'Ghosts' on the God beat

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news.

They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.

One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.

A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don't. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don't get to see them. But that doesn't mean they aren't there.

I want to show you an an example -- a case study, if you will -- of what I am talking about, a ghost in a set of stories that is related to this blog -- www.GetReligion.org.

But first let me introduce myself. My name is Terry Mattingly and I am journalist who covers religion news. For the past 15 years I have written the national "On Religion" column each week for the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C. I also teach at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Palm Beach County, Fla., where my title is Associate Professor of Mass Media & Religion.

I will be writing for this blog pretty much every day. The actual editor of the site is my colleague Douglas LeBlanc, another veteran journalist who has covered religion in the mainstream and religious press. In recent years, he has been best known as an associate editor of the respected evangelical news magazine Christianity Today.

Between the two of us, we have been covering religion news in secular and sacred media -- or trying to convince editors to pay us to do so -- for almost 50 years.

We write religion stories and we read religion stories. Lots of them. That's how we start our days and often that's how we finish them. We see all kinds of things and so do our many friends out there in the blogosphere.

Here's that example I was going to tell you about from a few months ago.

Like many people who live far from New York City, my morning email includes the digital newletter version of The New York Times. So I was scrolling along and ran into this.

***

November 12, 2003

Survivors of Riyadh Bombing Pick Up Pieces

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 11 They were neighbors and newlyweds, and late on Saturday night they bumped into each other by chance outside the obstetrician's office.

That is how Dany Ibrahim and Houry Haytayan found out that the blushing couple who lived next door were also expecting their first child.

***

It was your basic, solid symbolic person story, a snapshot from the age of terror. I was especially interested in finding out who the authorities thought planned and executed this bombing and why.

The details were, of course, sketchy. But the newspaper of record had to find the pattern that would help readers make sense of this.

"Of the 17 dead, 13 have been identified. A Saudi police investigator at the scene on Tuesday said one of the four unidentified bodies might have been that of a suicide bomber inside the sport utility vehicle.

"Mr. Ibrahim, the young Lebanese husband, lived in Beirut through the 1970's and 1980's when it was racked by civil war. Somehow this is different. He specifically picked this compound to move into six months ago, after the suicide bombings in May against Western compounds, because he thought it would be safer to live in a place that was almost entirely Arab and Muslim.

It was safer to live in a neighborhood that was almost entirely Arab and Muslim. But it was not safe."

Note: Arab and Muslim.

This is one of those strange combinations of words. Not all Arabs are Muslims and many Muslims are not Arabs. This strange combination of ethnic and religious identifications puzzled me.

After all, the terrorists themselves keep saying that these bombings target "infidels." There are, in fact, "infidels" who are Arab. There are even "infidels" who are Muslims. What exactly were we dealing with in this case? Who are the "infidels" and where are they in this story?

So I kept reading and, latter, I found this.

***

Christian Arabs possible attack targets

By ESTANISLAO OZIEWICZ

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

POSTED AT 5:40 AM EST Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2003

Nina Jibran had everything to live for. The Lebanese school teacher was recently married, pregnant and living in a comfortable compound in Riyadh.

There was even talk of her moving to Canada with her husband, an engineer who worked for a multinational advertising agency.

But then, shortly after the couple returned home from an obstetrician's appointment last Saturday, a suicide bomber ripped through the gates of their residential area, shredding their lives and sparking outrage in Saudi Arabia. Ms. Jibran was among the 17 dead, and her husband, Eliyas, among the more than 120 injured.

***

Scanning down, I found this newspaper's version of the crucial, defining paragraphs:

"As details emerge about the victims of last weekend's bombing, many observers believe their profile made them targets for the suspected al-Qaeda attack. Ms. Jibran, like her husband whom she married in July of 2002, was Christian. According to Arabic-language news reports, they had also received documentation to move to Canada.

"Elias Bijjani, a Toronto-based member of the Lebanese Canadian Coordinating Council, said many of the couple's neighbours were also Lebanese Christians. He speculated al-Qaeda was targeting Christian Arabs, rather than Muslims."

In fact, the evidence seemed to be that the victims were Arabs, but they were Arab Christians.

The wording in the New York Times story did not eliminate that possibility, but it also did not provide that specific information. In fact, it would turn out that it was hard to explain the location of the attack in any terms other than an attempt to kill a specific form of "infidels" -- Arab Christians.

Why was that information missing? What was the origin of this ghost?

I immediately did what I do several times a day. I sent pieces of these stories and the URLs around to a circle of friends -- journalists, human rights activists, politicos, etc. You know, the usual cyberspace circles. We all have these private circles, right? Mine just happen to care a great deal about religion and the news.

Before long, an interesting thing happened. One of these cyber-colleagues -- Dr. Paul Marshall of Freedom House, which studies religious liberty issues -- took an interest in these two stories. Then he took this case study to another level.

The result was this essay for The Weekly Standard.

***

Misunderstanding al Qaeda

What you weren't told about their targets in Saudi Arabia.

by Paul Marshall

12/01/2003, Volume 009, Issue 12

AMERICAN REACTIONS to the recent bombing of a foreign workers' compound in Riyadh reveal multiple misreadings of the Arab world and -- more dangerously -- of both al Qaeda and the Saudis.

The media seem to equate Arab with Muslim and, along with some in the administration, think that al Qaeda's war is against Americans and Westerners per se, rather than against all "infidels," a group al Qaeda defines idiosyncratically and expansively as anyone who is not a strictly observant Muslim. Both mistakes are compounded by reliance on the Saudis' distorted account of the attack.

The November 8 bombing took place in a Lebanese Christian neighborhood of Riyadh, and of the seven publicly identified Lebanese victims, six were Christian. Lebanon's newspapers are replete with photographs of Maronite Catholic and Greek Orthodox victims. Daleel al Mojahid, an al Qaeda-linked webpage, praised the killing of "non-Muslims." The Middle East Media Research Institute quotes Abu Salma al Hijazi, reputed to be an al Qaeda commander, as saying that Saudi characterizations of the victims as Muslims were "merely media deceit."

If so, the media fell for it.

***

Marshall and I had seen the same ghost. He chased it down and captured it in print.

And that is what we hope to do with this blog. It is an experiment by Doug LeBlanc and myself and, we hope, our friends and new readers. We want to slow down and try to pinpoint and name some of these ghosts.

But I don't want to sound like we see this as a strictly negative operation. There are many fine writers out there -- some believe the number is rising -- who are doing an amazing job of taking religion news into the mainstream pages of news, entertainment, business and even sports. We want to highlight the good as well as raise some questions about coverage that we believe has some holes in it.

Most of all, we want to try to create a clearning house of information and opinion on this topic. This is what blogs do best.

So this is why Doug and I are starting this experimental blog. We hope it grows. We hope it forms links with other sites that are digging into the same issues, each with their unique viewpoints and resources. We will point some of those out as well and include them in our links page.

Let's begin.

NOTE FROM TERRY MATTINGLY: This item ran at www.GetReligion.org on Feb. 1, 2004. I am adding it to the www.Tmatt.net site for a simple reason. Due to a technical error, the copy desk at the Scripps Howard News Service in Washington, D.C., did not receive my column this week. Thus, it will run a week late. Rather than leave a gap here at the Gospel Communications Network site, I am sharing this opening essay from another web project. I hope you enjoy it.

Good news for Orthodox in Turkey?

ISTANBUL -- There are two front gates into the walled compound that protects the home of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's 300 million Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Visitors enter through a door secured by a guardhouse, locks and a metal-screening device. They cannot enter the Phanar's main gate because it was welded shut in 1821 after the Ottoman Turks hanged Patriarch Gregory V from its lintel. The black doors have remained sealed ever since.

A decade ago, bombers who tried to open this gate left a note: "We will fight until the Chief Devil and all the occupiers are chased off; until this place, which for years has contrived Byzantine intrigues against the Muslim people of the East is exterminated. ... Patriarch you will perish!"

The capital of Byzantium fell to the Turks in 1453. Yet 400,000 Orthodox Christians remained in greater Istanbul early in the 20th century. That number fell to 150,000 in 1960. Today fewer than 2,000 remain, the most symbolic minority in a land that is 99 percent Turkish. They worship in 86 churches served by 32 priests and deacons, most 60 or older.

What the Orthodox urgently need is an active seminary and patriarchate officials are convinced the European Union will help them get one, as Turkey races to begin the formal application process. At the top of the list of reforms sought by the EU are improved rights for non-Muslims.

Thus, during the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization Summit, President George W. Bush held a strategic meeting with Istanbul Mufti Mustafa Cagrici, Armenian Patriarch Meshrob Mutafyan, Chief Rabbi Ishak Haleva, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yusuf Cetin and Patriarch Bartholomew.

"The European Union here is not focused so much on religion as it is on basic human rights," said Phanar spokesman Father Dositheos, through an interpreter. "For us this means hope. Any attention to the rights of minorities has to be good for us in the long run. Here, a little bit of religious freedom would go a long way."

But hard questions remain, as terrorists compete with Turkish reformers for headlines.

Western politicos are anxious for Turkey to serve as a bridge between East and West, between secularized Europe and the Muslim world. But others worry that decades of work by Turkey to mandate secularism on its people will have the opposite effect -- creating fertile soil for the growth of radical forms of Islam.

The Greek government now backs the entry of its once bitter rival into the European Union. But one of the most outspoken critics of this move is the Orthodox archbishop of Greece.

"Turkey is not a European country and, while its culture is worthy of our respect, it is not compatible with our European culture," said Archbishop Christodoulos, during an interview in Athens. "This is not a matter of prejudice. ... Our European culture has a sense of unity that comes from the spiritual traditions and the common spiritual roots of these countries."

But officials at the Phanar disagree and hope to verify reports that Turkey will take concrete steps to demonstrate its acceptance of some Western values -- such as religious liberty. The Orthodox and other religious minorities are anxious to have more control over their finances, to be able to grant work permits to foreign clergy, to freely elect their own leaders and to build and rebuild sanctuaries.

During his visit, Bush said he was satisfied that Turkey will soon let the Orthodox reopen the Halki seminary on Heybeliada Island, which was closed in 1971 under laws strictly controlling all religious education. In addition to training new clergy, this might strengthen two surviving monasteries. This is crucial since, under Turkish law, any monk who is elected Orthodox patriarch must be a Turkish citizen.

But change is slow and uncertain in this ancient city. The gate to the Phanar was been sealed for many generations.

"We hear rumors. The government officials say Turkey will allow us to reopen the seminary if the church will reopen the gate," said a church official who asked not to named. "The church says it may reopen the gate if the Turks allow the seminary to be opened. The government says it will allow us to reopen the seminary if we open the gate. We are used to this."

Tmatt away, in Turkey and Greece

This was the very rare week -- third time in 17 years -- when I did not file a column. I was traveling in Turkey and Greece and had trouble getting consistent Internet connections to do the column that I wanted to write.

So I will file it next week. I did write a short post or two for www.getreligion.org

Thanks. The column will return on its normal schedule this week.

tmatt

SBC hits a wall on the right

The resolution never hit the floor of the 2004 Southern Baptist Convention for debate.

An effort to insert some of its biting language into another resolution was easily defeated, with enough church messengers from across the nation raising their peach-colored voting cards on June 16 that a formal ballot was not required.

No doubt about it, Southern Baptists are upset about the state of American culture and, to get specific about it, the moral climate in public schools. But leaders of the nation's largest non-Catholic flock were not ready to start another media tsunami by saying the SBC "encourages all officers and members of the Southern Baptist Convention and the churches associated with it to remove their children from the government schools."

This failure to produce a major story in Indianapolis was a story in its own right.

"It seems like year after year, the Southern Baptist Convention has been passing one or more resolutions that kept getting more counter-cultural and polemical," said philosopher David Gushee, senior fellow of the Carl F.H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. "That didn't happen this time. It seems like they found an outer boundary and couldn't go over it."

It's crucial that the debate centered on separation from public schools, institutions woven into every corner of American life, said Gushee, who helped draft a famous SBC resolution condemning attacks on abortionists and another calling for racial reconciliation in churches. Questioning the quality of public schools is one thing. Urging educators to show openness to the views of religious traditionalists is another. But sounding a last trumpet of retreat?

"That would be tantamount to saying, 'We are going to withdraw from all of American culture,'" he said. "You can't say that. Southern Baptists don't want to say that."

The original resolution came from Bruce Shortt of Spring, Texas, and retired Air Force Gen. T.C. Pinckney of Alexandria, Va., a former SBC second vice president. This was the second year in which guidelines prevented messengers from proposing resolutions on the floor, so reporters saw this controversial text in advance.

While praising Southern Baptist adults who "labor as missionaries" in public schools, Pinckney and Shortt argued that the "government school system that claims to be 'neutral' with regard to Christ is actually anti-Christian, so that children taught in the government schools are receiving an anti-Christian education. ... The government schools are by their own confession humanistic and secular in their instruction, the education offered by the government schools is officially Godless."

When his resolution failed to survive the resolutions committee -- which included five home-schooling parents, out of 10 members -- Pinckney tried to add an amendment to another resolution mourning the secularization of American life. This time, he urged Southern Baptist pastors, parents and churches to commit to providing children with a "thoroughly Christian education." The amendment defined this as "home schooling, truly Christian private schools or some other innovative model of private Christian education." It was defeated.

Resolutions Committee chair Calvin Wittman noted the approval of 11 resolutions on education issues in the past two decades, which offered ample evidence of concern about issues in public, private and home schooling. In a press statement he said: "Southern Baptists have spoken to this issue sufficiently, and it does not need to be readdressed."

Gushee said it is crucial to note the images and the issues that were written into the secularization resolution, as well as those omitted. The convention said "God expects His people to embrace and reflect His passion for societal justice, relief for the oppressed, and protection of the helpless." It urged Southern Baptists to "cry out in desperation to God and seek His face in repentance and forgiveness for our part in the cultural decline that is taking place on our watch."

"This is a call to engage the culture in love, not hate," said Gushee. "Yet that 'desperation' reference stands out. It's obvious by now that Southern Baptists are very upset about the junk that's out there in the culture and our schools. I mean, all you have to do is turn on your television. ...

"So it's like the convention is saying, 'Dear God, will you please intervene before we head off a cliff?'"

'Progressives' in the pews

When the Rev. Robert Maddox went to work as Jimmy Carter's White House faith liaison, one of his main jobs was helping Beltway politicos lose their fear of born-again Christians.

The landscape has changed radically in the past three decades. What infuriates Maddox now is that Americans now automatically assume that religious believers are right-wing Republicans.

"People on the progressive side of things have not been doing a good job getting our message out," he said, during a break in a Washington, D.C., conference for the religious left. "We rolled over and let the Ronald Reagans and the fundamentalists grab hold of the media and define what faith means -- down at the level of bumper stickers and real life."

The gathering was called "Faith and Progressive Policy: Proud Past, Promising Future" and drew nearly 400 activists. Staffers for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops huddled with mainstream Jewish leaders and Muslim progressives. "Moderate" evangelicals talked shop with officials from the National Council of Churches. It was both reunion and pep rally.

Speaker after speaker said the key was finding unity in their creeds -- not strife. This worked in the civil rights era, the labor campaigns of Cesar Chavez and campaigns against apartheid in South Africa. They prayed that it could happen again.

The leader of the Center for American Progress, which sponsored the event, said exploring his Catholic faith has only made him more committed to liberal politics, said John D. Podesta, White House chief of staff for President Bill Clinton. His faith has also helped him identify the forces that he believes must be defeated.

"In the past 20 years we've seen the emergence of religious leaders who tried to dictate legislation and public policy from their particular set of religious beliefs," he said. "The religious leaders who attracted the widest attention were often those with the narrowest minds. Rather than use their faith in God to bring Americans together, they chose to use it to drive us apart."

Truth is, faith has become the boldest dividing line in American politics.

A wave of surveys indicate that the best way to predict what voters will do on Election Day is to study what they do on the Lord's Day. Voters who worship more than once a week vote Republican by a ratio of 2-1 or more. A Time poll says the "very religious" support Bush over Sen. John Kerry, 59 percent to 35 percent. Those who call themselves "not religious" back Kerry, 69 percent to 22 percent.

The problem, said Maddox, is that conservatives used U.S. Supreme Court decisions on hot-button moral issues to drive a wedge between Democrats and voters in many Catholic and evangelical pews. The Baptist pastor gets red in the face when describing the founding fathers of the religious right, using vivid, rodent-related vocabulary that can't be printed in a family newspaper.

"Take Reagan," said Maddox. "He started talking about abortion and, all of a sudden, he was this great Christian candidate. ... Now we're in another election year and the right is still obsessed with sex. We have to tell the American people that this isn't about abortion and it's not about gay marriage. It's about the budget, health care and the war. At least, that's what we believe."

But the moral divisions are real, said Maddox. He estimated that 90 percent of those attending this conference are pro-abortion rights and the same percentage backs gay rights. Almost all of the Christians present would clash with traditional believers on other biblical issues.

Take, for example, the familiar verse in the Gospel of John in which Jesus says: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

"Sooner or later," said Maddox, " the church crowd is going to wake up and realize that there are going to be a lot of people in heaven other than us Christians. I still believe Jesus is the way and the truth -- for me. But it's that last part that troubles me, the part that says 'no man comes to the father, except by me.'

"I don't think we can get away with saying that anymore. That might have worked in the '50s, but it's not going to work in the 21st century."

Reagan: Messiah? Antichrist? Normal mainliner?

As a Baptist preacher's kid who grew up in Texas in the 1970s, I had plenty of reasons to reject Ronald Reagan.

That may sound strange, since the Southern Baptist Convention and the Republican Party that Reagan built now appear to be wedded at the hip. But people tend to forget that Jimmy Carter really is a Baptist. So are Al Gore, the Rev. Bill Moyers and Britney Spears, while we're at it.

People also forget that Reagan was not a Southern Baptist or even what most would call an evangelical. He grew up in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in the Illinois heartland of mainline Protestantism.

Still, I believe it's safe to say that America's deep political divisions on moral issues are the result of three cultural earthquakes -- Woodstock, Roe vs. Wade and the Reagan revolution.

These events shaped modern Democrats as well as Republicans. They shaped religious conservatives and the growing bloc some researchers are calling the "anti-evangelical voters." And these events created or deepened cracks in most religious sanctuaries that remain today and have, if anything, only gotten worse.

Take the Southern Baptists. I believe the rise of Reagan split that massive flock of 16-million-plus believers just as much, if not more, than doctrinal debates about "biblical inerrancy."

Millions of Southern Baptists saw Reagan as a near messiah. For Southern Baptist conservatives, Reagan offered hope that the cultural revolution of the Woodstock-Roe era might in some way be overturned. They were wrong, of course.

Nevertheless, these conservative Baptists lost their historic fear of politics and jumped into the public square. But while the conservative grown-ups created the Religious Right, their children were in their multi-media bedrooms watching HBO and MTV.

The parents thought they could vote in the kingdom, but things didn't work out that way. What they got instead was "I Love the '80s."

There were some Southern Baptists who saw Reagan as the Antichrist.

I saw this close up. I had a friend in graduate school who literally lost his moderate Southern Baptist faith because of the election of Reagan. How could he believe in a just and loving God, if a Reagan could be elected president?

After all, the Reagan loyalists hated the really cool movies and they liked the really bad movies. They didn't read the proper books and magazines or laugh at the hip comics. And Reagan was embraced by all of those "fundamentalists" who wanted to ruin the Southern Baptist Convention, which they believed was poised to achieve mainline Protestant maturity.

Most of all, they believed that Reagan was dumb. And if Reagan was dumb, that meant that hating Reagan was smart. Everyone who was smart agreed. If you didn't agree, then you were dumb.

So defeating Reagan was part of voting in a smarter, more nuanced kingdom.

What these anti-Reagan Baptists and new evangelicals really needed was a progressive, smart, complex Southern Baptist in the White House -- someone like Bill Clinton. That would be perfect. But things didn't work out precisely as they imagined, either. They got "Sex & the City."

Many of them liked it. Many didn't, but the alternative was worse. The alternative was being labeled a religious conservative, the kind of person who liked Reagan.

There seemed to be no other option, no middle ground.

But perhaps Reagan wasn't a messiah or the Antichrist. What if he was just a normal mainline Protestant churchman from the 1950s?

Maybe he had good intentions and he did his best. Maybe he accomplished many things on the global level and didn't do so much on the cultural level. Maybe his beliefs were sincere, but not very specific. Maybe he made some people feel good and others feel bad. Maybe his greatest domestic political legacy is the Religious Right and the Religious Left.

But questions remain. Was Reagan truly a cultural and moral conservative? Did he cause the "pew gap" the researchers find in all the polls of modern voters? Could Reagan, if he had really tried, overturn the culture of Woodstock and Roe? Could he have helped Americans do a better job of focusing on their families? I have my doubts.

There are things that politicians cannot do.

It's a culture thing. It's a moral thing. It's a faith thing.

Hitting a nerve: News, religion, class

When it comes to media-bias surveys, God is almost as big a story these days as the president of the United States.

It helps if researchers release their work as journalists prepare for trench warfare in an election year. God is more newsworthy when linked to life's crucial issues, which, in journalism, are always politics, sports, entertainment and then more politics.

Thus, news coverage of a study by the Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism immediately focused on the fact that 34 percent of national-level journalists described themselves as "liberal," 54 percent as "moderate" and 7 percent as "conservative." The majority of national journalists considered their peers too soft on President George W. Bush. In a 1995 survey, the criticism was that President Bill Clinton was being treated too harshly.

"These political questions always attract attention," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project. But this time around, the questions that offered the best insights into tensions between journalists and their readers were the "ones we included about religion and social issues. That may be the biggest issue of all."

One of the nation's top reporters on media news quickly connected the dots, jumping from abstract statistics to a hot story -- same-sex marriage.

"The survey confirmed that national journalists are to the left of the public on social issues," wrote Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. "Nine in 10 say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral (40 percent of the public thinks this way). As might have been inferred from the upbeat coverage of gay marriage in Massachusetts, 88 percent of national journalists say society should accept homosexuality; only about half the public agrees."

There's more. Only 31 percent of national journalists still have confidence in the public's election choices, as compared with 52 percent under Clinton. For Kurtz, the implication was clear that "many media people feel superior to their customers."

Once again, the Pew survey has raised a divisive question about media bias: Is the wide gap between journalists and their readers on social issues the result of (a) politics, (b) social class, (c) religious practice or (d) all of the above?

Rosenstiel said journalists are used to having their political beliefs criticized and most -- on left and right -- believe they can achieve accurate, balanced coverage. But this is where survey questions about religion and morality are important. For most journalists, these highly personal issues may be hidden in the blind spots of their professional training.

"If you are truly trying to be fair, it's probably easier to overcome your most obvious political biases. You're used to thinking about them," he said. "But the cultural and religious values that we hold are much harder to recognize. They are just a part of us. They are part of how we view the world and we may have trouble seeing that."

Nevertheless, Rosenstiel stressed that readers must not be hasty when interpreting the Pew question that asked if "belief in God ... is necessary to be moral." The 91 percent of the national press (and 78 percent of local journalists) who answered "no," may include many religious believers who admire the skills and convictions of their secular colleagues.

It would be unfair, he said, to use this question "as a proxy" for a specific question that asked how many reporters and editors believe in God.

Yes, this survey did hit a nerve in tense newsrooms.

One conservative scribe stressed that if researchers are truly concerned about the future of journalism, they must keep asking these faith-based questions. But some of the most delicate questions are actually linked to culture and class in elite news organizations, according to John Leo, writing in U.S. News & World Report.

"When I was at the New York Times, the leadership was full of people who had gone to the wrong schools and fought their way up with brains and talent," he said. "Two desks away from mine was McCandlish Phillips, a born-again Christian who read the Bible during every break. ... Phillips was a legendary reporter, rightly treated with awe by the staff, but I doubt he would be hired by most news organizations today. He prayed a lot and had no college degree."

Hollywood after the Passion, Pt. II

The Rev. Mac Brunson recently took his kids out and, while the movie was forgettable, the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas was hooked by one of the coming attractions.

It was a trailer for the comedy "Raising Helen," in which Kate Hudson plays a hot New York City fashion star whose life changes when she has to raise her sister's three children. Five-hankie chick flicks require hunky love interests and, lo and behold, this time the blonde falls for a handsome, charming pastor.

"I thought, 'No way Hollywood will get that right,' " said Brunson, senior minister of the 12,000-member Southern Baptist superchurch. "You see a pastor in a movie today and he's almost always going to be an idiotic, dangerous, neurotic pervert or something."

Brunson aired some of these views when interviewed for a People magazine cover story called "Does Hollywood Have Faith?" What happened next was a parable about studio insiders trying to do their homework in pews and pulpits. It's a trend that predates "The Passion of the Christ," but is surging along with Mel Gibson's bank account.

After reading Brunson's remarks, publicists working for Disney called and made the preacher an offer he couldn't refuse. Before long, Brunson was sitting in the Tinseltown multiplex in suburban Dallas, watching an advance screening of "Raising Helen" with 200 church members.

The tough Baptist crowd was pleasantly surprised, said Brunson. Yes, the Lutheran pastor was played by John Corbett of "Sex & the City." Yes, this is the rare pastor who never mentions Jesus, faith, church and the Bible with a woman who has three children in his Christian school. But it's clear that Helen is seeking moral stability and she ultimately decides to embrace her children, rather than worship her career. And the romance was clean.

"It was just a normal movie, or what people used to call normal," he said. "This pastor is a moral guy. He falls in love. He gets to be natural. He's romantic and he kisses the girl. ... At the end it's clear that he's helped stabilize things and they're becoming a real family.

"So hurrah for Disney, on this movie. They got something right and we ought to praise them for that. Let's hope and pray that they do it some more."

But bridge-building efforts like this are tricky. While Disney is making progress with one powerful Baptist -- remember that the Southern Baptist Convention has been boycotting Disney for seven years -- MGM is traveling a rocky road trying to evangelize church groups on behalf of its edgy satire called "Saved!"

An online mini-guide for youth leaders says the movie presents "Christian teens who make poor choices, have a crisis of faith, seek answers and ultimately emerge with a genuine faith." Studio executives say it contains a pure Christian message of tolerance and love. Meanwhile, producer Michael Stipe -- the androgynous REM lead vocalist -- has said it's a high-school vampire movie, "only here the monsters are Jesus-freak teen-agers."

The movie's American Eagle Christian Academy has a giant plastic Jesus figure (in running shoes) and born-again gunners practice at the Emmanuel Shooting Range ("An eye for an eye"). One girl has a vision to sleep with her boyfriend to cure his homosexuality. The pseudo-hip Pastor Skip has an affair with a troubled mother (the area's top Christian interior decorator). The villain is a true believer who rules the popular girls ("The Christian Jewels") with an ironclad Bible.

The executives behind "Saved!" simply haven't done the "cross-cultural homework" required to reach religious believers, said Walt Mueller, head of the national Center for Parent/Youth Understanding in Elizabethtown, Pa. While much of the movie's satire is accurate and even constructive, it's the actual theological message that will offend most Christians.

"If you're into a real postmodern, smorgasbord, all-tolerant blend of Christianity and every other conceivable faith in the world, then you're going to love this movie," said Mueller. "What is amazing is that the people marketing this movie don't seem to realize that they are attacking lots of people's beliefs. ...

"The bottom line is that there are good Christians and then there are bad Christians and Hollywood gets to decide which is which. We're supposed to buy that?"

Movies after the Passion, Part I

When it comes to judging Hollywood, critics in pulpits and pews have been chanting the same mantra for decades.

All together now: There's too much sex and there's too much violence. Amen.

Then a strange thing happened. An evangelical named Randall Wallace wrote "Braveheart," which a Catholic named Mel Gibson turned into an Oscar-magnet about freedom, faith, sacrifice and truth. It was bloody violent and its wedding was followed by a nude wedding night. Many conservative believers cheered and began to have second thoughts about their R-rating phobias.

Then Gibson made "The Passion of the Christ."

"A movie comes along that is, in the words of one Los Angeles critic, 'a two-hour execution,' and people of faith everywhere are embracing it and being moved to compunction, repentance and spiritual renewal," said screenwriter Barbara Nicolosi, speaking at a global cinema conference last week in Valencia, Spain.

"What we are learning from all this is that the problem is not with violence on the screen. It is meaningless violence that is wrong in entertainment. The Passion reconnects violence to its source in rebellion against God. It never objectifies the subject of the violence, nor does it dehumanize the perpetrators of violence. It shows the effects of violence in all its horror."

Aftershocks continue in the marketplace and in churches, while Gibson's epic keeps climbing toward the $370-million mark at the U.S. box office. Meanwhile, Hollywood is trying to learn how to mine this bizarre demographic Gibson has discovered -- Middle America.

Nicolosi has argued that the big lesson is that masses of the faithful will buy tickets when a talented, name-above-the-title superstar finances, produces and directs a theologically sophisticated movie. But there's the rub. How many celebrities make that A-list?

Meanwhile, debates about the Passion may help traditional believers learn more about the craft of making movies for the modern marketplace, she said, in her written text. Questions about the film's shocking use of violence were highly symbolic.

"This movie will challenge future filmmakers to make the violence in their films just as meaningful," said the former Catholic nun, who leads the Act One screenwriting project. "It will also open the people of God to a broader artistic sensibility. ... My young filmmaking students are very concerned about the place of the artist in the world. They want to talk about an ethics that would go along with the power of the mass media.

"They want to know what is good for people to watch and what might harm people to watch. This is very good."

Anyone can make violent movies, she said. It takes talent, skill and vision to show violence that means something. The same thing is true of sexuality, after 40 "shameless years" in which "cinema has shown us every possible permutation of two naked bodies writhing around." The same thing is true of symbols and themes of faith and spirituality.

There are signs of change in Hollywood. Nicolosi called it the "Don't Show How Things Look, Tell Us What They Mean" movement. Are religious leaders paying attention?

Nicolosi is not the only conservative arguing that filmmakers must stop assuming that safe, squeaky-clean predictability is the same thing as artistic quality.

Even Christian consumers would rather watch "Spiderman" than "Left Behind -- The Movie" and they would choose "Toy Story" over another "Touched By and Angel" rerun on a family cable channel, according to Dallas Jenkins, president of Jenkins Entertainment. He created the company with his father, Jerry B. Jenkins, who is best known as co-author of the bestselling "Left Behind" novels.

At some point, religious critics must humbly study the art in films such as "Taxi Driver," "Traffic" and "Pulp Fiction" as well as criticize their moral content, he said. It is even more important to study edgy films that combine personal storytelling with issues of faith, such as "Schindler's List" and "The Pianist."

"Why can't we make movies like that about our faith? ... Great films, no matter how specific their subject matter, have universal appeal," said Jenkins, writing in Relevant Magazine.

"Where are the thought-provoking, morally important rated-R films? Every year there are dozens of big, successful family films, but only two or three landmark, important films for adults. Can't at least one be made by a Christian?"

NEXT WEEK: Hollywood struggles to understand the church.