The Cedar Park Church in Bothell describes itself as a “cathedral”
but is really a campus. It has its own school, parking lots, and a
church that resembles the shell of an enormous, bleached horseshoe
crab. Inside the sanctuary: a cafe, a giant gold Ark of the
Covenant perched above the stage, and racks of brochures for a
car-mechanics’ ministry and Christian martial arts.
Last weekend, 1,500 people flocked to Cedar Park to watch
Generations, an original musical by Daniel Perrin, an
evangelical pastor and doctor of worship studies (directed by Karen
Lund of Taproot Theatre). Perrin spent 19 years writing his magnum
opus, taking two research trips to Israel and one to Poland. The
conceit of Generations: Jesus comes back to Nazi-occupied Warsaw
to save the Jews. (Their souls, anyway—He did not offer to save
their bodies.)
The result of Dr. Perrin’s labors is a work of deep conviction and
deep befuddlement—bombastic, evangelical dreckcellence.
The music, played by a capable 22-member orchestra, sounds like Andrew
Lloyd Webber and Meat Loaf spiked with klezmer and squeezed through a
fine mesh of Christian pop. The plot scans like a three-way between
Godspell, Cabaret, and a performance of Life of
Brian by people who don’t realize it’s a joke.
The plot is confusing, to put it charitably: Jesus is a friendly
local rabbi who lightly aids the folks behind the Warsaw Ghetto
Uprising. In act two, the characters jump back in time to first-century
Galilee for a scrambled tour of the Gospel’s greatest hits.
Flash-forward back to Warsaw, where the Nazis shoot Jesus. (Overheard
in the pews: “Don’t worry, He’ll be back.”) Jesus resurrects Himself
and tells the lead Warsaw character: “Without God, all you have is a
ghetto.” The Jew converts, the music soars, and the woman behind me
mutters: “Yes, Jesus! Awesome!” Generations seems to argue that
the Holocaust was primarily a convenient time for Jews to find
Jesus.
Special moments: a unified theory of anti-Semitism (“they blame us
because they don’t have enough jobs or they owe us money“), a
poop joke (“at the beginning of his historic campaign, Napoleon put on
a red shirt to hide the blood, should he be wounded. Likewise, Hitler
put on a pair of brown pants!”), several marriage jokes (“what’s hers
is hers and what’s yours is hers”), and a mournful chorus of “Aryan,
Aryan, so barbarian.” Perrin had written a third act, which takes
place during the Inquisition, but he cut it because it “would’ve made
it too confusing and too long.” (Generations is currently two
and a half hours.)
“I can see how some people might feel offended by the musical,” Dr.
Perrin said in an interview after the show. “But it comes from my
sincere affection for the Jewish people and the Jewish faith.” Perrin
has not, to date, heard any complaints about the content. “But,” he
says, “most people who’ve seen the musical are the kinds of people
who’d walk into a church.” 
In reference to the Bothell Cedar Park Church musical written by their pastor, the only “saving” we Jews need is saving from Christian “love.” Martin Luther, claimed a great “love” for the Jewish people until his great love, always conditional on conversion, wasn’t accommodated by the Jews of his time. Luther flipped into one of history’s many great anti-Semites. He did that so well that the Nazis threw a humungous 500th birthday party to honor his anti-Semitism.
Get over it Christians. Jews, religious and secular, don’t need a Christian tune to dance to. Our brother Jesus never intended to found a new religion. He was one of many Jews who were warning their fellow Jews to prepare themselves by following Jewish laws for the imminent end times.
If that feels like a threat to your beliefs, so be it.