The depiction of Jesus as gay in a play that will be opening in Sydney has been strongly condemned by Australian Church leaders.
The Anglican Bishop of South Sydney, Robert Forsyth, expressed his outrage at the plot of "Corpus Christi" on Sunday, calling the play "historical nonsense."
"It is deliberately, not innocently, offensive and they're obviously having a laugh about it," he told the Sun-Herald newspaper. "I wouldn't want to go and see it. Life's too short,"
The play, which is set to open on Feb. 7 as part of Sydney's annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival, depicts Jesus being seduced by Judas and conducting a gay marriage for two apostles, and ends with the crucifixion of Jesus.
Australian Family Association spokeswoman Angela Conway strongly condemned it, saying, "The ideas are offensive and really border on blasphemous. It's just completely fanciful and self-obsessive.”
“The play creators have committed a big enough crime by neglecting to treat Christianity and Christian believers with more sensitivity,” she said.
The piece by American playwright Terrence McNally portrays Jesus and his disciples as sexually active homosexuals.
It originally opened in the United States in 1997, and is a modern retelling of the Gospels, taking place in the Texan town of Corpus Christi.
The play drew strong opposition with protests and some even sending bomb and death threats to McNally, who draws parallels between the rejection he faced as a young gay man growing up in Texas and Christ's persecution.
McNally also received a death edict, or fatwa, from a UK-based Islamic group, which declared the play blasphemous when it ran in London in 1999.
However, the director of the play in Australia, Leigh Romney rejected accusations the play mocks Christ.
"I think it humanizes Him in a way Christians might find difficult because we like to believe God and the son of God are ultimately divine and above all of us,” said Romney, a Christian.
"I wanted this play in the hands of a Christian person like myself to give it dignity but still open it up to answering questions about Christianity as a faith system," he told the Herald.
Stephen Billington, who plays Judas Iscariot, has said that the play carries a message about tolerance.
This is not the first time that it has been suggested Jesus might have been gay.
In 1977, Mary Whitehouse, a moral campaigner, brought a private prosecution against Gay News for publishing a poem by Professor James Kirkup titled “The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name.” The poem depicted a centurion's love for Christ and the newspaper was fined under blasphemy laws.
Also in 2005, New Hampshire Bishop the Rt. Rev Gene Robinson, an openly gay Bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church, suggested that Jesus might have been homosexual and said that Jesus was an unmarried, "non-traditional man" who did not uphold family values, "traveled with a bunch of men" and enjoyed an especially close relationship with one of his disciples.
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Excellent Seaport, I would love to see that too... but no, somebody is a coward...
To Sue Mitchell:
Beloved, you are correct, it's just a play. And, yes, Christianity is not so frail that it cannot survive.
However, dear one, young ones are very impressionable. Were you never influenced by anything you read, saw, or heard when you were young?
These young ones looking for truth, to find things as in this article, is very dangerous to their growth as Christians, and those that will become Christian. We can already see that lack of Biblical knowledge has allowed this abomination into the churches. All one has to do is turn on the nightly news and see this. A controversy where none should exist.
Jesus said: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea."
Are we not to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves?
I "D-Double-Dare" Terrence McNally to write and produce a play or movie portraying Islam's prophet Muhammed as homosexual, sexually active or not.
For crying out loud, people, it's just a play. Surely Christianity isn't such a frail religion that it can't survive it.
Angela Conway says, "The play creators have committed a big enough crime by neglecting to treat Christianity and Christian believers with more sensitivity,"
Insensitivity is a crime? Really? Maybe the play creators feel that you haven't treated them with much sensitivity? To get respect, you have to give respect. It isn't a one-way street.
Please - just show a little Christian charity. No one's forcing you to watch it after all.
You might also like to show a little more sensitivity to older readers with impaired vision and use a bigger font.
Best wishes,
Sue
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For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1, 21-32
Quote [ "really border on blasphemous" ]
This is blasphemous.
New Hampshire "Bishop" the Rt. "Rev" Gene Robinson - Apparently he doesn't understand the rabbi-disciple ancient tradition. According to his thinking, young, single male band members must all be homosexuals - which we know is not true.
gavulav: "Where will it all stop?"
When Jesus returns!!
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Ephesians 4:18-20
18They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.
Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.
This is now the favourite pastime of the international gay community, having sexual fantasies in places they have no right to be. Gay authors, gay clergy and gay actors are all caught up in these sick and disgusting sexual fantasies. It's possible that they could also be entertaining these abhorrent sexual fantasies amongst themselves about the Pope and Prophet Mohammed and the only reason it's still in the closet is because they know that the international backlash would trigger WW3. Where will it all stop?
Pitiful guys. I feel sorry for these people. May the mercy of Christ comes to them!