Eight months is an eternity in politics.
Last December, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was reeling from an
electoral butt-kicking with the defeat of his packet of ballot
initiatives, Mike Spence, president of the California Republican
Assembly (the state’s oldest Republican volunteer organization) was
touting Mel Gibson as a potential replacement for Schwarzenegger on
November’s ballot.
”
The success of ‘The Passion of the Christ’,
”
said Spence,
”
shows that [Gibson] has the ability to reach out to people.
”
Eight months is an eternity in politics.
Last December, as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was reeling from an electoral butt-kicking with the defeat of his packet of ballot initiatives, Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly (the state’s oldest Republican volunteer organization) was touting Mel Gibson as a potential replacement for Schwarzenegger on November’s ballot.
“The success of ‘The Passion of the Christ’,” said Spence, “shows that [Gibson] has the ability to reach out to people.”
In a reversal of fortunes worthy of Hollywood, Schwarzenegger now has a small but distinct lead over his Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides, while Mel Gibson is reaching out in desperation.
“I’m not just asking for forgiveness,” he said in a second, abject apology Tuesday in the wake of an alleged anti-Semitic screed during his DUI arrest July 27. “I would like to take it one step further, and meet with leaders in the Jewish community, with whom I can have a one-on-one discussion to discern the appropriate path for healing.”
It looks like he’ll get the opportunity. David Baron, Rabbi for Temple of the Arts in Los Angeles, has invited Gibson to speak at temple for Yom Kippur, two months hence. For gentiles unfamiliar with the Hebrew calendar, that, appropriately, is the Jewish day of atonement.
And Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, has extended the hand of forgiveness to Gibson – although he’s still waiting for Gibson to make good on a two-year old promise, made in the wake of the “Passion” controversy, to talk to his organization.
After accusing Jews of starting all the wars in the world, about the only thing left for Gibson to do is to endorse a pro-war Jew for elected office. Conveniently, there’s a primary election Tuesday in Connecticut featuring just such a candidate.
Gibson’s reported tirade against Jews and their supposed wars comes at a dicey moment in the history of both war and religion, and has exposed a much bigger, pinker elephant in the room: the responsibility of religion itself for our present conflicts.
The world teeters on the edge of global conflagration, and the reasons are in large measure due to conflicts between faiths. Yet have we treated these conflicts uniquely as matters of state.
The umbrella of secular authority has provided bellicose religious fanatics with cover to wage holy wars under the color of sovereignty, without having to assume any of the responsibility that might otherwise be attached to their faiths.
This is a consequence of the lines between church and state becoming blurred, or disappearing altogether, as is common in the Middle East, and increasingly so in the United States.
These conflicts will never be resolved by political means alone. They will only be resolved when the leaders of the great faiths, who profess to be agents of peace, find the wisdom, which they profess to be the bedrocks of their religions, to work out a durable peace.
Only these leaders – especially in Israel and Iran, but also in the Vatican, the U.S. and elsewhere – have sufficient moral suasion, not to mention financial influence, with the combatants. Silence, inactivity, and in some cases incitement, is complicity in the killing, and a repudiation of the religious tenets they profess to hold.
As religious leaders continue to duck responsibility for the bigotry-inspired transgressions being committed in the names of their faiths, Mel Gibson has, to his credit, stepped up to take responsibility for his – and committed himself to change.
Gibson himself has been silent, preferring to issue statements through a spokesperson. Doubtless he is engaged in a lot of reflection. Perhaps he is getting advice from Hugh Grant.
But eventually he will have to face the public, and when he does he will likely never overcome the reluctance of many who doubt his sincerity. Gibson’s own past, and his father’s Holocaust denials, gives them good reason for suspicion.
But taking those we distrust at their word is the necessary first step in healing. If Rabbi Baron and Abraham Foxman can make that leap of faith, there is no reason the rest of us can’t.
And while Gibson’s trials are, in the grand scheme of things, a sideshow to the carnage around the world, perhaps there is something global to be learned in his example, something about the power of confession, redemption – and reconciliation.
