Historically, the Church, and even large segments of say, Southern Baptist protestantism, haven't taken the now-more-common, nuanced view of the situation. Regardless of the fact that "deicide" is a problematic concept to begin with, from the 300s until about 1965, it wasn't uncommon for Jews to be the target of verbal abuse and physical violence for being "Christ-killers," and that whole original blood libel ("let his blood be upon us an on our children") sort of perpetuated that idea.

Recently, much of Christianity has come round to the idea that, in Jared's words, "blaming the Jews makes as much sense as blaming the Sioux." But it's only been about 40 years, and while great changes can happen in a generation or two, people are still skittish.

Overly so, in my view. America is not Europe. Europe's anti-Semitism was undoubtedly Christian in origin, even as it now is secular. America never had these problems, certainly not to the same extent. When people talk about Jews "being oppressed" in the South, I want to retch. Discriminated against, yes. Treated like a side-dish that hadn't been ordered, but it's almost time for the play and we really do need to get going, so let's not send it back this time, sure.

But "oppressed?" Oppressed brings to mind ghettos where the gates closed at nightfall. Tsarist Russia rampaging through the streets, or conscripting boys into the army to divest them of their lives or their religion or both. Being tossed out of countries wholesale (retail being heavily regulated), that sort of thing. Blacks were oppressed. Jews had a choice when they got off the boat in Baltimore to stop, turn right, or turn left. A lot of them turned left and made nice livings.

Let me now caveat all of what I just said. 1) Abe Foxman & the boys over at the Wiesenthal Center made a terrible blunder in terms of intellectual honesty by criticizing a film they hadn't seen, 2) I'm not about to make the same mistake, so I can't really criticize the film until I see it, 3) which I intend to do, in the company of a Jewish convert from Christianity who can translate for me, 4) there are enough reviews out now by Jews or non-believers that you can see what they might have found problematic, 5) it's only a movie, for crying out loud.

That said, movies are powerful. One of the networks (probably ABC now, since they pretty much own all pre-1970 content created in the world) still runs "Ten Commandments" every Passover. Ben-Hur also shows up every Easter. There are probably kids who are crestfallen to find out that Charlton Heston isn't Jewish. The Palestinians only wish they could come up with a movie as compelling as "Exodus," or even "Fiddler." (I know an Indian from East Africa with a family tradition of watching "Fiddler" every New Year's; they think it's their story, too.) And these movies don't have to be re-run on network television every year to be powerful. There's a small film called "Relentless," about the Israeli suffering at the hands of suicide bombers and terrorists, that's been shown in synagogues and almost nowhere else for the last few years on Tisha B'Av. It's very powerful, very moving, and is almost completely underground.

And if, 30 years from now, the movie is popular with church leaders, there's nothing inherent in it that keeps them from saying, "see what the Jewish mob did to Him? See how they rejected him? See why they and their descendents are worthy of our contempt and scorn?" It's not that people are going to fly out of the theaters looking for Jews to run over in the parking lot on the way to go burn down a shul. It's that, in the wrong hands, even a fine piece of film-making can be made to serve bad purposes.

My sense is that Christianity, especially in America, is not only well past that point, but moving further away. The most vocal Christians, the ones that are going to be around 40 years from now, are coming at it from Jared's point of view. (Although it's anyone's guess how the large Catholic influx from Mexico affects things.) I can't tell Christians what to think. But I can tell them that if they want their view of the world to prevail, they'll have to be responsible for the future of their churches, and the messages they teach.