M. Leary

Announcing: The Alternative History of Jesus

Very long ago I decided to start a series here I was calling the “Alternative History of Jesus,” and then I stopped after two. There were two reasons for this. First, I have been really busy. Second, I thought that the series would actually make a decent book – which would also give me the […]

M. Leary

Monkey Jesus, Balthazar, and a Dismaying Quality of Faith

Alternative History of Jesus: Episode 2 Surely we have all born witness to the Monkey Jesus* that now adorns a flaky bit of plaster in the Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Misericordia, a quiet church nestled in the western corner of Zaragoza. Once a fairly prosaic fresco in the mode of ecce homo, an amateur […]

M. Leary

The Alternative History of Jesus

For me, it all begin with Jeebus, who was made manifest to the world in the fifteenth episode of the eleventh season of The Simpsons.  In this episode, titled “Missionary: Impossible,” Homer flees a mob of angry PBS telethon hosts by hopping a cargo plane to hide out as a missionary in Microasia.* Realizing the gravity of his situation, Homer gets on […]

M. Leary

Mary (Ferrara, 2005)

(Ed. Note: Originally published at Film-Think.) I am baffled that Mary was not distributed in conjunction to either The Passion of the Christ or The Da Vinci Code hysteria after it played to acclaim at the Venice 2005 festival, even taking the SIGNIS award there. It would have been a helpful point of reference for either […]

M. Leary

Last Days (Van Sant, 2005)

  (Ed. Note: This was originally published at Image Facts.) “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.” Last Days is a religious film. A loosely fictional account of the days leading up to the suicide of the lead singer of an internationally famous grunge band, it is an extended meditation on the death of Kurt Cobain. […]

M. Leary

The Passion of the Christ (Gibson, 2004)

(Ed. Note: This was originally published at The Matthew’s House Project.) There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to […]