Beyond the Baptist boycott

It was a cheesy ad slogan sure to raise eyebrows during the summer battle for the teen-movie bucks -- "Got Passion? Get Saved!"

An acidic take on a Christian high school, "Saved!" was crafted to make evangelicals punch their boycott buttons. It featured clean queen Mandy Moore as a Bible-throwing harpy from Hades. Macaulay "Home Alone" Culkin played a hip cynic in a wheelchair who shared cigarettes and sex with the school's lone Jewess. Its all-tolerant God offered a flexible moral code.

MGM promoted the film directly to believers who were sure to hate it.

"It seemed like they did everything they could to get a boycott," said Walt Mueller, head of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding in Elizabethtown, Pa. "They wanted a boycott. They needed a boycott. I am sure they were stunned when they didn't get one."

The film cost $5 million to produce and grossed only $8.8 million, after a quiet sojourn in selected theaters. The bottom line: "Saved!" was an intriguing test case for those pondering the impact of media boycotts. Looking ahead, will Southern Baptist executives balk at saying the words "Disney," "boycott" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" in the same sentence?

The crucial word-of-mouth buzz never arrived for "Saved!", perhaps because the conservatives the film set out to bash often turned the other cheek and declined to provide millions of dollars in free publicity.

It helped that the film took so many pot shots that it even offended some secular scribes.

Michael O'Sullivan of the Washington Post said the best adjective for "Saved!" was "condescending" and that it was as "preachy as its finger-wagging victims." Glenn Whipp of the Los Angles Daily News said the movie's creators wanted audiences to "know that it's important to practice tolerance of others -- unless, of course, those others are Christians."

Still, The Los Angeles Times did its part to help the studio by seeking condemnation from the usual snarky suspects -- Catholic League President William Donahue, op-ed columnist Cal Thomas, Christian Film and Television Commission czar Ted Baehr and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Apparently Pat Robertson was busy that day.

But no one uttered the b-word -- boycott. "Saved!" didn't even create a buzz at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

"I vaguely remember hearing of that movie, but that's about it," said Dwayne Hastings of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission media office. "I didn't get a single call about it, or a single email. It simply did not make a blip on the Southern Baptist radar."

This is interesting, since Hollywood remains a hot issue for Southern Baptists and other moral conservatives. Years after the national headlines, the 1997 Southern Baptist vote to boycott the Walt Disney Co. remains in effect. The convention cited a wave of "anti-Christian" media products, Disney policies granting benefits to partners of gay employees and "Gay Day" events at theme parks that angered many families and church groups.

There is no sign that the Southern Baptist leadership is re-thinking this stance. This summer, the Rev. Wiley Drake of First Baptist in Buena Vista, Calif., a strong Disney critic, floated a convention resolution commending the studio for producing the patriotic movie "America's Heart and Soul." His motion was ruled out of order.

"I want a specific action commending them for what they are doing," said Drake.

Hastings said it's hard to image the convention retreating and ending the boycott. It's just as hard to imagine Disney apologizing to Southern Baptists. Nevertheless, an upcoming series of films based on the fantasy fiction of the best known Christian writer of the 20th Century would certainly raise questions. What if Mel Gibson provided the voice of Aslan, the Christ-figure lion?

"It's possible that there could be a resolution praising Disney for doing Narnia. Of course, this assumes that they offer some kind of accurate rendering of the Christian vision and beliefs of C.S. Lewis," said Hastings.

"But the whole point of the boycott is for people to stop and think about their choices. I'm sure that millions of Baptists went to see 'Finding Nemo' and they watch ESPN like everybody else. But they are thinking twice about giving Disney their money and support. People are learning to be more selective."

Tools of the virtual church, Part II

Tony Campolo had a specific flock in mind as he prepared his first sermon for the 3-D, "virtual" sanctuary at the online Church of Fools.

Using the lingo of his discipline, the sociologist referred to the typical wired worshippers as "religion-less Christians." They yearn for "spirituality," but believe they can do the faith thing on their own, without an institutional church.

Campolo also assumed they spend lots of time wielding a mouse.

So be it.

"In evangelism, you have to meet people where they are before you try to take them where they need to go," he said. "The reality today is that lots of people spend a good part of their lives plugged into computer screens. If that's where they are, that's where we have to go meet them."

This is the theory behind outreach work being done in "virtual churches" such as www.ChurchofFools.com, which is partly sponsored by the Methodist Church of Great Britain. Some sites offer basic chat rooms, while others use interactive graphics, audio and video.

But there are questions. How do people show repentance and commitment in a medium in which users can switch spiritual paths with a click of a mouse? Is online worship possible?

These questions, and more, were asked in Oxford as the Church of England created its first online congregation at www.i-church.org. It is open to anyone, regardless of "faith position," politics, sexual orientation, geographical location or membership elsewhere.

"I remember being taken to one side, early on in the research for i-church, and being told that not only would it not work, but that no one would want to join an online church, and that any kind of Christian community that was not a sacramental community was a deficient community," said the Rev. Richard Thomas, in the dedication sermon.

"It depends on how you define sacraments. My own definition suggests that sacraments are those things that make God, or his grace, 'visible.' To that end, we have at the last count around 700 applications for membership. ... These people are willing to commit to Christian discipleship, and to support others on the journey. If that is not sacramental, I don't know what is."

Cyberspace includes millions of seekers and believers. The "Faith Online" project conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 64 percent of online Americans -- representing 82 million people -- have used the Internet for faith-related reasons. They read religion news, download religious music, explore strange books, forward inspirational messages, share prayer requests and find alternative sanctuaries.

Most practice a specific faith, but many do not. While 54 percent of the online faithful are "religious and spiritual," 33 percent describe themselves as "spiritual but not religious." Some use the anonymity of cyberspace as a safe place to research new ways of living and worshipping.

Once in this global marketplace, these seekers are almost sure to find like-minded people who are "asking the same questions, searching for the same kind of experiences or even suffering a similar sense of pain or loss," said Stewart Hoover of the University of Colorado, the study's lead author. It's natural for these people to form groups online, based on their needs and interests. The Internet is all about options.

"But for most of these people, I really don't see this replacing what they already have in terms of their faith," he said. "It's more like a value-added situation. The religion they find on the Web needs to add on to what they are already experiencing somewhere else, with a real group of believers in a real community."

And there is one more question that lurks in the background, especially for those who fund these experimental sites. How can they measure the success of a "virtual" church?

"We know that encounters are taking place that are changing lives," said Stephen Goddard, co-creator of the Church of Fools. "Is that success? We know there have been some amazing intellectual conversations about the faith that have been going on down in the church crypt for weeks. Is that a success?

"We know that some people say that they are coming back into Christian fold because of this. They are more open to the faith, because of what we've done. Is that a success?"

Churches of virtual believers, Part I

No Tony Campolo sermon would be complete without his pulpit-shaking gestures of inspiration and exasperation, punctuating litanies of not-so-subtle digs at U.S. foreign policy, Hollywood, Wall Street and the Religious Right.

As he ended one recent oration, the sociologist, urban activist and evangelical gadfly fell to his knees, hands raised to heaven.

"I believe Americans must heed this call and turn away from our wicked ways," said Campolo, who made headlines counseling President Bill Clinton. "We need to turn away from sexual promiscuity, turn away from the consumeristic materialism, turn away from our failure to pay attention to what we have done collectively to poor and weak peoples around the world. ...

"Then, let our prayer be that God will hear from heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land."

Many of the faithful said "amen," lifted their hands or made the sign of the cross.

Then Campolo froze for a moment, as an hourglass icon hovered in the Romanesque arches of the Church of Fools, the world's first 3D, interactive, virtual church.

This kind of thing happens when traffic jams the Internet.

The computer-generated "avatar" looked like Campolo and he was delivering a Campolo sermon entitled "Why Many People in the World Hate America." But Campolo was not controlling his own computer image, since the site's webmasters were not sure he could master the technology needed to preach online -- line by line, gesture by gesture.

Actually, Campolo was at a clergy conference in St. Simons Island, Ga. But he stayed on the telephone with his Philadelphia office staff, which communicated with the Church of Fools in Liverpool, England, through an online instant-messaging program, while one of site's creators controlled the "pixilated preacher." The question-and-answer session was especially tricky.

"I wanted Tony to be animated, because that's the way he is -- live," said Stephen Goddard. "I have known him for years and I know his gestures and style. I was sure I could get our Tony to preach like the real Tony."

The experimental site -- www.ChurchofFools.com -- opened its doors on May 11, with help from the Methodist Church of Great Britain and others. The pilot project ends this weekend (Aug. 8) and the future is uncertain. Goddard said he is confident they can keep the doors open -- but not as often. The Church of England is also poised to open a digital church of some kind.

So far, volunteers have donated the time and expertise needed to create and run Church of Fools, with most of its $30,000 budget being used to purchase the bandwidth needed for interactive services. Goddard said the goal is to raise $300,000 to cover the next three years and to expand -- hopefully including churches in America, China and elsewhere.

It is hard to picture what happens in a "virtual church" without images on a screen. At any one time, 35 worshippers can sign in and create characters that stand, sit or kneel. They can whisper or talk to nearby worshippers, slip into the church crypt for discussions or linger at icons in prayer. Another 1,500 can take part as silent ghosts. Campolo packed the pews.

Participants sang along as the organ played through their speakers, typing phrases from the hymns that seemed meaningful. During the July 28th service, one warden led the global flock in prayer, giving thanks for computers, satellites, bloggers, online friendships and their virtual church.

"Help us to use our networks to do good things," she said, "to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with you, our God, and to be good neighbors online and off."

One thing visitors cannot do is jump the virtual altar rail. Early on, an avatar called "Satan" stormed the pulpit and cursed the Anglican bishop of London. That wasn't cricket. Wardens now have the power to smite the rowdy.

"It only took a day or two to discover that there are lots of people who could not resist the chance to scream 'wanker!' in a church sanctuary," said Goddard. "Actually, all that cursing was a good sign. It told us that we didn't have the usual holy club in the pews. This wasn't going to be just another safe Christian crowd."

NEXT WEEK: Is an online church a "real" church?

Gallup, statistics and discipleship

George Gallup Jr. has been studying the numbers for a half century and nobody knows better than he does that they just don't add up.

Most of the familiar, comforting statistics that describe public religion remain remarkably stable from poll to poll. Somewhere around 86 percent of Americans say they believe in God and another 8 percent or so in a "higher power" of some kind. Sixty percent say faith is "very important" in daily life and another 15 percent say it's "fairly important."

In the typical poll, around 80 percent identify themselves as some brand of Christian and claim membership in a congregation. Somewhere between 41 and 46 percent of Americans say they attended church or synagogue in the previous week. Can religious faith answer all of today's problems? Six in 10 say "yes." Throughout the 1990s, nearly two in three affirmed that "God really exists and I have no doubt about it."

But there is another side of this religion equation, said Gallup, during a recent address at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston.

"Sadly, our society continues to be wracked by domestic problems," he said. "Four in 10 American children go to bed without a father in the home. One-third of teens have been physically abused in the home. One-fourth of all Americans say that drinking is a problem in their home and half of all marriages this year will end in divorce.

"What lies ahead? Will democracy remain viable? ... How can our faith make a difference? How can it sustain us?"

That final leap of logic -- linking morality, politics and faith -- may seem strange to those who have followed his meticulous work as America's most trusted brand name in public information and the author of 16 books. But Gallup is convinced that most Americans believe that the state of the nation is closely tied to its spiritual health.

Now, the 74-year-old pollster has officially retired. But this doesn't mean Gallup will disappear. As a young man with a religion degree from Princeton University, he considered entering the Episcopal priesthood. No one expects him to stop asking questions about the role of faith in American life.

Truth is, Gallup has more questions than answers. But he said being retired will allow him even more time and freedom to discuss the strategies he thinks clergy should adopt if they want to help the faithful follow the doctrines they claim to believe.

"Surveys reveal an unprecedented desire for religious and spiritual growth among people in all walks of life and in every region of the nation," he said. "There is an intense searching for spiritual moorings, a hunger for God. It is for churches to seize the moment and to direct this often vague and free-floating spirituality into a solid and lived-out faith."

The key, he said, is that too many pastors naively assume that church members know and understand the core doctrines of their own faith.

"For example, half of all Protestants have no idea whatsoever what the word 'grace' means and what it has to do with their salvation," he said, in an interview not long after the Massachusetts address. "Now, that's pretty basic doctrine. Pastors today assume that their people know the basics. They don't."

Clergy assume that believers are familiar with the contents of those Bibles sitting on their bookshelves. They assume church members understand the teachings of other major religions and can hold thoughtful, respectful conversations about the differences between these faiths.

Many even assume their members sincerely want to repent of their sins, amend their lives and become serious Christians.

Gallup said he is constantly shocked to hear that few pastors ever ask members -- person to person, face to face -- about the status of their faith and personal lives. Many pastors no longer see the need to openly discuss the impact of sin.

"Someone has to challenge people to be true disciples of Christ," he said. "Someone has to ask the hard questions. If we don't talk about the whole dimension of sin, repentance, grace and forgiveness, what is the faith all about? What are we doing? ...

"Without true discipleship, the church can simply turn into a social services agency."

Beyond XXXChurch.com

PHOENIX -- Anyone with the nerve to create XXXChurch.com is going to get attention, especially if they keep calling it "the No. 1 Christian Porn Site."

"We're No. 1 because there really isn't a No. 2, which is a good business plan if you think about it," said Craig Gross, co-founder of the ministry in Corona, Calif.

Two years ago, Gross and partner Mike Foster opened their first booth at the Adult Video News trade show in Las Vegas, handing out anti-porn brochures to hardcore consumers and sharing their faith with porn stars and producers. The youth pastors took their wives as chaperones and to take turns inside their church's full-body rabbit costume. The approach was goofy, but intrigued the Los Angeles Times, ABC, Playboy and others.

This year XXXChurch.com teamed up with veteran pornographer James DiGiorgio -- producer of videos such as "The Sopornos #3" -- to make a surreal public service announcement called "Pete the Porno Puppet" warning parents not to expose kids to explicit images. As it turns out, "Jimmy D" is also a parent who worries about porn.

Now comes the hard part. Yes, the online ministry offers anonymous education, counseling and prayer support. It has free X3Watch software to help porn users form accountability groups. It has hip media products for skeptics.

But a website is not enough, said Gross, speaking at the annual North American Christian Convention. Sooner or later, church people will have to talk about pornography.

Sadly, it's easer to discuss God with porn stars than pornography with many pastors.

Why? A poll by Leadership magazine found that four in 10 pastors with Internet access had visited a porn site and more than a third had done so in the previous year. Many skeptical pastors said those numbers were too low.

"If 37 percent of our pastors are looking at this," said Gross, "then this is not a subject they're going to feel comfortable with in the pulpit. ... Think about it. What is going through a pastor's mind if he wants to look at online porn before he preaches on Sunday morning? What's that all about?"

Many believers prefer to ignore such questions. Faced with a minister who gets caught with porn, the typical church board will send the offender packing -- quickly. Yet this kind of zero tolerance policy will drive other addicts deeper into fear and denial, said Gross.

"What the church keeps saying is, 'Get out! We have no sin here,' " he said.

The goal is to take this secret sin seriously, while still offering hope to broken people in pews and pulpits, said the Rev. Gary Rowe, minister of pastoral care at the East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. Nevertheless, churches that create ministries for those struggling with pornography and other sexual sins will face unique challenges.

For example, it's hard to promote small-group sessions for porn abusers without listing the times and locations in the weekly church bulletin or on a web site, he noted, during another session at the convention in Phoenix. This sensitive issue must be openly discussed in the pulpit and in church education efforts, yet without violating the privacy of those involved.

It's also important to learn that the most effective ministry may not begin with the men.

"We had eight guys come forward when we started this work," said Rowe. "But we immediately had calls from 100 women, looking for help with a husband or a child who was involved with pornography. That really impressed us."

Gross agreed that wives almost always cry out for help before husbands. It is also important for church leaders to ask questions about pornography in premarital counseling and in parenting classes. Youth pastors have to realize that the teen years are crucial, since that is when most boys first come into contact with sexually explicit media.

The trick is to pull this subject out into the open with little or no warning.

"You can't come right out and say, 'We're having a men's breakfast and we're going to talk about pornography," said Gross. "Guess what? If you do that, nobody's going to be there. You are going to have lots of pancakes left over. ...

"We're at the stage where you're going to have to ambush people."

'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?'"