Friday October 30, 2009
William Wallace Was a Monster
It took fifteen years, but Mel Gibson has finally admitted that his portrayal of William Wallace in Braveheart was pretty much a complete rewriting of history. But even now he still gets Wallace wrong.
T4G Earlybird
Tomorrow is the last day to qualify for the early registration rates for T4G. As of Sunday the price goes up substantially!
Persecution in England
This video is interesting. It tells of a Christian couple who are facing criminal charges after debating faith with a Muslim.
Halloween Worries
Melinda, blogging at Stand to Reason, raises some good points about Halloween. "Christians can be shocked that another Christian will go trick or treating, but not blink an eye of awareness or concern when another Christian distorts the doctrine of the Trinity."
It took fifteen years, but Mel Gibson has finally admitted that his portrayal of William Wallace in Braveheart was pretty much a complete rewriting of history. But even now he still gets Wallace wrong.
T4G Earlybird
Tomorrow is the last day to qualify for the early registration rates for T4G. As of Sunday the price goes up substantially!
Persecution in England
This video is interesting. It tells of a Christian couple who are facing criminal charges after debating faith with a Muslim.
Halloween Worries
Melinda, blogging at Stand to Reason, raises some good points about Halloween. "Christians can be shocked that another Christian will go trick or treating, but not blink an eye of awareness or concern when another Christian distorts the doctrine of the Trinity."
Comments (4) »
1. Paul Huxley
October 30, 2009
8:54 AM
On the Persecution in England story, you can find out more, and many similar cases at the following websites:
http://www.christianlegalcentre.com
http://www.christian.org.uk
Disclosure: I work for the first of the above.
2. pentamom
October 30, 2009
10:07 AM
I was never under the impression that a movie about an historical character about whom little was certainly known was MEANT to be taken as an historical portrayal. I thought he was taking a famous person in history and spinning a good movie out of the related events — which is what he did. It’s weird that Gibson has to swing to the opposite extreme of negative falsehood in order to acknowledge that it was a good story about a famous character, rather than a documentary.
One also wonders if the “historians” have actually seen the movie — Wallace was not portrayed as a poor villager, but as a minor nobleman, and a man who traveled extensively before settling in his home country. The thing that might cause the confusion is that Gibson et al evidently deemed even minor Scots noblemen of the 12th century as dirty and rustic. But it was clear from the beginning that he came of a family of name and had land. I believe he even spoke Latin.
Far more troublesome to me are movies that play fast and loose with well documented history, or works of fiction that claim to have basis in truth but are no such thing (can anyone say Dan Brown?)
3. Renee Davies
October 30, 2009
3:23 PM
William Wallace was a monster. And the Sovereigns were little wee angels?
4. Tim Hansel
October 31, 2009
2:28 PM
No, the Article is titled “William Wallace is a Monster”
Mel Gibson is wrong about that, the same as portraying him as an angel…. Robert De Bruce is an interesting man from that time showing how much of Scotland felt about Wallace’s rebellion… he was on the English side to start with, when Wallace won a lot of battles De Bruce switched to Scotland, when Wallace started losing, he went back to England then finally rallied back to Scotland and became Robert I….. this could be viewed as the ultimate turn coat, or as a politician trying to balance the needs of his countrymen against an insurrection…..
You have to remember history is not lived in a vacuum, it’s affected by many things, when you are in history, how you got there, what has gone on before, what the state of the Church is.. (pre-reformation), how connected you are to the rest of the world beyond, and what the fight is for (Scots were at best Second Class citizens, little more than slaves in fact many were treated as slaves)…..
we can sit and judge if they were right or wrong, as an American, I have my bias they were freedom fighters and were right, as a Canadian you may disagree in how they separated from the crown, but without William Wallace and Robert De Bruce and other men who stood up and defended Scotland it is possible Presbyterianism would not have been welcomed some 200-300 years later, and the other good things that have come from Scotland could have also been lost….
Or these could have developed outside that frame of history….
either way, end of the day we are speculating on what happened in another culture in another time and we need to leave our bias at the door as best we can and try and understand it in that context…..
similar to studying the Old Testament accounts we find distasteful… or Grecian-Roman History…. it is what it is and we can benefit from learning it… but not necessarily by copying it.
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