Theologians', historians' challenges bring change

 

By Mary Stamp

Andrea (Andy) CastroLang, a retired United Church of Christ (UCC) pastor living in Spokane, experienced in her own family how it's possible for people to change from ingrained assumptions and antisemitism.

Through her experiences and those of her family, she told of the transformation of the Oberammergau, Germany, Passion Play on Christ's last week to communicate a positive message of faith.

For centuries, the play, which is performed about every 10 years from May to October—was like the seven-hour, medieval, antisemitic performance her father experienced in 1960. Today it is a modern, six-hour performance with updated theology and antisemitic overtones eliminated, she said.

Over time, villagers adapted the theology, script, acting, music, costumes, staging and sets to communicate a positive message for today's audiences, Andy said.

The change came because Christian and Jewish theologians and historians challenged misrepresentations in the play that were conveyed by Jewish characters wearing horned hats and making stereotyped gestures. Other characters loudly blamed Jews for his death.

Because Oberammergau is Andy's father's home village, her family members were among those involved in efforts to make changes in the performance.

Her grandfather, Anton Lang, had played Christ in 1900, 1910 and 1922. Her father, Gottfried Friedl Lang, as a cultural anthropologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder, wrote articles that supported efforts of cousins and villagers to make changes.

Gottfried, who was known as "Friedl," was 17 when he fled to the U.S. in 1937 to escape being conscripted as a pilot in the Nazi air force. Later, as a cultural anthropology professor, he did research and wrote articles challenging the tradition in order to restore integrity to the play.

"He described pressures on the villagers between holding on to cultural stability and embracing cultural change. He encouraged them to drop their resistance to change," said Andy. "In the small village with a long tradition, people were afraid of change. He interviewed people and heard their many perspectives. He was an ally of young people trying to make changes."

He appealed to and documented villagers' self-interest to maintain their livelihoods around tourism and the play, as Christians, Jews and others threatened to boycott the production, said Andy, who retired in 2022 after 20 years as pastor at Westminster UCC.

She shared recently with a small group about her family connection with the Passion Play and its transition.

Because her grandfather, a potter by trade, had played Christ, he knew popes, bishops and priests around the world. He also knew pilots who flew priests to visit Indigenous people in the Hudson Bay region. Andy's grandmother had hosted many international guests at her bed and breakfast (Gasthaus).

In 1937, Anton secured a visa for Friedl—the youngest of his six children—to leave with Friedl's aunt Anna, before he was conscripted, said Andy. As refugees, they were tense during the whole voyage from Bremerhaven until they set foot on the ground in New York City. Friedl went by train to Chicago to join the pilot friends. His older brother was also already in the U.S. and a professor of German culture and language at Georgetown University in D.C.

After Friedl graduated from Brown University, he was drafted by the U.S. army, applied for conscientious objector status and was stationed as a medic in the Southeast U.S.

"He did not like to talk about the war years," Andy said.

While earning a master's degree at the University of Chicago, Friedl met Andy's mother, Martha Baldwin, whose family went back to the Mayflower era. She was Presbyterian and converted to become Catholic. They had eight children.

After doctoral studies at Cornell University, he taught cultural anthropology at Catholic University in Washington, DC, and then at the University of Colorado.

In 1960, he returned to Oberammergau for the first time, taking his U.S. family for a year to teach on a Fulbright in Munich. They rented a house in Oberammergau, because he wanted his family to taste his early Bavarian village life in the mountains.

Andy learned of the war years from villagers. Oberammergau had not been bombed, but villagers experienced hunger and difficult times.

"The mayor knew my grandmother hid Jews, including a woman on the Gasthaus staff. Andy's grandmother convinced him to give her an extra ration card and eventually helped the woman escape," said Andy. "Over the years, our family pieced together bits about the war years."

The 1960 performance of the Passion Play was the traditional version.

"The old guard performers resisted changes, but many were retiring by 1980, when they faced a worldwide boycott," Andy said.

"Conservative villagers did not want to change but the uproar from Catholic and Jewish leaders grew, saying the play was pietistic and antiquated, not true to Scriptures or historical-critical study," she commented. "Catholic theologians and scholars were appalled that it continued the blaming that stoked hate of Jews."

As her father joined others challenging the Passion Play, it began to change.

Andy saw it in 2000 after some changes were made.

Villagers realized they would lose their livelihood in tourism from the play and from alpine skiing, hiking and hang gliding, so they made the changes.

In 2000, her father arranged for her two children, Brigid and Nick, to be in the Palm Sunday crowd scene with 300 on stage. Only villagers or their family members are allowed to be on stage. By then, young leaders had changed the message, costumes, staging, music and acting quality.

Changes also went on in Andy's life, from growing up with the influence of her devout, thoughtful, progressive Catholic parents. She had studied at Regis University in Denver, intending to serve the church as a Catholic lay woman, but she met Jim Castro, an Italian-Irish Catholic. A newly ordained priest, he was assigned in 1981 to a parish in Fort Collins. Her first job was as a Catholic lay worker there, too.

They fell in love and married in 1985, closing them off from jobs in the Catholic Church. They moved to Seattle, where Andy was a nanny and Jim worked in radio news, and then moved to Olympia, where Jim worked with the Democratic Caucus.

"Our ecumenical involvement led us to attend United Churches of Olympia, a UCC and Presbyterian federated church. They welcomed us and they encouraged me to go to seminary," said Andy.

After graduating from San Francisco Theological School, she served churches in Weeping Water and Avoca, Neb., for four years before starting as pastor at Westminster UCC in Spokane. Jim's ordination was recognized by the Pacific Northwest UCC Conference, and he has served as pastor at Walla Walla, Ritzville and Colville and interim pastor at Veradale UCC. He also assisted the Colfax, Chewelah and Wallace churches.

Before her father died in 2010 at the age of 91, Andy and her sisters took him to Oberammergau, where he was in the 2010 Passion Play crowd one more time—as he had been as a child and in 1960, 1990 and 2000.

"As an anthropologist, he had communicated how cultural conflict can lead to cultural shifts and changes," she said. "The play had become obsolete, dated and uncomfortable. People sat through seven hours of magical thinking, poor performances and antisemitism. It was change or die.

"The writers changed the theology to respect Jewish people as they were respected in the Gospel and in history, given that Jesus was a Jew," Andy said. "With that change the performances became more artistic, creative drama.

"The narrator now shares theological messages that are relevant and make sense today," said Andy, who appreciates her German heritage and growing up in a family who advocated for change.

"My dad taught inclusion, cross-cultural understanding and appreciation that I have always tried to include in my ministry," she affirmed.

For information, call 998-7204 or email acastrolang@gmail.com