Sept. 11 -- Dreams of St. Nicholas

The first thing police found at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was a piece of a wing and landing gear from American Flight 11.

Then the World Trade Center's north tower fell on the humble, white-washed walls of the tiny sanctuary across the street. It took time for work crews to find much of anything after that.

Eventually they found a paper icon of St. Dionysios of Zakynthos, but never found its frame or silver cover. They found an embroidered velvet cloth, but not the Bible it covered. They found a bell clapper, but not the bell. They found a silver hand in prayer, a wooden icon of a healing fountain, fragments of the marble altar, a twisted piece of a candelabrum and beeswax candles that survived the hellfire from above.

Church officials recovered part of a ceremonial book of New Testament epistles, with the smell of smoke in every page.

But the faithful have yet to recover the 700-pound fireproof steel safe from the office, the one containing the golden ossuary with its fragments of the bones of three saints, including their patron. St. Nicholas of Myra is the 4th century saint who in Western lands has evolved into St. Nick. Father John Romas explained all of this to workers at the New Jersey landfill as they sifted through mountains of rubble from ground zero.

"I told them about the relics of St. Nicholas and St. Katherine and St. Sava," said Romas, priest at St. Nicholas for almost two decades and a chanter for years before that. "I told them about the safe on the top floor. I described everything in detail. But our little church was gone. There were no windows, no doors, no walls -- nothing."

The priest paused, trying to find English words for his emotions.

"What can we say? Someone may have picked up a gold box thinking there would be money in it and then they threw everything else away. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? But this we do know -- we will rebuild our church."

The parish's 80 families have every reason to be hopeful, said Romas, as they wait for city, state and regional officials to solve what the New York Times calls an "urban-planning Rubik's Cube." The goal? Build 10 million square feet of commercial space and rebuild lower Manhattan's infrastructure, while creating a towering architectural masterpiece that honors those lost on a day that changed the city, the nation and the world.

Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Church in America has received assurances from New York Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the sanctuary can be rebuilt next to the World Trade Center site. Architect Daniel Libeskind's winning design for the site and memorial also includes St. Nicholas, the only church that was destroyed.

And the parish (www.stnicholasnyc.org) does control its site at 155 Cedar Street. But the old building was only 22 feet wide, 56 feet long and 35 feet high. Church leaders hope to raise funds to buy additional property to build a slightly larger church, in anticipation of new families and visitors to the Sept. 11 memorial.

The building that became St. Nicholas was built in 1832 as a private residence and even spent several years as a tavern. Greek immigrants bought it in 1916 and it was dedicated as a church the next year. Part of the church's charm was its size -- a Byzantine haven dwarfed by steel, glass, concrete and stress.

Every Wednesday, St. Nicholas invited workers and executives to spend the lunch hour in prayer.

In the future, Wednesdays will not be enough.

"Downtown New York City is crazy. It's another world. Yet when you stepped inside St. Nicholas you were taken someplace totally different," said John Pitsikalis, the parish council president. "You literally had the hubbub of the whole world of commerce only a few steps away and yet here was this small zone of peace and quiet and beauty.

"You would come in and the air would be still, the candles would be lit, there would be soft liturgical music and you would be surrounded by the icons. ... People needed that place of sanctuary and that is what we have to have again."

Free speech movement, for believers on campus

It took a few minutes for leaders of the Bisexual, Gay & Lesbian Alliance at Rutgers University to realize something was wrong at their back-to-school meeting.

The hall was full of unfamiliar students wanting to become members. Most were carrying Bibles with markers in the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. They also had copies of the campus policy forbidding discrimination on the basis of "race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability, marital or veteran status."

Truth is, this scene hasn't happened at Rutgers or anywhere else -- so far.

What if it did?

What if conservative Christians tried to rush a gay-rights group and elect new leaders? What if, when told they couldn't join because they rejected its core beliefs, evangelicals cited cases in which Christian groups were punished for refusing leadership roles to homosexuals? What if, when jeered by angry homosexuals, evangelicals called this verbal violence rooted in religious bigotry and, thus, harassment?

"No, no, no. I have never heard of a case in which conservative Catholics, Protestants or Jews tried to turn the tables in this fashion," said historian Alan Charles Kors, president of the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)

"That would never happen. There is an inherent meekness ... among students of faith on all these campuses. It's so ironic that people call them intolerant and offensive. Most of these religious students are among the last people who would ever go where they are not wanted. All they want is to be free to express their beliefs."

But there have been a growing number of cases in which traditional religious groups have been attacked because their "intolerant" beliefs and policies offend modern academia. Almost all of these cases are collisions between ancient moral doctrines and campus policies that defend and promote the Sexual Revolution.

The bottom line, according to recent FIRE legal guides, is that almost all campus policies that inhibit religious practices also inhibit the constitutional rights of free speech, association and assembly. Public colleges and universities are not supposed to make doctrinal decisions that deny privileges to some religious groups that are then extended to other secular or religious groups.

Yet that is what is happening.

"Religious liberty is now center stage in the battle for freedom on campus," according to David French, a Harvard Law School graduate who wrote the manual covering disputes over faith issues. "Religious students are particularly convenient targets. After all, they think and behave in ways that many other students don't understand; they tend to be small minorities on most campuses; and -- by religious conviction -- they often resist even the most heavy-handed repression."

For all of their talk about "diversity" and "tolerance," French is convinced many academic leaders think that "the fewer 'fanatics' -- of the 'wrong' kind -- the better."

While these campus disputes are often described in terms of "left" and "right," the FIRE project (www.thefireguides.org) has been endorsed by a diverse coalition of activists ranging from Edwin Meese III, attorney general in the Reagan administration, to American Civil Liberties Union President Nadine Strossen.

The key is that academic leaders must be honest, said French. Leaders at state schools are quickly learning that their work is covered by explicit laws that ban any "viewpoint discrimination" that blesses some believers and curses others. Religious schools, meanwhile, are allowed to require particular beliefs and practices -- mandatory chapel, moral codes, doctrinal statements for faculty -- if these rules are clearly stated in writing.

Right now, the toughest battles are at some of America's most prestigious private colleges and universities. These secular schools once encouraged fierce debates and proudly tolerated dissent. But now, it seems that some worldviews are created more equal than others.

Many religious believers do not discover this reality until they arrive on campus and receive copies of the all-powerful student handbook.

"Students must be told the truth," said French. "They should not be duped into believing that they have enrolled in a school that respects their beliefs and their freedom to express viewpoints that are out of the so-called mainstream. These secular schools must be more honest in their recruiting materials and catalogues. This is a truth in advertising issue."

The roots of King's dream

The telephone rang after midnight and sleep was not an option for the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., after he answered it.

It was late 1956. Years later, King quoted that hellish voice: "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of this town in three days, we are going to blow your brains out and blow up your house."

King ended up in the kitchen, meditating on the mystery of evil and worrying about his family. He began praying out loud, voicing his feelings of weakness, frustration and fear. Soon, he fell into a waking dream in which God gave him comfort and courage. He glimpsed the future.

The next day, King told reporters: "I had a vision."

This became a touchstone event and shaped one of his signature themes. But the wording had changed by the time King reached the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, 1963.  By then the voice of the Civil Rights Movement was crying out: "I have a dream."

Four decades later, this speech may be the only exposure that millions of young Americans have ever had to King's preaching and writing, said Drew Hansen, author of "The Dream," a new book that offers an in-depth analysis of the history and content of the speech.

This is sadly limited view of a complex man and his times, said the 30-year-old Seattle lawyer. But many who watch or read this speech may be inspired to learn more. After all, that is what happened to Hansen during a Yale Law School class on civil rights. He dug deeper and what he found was both inspiring and sobering.

"It's easy to focus on this speech and King's victories and all those barriers that fell back in the days when things were so bad," said Hansen, an evangelical Christian who graduated from Harvard and also studied theology at Oxford University.

"Focusing on this speech alone is certainly a lot easier than meditating on all of the barriers that remain. ... But still, this is a wonderful place to start as we give King the homage that is his due as a preacher, public philosopher, field general and prophet."

It is crucial to grasp the context. Hansen noted that King traveled about 275,000 miles and delivered at least 350 speeches during the year of the March on Washington. Witnesses said he worked on the text up to the last minute, literally marking out passages and scribbling in others as he sat waiting to speak.

Hansen's book includes material from rough drafts prepared by aides as well as a side-by-side comparison of the text as King wrote it and then delivered it. This includes detailed descriptions of the preacher's vocal inflections and use of dramatic pauses and repeated sentence constructions that let his listeners to respond to his words like skilled jazz musicians.

"King knew how to read his audience," said Hansen. "That had been part of his training since he was a little boy in his daddy's church. This address was a case of a talented preacher getting caught up in a call-and-response experience, not just with the audience in front of him, but with the whole nation. "That's why these words touched people then and they touch people now."

It was supposed to have been a political speech. Yet nearly every significant metaphor in it can be traced to a biblical source, noted Hansen. Growing up in black Baptist churches, King had been baptized in the words, grammar and imagery of the King James Bible. This provided a solid foundation as he spoke to African Americans and, ironically, to white Protestants in the Deep South. King knew that the Bible had authority --authority to inspire and to judge.

This is what King turned to as he faced the nation. The entire "I have a dream" section of the speech was not in his written text.

"He wrote a political address," said Hansen. "It's not that other people wrote a political address for him. King's own draft was nothing like a sermon. But the speech he actually delivered was not dominated by that kind of political language. He left lots of that out and everything he added was rooted in biblical images and themes. That changed everything."

Catholic college culture wars

Anyone trying to understand the Catholic college culture wars can start with last spring's commencement address by Cardinal Francis Arinze at Georgetown University.

Media coverage was guaranteed, since many list the Nigerian prelate as a top contender to succeed Pope John Paul II. Who knew he would dare to mention sex and marriage?

"The family is under siege," said Arinze. "It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce."

A theology professor walked out, as did some outraged students. Seventy faculty members signed a letter of protest. But traditional Catholics began asking a burning question: Why was it shocking for a cardinal to defend Catholic doctrines on a Catholic campus?

These fires are still smoldering as students return to America's 223 Catholic colleges and universities. The Arinze controversy also reinforced some controversial statistics suggesting that four years on most Catholic campuses may actually harm young Catholic souls.

"What we are seeing is a battle between orthodox Christian beliefs and the moral relativism that is becoming more powerful in many religious groups," said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a fiercely pro-Vatican educational network.

"Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, you name it.

Faith Crisis in Blogosphere

The news from Rome infuriated the most quotable Catholic, gay, HIV-positive, political conservative in cyberspace.

But Andrew Sullivan knew where to find comfort after the Vatican's recent reminder that gay unions are in no way "similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family." He poured out his frustration at www.andrewsullivan.com and his online community responded.

"Times are terrible," wrote a Catholic priest. "The church says gay people are not permitted to get married, ordained or adopt children. All prohibitions. Not one statement of moral guidance or recognition. Negation only. I don't know what to say or think myself. ...

"I take refuge in conscience (which the tradition treats with utmost respect) and in my belief that the church is larger and older and wiser than one segment, no matter how powerful and officially sanctioned its self-defined role. The church cannot be contained or proscribed as the narrow experience of what the magisterium teaches. It is all of us."

Sullivan shared that anonymous epistle with the 400,000 or so readers who visit his "weblog" each month. There are between 1.5 and 3 million "blogs" and the former New Republic editor is known as a trailblazer in this ever-expanding "blogosphere."

Blogs are helping shape mainstream news, as the ousted editors of the New York Times now know. But blogs are also touching untold numbers of private lives. This is especially true in the realm of religion, where public policy and private piety are mixing in new ways.

Headlines seem distant in the daily press. They are personal in the blogs. One day it's Catholic doctrine and its impact on legislators and judges. The next day it's the Episcopal Church and the consecration of its first openly gay bishop.

Sullivan is used to slinging ink in this marketplace. But this week he used his blog to say that events are pushing him toward a "pretty major life-decision."

"It tears me apart to see no prospect of the Catholic Church ending its war on gay people and their dignity in my lifetime," he wrote. "I think it's getting worse; and the next pope from the developing world could make the current one seem humane. Leaving the sacraments would be a huge blow to the soul; but the pope just called the love I have for my boyfriend 'evil.' "

Sullivan posted painful letters from gay Catholics who said the Vatican had pushed them over the line. One pondered cutting off "my membership and support of the Roman Catholic Church" and moving on to "what in my upbringing would be called 'the next best thing': the Episcopal Church."

But the "blogosphere" has other sanctuaries. Father Paul Mankowski of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome called Sullivan and his acolytes "conditional" Catholics who yearn for a different church.

"They persist in their membership, but with the understanding that the Church will be a different Church in the future," he said, in the blog at Catholic World News (www.cwnews.com). "And if the Church will reverse her teaching in future, the Church must be wrong now. And if a man believes the Church is wrong now, he can't possibly mean the same thing I mean when he professes her to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic."

And Catholic blogger Amy Welborn (www.amywelborn.com) wondered whether Sullivan fears surrendering the familiar rituals of daily Catholic life, even though his beliefs have changed. Yet reason suggests that there "comes a point when an individual who doesn't believe that faith rests on objective truth comes up hard against the institution that maintains that it does, and at that point, something's got to give."

Then again, she said, he may stay. What's the "marquee value" of being a gay Episcopalian?

Reached by email, Sullivan said he feels tied to Catholicism by baptism, family, the sacraments and a "lifetime of prayer and reflection." He still goes to Mass. He asked his readers to pray for him and was stunned at the consolation that flowed through these digital ties that bind.

"I don't think I could belong to any other Church but the one I believe to be the true one," he said. "I respect completely other faiths and denominations; but this one is in my bones and in my soul."

An Orthodox parable for today

MIAMI -- The elderly husband and wife were screaming at each other as they waited for an audience with the Orthodox archbishop of Tripoli. Metropolitan Theodosius VI could hear them and so could his young Lebanese assistant. Finally, the couple stormed into the office. They agreed on only one thing -- divorce.

"I will deal with you separately," said the archbishop. Then he gestured for his aide to linger. This was going to be a learning opportunity for Philip Saliba, a master class in the realities of church leadership. Half a century later, he remembers what he learned.

It helps to know that, Theodosius soon became patriarch of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the ancient church of Sts. Peter and Paul. Then in 1966, he consecrated Philip Saliba as metropolitan of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

So the old world was teaching a lesson to the new world, a lesson that the 72-year-old Metropolitan Philip turned into an emotional parable during last weekend's 46th Archdiocese Convention, held at the Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami Beach.

This was a parable about the growing pains of Eastern Orthodoxy in America, a story about trying to honor the past while facing the future. Grasp this parable, Philip told his priests and lay leaders, and you will begin to understand the hurdles facing churches in America as they strive to gain autonomy from the old country.

So here is the rest of the parable.

Theodosius asked the elderly husband what was wrong with his wife. He offered a familiar litany: She didn't cook, she didn't clean and she refused to shine his shoes. The husband left and the wife came in. She said her husband was lazy and unaffectionate. He gambled, drank too much and leered at other women.

The archbishop listened and then faced the two of them. Recalling that moment, Philip thickened his Lebanese accent to imitate his old teacher's voice. All Theodosius said was: "You are having very serious problems. Go home! Come see me next year!"

Philip was confused. He said he did not understand the wisdom of this response to the couple's fury. What was he supposed to have learned?

That is easy, said the archbishop. The husband and wife were very old. During the next year, they might kill each other. In a year, the odds were good that either the wife or the husband would die. That would solve the problem.

The audience laughed. Then Metropolitan Philip's voice grew serious. Never forget, he said, that people in the ancient lands of the East truly believe that "time and death" will solve most difficult problems.

The audience stopped laughing. This was the meaning of the parable.

After all, it had been two years since the American archdiocese -- which has grown from 66 to 228 parishes during his tenure -- overwhelmingly approved an appeal to the Holy Synod in Damascus for autonomy and the ability to manage more of its own affairs. And it had been two years since Metropolitan Philip survived a life-and-death showdown with heart disease.

Hotel hallways were buzzing with reports of calls from the Istanbul offices of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, symbolic leader of the world's Orthodox churches, seeking delays in autonomy efforts affecting the growing churches in North America, and their bank accounts. After all, changes in the convert-friendly sanctuaries of the Antiochian archdiocese and the Orthodox Church in America, which has Russia roots, might spread to others -- even the Greeks.

Some leaders "in the East," said Metropolitan Philip, are convinced that if he dies, the autonomy issue will die. Delay the decision and time and death will solve the problem.

Shouting in Arabic and English, Philip vowed that he would not let this happen.

"No! No way," he said. "I will rise from the grave!"

Hours later, the conference approved -- by a 99.6 percent margin -- sending the latest draft of an autonomy resolution to the Holy Synod, a document prepared by leaders from America and the old country. The synod should meet in October, but recent meetings have been postponed.

In other words, the phrase "Byzantine politics" exists for a reason.

"If this step is delayed," Metropolitan Philip said, Orthodox unity in North America "will be set back for 100 years."

Harry Potter for grownup believers (of all kinds)

ORLANDO -- Lee Hillman's nightstand contains a copy of Sir James George Frazer's classic "The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion."

It's a condensed version, not the two-volume 1890 epic or the12-volume monument from the following decades. The single volume contains more than enough magical minutia for ordinary readers. Six dense pages will usually put Hillman to sleep.

Nevertheless, the practicing pagan keeps reading. It has helped give perspective on her other passion -- reading and writing about a certain young wizard in England.

"There is no relationship set up in the Harry Potter books between magic and religion," said Hillman during Nimbus 2003, the first global convention dissecting the 2,715 pages published so far in the series. "This had to be a deliberate decision by J.K. Rowling. ... She is using literary conceits drawn from throughout Western culture."

She scanned the crowd at a panel discussion last weekend entitled "Harry Potter: Witchcraft? Pagan Perspectives." Then she said the same thing again, as a Wiccan believer and another miscellaneous pagan nodded in agreement.

"There is nothing in these books that relates magic to any particular religion," said Hillman. "There is no connection. None. None. Zero. ... They are not really about witchcraft."

Don't misunderstand. Hillman still loves the Potter books. That's why she was wearing a spectacular witch's hat and robe, a flash of purple that even stood out among the 600 other colorful fans at Disney's Swan Hotel. Among online Potter devotees, the 31-year-old secretary from Rochester, N.Y., is known as "Gwendolyn Grace, Minister of Magic" and she was the driving force behind the gathering.

Nimbus 2003 sprouted out of the Internet, where the "Harry Potter For Grownups" email list has 10,000 members and a "Fiction Alley" list dedicated to stories written by fans for other fans has 30,000 members.

With this kind of reach, organizers attracted participants -- about 90 percent female -- from across the United States, as well as from England and Australia.

In hotel hallways, witch wannabes raised their expensive, professionally carved wands and fought imaginary duels with tickling spells and other incantations. In the lecture halls, others heard papers on everything from Harry Potter and the First Amendment to "Greenhouses are for Girls, Beasts are for Boys? Gender Characterizations in Harry Potter." There were packed sessions on so-called "slash" fiction in which online scribes write gay and lesbian themes into new Potter stories.

Organizers also dedicated an entire track of lectures and panels to spiritual issues, addressing topics such as "Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Heavenly Virtues: Moral Development in Harry Potter" and "Can Any Wisdom Come From Wizardry?"

Hillman and other pagan panelists were convinced that Rowling -- who has said she attends the Church of Scotland and does not believe in magic -- is a wonderful writer for children, but is clearly not interested in witchcraft. This is not the magic in which they believe.

"There is a cause-and-effect relationship to everything in these books," said Hillman. "You say the spell, you see the effect. ... It's like turning on a light. You flip the switch and the magic is there. That just isn't how things work."

Meanwhile, evangelical writer Connie Neal enthusiastically found echoes of biblical stories and parables in the Potter canon. Her book "The Gospel According to Harry Potter" has been banned in many Christian stores, but "this only seems to have made the secular stores more interested," she said. She keeps challenging people to set up evangelistic reading groups that mix Bible study and Harry Potter discussions.

A Jewish cantor found echoes of the Talmud. A Mormon speaker found strong family values. And classics teacher John Granger aired the thesis of his book "The Hidden Key to Harry Potter," arguing that Rowling has soaked her work in centuries of Christian symbolism and spiritual alchemy themes shared with Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, C.S. Lewis and countless others.

"The human person was designed for resurrection, in love. That is what we yearn for because that is how we were created," he said. "That is what these books are about. We respond to them because we are human. Rowling is using symbols and themes that have worked for centuries. And you know what? They still work."

Facing the Russian icons

As was his custom, the thief began his day with prayer before an icon of Mary and Jesus. But then the image began to move and he saw bleeding wounds on the Christ child's hands and feet. Trembling, he cried out: "Oh lady, who has done this?" "You and other sinners," said Mary, "who crucify my Son anew with your sins."

In this classic Russian icon called "Unexpected Joy" the thief repents and begins a new life. The icon is complex, yet contains a spiritual truth that would have been clear to the Russians who faced it as they prayed. They understood the symbolism. They knew the parable. But what does this 19th century icon say to Americans who see it hanging in a gallery?

"It's hard for us to grasp things like this," said Frederica Mathewes-Green, author of "The Open Door: Entering into the Sanctuary of Icons and Prayer." "The thief is convicted of his sins and repents and the result is this 'Unexpected Joy.' Repentance? Joy? We have trouble connecting the two. Of course, we also have trouble imaging a thief who faithfully prays in his icon corner. ... It's like this icon lets us have a glimpse of a whole different world."

It was late on a muggy Washington, D.C., afternoon and a few tired visitors were viewing the 89 works in a summer exhibition called "Windows Into Heaven: Russian Icons, 1650-1917" at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center. There were glorious angels from the doors that lead from sanctuaries to altars. Immaculate icons from the workshops of czars -- details painted with single-hair brushes -- hung near the rough icons of peasants.

Many of the images featured familiar faces and scenes, from St. John the Baptist to St. George and the dragon. This constant repetition of themes often puzzles visitors. Others ask why some icons are "more artistic" than others, said volunteer John Harrison.

"But this really isn't about art, is it? Each of these icons may be a copy of a copy of a copy," he said. "But that's the point. The images are familiar. But each icon had a life of its own. It is real. It was a holy object to real people, in a real time and a real place. Their prayers were real."

It's almost impossible for Americans to grasp the role icons played in for centuries in lands such as Russia, said curator James Lansing Jackson, who assembled this exhibit. In addition to prayer corners in homes, these "windows into heaven" were found in factories, stores, schools, prisons, offices, roadside shrines and countless other public and private locations.

"They were literally everywhere and part of almost every event in life," he said, reached at his office in Cedar Falls, Iowa. "The typical home might have contained 20 or more. ... There were probably 200 million icons in Russia in the days before the 1917 revolution."

Many Orthodox believers fled as the Bolsheviks took control and they took family treasures with them, including their icons, said Jackson. By the 1930s, Soviet officials were selling antiques, art and icons on foreign markets to raise hard currency.

Some believers hid their icons during times of terror and persecution. Then, as generations passed, some flung them aside as signs of a forgotten faith. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was another frenzy of interest in icons, for reasons ranging from spiritual hunger to raw commercialism.

"Ironically, the fact that they did have historic and antique value gave many people a motive to save them," said Jackson. "They were saved by greed and by the fascination that Westerners have for them. That's a strange thing to say, but it's true."

Still, it's poignant to face icons in settings "so far from their homes," said Mathewes-Green. This is like being introduced to orphans whose lives have been shattered. Who knows what happened to their families?

"It's tragic when you see them collected as mere art objects, put away somewhere in glass cases," she said. "They are beautiful and it's tempting to get caught up in their beauty. But the icons are not what we are supposed to focus on. That is not their true purpose. They are supposed to lead us somewhere else."

Church Shoppers 'R' Us

How many Southern Baptists does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: "One to change the bulb and 16 million to boycott the maker of the old bulb for bringing darkness into the church."

And on the left, how many United Church of Christ members does it take? Answer: "How dare you be so intolerant! So what if the light bulb has chosen an alternative light style?"

There are zillions more ecclesiastical light-bulb jokes where those came from and Carmen Renee Berry heard plenty while writing "The Unauthorized Guide to Choosing a Church." How many Catholic nuns does it take to change a light bulb? Episcopalians? Calvinists? United Methodists? Pentecostals? Members of the non-instrumental Churches of Christ?

Behind the jokes is a serious issue. According to her "meticulous count, there are exactly 29816 gazillion denominations to choose from." What are consumers supposed to do, throw darts at the Yellow Pages?

Berry has been there and done that. Over the years, she said, "I met a variety of 'believers' -- incense burners and Bible thumpers; charismatic hand wavers, 12-steppers and genuflectors; priests, pastors and prayer warriors; militant social justice demonstrators and right-wing activists; and lots of theologians who were straight, gay, male, female, fighting for purity and fed up with the status quo -- a varied spectrum of people all living under the umbrella of the 'church.'

"I've listened to, and argued with, them all."

Berry was raised in the conservative Church of the Nazarene and, in the end, found her way back into a small flock of Nazarene progressives. But her searching taught her things. She knows she is allergic to incense. She can dress Presbyterian. She can tell Mennonites from the Amish. And she learned that she is not alone in this search.

"People want to make a faith their own," said Berry, a former social worker who is best known for writing the bestseller "Girlfriends."

"They don't want to go to a church just because they were born into it. ... They want to authentically express their own spirituality. They want to find that congregation that will help them find their own way, their own path."

It doesn't help that most religious groups keep changing -- in terms of doctrine and style. There are Baptists writing documents that look like creeds or confessions. There are Catholics who pick and choose what to believe in the catechism. There are Presbyterians who don't think hell and predestination matter anymore and Methodists who think evangelism is cultural imperialism.

Next door, there are fundamentalist churches that are as old-fashioned as ever, while others show movie clips in between the offerings of their hard-rock worship bands. There are flocks that use incense, candles and ancient rites while the priests sound like Oprah.

Berry openly argues that seekers must start by knowing their own needs and biases. She, for example, avoids churches that do not accept women as clergy. She learned to avoid churches -- on the left and right -- that "engaged in group-think" on politics. She found that vital small-group ministries were crucial.

She also found that she does not need a church with ironclad teachings on heaven and hell. She doesn't want to get tangled up in today's fierce debates about sexuality and marriage. Those issues are not at the top of her personal list, she said.

Thus, her book tried to offer a kind of consumer's guide to the worship, history and culture of various traditions -- Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Presbyterianism, Lutheranism, Congregationalism, Methodism, Pentecostalism and the complex world of Baptist and free-church evangelical life. She also included a detailed personal-faith survey.

The hard part is finding a balance between personal freedom and the larger framework of spiritual authority found in a church, said Berry. It is very American and very Protestant to want both at the same time.

"I believe in true Truth, with a big T," she said. "But I have to admit that I have a kind of shopping list of my own. I have my beliefs, too. I know that sounds contradictory, but there you go. ... You end up advocating a kind of spiritual consumerism. That makes me very uncomfortable, but that's the reality of what is going on out there. That's what people are doing."