The widely-praised BBC programme on Judas Iscariot presented by Gogglebox vicar Rev Kate Bottley has been attacked by a former president of the US Southern Baptist Convention as "an attempt to undermine the Christian gospel".
The documentary, broadcast on Good Friday and entitled In the Footsteps of Judas, won plaudits for its faithfulness to the Bible and theological insights. As well as visiting the locations associated with Judas, Bottley drew on the expertise of established biblical scholars for her presentation. Interviewed by Christian Today, she stressed that Judas had done wrong but said his was a tragic story that had much to teach us about our own flaws.
However, Rev Jerry Vines, retired pastor of First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida, told Baptist Press the programme appears to be "an attempt to undermine the Christian gospel, actually. This idea that you're a sinner is not real popular with culture. So if you can turn the so-called notable sinners in the Bible into just misunderstood men and scapegoats, it kind of minimises the fact that men are sinners and need a Saviour."
Vines added: "You go by what Scripture says, not by these outside, extraneous views. Jesus called Judas the 'son of perdition' in John 17, and then almost uniformly he's referred to as 'the traitor.'
"When I preached on Judas, which I did many times through the years, I certainly felt sorry for him," he continued. "You're sorry he became such a tragedy, but he made his own decisions and according to Acts, he went 'to his own place'" [a reference to hell].
Baptist Press cites another scholar, David Allen, dean of the School of Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said: "From a biblical perspective... there's no question, number one, about [Judas'] character and, number two, about his eternal destiny. The Scripture is actually quite clear on both counts."
He said attempts to "sanitise Judas" seem to occur "within the purview of liberal theology, where we don't want to say that anyone is damned".
