Christians launch petition to stop production of "blasphemous jesus of nazareth" film

Conservative Christians are angry about a film to be directed by Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director famous for his films "RoboCop," "Total Recall" and "Basic Instinct," called "jesus of nazareth."  The film is based on the book, jesus of nazareth, written by Verhoeven.

After receiving advanced degrees in math and physics, Verhoeven began to make movies, eventually moving from his native Holland to Los Angeles in 1985, where he also became the only non-theologian admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of seventy-seven eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history.

"The liberal media's relentless persecution of the Christian faith shows yet again the double standard of bigotry. There's no way a similar movie would ever be made claiming Muhammad was the product of a rape," wrote Dr. Ted Baehr, the founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, in a press release.  The press release goes on to say:

The movie depicts the life of Jesus, but unlike other Biblical epics "jesus of nazareth" shows Jesus performing no miracles, born as the result of rape, and when Jesus dies he does not come back from the grave.

Paul Verhoeven, the bigoted writer of "jesus of Nazareth" is no stranger to offending Christians with statements intended to bully and browbeat: "In my opinion, Christianity is nothing more than one of many interpretations of reality, neither more nor less. Ideally, it would be nice to believe that there is a God somewhere out there, but it looks to me as if the whole Christian religion is a major symptom of schizophrenia in half the world's population: civilizations scrambling to rationalize their chaotic existence. Subsequently, Christianity has a tendency to look like magic or the occult."

Baehr is urging his fellow Christians to sign the online "Stop the Blasphemous Movie 'Jesus of Nazareth'" petition powered by Liberty Action Center, which reads:

I demand that “jesus of nazareth” be pulled from production.

This movie intends to declare that my Christian faith is useless and it blasphemes the precious name and actions of Jesus.

It's offensive to my beliefs and religion and perpetuates the double standard that it's o.k. to ridicule Christians.

This movie is a cruel deception targeting our children and grandchildren who are impressionable and love to go to movies.

This type of religous [sic - religious] bigotry would not be tolerated against any other major religion in this country and we will not be silent in the face of such an attack on our faith by any movie studio, production company and/or theater.

According to The Huffington Post, "It seems unlikely that Christian protests will be able to prevent Verhoeven from making the film — he recently obtained funding — and the controversy may offer the film the kind of free publicity that helped Martin Scorsese's 'The Last Temptation of Christ,' and Monty Python’s 'The Life Of Brian.'"

D. Beeksma

One of the growing crowd of American "nones" herself, Deborah is a prolific writer who finds religion, spirituality and the impact of belief (and non-belief) on culture inspiring, fascinating and at times, disturbing. She hosts the God Discussion show and handles the site's technical work. Her education and background is in business, ecommerce and law.

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