Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:1 (Winter 2025)
Article: The Sexual Violences Of Empire, Patriarchy, And Crucifixion
Author: Rebekah Mui Pei Ern

PP 39:1 (Winter 2025) p. 14

The Sexual Violences Of Empire, Patriarchy, And Crucifixion

Rebekah Mui Pei Ern

Rebekah Mui Pei Ern is a doctoral student in Virginia Tech’s Alliance of Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought program (Blacksburg, Virginia). Her research is situated in the field of political theology, where she explores anarcho-pacifist and Anabaptist responses to imperial, sexual, and gendered violences.

The image of Jesus Christ crucified has been replicated, illustrated, and infused with varied symbolic meanings over its history. That is, over the centuries, many interpretations of the crucifixion have developed, obscuring its original context and meaning. Thus, the many “Christianities” around the world today make competing claims as to the meaning and symbolism of the crucifixion. Cultural imagery surrounding the crucifixion ranges from traditional crucifixes to film portrayals, and from theologies to cross-shaped Easter chocolates.1 One key example of “crucifixion horror” in film is Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (2004),¹ which will be the sociological starting-point from which I explore the role of the violated, divine body of Christ in political theology, particularly within the historical and present-day context of imperial masculinity and the patriarchal household.

Crucifixion—Heroic Or Shameful?

Neal King’s study, Heroes in Hard Times: Cop Action Movies in the U.S., notes the ritual portrayal of torture enacted upon bare-chested male bodies.2 Such torture is not emasculating. Instead, it often serves as a “proof of sacrifice and suffering in a world gone wrong.”3 Torture, in these contexts, serves as a vehicle toward greater masculinity for men who endure it. King notes in a sociological study of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ that the visceral depiction of Jesus’s crucifixion provoked affective reactions among Christian audiences. The cinematic experience became a religious one, where they revered “the sacrificial hero” and realized “the extent of his love.”4 Indeed, according to historian Kristin Kobes Du Mez, evangelical authors felt that the film presented an “antidote to the image of the wimpy Christ,” one far more in line with the All-American, “John Wayne” and “Teddy Roosevelt” masculine ideal.5 Du Mez notes,

Evangelicals were already fans of Gibson’s work. Gibson was Catholic, but evangelicals recognized that they shared the common creed of militant Christianity and heroic...