For God's sake, let's tell the truth

Archbishop John Foley was speaking to an audience of Catholic communications officers and editors, so he made sure that he didn't bury his most important statement.

The first principle of dealing with the news media, he told a Vatican conference in 2001, was simple: "Never, never, never tell a lie." Then the president of the Pontifical Office for Social Communications offered more advice that would prove to be prophetic.

"Truth will always come out," he said. "Failure to tell the truth is a scandal, a betrayal of trust and a destroyer of credibility. ... So sacred is the responsibility to tell the truth that one must be ready to accept dismissal for refusal to tell a lie."

Principles of openness and honesty were tested as never before during 2002 as another wave of scandal hit the Catholic Church. In the end, members of the Religion Newswriters Association selected the clergy sexual abuse scandal as the year's most important news event. Four of the poll's top five stories were linked to the scandal and Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston was named newsmaker of the year.

The RNA occasionally offers a dubious prize -- its "Into the Darkness Award" -- to the group that has done the most to hide information from the media and the public. This year, it was awarded to the American Catholic hierarchy.

"The institutional church is slowly learning that evasion and stonewalling and spin are not in its best interests," said Father Donald Cozzens, author of "Sacred Silence: Denial and the Crisis in the Church."

"After all that has happened during this year, isn't it obvious that telling the truth is the best way to serve our people? It's the best way to protect our children. It's the best way to restore trust and regain our role as moral leaders. At some point we simply have to say, 'For God's sake, let's tell the truth.' "

Here are the top 10 stories in the RNA poll:

(1) For the third time in two decades, clergy sexual abuse shakes Catholicism. At the heart of this scandal are new revelations that many bishops have moved priests alleged to have abused minors from parish to parish without warning legal authorities and the faithful. Some bishops apparently have approved secret settlements to avoid disclosure.

(2) Cardinal Law resigns after rising protests by clergy and laity over his handling of abusive priests. Reports increase that the Boston archdiocese is considering bankruptcy, as the number of lawsuits climbs over 400. Sexual scandals claim several other bishops, including the liberal Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland.

(3) Controversy erupts as some evangelical s openly criticize Islamic doctrine, often quoting the testimonies of Muslims who have converted to Christianity. The Bush White House tries to keep its distance, as Franklin Graham says Islam is an "evil and wicked religion" and Southern Baptist leader Jerry Vines calls Muhammad a "demon-possessed pedophile."

(4) U.S. Catholic bishops listen to the stories of abuse victims and then pass a "one strike and you're out policy" against any priest who has abused a child. Five months later, the policy approved in Dallas is changed -- on orders from the Vatican -- to include church tribunals to hear the cases of priests who proclaim their innocence.

(5) The growing clergy sexual abuse scandal fuels the creation of new networks of Catholic laity, including the Voice of the Faithful, which draws 5,000 to a convention in Boston. The Vatican faces waves of protests from outraged Catholic conservatives as well as liberals. Support groups for victims surge with each new round of media coverage.

(6) In yet another church-state cliffhanger, the U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of programs that use government-funded vouchers to allow children to attend religious schools.

(7) A Circuit Court of Appeals judge in San Francisco causes a firestorm by ruling unconstitutional the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. The judge soon stays his own ruling to allow for an appeal.

(8) The National Council of Churches and other bodies on the religious left express their opposition to a U.S. invasion of Iraq. American Catholic bishops and a coalition of progressive evangelicals express similar concerns, asking if "just war theory" allows a preemptive strike.

(9) Palestinian gunmen take refuge in the Catholic and Orthodox sanctuaries of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, leading to a 39-day siege by Israeli forces. Suicide bombers and military actions continue throughout Israel and the West Bank.

(10) Scholars announce the discovery of a stone burial box bearing the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus." Is this a 2,000-year-old archaeological breakthrough or a hoax?

Merry tropical Christmas

At first light, the little ones would sneak out of bed to look for telltale signs of night visitors bearing gifts.

Cookies and milk? Most children in these Hispanic homes gathered hay or fresh grass before sundown and left it with water in clear sight. Camels get hungry and thirsty, you know, especially when traveling long distances on tropical nights.

Members of these families would have exchanged a few gifts on Dec. 25, at the Feast of the Nativity. As the decades passed in Florida, they may even have added a visit from St. Nicholas. But they would have visited neighbors for caroling and parties during the entire 12-day Christmas season.

Everyone knew that the traditional day for gift-giving was El Dia de los Reyes Magos, which marked the arrival of the three kings from the East with gold, frankincense and myrrh for the Christ child.

Christmas wasn't over until Jan. 6, when the camels ate the hay.

"There's no question that -- along with the weather -- religious traditions played an important role, if not the most important role, in shaping Christmas down here up until World War II," said Kevin McCarthy, an English professor at the University of Florida.

"That was before air-conditioning and mosquito control opened the state up to the whole world. Combine that with interstate highways and everything changed -- forever. Christmas down here started looking like Christmas everywhere else."

Stop and think about it. Most of the world celebrates Christmas in the tropics or during what is summer in the Southern Hemisphere. But when most people dream of a "merry little Christmas" they imagine tastes, smells and sights from frosty winter festivities in Europe and North America.

So it's hard to imagine palm trees and Christmas, unless they are in sacred images of shepherds, sheep, camels and kings near Bethlehem.

But McCarthy was able to find hints of what a tropical Christmas was like before the spread of shopping malls that resemble fake versions of New England villages swaddled in blankets of snow. The result was a breezy volume of history, tales, recipes and photos entitled, logically enough, "Christmas in Florida."

For generations, the Christmas season had a uniquely Catholic flavor in the tropics. In Florida, Christmas began in 1539 when Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto and his soldiers gathered with 12 priests for Mass at a site in what is now Tallahassee. These were, said McCarthy, the first Catholic Christmas rites in North America.

Meanwhile, several Southern states embraced Christmas long before the holiday was accepted up north.

"New England Protestants, especially the Puritans, had Christmas banned in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659," McCarthy noted. "The most Southern state of all ... was Florida, a land settled by Spanish Catholics and therefore more willing to celebrate the nativity of Christ."

In addition to religious traditions, another simple reality shaped Christmas in the American tropics. Settlements were small and remote. Most early Floridians were poor and they learned to celebrate with whatever they found around them.

They didn't have fine meat so they made do with local fare, no matter how humble. In the 1870s, an early settler near Hypoluxo was forced to improvise a main course for his neighbors. He settled on a feast of possum, "which he had fattened on sweet potatoes for over a month," noted McCarthy.

Settlers in the tropics didn't have snow, so Santa Claus arrived by boat. This led to a beautiful tropical tradition -- decorating boats with strings of lights and then parading them along the coast at night. A few people even decided that Christmas trees looked especially beautiful under water.

One thing led to another. Christmas was Christmas.

"They didn't have Christmas ornaments, so they used seashells, sand dollars, starfish or driftwood," said McCarthy. "They used native scrub pines, since that was all they had. They couldn't have a Christmas that looked like New England, so they improvised. They came up with Christmas traditions that made sense where they were. ...

"But the forces of homogenization have been a work for a long time now -- TV, movies, advertising. A lot of beautiful things, a lot of beautiful traditions have been lost down here."

Tolkien, creation & sin

NEW YORK -- Screenwriter Philippa Boyens gets a tired look in her eyes when she recalls the surgery required to turn "The Lord of the Rings" into a movie, even a sprawling trilogy of three-hour movies.

"It's so hard," she said. "It's hard, it's hard, oh God, it's hard."

One agonizing cut in the screenplay removed a glimpse of the myth behind J.R.R. Tolkien's 500,000-word epic. In this lost scene, the traitor Saruman is torturing the noble Gandalf. "What," asks the evil wizard, "is the greatest power?" Gandalf replies, "Life."

"You fool," says Saruman. "Life can be destroyed. Did I teach you nothing?"

Trying again, Gandalf says, "Creation."

"Yes," answers Saruman, "the power to create life."

Millions of readers and now moviegoers have seen "The Lord of the Rings" as an epic tale of good versus evil.

Many have tried to pin labels on each side. The dark lord Sauron and his minions represent Nazi Germany and the armies of Middle Earth are England and its allies. Wait, said scribes in the 1960s. The forces of evil were industrialists who wanted to enslave Tolkien's peaceful, tree-hugging elves and Hobbits. The dark lord's "One Ring to rule them all" was the atomic bomb, or nuclear power, or something else nasty and modern.

The reality is more complex than that, said Boyens, after a press screening of "The Two Towers." Director Peter Jackson's second "Lord of the Rings" reaches theaters on Dec. 18.

"This is not a story about good versus evil," she said. "It's about that goodness and that evilness that is in all of us."

Anyone who studies Tolkien, she said, quickly learns that the Oxford don rejected allegorical interpretations of his work.

Nevertheless, Tolkien was a devout Catholic and his goal was to create a true myth that offered the modern world another chance to understand the timeless roots of sin. Thus, even his darkest characters have mixed motives or have been shaped by past choices between good and evil. Even his virtuous heroes wrestle with temptations to do evil or to do good for the wrong reasons.

The dark lord Sauron, noted Boyens, "was your basic fallen angel. If you go back even further within this mythology, you have a world that begins with Iluvatar, who is the One, who is basically God."

Iluvatar created the world through music, noted Boyens. But one angel, Melkor, was "jealous of the power of creation" and struck a note of discord, shattering the harmony. Yet Iluvatar did not destroy his creation. Instead, he gave his creatures the freedom to make choices between darkness and light, between evil and mercy.

It is hard to put this level of complexity on a movie screen. Nevertheless, Boyens and Jackson stressed that the "Lord of the Rings" team tried to leave the foundations of Tolkien's myth intact. The ultimate war between good and evil is inside the human heart.

"We didn't make it as a spiritual film, but here is what we did do," said Jackson, who is a co-writer and co-producer as well as the director of the project. "Tolkien was a very religious man. But we made a decision a long time ago that we would never knowingly put any of our own baggage into these films. ...

"What we tried to do was honor the things that were important to Tolkien, but without really emphasizing one thing over another. We didn't want to make it a religious film. But he was very religious and some of the messages and some of the themes are based on his beliefs."

The goal is to retain the timeless quality of the books, said Jackson.

Most of the filming for this three-movie project was done before the events of Sept. 11, 2001, he noted. The director had no way to know his movies would reach theaters during such tense times. Once again, many want to match headlines with events in Tolkien's masterwork.

"You sort of get the impression -- which can be depressing -- that Tolkien's themes really resonate today and that they're probably going to resonate in 50 years and then in 100 years," said Jackson. "I don't think humans are capable of actually pulling themselves out of these basic ruts."

A priest keeps his collar

Father Mark Pearson can see trouble coming as he walks the sidewalks of Boston.

He can see some faces harden after people make eye contact and then see his clerical collar. Some look away in disgust. A few men deliberately switch to a collision course. Pearson said one or two angry pedestrians have spat on him.

"If someone is upset, they may find a way to bump into you or give you a shove," he said. "Then they say sometime like, 'Oh excuse me, FATHER. Hey, did you molest anybody today, FATHER.' ...

"I try to just say something simple like, 'God bless you anyway, my friend.' "

Pearson is not a Roman Catholic priest, but other Bostonians don't know that. He is a veteran Anglican renewal leader who is now a canon theologian in a global body called the Charismatic Episcopal Church. Nevertheless, he still wears clerical clothing as he goes about his life and work. He also encourages other clergy in his church -- many of whom are former evangelical or Pentecostal pastors -- to do the same.

This latest round of Catholic sex-abuse scandals have caused Pearson to reflect on what it means to be visually labeled as a priest.

The tensions in his hometown are unbelievable, he said. Ordinarily, Boston is the kind of place where police may call for priests to help break up fights. Now the mighty Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston is considering filing for bankruptcy due to its mounting legal woes. And in the pews, devout Catholics are experiencing shock and grief. Others have crossed over into fury.

Pearson tries to remember this when hit with an icy stare or a sharp elbow.

"Some people are jerks," he said. "Right now they're being a jerk about this. Next week they'll be a jerk about something else. But you never know when you are dealing with someone who is truly in spiritual pain, someone who has experienced abuse or who has a loved one who was abused."

Innocent priests are in pain, too. They feel like they have targets pinned on their black jackets. Some priests -- in Boston and elsewhere -- have reportedly stopped wearing their distinctive clerical garb much of the time.

Pearson is convinced this is a tragic loss, both for the priests and the communities they serve. A clerical collar is more than a symbol, he said. It is a sign that God is present in the gritty and numbing realities of daily life.

"There are still many people who need to see someone is available and 'on duty' for them," wrote Pearson, in a Charismatic Episcopal Church newsletter. "While the general mood ... has changed, there are still people who come up to me for a word of comfort or for prayer.

"I'll risk the abuse of some in order to be available to people in need."

The Protestant pastor Pearson knew as a child always blended into a crowd, with his standardized "brown suit, white shirt and brown tie with blue blobs on it." This pastor was dressed for work, but only the members of his flock knew who he was.

Wearing a clerical collar is different, for better and for worse.

Some people are offended and some are encouraged. But everyone knows a priest is in their midst, said Pearson. It is sad that some Catholic priests are even considering leaving their clerical clothing at home. They are hiding from the needy.

A few months ago, Pearson said he visited a "very Italian Catholic parish" in Boston's north end. In the foyer, a troubled man rushed up and asked when was the next time for confessions. Pearson looked around and did not see a priest in the empty sanctuary. So he borrowed a confession booth.

Afterwards, the parish priest approached -- wearing a simple blue sports shirt -- and thanked Pearson for hearing the man's confession.

"That troubled soul didn't know to approach this other priest, because he couldn't see that he was a priest," said Pearson. "But I was wearing a uniform that said, 'I am a priest. Approach me. That is what I am here for. Approach me.' That is what wearing that clerical collar is all about."

Trying to do the Muslim math

Researchers at Hartford Seminary's Institute for Religious Research began with seven different lists of mosques in the United States.

They eliminated all duplicates, before attempting to verify the existence of each institution. This produced a list of 1,209 mosques. Interviews at 416 found that about 340 Muslims regularly prayed in a typical mosque, but 1,629 or so might be associated in one way or another with its religious life.

Then the researchers did what researchers do -- the math. The numbers suggested that there might be 1,969,000 or so Muslims linked to U.S. mosques in 2000.

But there was a problem. Another study found 2,000 "mosques, schools and Islamic centers" and yet another 3,000, including "prayer locations." These numbers would push the population total higher. And what about all the Americanized, "cultural" Muslims who don't go to worship? What about mosques that only count the men?

"The data we have on how many people are going to mosques is actually pretty good, I believe," according to Mohamed Nimer of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "The problem is what happens when you try to postulate up from that number to some kind of estimate for the total Muslim population in this country.

"At that point, all kinds of things can happen to the numbers. No one agrees on how to make that leap."

This is serious business in the tense, highly politicized atmosphere following Sept. 11, 2001. Muslim leaders are striving to portray their community as a solidly mainstream presence in American culture. Everyone knows Islam is winning converts and becoming more visible, especially during seasons such as Ramadan, which is expected to end Dec. 6.

But how many Muslims are there in America? The Glenmary Research Center says 1.6 million, while CAIR and other Muslim advocacy groups say 7 million. Other reports jump all over the statistical map. Meanwhile, U.S. Census officials cannot ask questions about religion.

Writing in Public Opinion Quarterly, researcher Tom W. Smith is blunt: "None of the 23 specific estimates during the past five years is based on a scientifically sound or explicit methodology as far as one can tell from the published reports. All can probably be characterized as guesses or assertions." He concludes that the best estimates fall between 1.9 and 2.8 million, while most media reports continue to say 6 to 7 million.

While some researchers begin with data from mosques, others use telephone surveys. But Nimer said this fails to take into account immigrants whose English is weak. Others may hesitate to talk about their faith with strangers on the telephone. Finally, other surveys turn to immigration data focusing on ancestry and country of origin.

But immigrants are often hard to count, said journalist Joyce Davis, author of "Between Jihad and Salaam." Some are constantly moving to visit relatives in different parts of the nation, seeking the right place to settle. Some are unsure of their status with authorities. Some are trying to blend into this new culture.

"A significant number of Muslims simply do not want people to be able to trace them through a mosque," she said. "This was true before 9/11 and it certainly is true now. The assumption is that the FBI is paying close attention to those membership lists. Many Muslims -- for a variety of reasons -- may not want to join anything right now.

There are layers of other complications. Nimer is convinced only one out of three U.S. Muslims actively practices his or her faith. It's hard to know precisely how many African Americans are converting. Some surveys are notorious for missing Muslims from Southeast Asia, where Indonesia has the world's largest Muslim population.

There is no clear bottom line. But Nimer said he believes conservative estimates of Muslims in America should fall between 2.5 and 4 million.

"It is crucial to realize that this is an issue that applies to all religious groups, not just Muslims," he said. "It is hard, as a rule, to count religious people. ... Are you counting people who are born into a particular faith or those who practice it? Do you want to count Arabs or do you want to count Muslims? Or do you want to count Arabs who are Muslims?"

Spirituality in the workplace?

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Tim J. McGuire is a baseball fan, but that wasn't why he kept a framed Mickey Lolich card on his desk when he was the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

That baseball card was a gift from a man who applied for one of the newsroom's top jobs and, here is the twist, did not get it.

"But he wrote me a beautiful letter and he remembered that Mickey Lolich was one of my favorite players," said McGuire. "Sending me that card was such a beautiful, gracious thing for him to do.

"For me that isn't just a baseball card. It's a sacred object."

McGuire mixes work and spirituality all the time, even though he knows many people think this is heresy. Still the former editor is convinced that journalists and other stressed-out professionals must find some way to stop ignoring the holes in their souls.

That's one reason the 53-year-old Catholic layman parachuted out of his newsroom last summer, weeks after finishing his term as president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He wanted to be able to speak his mind even more freely than he did during his years as a journalistic gadfly known for his brash management style and profane wisecracks.

Instead of retiring, he began writing a syndicated column called "More Than Work," dedicated to values and faith in the workplace. He also is a leader in the Partners In Preaching network of Catholic speakers.

Work is the last place most people think about spirituality, said McGuire, speaking during a seminar on "Faith, Religion & Values" at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. Instead of being the place where they express the values that are most precious to them, work becomes the place where these values are irrelevant.

"Work is brutal. Work is a four-letter word," said McGuire. "Most people don't think that work could possibly have anything to do with spirituality. ... They assume that these two worlds cannot mesh. But if we bring our souls to work, then we can transform our work. That is when our work can begin to transform us.

"The problem for most people is that their work transforms them into something bad, something bitter and tired and broken."

McGuire saw this happen day after day, but he doesn't think journalists are more "soul sick" than other people. All kinds of people struggle to find ways to cope with pain, confusion and anger. Some purchase mountains of possessions and others keep trading in one romantic relationship for another. Some turn to drugs and alcohol. Some literally worship their work, even though they may hate the work that they do.

This struggle is spiritual, whether people want to admit it or not. Finding a way to sleep at night is a spiritual process.

"Everybody has to have a spirituality and everybody does have one," said McGuire. "What we do with that personal madness that makes us who we are is our spirituality. ... Spirituality is about how we try to fill that hole in our souls."

Welcoming spirituality into the workplace doesn't mean holding revival meetings and letting people speak in tongues at their desks, he said. Proselytizing is wrong and there are settings in which it would be wrong for believers to display the symbols of their faith. The key is to make personal changes and vows that help "bring Sunday on over into Monday," he said.

That's why McGuire treasured that Mickey Lolich baseball card. That's why he uses computer passwords such as "blessed" that make him stop and think. A glass eagle sculpture on his desk is a reminder to treat his staff like eagles, not chickens.

Believers can find way to seek holiness, without being "holier than thou," he said. Take office gossip, for example.

"What are you supposed to do about that? You should not participate in the sin. You have to walk away," he said. "So far, so good. But what you can't do is point at those people and say, 'You're sinning! You're sinning! You've got to stop gossiping!' ...

"No, the way you cut down on the gossiping is that you stop gossiping yourself. But that's the hard part anyway, isn't it?"

Goodbye, Democrats. Hello, what?

It was sometime during the hearings into whether Judge Priscilla Owen was fit to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals that Father John F. Kavanaugh faced a hard question.

All 10 Democrats on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted against her and killed her recent nomination, even though the Texas Supreme Court Justice received the American Bar Association's highest ranking. The problem was that she favored restraints on abortion rights, including parental-notification laws.

"This was the first time in history that someone with her qualifications had been rejected in committee," said the nationally known Jesuit writer. "I couldn't believe it. ... That was when I had to ask: Why am I still a registered Democrat?"

Kavanaugh poured his feelings into a column in which he argued that it's time for Catholics to cut the political ties that bind and register as independent voters. While the priest stressed that he believes Catholic Republicans may also need to declare their freedom, he entitled his provocative piece "Goodbye, Democrats."

It helps to know that Kavanaugh is an old-school progressive, the author of books with titles such as "Following Christ in a Consumer Culture," "Faces of Poverty, Faces of Christ" and "Who Counts as Persons? Human Identity and the Ethics of Killing." This is one Jesuit who would never "wrap a rosary" around a conservative agenda.

Kavanaugh said he remains firmly opposed GOP doctrine on tax cuts, labor laws, welfare reform, the death penalty and a host of other issues. In the past decade, he noted, Democrats have compromised on all of those issues. But there is one issue on which his old party has steadfastly refused any compromise.

"One thing the Democrats really stand for, however, is abortion -- abortion on demand, abortion without restraint, abortion paid for by all of us, abortion for the poor of the earth," wrote Kavanaugh. "I am not a one-issue voter, but they have become a one-issue party. ... If traditional Democrats who are disillusioned with the selling out of the working poor and the unborn simply became registered Independent voters, would not more attention be paid?"

In recent national elections, researchers have been watching for any signs that America's 60 million Catholics are changing their voting habits.

For generations, Frost Belt Catholics have been a crucial part of all Democratic coalitions. Today, Catholic trends are crucial in an era when Hispanic voters are gaining clout in Sunbelt politics. Thus, it matters that nearly three-fifths of the Catholics who said they frequently went to Mass voted for George W. Bush in 2000.

The question is whether this change is part of a fundamental realignment in the role that faith plays in American politics, according to two political scientists at Baruch College in the City University of New York.

Once, Southern evangelicals and northern Catholics were loyal Democrats. Once, the mainline Protestant churches were the heart of the Republican Party. But everything has changed. Today, liberal Protestants have joined a rising tide of "secularists" and "anti-fundamentalists" as the most loyal members of the Democratic establishment.

"The importance of evangelicals to the ascendancy of the Republican Party since the 1980s has been pointed out ad nauseam," noted Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio, in a paper presented to the Southern Political Science Association. "But if the GOP can be labeled the party of religious conservatives, the Democrats, with equal validity, can be called the secularist party."

And, they added, any list of nonnegotiable issues for secularists and leaders of the religious left would begin with abortion rights.

At some point, said Kavanaugh, Catholics must find a way to be active in politics without writing off the poor, the weak, the defenseless and the unborn. This is what their faith teaches. Right now, he believes that this means letting the political world see visible evidence that Catholics are no longer tied to one party.

"It's not just the unfettered worship of 'choice' that we see in the Democratic Party today, which some would even call a form of libertarianism," he said. "There has also been a capitulation to the power of money. ... It's painful to say this, but right now I see as much hard-heartedness in the Democrats as I do in the Republicans."

Worship for sale, worship for sale

In the beginning, there were the Jesus People.

They had long hair and short memories and they emerged from the 1960s with a unique fusion of evangelical faith and pop culture. They loved fellowship, but didn't like frumpy churches. They trusted their feelings, not traditions. They loved the Bible, but not those old hymnals.

So they started writing, performing, recording and selling songs. The Contemporary Christian Music industry was born.

And, lo, the counterculture became a corporate culture, one that was increasingly competitive and relentlessly contemporary, constantly striving to photocopy cultural trends. Out in the mega-churches, the definition of "worship" changed and then kept changing -- Sunday after Sunday.

Even though this industry "makes claims for musical diversity among its ranks, it is primarily a reflection of current folk, pop and rock styles," noted veteran pop musician Charlie Peacock, speaking at a recent conference on "Music and the Church" at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. "Even today's successful modern worship music is composed of these and does not have a distinct style of its own."

The "bandwidth" of worship music today is actually quite narrow, he said, even if black gospel and "urban" music is included. This reality is especially obvious if the industry's products are contrasted with the dizzying array of church music found around the world and across two millennia of history.

Today, the bottom line is almost always the financial bottom line.

While believers lead the companies that dominate Christian music, secular corporations now own these smaller companies, noted Peacock. Clearly this is shaping the "Christian" music sold in religious bookstores and mainstream malls. But this corporate culture is also affecting worship and the heart of church life.

"The industry cannot be expected to always have the best interests of the church in mind," Peacock told nearly 500 scholars, musicians, entrepreneurs and clergy. "Christians within the companies may. But the overriding ideology of the system is to serve the shareholder first."

Serving the shareholders means an endless stream of new products, fads and artists -- just like in the secular world. The new always vetoes the old and the saints don't use credit cards or own stock. Thus, CCM is dominated by pop, rock, urban and new worship music. Classical Christian music is below 1 percent on the charts.

Most worship leaders are trying to blend these radically different musical elements, reported pollster George Barna, describing a survey of Protestant worshippers, pastors and "worship leaders." Sometimes the easiest solution is to have different services for different audiences -- a strategy the Barna Research Group found in three out of four churches.

Thus, the GI Generation attends a different service than the upbeat Baby Boomers or the mysterious young faithful of generations X and Y. The result looks something like an FM radio dial.

"What we know about Americans is that we view ourselves first and foremost as consumers," said Barna. "Even when we walk in the doors of our churches what we tend to do is to wonder how can I get a good transaction out of this experience. ... So, what we know from our research is that Americans have made worship something that primarily that we do for ourselves. When is it successful? When we feel good."

And sometimes people feel bad. According to the pastors, only 9 percent of the surveyed churches were experiencing conflict over music. But it's possible to turn those statistics around and note that 90 percent of all church conflicts reported in this study centered on musical issues.

Is peace possible? Peacock concluded that it will be up to ministers and educators to argue that there is more to worship than the niches on a CCM sales charts.

The industry can play a valid role in shaping the content of Christian music, he said, even in "contributing to the congregational music of the church. Still, the industry is at the mercy of a consumer with narrow tastes. Until this changes, it can't possibly function as a definitive caretaker and should not be asked to.

"This means that the stewardship of Christian music from the Psalms, to Ambrose, to Bach, to Wesley, to the Fisk Jubilee Singers and more, belongs to the church and the academy."

Truckers, snipers & prayer

There are still churches left in this land where folks gather every Wednesday night for "prayer meeting," since they're convinced God doesn't just listen on Sundays.

Central Church of the Nazarene in Fort Wright, Ky., is that kind of church. Last week, the Rev. Larry Dillon told his mid-week faithful that he felt God wanted them to spend some extra time praying about the sniper attacks near Washington, D.C.

"We prayed for the victims and their families," he said. "We prayed for the police. We also prayed that somebody out there would find the killers. ... Our people just kept praying, 'Please Lord, let this end.' "

One layman who couldn't be there was trucker Ron Lantz. Normally, he drove his 18-wheeler back and forth to Wilmington, Del., on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But he'd been called in special and had to be on the road Wednesday night and into the morning.

This is, of course, where this prayer story turns into a news story.

Christian truck drivers often like to take their breaks far from the temptations and noise of giant truck stops. The Myersville rest area near Frederick, Md., is one safe refuge where Lantz regularly pulls over and parks.

This time, it was a few minutes before 1 a.m. and, as usual, the 61-year-old Lantz was listening to the national Truckin' Bozo Radio Show. The host was urging truckers to look for a 1990 blue Chevy Caprice with New Jersey license plate NDA21Z. Lantz pulled into the rest area and there was the car. He was one of the first callers to get through and alert the police.

"I called 911," Lantz told CNN. "They told me, 'We'll be there as soon as possible. We'll be there right away.' He didn't say how long. He said, 'You stay right where you're at.' I said, 'OK.' "

Lantz and another driver blocked the rest area's entrance and the exit and, about 20 minutes later, swarms of officers arrived. After a cautious stakeout around the car, the police awoke John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo and put them under arrest.

The next day, Lantz enjoyed a few sheepish moments in the media spotlight.

That was the end of that story. But what few journalists noted was that the folksy trucker was telling them that his story had a beginning, as well as an ending. Finding that deadly sniper-mobile followed some serious prayer, he said.

A week earlier, lots of truckers were talking on their CB radios about the sniper case. Finally, Lantz and several others told everybody to pull off the road. It was time for a prayer meeting. According to Lantz, at least 50 truckers and a slew of other drivers got together -- a mere 20 miles from that Myersville rest area.

Lantz is on the road again this week, far from reporters. But he told the whole story in church last Sunday, said Dillon.

"That truckers' prayer meeting is a big part of all this, the way I see it," said the preacher. "Ron said they all knew that the sniper was probably driving on the same roads that they were. So they prayed that the truckers out there would be able to help stop him, somehow. ...

"Ron's testimony is that he was just in the right place at the right time. But Ron doesn't think any of this was a coincidence and I don't think it was a coincidence, either."

It's probably hard for journalists to figure out where prayer fits into this kind of news story, said Dillon. But millions of people sincerely believe prayer makes a difference. So they keep praying. It's part of the story of their lives.

"I know people ask, 'If prayer matters, then why didn't God stop the killing earlier?' Well, God gives people choices. They can choose good or they can choose evil," said Dillon. "So we don't know why those men chose to do what they did and we don't know why God didn't stop them sooner.

"Those are tough questions. But we know that we're supposed to choose what's good and keep doing what God wants us to do. We'll have to get to heaven before we truly understand how all of this works."