Jesus Christ Superstar

On Saturday I saw the musical Jesus Christ Superstar for the first time and I was very impressed. It was an excellent production by Wollongong High School of the Performing Arts. It was full of passion and terrific performances in singing, dancing and acting.

Seemingly, it was first performed forty years ago in 1971. I'm older than that. It has been around for a long time so why haven't I seen it before now? I think it was performed in Ireland for the first time at the beginning of 1973 and I remember that there were protests about it when it came to Cork. Some people were still protesting it again in 2003 when it was performed in Cork. Was it those 1970s protests that put me off? I'm sure that at the time the protests acted as the best publicity.

As I watched the performance I thought about the protests.What was all the fuss about? Why were some who claim to be followers of Jesus so threatened by it? I imagined that the protesters could have been part of the script. It would be interesting to place a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar within another musical or play a bit like the plot of the film 'Jesus of Montreal' (1989). The protesters adding more calls of 'blasphemy' would only enhance the script and bring into sharper focus how we can use religion as a negative, oppressive and controlling force in people's lives today just as it was back in the time of Jesus. Perhaps it has been done already.

Just as Jesus challenged the religion of his day so the religion of our day needs to be challenged. We want to challenge people beyond our definitions of the church with the message of Jesus but will we let people 'beyond' or 'outside' the church challenge us with the message of Jesus? Shall we let them speak (or sing, dance and act) or shall we seek to silence them just as we seek to silence those within the church who raise questions and see things differently?

Violence and Religion

I spent most of the day making notes for our study group on Reza Aslan's book 'No god but God: the origins, evolution and future of Islam'. This week we are reading chapter seven which is entitled 'In the footsteps of the martyrs'. The chapter is a summary of Shi'ism from its origins in bloody and tragic circumstances to the revolution in Iran and the war between between Iran and Iraq during which tens of thousands of children were killed as martyrs, thus the title of the chapter 'In the footsteps of the martyrs'.

In December, North Sydney Council is holding an Interfaith Forum on raising awareness of issues of violence in the home. In preparation a few of us had a discussion during the week and we talked about how biblical texts can be used to trap women within the cycle of violence. One such text being: 'take up your cross and follow me'. Some women have applied this text to themselves or have it applied to them by male church leaders in such a  way that they regard having to live with a violent partner as being the cross they must bear as a good Christian and their lot for life.

When we men (male religious leaders) allow this to happen it is like we are allowing Christ to be crucified twice (to speak in theological terms) or in non theological terms that we men are not taking responsibility to let other men know in the strongest terms possible that violence against women and children in any form is wrong and totally unacceptable.

Violence and religion has had a long history and much human violence is attributed to God. Shall we continue to go along with the status quo, the acceptance of the relationship between violence and religion or shall we in all religions reject violence as attributable to God and dare to question our own interpretations of our sacred texts?