Abstract
The Passion is a contemporary performance of the passion of Christ live on stage, combined with pop music, city marketing, social media, and entertainment. The result is an encounter between the Christian gospel and traditional elements of devotion like a procession of the cross on the one hand, and the typical mediatization and commercialization of late modern society on the other. In this article, I will first briefly describe the phenomenon, including the different effects that the event has upon the audience and the stakeholders and benefits it has for them. It is one characteristic of The Passion that it allows for a variety of possible approaches, and this is, at the same time, part of its formula for success. Another characteristic is the configured intertextuality between the sacred biblical text and secular pop songs. In the second section, I will interpret this as a central mode of storytelling in The Passion. It can evoke traditional, but also new, interpretations of the Christian gospel. The purpose of the article is to interpret The Passion as an expression of constructive public theology. It is an example of how the gospel is brought into dialogue with secular society.
Highlights
The Passion is a contemporary performance of the passion of Christ live on stage, combined with pop music, city marketing, social media, and entertainment
The concrete result can be a form of constructive public theology (Breitenberg 2003, pp. 64–65), such as an event like The Passion, where the Christian narrative melds with secularity
In our description of The Passion as a phenomenon, we observed that it is a hybrid form of storytelling
Summary
The television program The Passion is an example of public theology. This concept is not about preaching the gospel to society, but bringing it into dialogue with and in society. Traces of God can be found in the secular world, because he honored the world through his self-revelation in Jesus Christ. This is not first and foremost about mission, but rather about a mutual dialogue. The world is placed under criticism, and the church and theology They in turn benefit from their contact with different social systems and with all aspects of life. The concrete result can be a form of constructive public theology (Breitenberg 2003, pp. 64–65), such as an event like The Passion, where the Christian narrative melds with secularity
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