The Passion and the Talmud

The ancient rabbinic text is clear about the punishment for those who twisted sacred law and misled the people of Israel.

Offenders would be stoned and then hung by their hands from two pieces of wood connected to form a "T." The Talmud once included this example from the Sanhedrin.

"On the eve of Passover they hung Jesus of Nazareth," said the passage, which was censored in the 16th century to evade the wrath of Christians. "The herald went out before him for 40 days saying, 'Jesus goes forth to be stoned, because he has practiced magic, enticed and led astray Israel. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and declare concerning him.' And they found nothing in his favor."

If armies of Jewish and Christian scholars insist on arguing about Mel Gibson's explosive movie "The Passion of the Christ," it would help if they were candid and started dealing with the hard passages in Jewish texts as well as the Christian scriptures.

At least, that's what David Klinghoffer thinks.

The Orthodox Jewish writer -- whose forthcoming book is entitled "Why the Jews Rejected Christ" -- believes these lines from the Talmud are as troubling as any included in the Christian Gospels. They are as disturbing as any image Gibson might include in his controversial epic.

The Talmudic text seems clear. Jesus clashed with Jewish leaders, debating them on the meaning of their laws. They hated him. Many wanted him dead.

It is possible, said Klinghoffer, to interpret these documents as saying that Jesus' fate rested entirely with the Jewish court. The use of language such as "enticed and led astray" indicated that Jesus may have been charged with leading his fellow Jews to worship false gods.

There are more details in this confusing drama. Writing in 12th-century Egypt, the great Jewish sage Maimonides summed up the ancient texts.

"Jesus of Nazareth," he proclaims, in his Letter to Yemen, " ... impelled people to believe that he was a prophet sent by God to clarify perplexities in the Torah, and that he was the Messiah that was predicted by each and every seer. He interpreted the Torah and its precepts in such a fashion as to lead to their total annulment, to the abolition of all its commandments and to the violation of its prohibitions.

"The sages, of blessed memory, having become aware of his plans before his reputation spread among our people, meted out fitting punishment to him."

Is that it? What role did the Romans play?

In terms of historic fact, stressed Klinghoffer, it's almost impossible to find definitive answers for such questions. But the purpose of the Jewish oral traditions that led to the Talmud was to convey religious belief, not necessarily historical facts.

"If you really must ask, 'Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?', then you can only conclude that both the Gospels and the Talmud agree that the Jewish leaders did not have the power to execute him," he said.

"Did they influence the event? The religious texts suggest that they did, the historic texts suggest that they did not. It's hard to know. ... But if Gibson is an anti-Semite, then to be consistent you would have to say that so was Maimonides."

Obviously, Klinghoffer is not spreading this information in order to fan the flames of hatred. His goal, he said, is to provoke Jewish leaders in cities such as New York and Los Angeles to strive harder to understand the views of traditional Protestants and Catholics. And it's time for liberal Christians to spend as much time talking with Orthodox Jews as with liberal Jews.

It's time to everyone to be more honest, he said.

"I don't see anything that is to be gained for Judaism by going out of our way to antagonize a Mel Gibson or to antagonize as many traditional Christians as we possibly can. I think we have been yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater," said Klinghoffer.

"To put it another way, I don't think it's very wise for a few Jewish leaders to try to tell millions of Christians what they are supposed to believe. Would we want some Christians to try to edit our scriptures and to tell us what we should believe?"

Terrorism, fiction and the Truth

WASHINGTON -- One of the most sobering sights that novelist Joel Rosenberg has ever seen was the glitter of Manhattan outside the windows of a Learjet a few months after Sept. 11.

Since this was a private plane, its passengers did not pass through a metal detector and have their ID cards checked. There were no security procedures at all.

"It was the middle of the night and we were flying right over Ground Zero," he said. "I remember saying at the time that there was nothing -- literally nothing -- except our own morality that could stop us from taking a private jet like this one and doing pretty much whatever we wanted to do with it. That's still true."

This moral blind spot in the war on terror has bugged Rosenberg for years. That's why his first novel -- the 2002 bestseller "The Last Jihad" -- opened with a private jet exploding into a presidential motorcade in the not-so-distant future.

Rosenberg was writing the final chapters of that book on the morning of Sept. 11. That meant he had some rewriting to do.

But those kamikaze pilots were front and center in chapter one, written in 2000. So was the author's emphasis on faith. This is what happens when a Jewish Christian who used to work for Rush Limbaugh and Israeli politico Benjamin Netanyahu starts writing thrillers about nuclear terrorism. The religious content increased in the 2003 sequel, "The Last Days," which earned Rosenberg a $1 million advance.

Many secular critics have been brutal, including the Washington Post's infamous verdict that his work was "an act of terrorism on the reader's brain."

Rosenberg is unapologetic. He said he simply started asking "what-if questions" about terrorism in America and the Middle East and tried to figure out the answers. As it turned out, the timing was right to ask big questions about good and evil.

For example, one of Rosenberg's fictional heroes is a retired Israeli spy who is convinced that American leaders cannot wage a war on terror because they no longer believe that evil is spiritual reality. Thus, they also doubt the existence of eternal, absolute truth.

This theme shouldn't be surprising, said Rosenberg, because his ancestors were Orthodox Jews who fled the pogroms of Russia. The writer's father was Jewish and his mother Methodist. Both converted as adults to evangelical Christianity, as did their son.

"Because of my own faith and my family's experiences, I truly believe in the reality of evil. ... But many, many people in this town do not," said Rosenberg, sitting in a coffee shop on Capitol Hill. "That includes lots of people in the U.S. intelligence community and the state department. They had a hard time conceiving of a 9/11 because they didn't BELIEVE it could happen.

"What we had was not so much a failure of intelligence as it was a failure of moral imagination. ... It was a worldview problem."

All Rosenberg did was take these religious convictions and blend them with what he knew about politics, economics, world affairs and intelligence work -- creating fiction. It also didn't hurt that his political roots gave him bullet-proof ties to the rulers of talk radio. During one blitz, he was on 160 radio and television programs in a month.

Some of these shows were religious, but the vast majority of them were secular. Also, his books were published by a mainstream company, rather than a religious one. This was intentional, he said, because the Christian writers he admires the most -- such as J.R.R. Tolkien and John Grisham -- dominate shelves in secular bookstores.

Now it's time to navigate the minefield of making a movie in mainstream Hollywood. Rosenberg also faces hard decisions about the content of his future books. What happens to his themes of moral absolutes and religious conversion?

"I don't know if Hollywood producers are going to want those scenes in a movie," he said. "We'll have to see. Whatever happens, it won't weaken my conviction that Christians and other conservatives have not been doing enough to tell these kinds of stories in the secular media.

"We have to try. Who knows? We may have stories that people want to hear and see. That is, if the stories are good enough."

That Christians For Dean www guy

John Paget has no doubt there are conservative Christians in cyberspace who are praying for the salvation of his soul.

This may seem like a strange use of prayer time, seeing as how he is a pro-life, evangelical Christian who is a graduate of Biola University -- once the Bible Institute of Los Angeles -- and active at the First Baptist Church in Olympia, Wash.

Then again, Paget runs a certain political website.

It's www.ChristiansForDean.info, with this cheery headline: "Good News! Christians don't have to vote Republican anymore!"

Thus, Paget gets mail. Some of it says "hallelujah" or "Thank God somebody is doing this." But many correspondents disagree.

"Lots of people assume I'm a fake, some stooge working for the campaign who is trying to fake Christians into voting for Dean," he said. "Some people think I'm all mixed up. Many others assume that I'm lost and they say they're praying that I will accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior."

Paget laughed and added: "So I feel supported in what I do. I have all these people praying for me."

Other letters urgently question Paget's core belief -- that his progressive views on peace, economics, gender and the environment can justify voting for a politician who backs abortion rights and gay rights.

Consider this email from Austin, Texas: "If you are a Christian and plan to vote for Dean, or a Democrat, you need to get on your knees and ask God for guidance because you are on the wrong track, or you do not worship the same God as do most Christians. ... They will eventually lead to the downfall of this nation. Wake up."

Actually, Paget is a documentary filmmaker and he does not work for Dean. He also noted that he is registered as an independent. Nevertheless, he is a statistical rarity. He is a morally conservative churchgoer who feels at home among Democrats. Dean and the other Democrats know they need to find more people like Paget -- quick.

It's a matter of numbers. Voter News Service found that 14 percent of 2000 voters attended religious services more than once a week. These voters backed George W. Bush by a 27-percent margin. The 14 percent of the voters who said they never attended went to Al Gore by a 29-percent margin.

These secular voters are especially crucial in major cities on both coasts, noted Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio of the City University of New York, writing in The Public Interest. But national Democratic candidates know they also need votes in the Bible Belt and heartland.

This "pew gap" is not new. While trends vary among blacks and Hispanics, they noted, the religion gap among white voters in the 1992, 1996 and 2000 presidential elections was "more important than other demographic and social cleavages. ... (It) was much larger than the gender gap and more significant than any combination of differences in education, income, occupation, age, marital status and regional groupings."

Meanwhile, the fastest growing Democratic power bloc is what Bolce and De Maio called the "anti-fundamentalist" voter. In 1996 and 2000, about a third of the total white Democratic presidential vote came from these voters that identified themselves as intensely secular or religious liberals.

As a member of the progressive United Church of Christ, Dean was preaching to these voters when he told a Houston crowd, "We've got to stop voting on guns, gods, gays and school prayer." He also told the Washington Post that his faith played a crucial role in convincing him to sign a Vermont bill legalizing civil unions for gays. "From a religious point of view, if God had thought homosexuality is a sin, he would not have created gay people," he said.

Hear those church doors slamming?

At some point, said Paget, Democratic candidates will have to learn how to reach out to traditional believers, especially those -- such as Southern evangelicals and northern Catholics -- who once were crucial to their party's fortunes.

"Democrats have to get over their hostility to Christians and realize that we are not all Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells," he said. "They have to stop taking pot-shots at us and be willing to invite us into a broader, more diverse Democratic Party."

The passion of old words and symbols

Jesuits rarely receive frantic calls from Hollywood megastars rushing to finish movies that are causing media firestorms.

But Father William Fulco is getting used to it, as Mel Gibson completes his cathartic epic "The Passion of the Christ."

While mixing dialogue the other day, Gibson hit a scene in which a man standing at a door lacked something to say. The director needed a line -- right now. Fulco's first question was unique to this project: Was this character supposed to speak Latin or first-century Aramaic?

"Mel said the camera was not on the speaker's face, so we did not need to synchronize what he said with his the movements of his mouth," said Fulco, who translated the screenplay into the two ancient languages, with English subtitles.

"The character needed to say something in Aramaic in the ballpark of, 'What do you want?' So I had him say in rather colloquial early Aramaic, 'MAH? MAH BA'EH?' That is literally, 'What? What wanting?' "

That worked.

It has been nearly two years since Fulco answered the telephone and heard a strange voice blurt out: "Hey Padre! It's Mel!"

Gibson's proposal was unusual, but fit the Jesuit's skills as a professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Fulco began digging into Hebrew texts seeking the roots of the now-dead Aramaic language, while simultaneously exploring dialects such as Syriac spoken today in tiny Christian enclaves in Iran, Syria and Turkey. He also stepped into heated academic debates between those who favor a more Italian-friendly Latin and those who reject this approach.

"I'm getting hate mail about Latin pronunciations," said Fulco. "On guy wrote who was angry about what he called 'these ecclesiastical bastardizations' of the Latin. Not only was he going to boycott the movie, he said he was going to call his high school Latin teacher and tell her to boycott the movie as well. ...

"I have to keep reminding people: This is not a documentary. We had to make artistic choices."

Legions of critics, of course, oppose the film for other reasons. Liberal Catholics and some Jewish leaders claim the script is tainted by anti-Semitism. Meanwhile, Gibson -- who has invested $25 million in the project -- has previewed early versions to rapt audiences of traditional Catholics, evangelicals and others. The film opens on 2,000 U.S. screens on Feb. 25, which is Ash Wednesday.

It is crucial to realize that the images and language at the heart of "The Passion of the Christ" flow directly out of Gibson's personal dedication to Catholicism in one of its most traditional and mysterious forms -- the 16th century Latin Mass.

"I don't go to any other services," the director told the Eternal Word Television Network. "I go to the old Tridentine Rite. That's the way that I first saw it when I was a kid. So I think that that informs one's understanding of how to transcend language. Now, initially, I didn't understand the Latin. ... But I understood the meaning and the message and what they were doing. I understood it very fully and it was very moving and emotional and efficacious, if I may say so."

The goal of the movie is to shake modern audiences by brashly juxtaposing the "sacrifice of the cross with the sacrifice of the altar -- which is the same thing," said Gibson. This ancient union of symbols and sounds has never lost its hold on him. There is, he stressed, "a lot of power in these dead languages."

Thus, the seemingly bizarre choice of Latin and Aramaic was actually part of the message. The goal of Gibson's multicultural, multilingual team was to make a statement that transcended any one time, culture and tongue.

"We didn't want another movie with Jesus as some kind of Aryan superman or Jesus as a surfer," said Fulco. "We saw one movie in which Jesus was almost this Michael Jackson kind of character. Try to imagine that. ...

"We didn't want an American Jesus, or a Japanese Jesus or a French Jesus. What we wanted was a language that allowed Jesus to be none of these nationalities, so that he can be all of them at the same time. This is a universal story."

Deja vu Nativity wars

Another Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Winter Solstice season has come and gone, but the lawyers will be cleaning up for quite a while.

Things got rough on the church-state front. Pick a zip code.

Firefighters in Glenview, Ill., were ordered to take down their station's lights, tree and Santa when neighbors said they were offended.

A pastor in Chandler, Ariz., was grieved when the public library set up a display of readings about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, but not Christmas. Instead of adding Christian books, as the pastor requested, the library staff removed the whole display.

The American Civil Liberties Union intervened in Tallahassee, Fla., when the Jewish Chabad offered to help county commissioners buy a 22-foot menorah for the courthouse yard. Both sides threatened lawsuits, until a shopping center offered to play host.

The conflict is now global. Leaders of the Abbey National Bank in England ordered the Upminster branch to remove an offensive Nativity scene from private property. Down under, the Anglican archbishop of Sidney, Australia, protested new bans on Christmas decorations in businesses and schools.

There were waves of similar cases.

But this drama would not be complete without an election dispute in Palm Beach, Fla., where protestors are trying to unseat council members who nixed a creche on public land, next to a holiday tree and a city-owned menorah. This gets complicated. Officials offered to allow a creche in a city park next to a menorah used in rites by the Orthodox Lubavitch Center. So there could be a Nativity scene next to the "religious" menorah in the park's display area, but no Nativity scene next to the "secular" menorah on a street median.

This week, the council voted to avoid the religious symbolism wars altogether.

"It's a mess," said Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which is involved in several Christmas cases. "The key ... is that a Christmas tree simply does not equal a menorah, because the courts have said that a Christmas tree has become a secular symbol while a menorah is a religious symbol.

"To put a more neutral spin on it, it's really clear that an evergreen holiday tree with totally secular decorations on it is not a Christian symbol."

Not all creche controversies are created equal. The most problematic involve government-owned and operated decorations on public land. In other cases, authorities may allow diverse collections of private religious decorations on public sites that are zones for free speech. With private groups, on private property, anything goes.

The case law is actually decades old, noted Marci Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University. Nevertheless, many public and private leaders remain confused.

In a recent Pennsylvania case, a school's multicultural committee set up a display with a creche, a menorah and a Kwanzaa scene, she noted, writing for FindLaw's Legal Commentary. Although this display was almost certainly constitutional, a principal panicked and ordered only the creche removed.

The message in the original, diverse display, she noted, was "not one of endorsement for a particular religious viewpoint," but that government was "acknowledging the celebrations of its various citizens. And that is perfectly constitutional."

Meanwhile, there is no legal entitlement for citizens to demand that government acknowledge their particular faith, she noted. Civic leaders should try to offer equal access or do nothing. But if diverse decorations are allowed, then there "no constitutional right not to be exposed to the holidays, either," she noted. Some may be offended.

At times, the whole debate becomes a tornado of lawyers arguing about how many generic angels, non-liturgical stars and strings of secular twinkle lights beleaguered politicos must drape around religious symbols to make them safe for public consumption.

Enough is more than enough, said J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington, D.C.

"Why not just put Nativity scenes on the front lawns of every single church in town?", he asked. "Why do people think they need to get the government get involved, which shoves things into a constitutional zone where you have to start counting the number of reindeer and Santas around your Nativity scene so that everybody knows you're trying to be neutral?

"Why don't our churches just get together and handle this?"

Divided by the Creeds?

The words are ancient, yet affirmed by all who join the Episcopal Church.

The bishop asks them: "Do you believe in God the Father?" New members reply: "I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth."

The bishop asks: "Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?" They reply: "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary."

There are more doctrinal questions where those came from. This covenant is based on the Nicene Creed (325 A.D.), which is affirmed at Anglican altars everywhere.

This is good, according to one network of progressive Episcopalians, because the way to avoid a global Anglican schism will be to focus on creeds, rather than trying to agree on what the Bible teaches about sex.

The bottom line, argues the Claiming the Blessing coalition, is that "there is no universal 'plain truth of Scripture' in our tradition, save that interpreted for us by the universal creeds. To claim differently is ... to propose a change in the fundamental nature of Anglicanism."

But what if postmodern believers can't agree on what the ancient creeds teach?

The Claiming the Blessing document is backed by groups such as the Episcopal Women's Caucus and Integrity, the caucus for gay, lesbian and bisexual Episcopalians. It was released after the election of a noncelibate homosexual as bishop of New Hampshire.

While Bishop V. Gene Robinson has continued to dominate news reports, many Anglicans are trying to move on and debate more fundamental issues, said the Rev. Susan Russell, director of Claiming the Blessing and president of Integrity.

"Believe me, I would much rather be having deep conversations about peoples' theological orientations than their sexual orientations," she said. "But anything that is about sex is, well, sexy and that's going to get attention. ... Those issues are so polarizing. What we need to find is some unity."

The Claiming the Blessing document is crucial precisely for this reason, said journalist Douglas LeBlanc, writing in the Episcopal Life newspaper. It has candidly underlined the "clash of worldviews that is ultimately at the foundation of our church's arguments about sex. To the letter's question about whether the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds are our common confession, I must answer: I sure hope so."

But creeds only provide unity if people agree on what the words mean. LeBlanc asked, for example, if Claiming the Blessing's leaders believe the creeds are literally "statements of theological reality?

2003 -- Divided by the Sacraments

The atmosphere could not have been tenser as the world's Anglican archbishops gathered in the privacy of Lambeth Palace in London. The world was watching. Conservative Anglicans -- most from Third World altars -- were furious that the U.S. Episcopal Church and its allies were ignoring global calls not to enthrone a noncelibate gay bishop in New Hampshire.

No doubt about it, the consecration of Bishop V. Gene Robinson grabbed headlines and easily won the Religion Newswriters Association poll to determine its top 10 events of 2003. More than 80 percent of the religion-beat specialists named Robinson as Religion Newsmaker of the Year, beating out Pope John Paul II and deposed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

But there was much more to this story than the election of one bishop in a tiny Episcopal diocese and the development of same-sex union rites for Anglican altars in North America. After all, there are 2 million Episcopalians. There are between 40 and 50 million Anglicans in Africa, alone.

Robinson's consecration raised a question that could no longer be avoided: How can the Anglican Communion remain intact when it is divided by sacraments, rather than united by them?

Consider a symbolic moment in the Lambeth Palace summit, when traditionalists learned that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams would open that October meeting with the Holy Eucharist. Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria quickly informed Williams that several primates could not take part, since they no longer considered themselves in Communion with U.S. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

"They did this privately, as a courtesy, because they didn't want to create a scene," said an American priest active in debriefing sessions with the archbishops.

Williams was horrified, his face flushed. The archbishop of Canterbury pleaded with Akinola and members of the Third World coalition to receive Communion.

"Rowan asked them to receive since they remained in Communion with him," said another activist close to the African archbishops. "They did so. If they had not had the discussion about not receiving, they would not have been able to produce the tough statement that came out of the meeting. "If they had not received, the meeting would have been over."

Williams drew a sacramental line at the altar and demanded that the Third World archbishops cross it. But will they continue to do so? For how long?

Anglicans are not alone in wrestling with these moral, doctrinal and sacramental questions. Just ask the Presbyterians, Lutherans and United Methodists.

Their answers will affect everything from the number of bodies in pews, to the number of dollars in offering plates, to the number of lawyers on denominational payrolls.

Here are the rest of the top 10 stories in the RNA poll:

(2) The war in Iraq divided some religious communities, with the National Council of Churches and other mainline churches opposed while most evangelical Protestants supported the White House. Some relief efforts also caused controversy.

(3) Clashing definitions of "marriage" continued to cause controversy as the Massachusetts Supreme Court overturned a gay-marriage ban. Meanwhile conservatives debated how to word a proposed constitutional amendment on marriage. A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court ended a Texas ban against homosexual sodomy.

(4) Amid a flurry of protest and litigation, a Ten Commandments monument was removed from Alabama's Judicial Building. Justice Moore was removed from office.

(5) The Roman Catholic Church earned both praise and scorn as it tried to implement plans to combat priestly sex abuse. Bishop Sean Patrick O'Malley of Palm Beach succeeded Cardinal Bernard Law in Boston and earned high marks. Convicted sex-abuser John Geoghan was killed in prison.

(6) The pope celebrated the 25th anniversary of his election, while growing concerns about his health fueled renewed speculation about his eventual successor.

(7) A tough economy and, in many cases, strife in pews caused red ink and budget cuts in many denominations.

(8) After intense debate, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) retained its "fidelity and chastity" standards for clergy sexual behavior.

(9) The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a California case challenging the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

(10) The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod overturned the suspension of New York President David Benke for participation in an interfaith service after Sept.11. Further debate on interfaith worship is expected in 2004.

What is a 'carol' anyway?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Second of two columns on traditional carols.

The story begins with the Empress Helena, who commanded that the relics of the Wise Men of the East be brought to Byzantium.

These three skulls were eventually taken to Milan and, in 1162, to Cologne. According to folk tradition, the relics made their journey from Bethlehem to Cologne in three ships. As minstrels kept singing the songs, the destination changed and so did the identity of the travelers.

The result was a carol: "I saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day on Christmas day. I saw three ships come sailing in, on Christmas Day in the morning." It asked, "And what was in those ships all three?" The answer was the Holy Family, or "Our Savior Christ and his lady." The carol asked, "And where they sailed those ships all three?" The obvious answer: "All they sailed in to Bethlehem."

The logic may escape singers today. But it worked for centuries of carolers in the pageants, processions and parties during Christmas and the 12-day season that followed.

"The true Christmas carol is anonymous, both the text and the tune. A true carol is something like 'I Saw Three Ships' or 'The First Noel.' Many of them are very, very old," said scholar Hugh T. McElrath, author of "The History of Our Christian Faith In Hymns."

"Hymns tend to be more formal and church-centered and from a particular composer in a particular place and time. Carols just spring up among the people and it's common to find many different versions handed down from generation to generation."

The question now is whether centuries of carols can survive modern trends, from the secularization of public holiday music to the contemporary church's hunger for music that constantly changes to mirror pop sales charts.

Christmas carols can be traced to St. Francis of Assisi and his Nativity dramas in 1223. Carols were sung as "intermezzi" between scenes of the "mystery plays" for centuries. The carols became so popular that theater players and members of the audience began processing into the streets, singing and dancing.

After all, noted Erik Routley in his classic book "The English Carol," early definitions of "carol," "carole" or "karolle" define this music as a round dance. "Even if we say that to all general purposes today a carol is a cheerful seasonal song ... we shall never understand its extraordinary history if we forget that it began not as a pious religious gesture but as a dance," he wrote.

When it came time for Christmas festivals, few drew a stark line between sacred and secular. Thus, the home of the true Christmas carol was not in the safety of a church sanctuary, surrounded by marble and pure candlelight. Carols were sung on sidewalks and in the marketplace, in homes and in taverns.

"The dance could be trivial, but the church would spiritualize it," noted Routley. "Feasting could be orgiastic, but the church would balance it with fasting. Joy could be selfish and frantic, but the church would make it sane."

This happened in many cultures, from the festive Christmas carols of Latin America to the rousing Russian "kolyadki," which were shared by carolers who gladly accepted food, drink and coins as they moved from house to house. North American folk music has already yielded classic carols such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain" and "Away in a Manger."

And what about today?

As long as people gather to celebrate Christmas together, they will produce new carols and pass along classics to future generations, said Kenneth W. Osbeck, author of "101 Hymn Stories" and many similar books. There have been hard times for carolers in the past, such as the Puritan era when such public revelry was banned.

If the Christmas season is celebrated with joy, then the carols will survive.

"I can't think of a single carol that has a note of sadness and tragedy to it," said Osbeck. "Maybe there are a few, I don't know. But what unites these simple songs -- from culture to culture and in all settings and times -- is that simple sense of joy in celebrating Christmas and the birth of Jesus Christ.

"If people want to share that joy with others, then that's what the carols are for."

A Caroling We (Don't) Go

Sometime just before Christmas, maestro Patrick Kavanaugh will gather a few friends to take part in a quietly subversive public rite.

Slipping from house to house under cover of darkness, it is their intention to sing pieces of explicit, doctrinal religious music to family, neighbors and even strangers. They do this every year, even if it is snowing.

Historians refer to this rare activity as "Christmas caroling."

"People really do love it," said Kavanaugh, conductor for the Christian Performing Artists Fellowship in Haymarket, Va. "Wherever you go, people hear the singing and they meet you at the door and they're just glowing. I guess it's like a form of Americana for some people, like a glimpse of the past."

Kavanaugh paused for a second and laughed. It was a sad laugh.

"People love it, but I have to admit that I don't know many others who are still out there doing this. ... What are you supposed to do with a carol like 'Away in a Manger' if people think you're celebrating something called the Winter Festival?"

Christmas carols have not vanished.

People still sing them at family reunions, in church services and at safe, private parties. Churches may also send cars full of carolers to nursing homes or jails as a form of community service.

What is fading is the tradition of singers caroling in neighborhoods or shopping districts as part of their Christmas festivities. Of course, it's hard to imagine carolers mingling with shoppers and singing "Lo, How A Rose 'Er Blooming" outside Abercrombie & Fitch. Also, the odds are good that the local shopping mall will have adopted a code limiting religious activities on the premises.

Caroling in the black hole of the parking lot is not a lovely option. It's hard to sing to passing cars.

The result is what Southern Baptist scholar Hugh T. McElrath called "Frosty the Snowman" syndrome, a culture in which people sing secular songs at public celebrations and hymns and carols in worship services.

"What we've lost is the whole sense of a complete Christmas season, one that really gets started on Christmas Eve and then lasts for those 12 days and includes all kinds of parties and festivities and, yes, going out caroling," said McElrath, author of "The History of Our Christian Faith In Hymns."

"You lose the season and you lose the context for the carols themselves."

The traditional 12-day Christmas season begins -- not ends -- on Dec. 25th. Not that long ago, the faithful held parties throughout this season in different homes, with participants singing carols as they walked to the next round of festivities. This would build in intensity through the 12th night, "Three Kings Day" or the Epiphany celebration.

Traditions would vary from church to church and culture to culture, with the carols themselves emerging as true folk songs. Thus, carolers in different places would sing many different songs, with unique carols from Latin America, Africa, Russia and around the globe.

Most carols sung in North America can be traced to England and elsewhere in Europe. Still, it would seem logical that as America grows more diverse, the modern church's repertoire of Christmas carols would keep growing. If the Latin Grammy Awards are here, can true Spanish Christmas carols be far behind? Apparently not.

Instead, a blanket of sanitized holiday music -- spread through media, commerce and a highly mobile population -- covers the land. Christmas in Miami sounds the same as Minneapolis and Seattle tends to sound like Savannah. Steel-drum bands play "White Christmas" in the Bahamas.

This trend affects churches as well as shopping malls.

What is at stake are centuries of lovely Christmas music, said McElrath. Carols are supposed to be the songs of the people, binding one generation to the next. Is the very act of going Christmas caroling out of date?

"I guess that it's hard to go Christmas caroling when it's hard to even talk about Christmas in public," he said. "You end up with people sitting in church singing a few Christmas carols one or two days out of the year. That's lovely, but it's not what Christmas carols are about."

NEXT WEEK: What is a Christmas "carol" anyway?