Hollywood meets the pews

NEW YORK -- Cell phone to her ear, "Junket Bible" in hand, the studio publicist dashed into a Park Avenue hotel lobby to face another pack of journalists waiting to catch another shuttle to yet another movie.

"You're the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' press," she said. "Right?"

Nope -- wrong demographic.

This particular set of scribes represented Baptist Press, the Parents TV Council, Good News Magazine, the 700 Club, Eternal Word Television Network and 20 other religious outlets. They were ready to meet the talent behind a Christmas comedy called "Elf," and "Radio," a Good Samaritan parable wrapped in a football movie.

New York City was in pre-holiday-movie mode last week, with reporters of every stripe bouncing through tightly-scheduled events promoting six new films. There were hobbits in the Regency Hotel elevators and one angel (of the Charlie variety) in the bar. Sushi, cookie and bottled-water suppliers were busy.

In the middle of it all was Jonathan Bock, a unique Hollywood publicist who keeps underlining one big statistic for studio leaders -- week after week roughly five times as many people go to church as attend movies. In the past three years, his Grace Hill Media operation has helped promote 30 mainstream movies in religious media, from small films such as "A Walk to Remember" to epics such as "The Lord of the Rings."

"We promote films with a moral message, films that encourage people to lead better lives, that explore God or hope or faith," said Bock, a Presbyterian churchgoer and former sitcom writer. "Our goal is simple: we want Hollywood to make a ton of money from religious people. And if they're doing it, then that means they're successfully tapping into those themes. ...

"We've begun to see regular occurrences of studios making subtle changes to their product so that it appeals to this sizeable audience."

While Bock offers Hollywood a chance to reach pews, his work also offers religious-market journalists access to interviews and screenings that secular journalists take for granted. At the same time, actors and executives are hearing moral and theological questions whenever they enter what "Rings" director Peter Jackson has called "the God room."

Thus, "Elf" producer Todd Komarnicki tried to explain how his film is an innocent salute to "the light inside of us that never dies." Director Jon Favreau described his decision to rein in his comedic instincts to switch from PG-13 to PG. Comedian Will Ferrell said he discovered that constantly "sticking a lot of crude jokes in there" can be a cop out.

And in the "Radio" interviews, Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., was pressed for insights into how his faith affected his portrayal of a mentally-challenged man whose friendship with a high-school football coach changes a Bible Belt town. The movie, which is based on a true story, contains few overt religious references -- other than a church scene, a cross-stitch sampler of the "Serenity prayer" and the coach's office shrine for Paul "Bear" Bryant of Alabama.

"God's work is in everything I do and that is, hopefully, evident," said Gooding. "But with this movie, it's so much bigger than the conversation of religion. It's about a faith in the humanity of the people and, you see, that's about God, too." So spiritual lessons are present, he said, even "without being specific about God's will in the life of these people of Anderson, S.C."

This kind of vaguely spiritual talk tends to make movie professionals nervous. It also falls short of the doctrinal rhetoric favored by Hollywood's fiercest critics.

Meanwhile, the extremists in these two worlds -- the hard-core Religious Right and Hollywood's lifestyle left -- may never agree to sit down and chat with tape recorders rolling, said Greg Wright of HollywoodJesus.com.

"Still, I think what Grace Hill is doing is significant," said Wright. "When religious people actually meet Hollywood people they discover there's no reason to get all hysterical about all of the things that they're always getting so hysterical about. The Hollywood people are not the demons they thought they were going to be.

"Then the Hollywood people meet the religious press people and realize they're not the dithering fools that most Hollywood people think they are. Some even ask interesting questions they haven't heard before.

"It's a start."

Define 'Jewish,' please

The telephone rings during dinner and a dispassionate voice invites you to participate in a survey probing the sex lives of modern Americans.

Who wants to answer such intimate questions?

"Surveys like this always tilt because of the kinds of people who are willing to discuss their private affairs with a stranger," said Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition.

"It may sound strange, but that's how I feel about Jewish surveys, right now. It's almost like sex. Some of the questions we face are so personal that there is a modest crowd -- including some very devout people -- who are going to tell that stranger on the telephone to take a hike. The whole subject is too personal."

So pity the researchers who conducted the long-delayed National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001, which is based on interviews with 4,500 Jews. Sponsors at the United Jewish Communities -- an umbrella covering 550 groups -- call it the most detailed statistical portrait of American Jews ever assembled. Critics say it's so limited and flawed that its 2 percent margin of error is meaningless.

Nevertheless, the initial results are being parsed by everyone from Washington politicos to Jewish educators, from community leaders to the faithful who will gather this weekend for Yom Kippur services that close the High Holy Days.

The usual family statistics are making news. This survey found 5.2 million U.S. Jews, down from 5.5 million in a controversial 1990 study. Since 1996, 47 percent of Jews who married chose a non-Jewish partner, up from 43 percent in 1990. This is crucial, since 96 percent of children with two Jewish parents are raised as Jews, as opposed to 33 percent in homes with one Jewish parent.

Meanwhile, the Jewish population keeps getting grayer and birth rates remain low.

These numbers raise painful questions. But so does the content of the survey itself, said Lapin, a national leader among cultural conservatives. The first thing researchers had to ask was, "Are you a Jew?" This is a loaded question, rooted in personal questions about family and faith.

The survey defined a Jew as someone whose "religion is Jewish, OR, whose religion is Jewish and something else, OR, who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, OR, who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing."

The goal, said survey manager Lorraine Blass, was to cast a wide net of "communal definitions," not to reconcile divisive doctrinal issues about identity. "We don't claim our definitions are the only definitions for who is and who is not Jewish," she said.

But all definitions include some and exclude others, said research director Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz. This survey, for example, was clear to include Jewish Buddhists. But its "non-monotheistic religion" clause excluded two people who had converted from Judaism to Islam. The "whose religion is Jewish and something else" clause created another problem.

"We included people who said they were both Jewish and Catholic or Jewish and something else," he said. "But if they identified themselves as Jewish Christians or we found some evidence that they were Messianic Jews, then we excluded them from the study. We had to draw that line."

Amid the whirlwind of complications, researchers found some positive numbers, primarily among a core group of 4.3 million adults and children who are more connected to Jewish life. There are signs of new interest in Jewish education and religious ritual. Also, that rising intermarriage statistic may be stabilizing.

This is a good news, bad news situation, said Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program. While millions of marginalized Jews are becoming ever more assimilated into American culture, others appear to be making renewed efforts to practice their faith and pass it on to children.

"We do have our work cut out for us," he said. "Our grandparents prayed for a melting pot and what they got was a meltdown. ... But this is a pattern we see in Jewish history. There always seems to be a small number of Jews who rebuild the Jewish community, over and over. Someone has to actually practice the rituals and traditions of the faith. That is what lasts."

The testimony of Johnny Cash

As a veteran of many Billy Graham crusades, Johnny Cash must have known the parable of the drunken airline passenger by heart.

Here's how Graham told this old, old story during his1985 South Florida crusade.

One day, the evangelist boarded an airplane at the same time as a fat, boisterous drunk who cursed up a storm and even pinched a stewardess. The crew finally wrestled the man to his seat -- right in front of Graham. Another passenger leaned over and said he ought to behave. Didn't he know who was behind him?

"You don't say," the man said. Then he turned and loudly said, "Are you Billy Graham? ... Put her there! Your sermons have sure helped me!"

After the laughter, Graham warmly introduced Cash, who added another punch line.

"I wonder," said Cash, "why he thought about introducing me right after he talked about the rowdy drunk on the airplane."

Yes, Cash knew his role as a missionary to the backsliders.

The man in black was a country kid who embraced his mother's faith, then flung it away, the hell raiser who got saved, and saved and then saved some more. Cash sang about the hope of heaven and the siren songs of hell. Time magazine put it this way: "Here was a man who knew the Commandments because he had broken so many of them."

The gritty details filled 1,500 songs and a lifetime of work in television, movies, books and nights on the road. For years, Cash prowled the stage on amphetamines and wept as he sang "The Old Rugged Cross" -- often in the same show.

Things got better after he married June Carter in 1968, a meeting of souls made in heaven, but worked out in the flesh under the parental gaze of Ezra and Maybelle Carter. These country-music pioneers not only prayed at Cash's bedside while he kicked drugs, but hung on through years of front-porch Bible study as he walked the line toward redemption.

Cash was in a spiritual war and he knew it. Thus, he constantly quoted Romans 8:13 as his favorite verse: "For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live...."

The superstar also knew that millions of people were watching and waiting for him to fall. He lived in that hot spotlight until the day he died.

"I have been a professional entertainer," said Cash, at a 1989 Graham crusade in his home state of Arkansas. "My personal life and problems have been widely publicized. There have been things said about me that made people ask, 'Is Johnny Cash really a Christian?'

"Well, I take great comfort in the words of the apostle Paul who said, 'What I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do.' And he said, 'It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me. But who,' he asks, 'will deliver me from this body of death?' And he answers for himself and for me, 'Through Jesus Christ the Lord.' "

This language he used in his Graham crusade testimonies was loftier than his style on stage. But the words hit home because Cash knew that his listeners knew he was there flaws and all. So he talked about his struggles with drugs -- past, present and future. He talked about the flaws in his family life. Cash named his idols and his demons and urged others to do the same.

The man in black was on the same Gospel road throughout his life, even when he detoured into the gutter, said Steve Beard, author of the Cash profile in the book "Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced 12 Musical Icons."

"This was the real Johnny Cash.

Symbols & Substance in Alabama

Susan Pace Hamill's colleagues on the law faculty at the University of Alabama were puzzled when she decided to spend her hard-earned sabbatical studying the Bible.

Why study Greek at Samford University's evangelical Beeson Divinity School? What was a tax-law specialist who had worked in New York City and Washington, D.C., supposed to do with a Masters in Theological Studies degree?

Hamill wasn't exactly sure herself, but she certainly wasn't trying to start a political crusade.

"If you divide the world into people who are on the side of money and people who are not, then I'm on the side of money," she said. "I'm a corporate lawyer. It's what I do."

Then she read an article about Alabama's income, property and sales tax laws that shook her faith as well as her legal convictions. One statistic cut deep: A family of four had to pay taxes if it earned $4,600 a year, a figure that was light years below the $17,601 poverty line.

Before long before she was writing statements such as this: "Alabamians are, or at least claim to be, a Christian people. ... However, in one glaring case Alabamians have strayed far from the direction that God's moral compass provides. When one examines the suffering and hardship Alabama's tax structure inflicts on the poorest and neediest among us, one cannot fail to see the enormous gap that exists between what God's moral values demand and what we have allowed our state to become."

The typical essay quoted 20-plus Bible verses per page, with special attention given to prodding ministers and wealthy Christians. Hamill added hard statistics and legal scholarship, seeking "10 witnesses and DNA" to build an ironclad case. The bottom line?

"Alabama's tax structure," she wrote, is the "sort of system condemned by the Old Testament Prophets and by Jesus as inconsistent with God's Word."

Hamill called her Beeson thesis "An Argument for Tax Relief Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics" and, after a burst of local news coverage, lots of people started reading it -- including Republican Gov. Bob Riley. This rock-ribbed Southern Baptist conservative proceeded to propose the biggest tax increase in state history, telling Alabamians that "we're supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor."

The $1.2 billion tax package lost on Sept. 9 by a crushing 68 to 32 percent margin. Nevertheless, Hamill believes the cause might rise again. It would certainly help if certain media and political elites took off their ideological blinders.

She isn't the only person who thinks that. Gregg Easterbrook of the New Republic was appalled by the lack of support Riley's crusade received from the proud progressives in the national media. This is especially true in comparison with the oceans of digital ink spilled over a 2.5-ton granite monument in the Alabama Supreme Court rotunda.

Major newspapers and networks, he noted, swarmed over the Ten Commandments story, but ignored the tax-reform effort. It's fair to ask, "Why?"

"Why does the crackpot judge get 24-7 coverage," he asked, "when the noble governor gets almost none? Because the snarling judge and his intolerant followers show Christianity in a bad light; by granting them attention, the media make Christianity look bad. Gov. Riley's crusade to help the poor shows Christianity at its luminous best. Therefore the media ignore Riley."

Hamill isn't that harsh. But she agrees that a symbolic chunk of granite received more than its share of coverage, especially in contrast to the substance of the tax-reform plan, which would have affected paychecks, schools, businesses and grocery bags.

The ultimate question, she concluded, is whether citizens honor the content of the Ten Commandments and the civic principles that flow out of them. That's a big story, too.

"The plan failed," she said. "Does that mean the moral message failed? I hope not. I hope and pray that the movement down here is just getting started. Sometimes grassroots movements take time.

Vanilla values on the DC mall

The program opened with a homily by President Bush about American values, teamwork, dedication and the National Football League.

It ended with Aretha Franklin singing the National Anthem, with the glare of red rockets reaching the dome of the U.S. Capitol.

Washington Redskins great Joe Theismann reverently called it "a national moment of remembrance," saluting thousands of uniformed military personnel in the crowd. ABC Sports and "New Pepsi Vanilla and Diet Pepsi Vanilla, the Not-So-Vanilla Vanilla" simply called it "NFL Kickoff Live 2003."

This pre-packaged spectacle on the National Mall was business as usual for most American viewers. But it may have taught a lesson to the 7,000-plus pastors, parents and youth ministers who read and passed on one of Walt Mueller's email alerts to punch "record" on their VCRs and use this as a religious education lab.

"This kind of stuff has become so mainstream that we don't even blink," said Mueller, founder of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding (www.cpyu.org) in Elizabethtown, Pa. "The whole thing is about mass marketing, of course, but those messages are mixed in there with patriotism, sex, entertainment, sports and everything else. ...

"This was a peek into the American soul. It said, 'This is what we value. This is what we think is acceptable, good and, of course, cool.' "

The show had something for everyone, from the generic rage of tattooed suburban rockers to bluesy power chords by graying superstars who are eligible for the AARP. Football legends hugged military heroes, while TV producers wrapped everything in red, white and blue.

But the reason many tuned in was to see what former Mickey Mouse Club boy toy Britney Spears would do to top her girl-on-girl love fest with Madonna on the recent MTV Video Music Awards. The one-time Southern Baptist babe gave it her best shot, lip-syncing her way through gender-bending "freak dance" moves that mimicked sex with reed-thin female dancers as well as the hunky males.

Washington Post critic Tom Shales was amused, in a tired sort of way: "When they weren't being groped or fondled by her, dancers helped Spears strip her pants off, revealing a bikini-like black bottom. ... They even helped straighten out the little pixie's shorty shorts so that they didn't reveal too much. Or maybe so that they did."

It was a pathetic sight, said Mueller, and many viewers probably laughed. But it's important for adults to see this through the eyes of millions of girls who started watching Spears -- with parental blessings -- when they were nine or 10 years of age. Now they are entering a time of tremendous physical, emotional and spiritual changes.

What did they see on their television screens?

"Twelve- to 14-year-old girls are not going to watch something like this and say, 'Oh, what a cynical attempt to be shocking in the name of commercialism,' " said Mueller. "No, the girls who grew up with Britney -- whether they want to admit it or not -- have to see this and think: 'This is how Britney looks now. This is how she acts now.

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.