that aren’t relevant here) a less than stellar opinion of Millet in the past; this statement, then, was for me a pleasant surprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another one of those typical “what-do-the-Mormons-think?” articles this morning in the Deseret News, this one on “The Passion of the Christ” and the supposed challenge which its R-rating poses for members of the church. (I always love these articles by the way, because they differ not a whit in their form from the sort of articles we often had to write back at The Daily Universe: call up some random religion professor–it was usually a religion professor–and get them to talk on the record about what everybody had already beaten to death in elder’s quorum the week before. The more straightforward Deseret News article on showings of “The Passion” in Utah is here.) This one has some notable nuggets in it though, because Professor Robert Millet (the BYU religion professor they managed to get on the phone) was willing to elaborate at some length on why he’s going to see the movie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}