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Chapter Three opens Part Two of this work, which looks at what it is that is ‘finished’, as Christ affirms with his last word from the Cross in the Gospel of John. This chapter focuses on Christ as the true Temple, erected when his body is lifted up upon the Cross, Building upon the work of Mary Coloe and others, this chapter explores how Christ is presented in the six feasts which structure the narrative of this Gospel, culminating in the Passion and the appearances of the Risen Christ on the first and eighth day. In addition, this chapter also examines the way in which imagery drawn from the Tabernacle and Temple are used to explain Christ’s flesh (John 1:14 and 6), the relationship of this flesh, his glorified body, to the Eucharist and martyrdom, broadening in this way what is meant by ‘incarnation’.

This chapter discusses positive commentaries of the Vatican on Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ. It suggests that the rush to laud the film and the sense of certainty about it characterizes the new Catholic apologetic. This certainty may be attributed to the rhetoric of Vatican II documents that sought to describe the universal quality of the Church by equating it with an ideal: the entire holy people, and to the confidence within the Catholic hierarchy that comes from the peculiar way the Church of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has tried to explain its relationship to history.

This chapter focuses on the presence of torture in many of Mel Gibson’s films, including The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart, and Apocalypto. It argues that while Gibson heroes—with the exception of Jesus in The Passion—are ferocious toward their enemies, they do not condone torture per se. Indeed, they are cast as valiant victims of it. In the Gibson schema, revenge is what good guys justifiably inflict on their enemies. Torture is what the bad guys do. The chapter suggests that Gibson’s films actually “condemn the use of torture.” The male characters in these films are victims of torture, a torture that often ends in sacrifice, and the suffering that they endure grants them a purified and patriarchal masculinity that invites honor.

George W. Bush spoke to the fullness of evangelical relevance at the start of the twenty-first century. Bush's faith-based language of compassionate conservatism garnered appeal beyond the Christian Right proper, as Michael Gerson and John DiIulio demonstrated. Yet the culture wars still raged among Intelligent Design advocates and Bush reelection strategists. Evangelicals were politicized as never before. Egged on by Karl Rove, the Christian Right entered its baroque period. Evangelical popular culture followed a similar trajectory. Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life and Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series transcended the crossover label, while Mel Gibson's deeply Catholic The Passion of the Christ became a born-again blockbuster. A backlash loomed in the form of a second evangelical scare. Journalists warned of theocratic “dominionism,” the new atheists dismissed religion in the aftermath of 9/11, and The Daily Show offered wit as a way around “Evangophobia.” Opportunities beckoned for evangelical critics of Bush