The quest for safe, generic, 'ceremonial' prayers

As the members of the Town of Greece Board prepared for business, a local Catholic priest rose to offer a short prayer. "Heavenly Father, you guide and govern everything with order and love," said Father John Forni, of St. John the Evangelist parish. "Look upon this assembly of our town leaders. ... May they always act in accordance with your will, and may their decision be for the well being of all. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord look upon you kindly and give you peace. Amen."

Perhaps it was the "Father" God reference, or even that final trinity of blessings, but this 2004 prayer was listed (.pdf) among those considered too "sectarian" during the Town of Greece v. Galloway case that recently reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

Most religious conservatives cheered the high court's 5-4 ruling, which said local leaders could continue to allow volunteers from different faiths to open meetings with "ceremonial" prayers that included explicit doctrinal references to their traditions, even references to Jesus Christ. The court majority also said it was crucial that one faith not dominate others and that prayers must not be allowed to "denigrate" other viewpoints, to "threaten damnation" or to "preach conversion."

However, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted for the majority: "To hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures sponsoring prayers and the courts deciding these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech, thus involving government in religious matters to a far greater degree than is the case under the town's current practice of neither editing nor approving prayers in advance nor criticizing their content after the fact."

Kennedy's bottom line: "It is doubtful that consensus could be reached as to what qualifies as a generic or nonsectarian prayer."

Even among church-state analysts who disagreed on the decision, this theme -- that the state must be denied the power to determine which prayers are generic or safe enough -- emerged as crucial common ground.

"Put bluntly, government has no right to declare that the only God welcome in public is a 'generic God,' " noted the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in online commentary. "That is a profoundly important constitutional argument. For Christians, this is also a profoundly important theological argument. We do not believe that any 'generic God' exists, nor can we allow that some reference to a 'generic God' is a reference to the God of the Bible."

On the liberal side of Baptist life, Bill Leonard of the Wake Forest School of Divinity openly challenged the belief that the state should have the power to determine when prayers cross the line and become oppressive. "What government official," he asked, "will judge when one person's prayerful 'conviction' becomes another's 'damnation?' "

Labeling his perspective that of an "old-timey Baptist," Leonard said the big question is why so many rush to embrace "ceremonial" prayers in the first place.

"There may be government-centered ceremonies where the deity is addressed in various forms, but let's not stoop to calling it prayer," he said, in online analysis. "Prayer is talking to God, not to the Emperor, the President, the Congress, political parties, county commissioners or people gathered for hearings about potholes, zoning or sanitation. They may all need prayer, but certainly not the ceremonial kind.

"Prayer is anything but ceremonial; it burns in the soul, dances in the feet, erupts from the gut. ... No, no, Mr. Justice. Government use of prayer to tout privileged 'religious leaders' or their 'institutions' trivializes faith's most wondrous connection: a confrontation with the Divine."

This complex debate is packed with political and religious ironies, noted Francis Beckwith, who teaches philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University.

Many liberals, especially unbelievers, would like to ban public prayer altogether, yet accept non-sectarian prayers as "their own kind of don't ask, don't tell policy," he said. Meanwhile, some conservatives feel "so squeezed out of everything" and "so under attack" that they grudgingly accept watered-down expressions of public faith.

In the end, he added, "Christians -- on the left or the right -- should worry about representatives of the state trying to co-opt their leaders and their symbols and their language to serve some particular political cause or movement. ... That temptation is always out there."

Porn again -- Facing denial in conservative pews

The Rev. Heath Lambert usually hears one of two responses when he tries to get pastors to be candid about the impact of Internet pornography in their churches. Response No. 1 sounds like this: "Pornography isn't a problem in my church."

That answer drew laughter at a recent conference on faith and sexuality, organized by the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Lambert, a seminary professor who leads the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors, said he realized that laughs and disbelief were appropriate -- if sad -- responses to this crisis.

Response No. 2 is also rooted in denial, he said. Pastors shake their heads and say: "Good night! I can't talk about this. Do you know what the people in my church would do if I started talking about pornography? ... I can't talk about this from the pulpit."

But if pastors cannot face this issue with their own flocks, then who can? It doesn't help that this pulpit silence often, according to researchers, may be linked to pornography addictions among clergy.

Lambert said he found it disturbing that 75 percent of clergy say they have zero accountability systems in place to help keep them honest about their online activities. Far too many pastors -- tragically -- seem to "think they are Superman" and need to be challenged on this issue, he said.

Sex and religion remains a volatile mix. Thus, this "sex summit" in Nashville generated it share of online buzz, and news coverage, with its discussions of hot topics -- from private issues such as adultery and divorce to public controversies surrounding gay marriage and sexual trafficking.

But while the culture wars rage on and draw the most attention, Lambert argued that the greatest moral threat to the church today is "the Christian pastor, the Christian school teacher, the Christian Bible college and seminary student, who exalts sound theology, who points to the Bible and then retreats to the basement computer to indulge in an hour or three of Internet pornography."

The bottom line, he said, is hypocrisy: "Porn is something that evangelicals can do in a dark room, behind a shut door after they have railed against homosexual marriage and talked about conservative theology."

In addition to looking in the mirror, Lambert challenged religious leaders to:

* Face the fact that 12 is now the average age at which American boys first experience video pornography, which means "some people are getting exposed to it a lot earlier," he said. "This is the reality. ... We have no idea what kind of generation we are creating. We haven't tested it yet. We don't know what it's like to have a nation of grown men who were taught about sex from Internet pornography. God help us."

* Help members of their congregations -- of all ages, male and female -- learn strategies for how to avoid the common dangers on the digital roads that led into the online marketplace that dominates modern life. Far too many people, he said, keep going to "places where they shouldn't be at the times when they shouldn't be there." Many are alone and vulnerable and pastors need to openly discuss that fact.

In particular, he said, religious-education leaders must talk to adults about Internet security in an age in which their homes are packed with Internet devices. Most of the time, of course, it's the children who know significantly more about how to operate this technology than their parents.

* Confront the belief that consuming pornography is a sin that only affects individual users. For example, he said believers should feel concern -- at least at the level of prayer -- for performers who are caught up in the porn industry. Then there are the patterns in modern divorce, with 50-plus percent of those in broken marriages confessing to some degree of problematic involvement with pornography.

It's simply wrong, said Lambert, to think "this is all about you. ... You wouldn't do it if you thought everybody was going to find out. You wouldn't do it if you knew that you were going to lose your ministry position. You wouldn't do it if you knew your wife was going to leave. You wouldn't do it if you knew that your kids were going to think that you were a pervert.

"The lie is: Nobody has to know."

Dueling saints from the Second Vatican Council?

History will show St. John XXIII was a pastor with an "exquisite openness to the Holy Spirit," while St. John Paul II will be known "as the pope of the family." That was as close as Pope Francis came to providing the sound bite all the so-called Vatican experts were waiting to hear during the historic St. Peter's Square rites in which he -- with the retired Pope Benedict XVI looking on -- elevated to sainthood two popes who did so much to shape modern Catholicism.

The media mantra called the humble Pope John XXIII the patron saint of the left, while Pope John Paul II was the courageous general for the right. Clearly, Pope Francis' goal was to broker peace between these warring Catholic camps.

Francis stayed the course.

"St. John XXIII and St. John Paul II were ... priests, bishops and popes of the 20th century," he said. "They lived through the tragic events of that century, but they were not overwhelmed by them. For them, God was more powerful; faith was more powerful -- faith in Jesus Christ the Redeemer of man and the Lord of history."

Francis then linked both saints to the Second Vatican Council, the seismic event that defined their era: "John XXIII and John Paul II cooperated with the Holy Spirit in renewing and updating the Church in keeping with her pristine features, those features which the saints have given her throughout the centuries."

So both popes sought renewal, but also to guard the faith's foundations. After all, in his October 11, 1962 address that opened the Council, Pope John XXIII declared: "The greatest concern of the ecumenical council is this -- that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more efficaciously."

The young Bishop Karol Wojtyla of Poland was an active participant at Vatican II. The future Pope John Paul II was known for his contribution to the epic constitution "The Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes)," which he loved to quote, along with various other Vatican II texts.

In fact, during his "heroically long pontificate" -- almost 27 years -- John Paul offered detailed written and verbal commentary on "virtually every controversial or disputed point in the Council documents and on the event of the Council itself," noted Father John Zuhlsdorf, at his popular "What does the Prayer Really Say?" weblog.

The future St. John Paul the Great, as many are already calling him, "may not have solved, settled, definitively pronounced, on every controversial issue, but he offers commentary and insight on them. ... I think Francis was steering us to John Paul II as an additional interpretive lens, for a proper hermeneutic of reform."

Meanwhile, it's also important to remember that "conventional political labels" like "liberal" and "conservative" are simply inadequate when discussing the work of saints, said Father James Martin, a Jesuit best known as The Colbert Report chaplain and through books such as "My Life with the Saints" and "Jesus: A Pilgrimage."

In terms of the substance of his life and work, both liturgical and doctrinal, Pope John XXIII is "probably best thought of as a 'conservative.' I think that on moral and sexual issues ... he probably would have implemented the Council's work in the same way as John Paul."

Meanwhile, John Paul II did so much to push forward on issues such as economic justice, world peace, ecumenism, mass communications and a host of other subjects. It's impossible to look at the sweep of his remarkable life and conclude, as some critics have, that his pontificate was dedicated to "trying to slam the lid back on" after the Second Vatican Council. "That's just too simplistic to argue that," he said.

The larger truth is that both of these popes, now hailed as saints, embodied the work of the Second Vatican Council, each in their own way, in their own time.

"It's true that there were clusters of issues that led Catholics in different camps to adopt one or the other as their hero," said Martin. "But those labels are so limiting, while the lives of these two men were not. ... People that insist on using political labels keep trying to turn everything into a contest about who wins and who loses. That's not the way to talk about the lives of the saints."

Year 26: Frustrated Catholics playing 'Name that pope'

Soon after Pope Francis skyrocketed into media superstardom, some frustrated Catholics started playing an online game that could be called "Name that pope." Most of them were not upset with what their charismatic shepherd from Argentina was actually saying and doing. Instead, they were frustrated with the media storm portraying him as radically different -- in substance -- from his predecessors.

Frankly, this is one of the strangest stories I have seen during the many years -- 26 as of last week -- I have been writing this "On Religion" syndicated column.

Want to try this game? Start with this quotation: "The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion."

Name that pope: That's Pope Francis, believe it or not.

Round two: "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs."

Name that pope: That's Pope Benedict XVI.

Round three: "If we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, we make of our possessions a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! ... Instead of bringing life, they bring death."

Name that pope: Benedict, again.

Round four: "Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us. ... Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church's effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. ... It is not 'progressive' to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life."

Name that pope: Francis, of course.

What's going on? Many progressives now shouting praises at Francis don't seem familiar with the doctrines he is supposedly modernizing, according to Rep. Rebecca Hamilton, a Catholic Republican in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.

"This old wine of the Gospel has become new again in Pope Francis' way of expressing and living it. 'Bombshell' is the word that pundits attach to comments he makes that are nothing more nor less than what the Church has taught from the beginning," she wrote, at the Public Catholic website.

Another religion-beat veteran, someone who has read daily Vatican dispatches for 20 years, thinks it's "nonsense" to say that Francis has suddenly shifted Rome's concerns away from contraception, abortion and homosexuality to poverty, peace and environmentalism. If there has been a dominant theme under recent popes, it has been human rights.

"It was the media, some advocacy groups on both sides and perhaps some individual bishops -- but not the popes -- who were fixated on what is so wrongly mischaracterized as 'pelvic issues,' " said Ann Rodgers, who recently became communications director for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh after several decades covering religion in the mainstream press.

So why is Pope Francis a media star and "Teflon" when it comes to criticism? Speaking at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Rodgers said the key is that famous Marshall McLuhan statement: "The medium is the message."

After his election, Francis declined a limo and rode a bus to dinner with other cardinals. The next day he famously paid his own bill at the international residence house, where he had often stayed in the past and knew the staff by name.

"The medium is the message," said Rodgers.

The list goes on and on. Last fall, the pope publicly embraced a man with a horribly disfigured face. He warned Mafiosi to repent or face hell. On his first Maundy Thursday, he washed the feet of inmates, including women and non-Christians.

"When he is washing the feet of a Muslim girl, he is not making a claim that she is a Christian or that Islam and Christianity are in any way interchangeable," said Rodgers. "He is saying, 'You are a Muslim girl. You are a prisoner and I love you, in the name of Jesus. I am here to serve you, in the name of Jesus.' ...

"He takes away her sense of shame, but in a way that may help her aspire to holiness. He's not just talking about mercy. He's not just talking about loving the stranger who is our neighbor. The medium is the message."

An honest Easter with doubters and the 'nones'

It's the first thing people do after meeting strangers in coffee shops and clubs favored by the young professionals now flocking into Austin, Portland and America's other trendy postmodern cities. Job one is to define themselves in terms of what they do and what they believe. "I am an accountant," one will say. "I am a vegetarian," or "I am gay," or "I am a techie," others will reply. Hipsters don't need to say, "I am a hipster," because everyone can see the obvious.

"Usually, our identity will emerge as a composite" of these kinds of labels, noted the Rev. Jonathan Dodson of Austin and the Rev. Brad Watson of Portland, in a small book of meditations on the resurrection entitled "Raised?"

"It will have a hidden mantra that goes something like this: I am what I eat, who I sleep with, how I make money, what I wear, what I look like, or where I came from. ... If you cannot imagine yourself without that statement being true, you have likely found something that is core to your identity."

For many Americans that core still includes a religious label, like "I am a Christian," noted Dodson, founding pastor of City Life Church, which meets in the Ballet Austin complex near downtown. And millions who make that claim, with varying degrees of fervor, will flock to churches this weekend for the year's one service in which almost all pews are full -- Easter.

Instead of affirming a "sentimental" or "mushy" faith on this Christian holy day, Dodson thinks more pastors should ask a blunt question: Do you really believe Jesus was raised from the dead?

If some people confess doubts, that would be good because sincere doubt leads to true faith more often than hidden apathy. This is especially true when discussing the brash claim that has been at the heart of Christianity for 2,000 years, he said. Thus, it's time to ask lukewarm believers to question their faith and to ask modern doubters to question their doubts.

This blunt approach would be timely in light of surveys indicating that more Americans -- especially the young -- are changing how they think about faith, including the role of scripture and the need for any ties to organized religion.

For example, the American Bible Society's recent "State of the Bible" survey found that the percentage of "Bible skeptics" is now precisely the same -- 19 percent -- as for those who are truly "engaged" in Bible reading and who strongly value biblical authority. The "Bible friendly" segment of the population shrank from 45 to 37 percent.

The 19 percent figure for "Bible skeptics" matched the key finding in a headline-producing Pew Research Center survey in 2012, which found that nearly 20 percent of American adults -- the so-called "nones" -- no longer identify with any given religion. The "religiously unaffiliated" number was 30 percent for those under the age of 30.

Meanwhile, one common theme in recent surveys is that an increasing number of Americans no longer believe they need to claim a traditional faith, and Christianity in particular, because they no longer see themselves as sinners -- especially when discussing doctrinal issues linked to sexuality.

This moral sea change could, for some people, even undercut belief in the resurrection. After all, if the resurrection actually happened, that validates the central claim of Christian tradition, which in turn validates biblical teachings about sin, repentance and forgiveness.

"What ruffles feathers is the God-sized claim" that Jesus died to atone for the sins of humanity, noted Dodson and Watson. This insistence "that we all need an atoning representative troubles our dignity. ... In light of recent horror trends, we might be more inclined to believe in a zombie emerging from the dead than a resurrected and fully restored person."

With doubts and open unbelief on the rise, it's time for church leaders to face this issue head on, said Dodson. This is no time to duck the central question at Easter.

"In so much of popular Christianity today, people are just nodding their heads and saying they believe all of these doctrines, but this really isn't having much of an impact on their lives," he said. "If they actually believe in the resurrection, it should make a difference. … The resurrection matters more than the Easter bunny."

Building a new monastery in the isles of Celtic giants

Father Seraphim Aldea is so committed to building the first Orthodox monastery in the Scottish isles in more than a millennium that he did something no monk searching for solitude would ever, ever do. "I learned how to use that dreadful Facebook thing," he said.

The Romanian monk has already been handed an abandoned Church of Scotland sanctuary on Mull Island. While Kilninian was built in 1755, it appears in 1561 records as a site associated with the great Monastery of St. Columba on Iona. Thus, this property may have been linked to monasticism as early as the 7th century.

But there is a problem. The Atlantic coast of Scotland, including the 150 main Hebrides islands, is now a "Designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" -- which means major restrictions for anyone wanting to build or restore anything.

Normally, starting a monastery means obtaining land and then gathering some monks to move there, noted Father Seraphim, during a fundraising swing through the Baltimore area. The monks build their facility and then it's dedicated. But that isn't how things work in Great Britain these days. Before the 34-year-old monk can build a single monastic cell he has to buy land that can provide running water and a sewage system.

"I need your help ... to build that toilet," he said, drawing laughter from his audience. "It sounds stupid, but that's all there is. We can build the first monastery in the Hebrides in over a millennium if I can build a toilet."

Scotland and Ireland have for centuries -- well before the 1054 schism between Rome and the Orthodox East -- been famous for the work of St. Columba, St. Brigid, St. Brendan and other great Celtic monastics. Pilgrims continue to flock to these lands to visit ruins on these sacred sites.

It is customary for the boatloads of pilgrims headed to Iona to stop on Mull Island, noted Father Seraphim. Thus, the goal is to build a new monastery (mullmonastery.com) out of local stone for those who want to stop, rest and pray, or even to spend several days as visitors. The chapel will remain dedicated to Saints Ninian and Cuthbert, while the monastery will house a community of nuns, since it is "likely that a pack of bearded foreign men" would be harder for "the locals to trust," he said.

A group of Catholics has already made a similar attempt, but eventually gave up and donated the sanctuary to the Orthodox -- under the condition that Kilninian would become part of a monastic community.

Father Seraphim, who is 34, noted that he knew nothing about the great Celtic monastics when he began doing graduate work in England, concluding with a doctorate in history at the University of Durham. Then his bishop asked him to consider working near London or, perhaps to continue his scholarly research in Paris.

However, Father Seraphim told his superior that he "felt called to solitude." When told about the abandoned sanctuary in the Hebrides, the young monk asked: "Do you know someone mad enough to be willing to go and live there?"

If he is able to purchase five acres providing clean water and a septic system, Father Seraphim plans to move to Kilninian this coming fall. He said he is convinced, after preliminary research, that there are still believers in England who feel called to monasticism. In addition to several "semi-monastic houses," there appear to be a number of hermits in various parts of the land who are dedicated to prayer and worship.

"This vocation is there, it still pulsates in these islands," he said. "What people are lacking is tradition. They need examples -- not one, not two, but several real monasteries -- so that they may have somewhere to learn from without having to leave their country."

Meanwhile, if Americans are concerned about the faith's future in their own land, then they need to be concerned about this kind of renewal project in postmodern England and elsewhere in Europe, said Father Seraphim.

"England and Scotland and Ireland are the lands of your ancestors," he said. "It sounds strange to say it, but the truth is that whatever happens in Western Europe today will take place everywhere in the world in about 50 years. If we let those countries go completely ... it is going to affect us all."

The World Vision same-sex marriage wars of 2014

When church historians review the 2014 World Vision wars over gay marriage, they will ponder several puzzling statements by the man caught in the crossfire. "We do know this is an emotional issue in the American church," said World Vision U.S. President Richard Stearns, in the recent Christianity Today interview that revealed his organization's decision months earlier to employ Christians in same-sex marriages. "I'm hoping not to lose supporters over the change. We're hoping that they understand that what we've done is focused on church unity and our mission."

Church unity?

Not quite. The evangelical establishment immediately exploded, expressing outrage and disappointment with the influential charity -- America's 10th largest in a recent Forbes list. Thousands of conservatives cancelled donations while liberal evangelicals were just as eager to pledge support.

World Vision U.S. quickly retreated, and Stearns told The New York Times he had "made a mistake in judgment," in part because his board sincerely thought this policy change would help it "avoid divisive debates."

Avoid divisive debates?

The "brokenhearted" board quickly released a statement seeking forgiveness and promised to return to its "longstanding conduct policy requiring sexual abstinence for all single employees and faithfulness within the Biblical covenant of marriage between a man and a woman." The new policy on same-sex marriage, it added, had not been consistent with the charity's faith statement affirming the Bible as the "inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God."

The stakes were high, both for World Vision -- with a billion-dollar budget and branches in 100 nations -- and for other nondenominational groups that admire its structure and methods. The bottom line: It's getting harder to work with broad coalitions when culture wars keep rocking churches as well as local, state and national governments.

World Vision U.S. is based in Washington, a state that has legally recognized same-sex marriage. World Vision Canada has already complied with provincial laws prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. Yet World Vision leaders stressed that -- even with legal victories for gay-rights rising -- the possible loss of USAID dollars played no role in the short-lived attempt at a compromise on same-sex marriage.

"Concerns over government funding had no impact on this decision," Stearns told Christianity Today.

Meanwhile, World Vision's staff and donor base has been changing, especially among young evangelicals. The charity's idealistic appeal for "church unity" was linked to the fact that it's staff now includes believers from 50-plus churches and denominations -- including some from liberal Protestant churches that have affirmed same-sex rites, such as the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

In this case, the goal was to affirm a biblical call to social justice while mapping a demilitarized zone on same-sex marriage between the emerging evangelical left and those committed to defending 2,000 years of Christian doctrine.

A key Southern Baptist leader understood that goal, but rejected the result.

"Richard Stearns has every right to try to make his case, but these arguments are pathetically inadequate. Far more than that, his arguments reveal basic issues that every Christian ministry, organization, church and denomination will have to face -- and soon," argued the Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. World Vision cannot "surrender theological responsibility when convenient and then claim a Christian identity and a theological mandate for ministry."

Attempting to do ministry with both liberal and conservative churches "might work if World Vision were selling church furniture, but not when the mission of the organization claims a biblical mandate," he added, in his online commentary.

Leaders on the evangelical left were just as upset when World Vision U.S. backed down. The Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber, the tattooed pastor of a hip ELCA flock in Denver, tweeted her disappointment: "One step forward, two steps back. #worldvision." And the popular writer Rachel Held Evans, author of the bestseller "Evolving in Monkey Town," said she felt betrayed, frustrated, broken and angry, at the church in particular.

"I confess I had not realized the true extent of the disdain many evangelicals have toward LGBT people, nor had I expected World Vision to yield to that disdain by reversing its decision under financial pressure," she wrote. "I don't know what else to do but grieve with everyone else who feels like a religious refugee today."

The death of an Orthodox visionary -- in America

When major religious leaders die, it's traditional that public figures -- secular and sacred -- release letters expressing sorrow and sending their condolences to the spiritual sheep who have suddenly found themselves without a shepherd. This is precisely what Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios Trakatellis did, acting as chairman of the assembly of America's Eastern Orthodox bishops, after he heard about the death of Metropolitan Philip Saliba -- the leader of the Antiochian Orthodox Christians in North America for a half century. His letter was kind and gracious, but contained a hint of candor that spoke volumes.

"For more than 15 years I have had the opportunity and privilege to work closely with Metropolitan Philip," wrote Archbishop Demetrios, noting that the Antiochian leader served as vice-chairman of the assembly of bishops. Metropolitan Philip was a pastor to his people, but he also "passionately supported a common witness to our Orthodox faith in the world. It is well known that he spoke his mind openly on a number of important issues and would often challenge inactivity surrounding serious issues, which he felt Orthodoxy could address in unique and important ways."

That's one way to put it.

Metropolitan Philip -- who died March 19th -- was more than an advocate for Orthodox life and faith. He was more than a pragmatic strategist who helped his flock grow from 66 parishes to 275, while opening youth camps and a missions and evangelism office.

The Lebanese-born archbishop was also a fierce advocate of Orthodox unity in the United States, to whatever degree possible among Greeks, Arabs, Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Serbians and others. After living his adult life in this land, he made the controversial decision in the mid-1980s to embrace waves of evangelical converts (I am one of them). These converts affected all levels of his church including, as much as anywhere else, in seminaries and, thus, at Orthodox altars.

That was the backdrop to the symbolic moment when Archbishop Demetrios surprised Metropolitan Philip by asking him to make some off-the-cuff remarks at the 2004 Clergy-Laity Congress of the Greek Orthodox Church in New York City.

"I reminded him that when I speak, I tell it like it is," said Philip, when I interviewed him for an "On Religion" column soon after that event.

Rather than speaking in Byzantine code, Metropolitan Philip bluntly addressed the delegates as Americans, not Greeks. He said he thought it was time to challenge ecclesiastical ties that continued to bind their churches in the new world to those in the old. Then he marched straight into a minefield, bringing greetings from the Antiochian Orthodox delegates who, a few days earlier, had unanimously approved what many Greeks have long desired -- a constitution granting them more control of their church in North America.

"I told them that if I could sum up this new constitution, I would begin with the words, 'We the people,' " he told me. "We cannot ignore this truth -- Americans are infested with freedom. We cannot ignore that our churches are in America and we are here to stay."

A press aide for the Greek archdiocese noted: "It would be accurate to say that he received an enthusiastic response."

Part of the problem was that Philip was intentionally calling to mind the 1994 gathering in Ligonier, Pa., when America's Orthodox bishops boldly declared: "We commit ourselves to avoiding the creation of parallel and competitive Orthodox parishes, missions, and mission programs. We commit ourselves to common efforts and programs to do mission, leaving behind piecemeal, independent, and spontaneous efforts … moving forward towards a concerted, formal, and united mission program in order to make a real impact on North America through Orthodox mission and evangelism."

That effort failed. Two decades later, Metropolitan Philip left instructions that he was to be buried at the Antiochian Village camp near Ligonier, where young people will visit his grave for generations to come.

"This faith was to remain the best kept secret in America because of our laziness, we Orthodox, because we have been busy taking care of our little ethnic ghettos," said Philip, during one of the first rites ushering an entire evangelical congregation into his archdiocese.

"It is time that we let this light shine. American needs the Orthodox faith. I said to the Evangelical Orthodox in these past Sundays, I said, 'Welcome home.'"

Praying for better journalism at The New York Times

NEW YORK -- It was a perfectly ordinary invitation to gather for Christian fellowship, the kind of message believers often circulate among colleagues that they know share their faith. In this case, Michael Luo invited a circle of fellow journalists in the New York Times newsroom to breakfast, including one former pastor of an evangelical church.

Yes, this tiny Times flock plans to gather again. No, the veteran reporter was not willing to name any names.

"The Times is like a lot of other elite cultural institutions," said Luo, speaking at The King's College in lower Manhattan's financial district. The newsroom is full of "cosmopolitan, urban types, highly educated people who went to the top colleges whose cultural sensibilities are probably more shaped ... by the upper West Side and Park Slope, Brooklyn, than, you know, the Bible Belt.

"So it's certainly not the easiest place to say that you're a Christian. In fact, some of those people at that breakfast who have confided their faith to me have often sworn me to secrecy."

After giving the matter careful thought, Luo did mention his public lecture at the evangelical college -- "Articles of Faith: A Believer's Journey Through The New York Times" -- on his Facebook page.

The Harvard graduate has faced more than his share of tricky situations, whether reporting in war-torn Iraq or in the culture wars of two White House campaigns. After one of his many Times pieces on loopholes in gun-control laws, AmmoLand.com ran his photo with a caption that called him a "biased anti-gun" reporter.

During the 2007 Values Voters Summit, Luo tried to assure participants that he was a churchgoer who genuinely wanted to understand their beliefs. One activist then introduced Luo to a prominent conservative Christian by saying, "Don't worry, he goes to church." The leader responded, "Well, he'll have to prove it," with a snarl.

"I was thinking," Luo recalled, "what am I going to have to do, quote my favorite Bible verses or give him the Four Spiritual Laws?"

On the other side of the church aisle are well-meaning Christians who insist that Luo's goal should be to "bring Christian truth to the pages of the Times." The implication, he said, is that he should smuggle an evangelical agenda into the "newspaper of record" and let it shape his work.

That would be a disaster, Luo said, and would allow other professionals to label him that "Jesus freak guy" or a "religious zealot." This would destroy whatever trust and respect he has earned during his decade at the Times, which recently led to his appointment as deputy metro editor with much of his work focusing on investigative reporting and, yes, religion coverage.

Luo stressed that one of his goals is to live out the recommendations of a 2005 Times self-study -- entitled "Preserving Our Readers' Trust" -- that urged editors to do more to cover "unorthodox views," "contrarian opinions" and the lives of those "more radical and more conservative" than those usually found in their newsroom.

In addition to seeking diversity of gender, race and ethnicity, the report said: "We should pursue the same diversity in other dimensions of life, and for the same reason -- to ensure that a broad range of viewpoints is at the table when we decide what to write about and how to present it." It would help, the report noted, if Times editors sought out "talented journalists who happen to have military experience, who know rural America first hand, who are at home in different faiths."

Thus, Luo said he has tried become a resource to help the newspaper do fair, accurate, informed news coverage of a wider variety of religious believers. The goal is to avoid "loaded language" that frequently confuses "theological terms with political ones." It also would help, he said, if journalists spent more time covering religion stories rooted in the details of daily life, rather than focusing almost exclusively on political conflicts, both in pews and in public life.

"I would argue that when we screw up, it's not because of some sort of overt prejudice," he said. "The problem usually is that you can't know what you don't know. ... So ignorance can obviously lead to inaccurate and misleading characterizations and, yes, it can lead to bias sometimes seeping into the ways Christians are depicted."