Zombies meet Dante at the mall

Kim Paffenroth was 13 years old when filmmaker George A. Romero released "Dawn of the Dead," so he knew he would need parental guidance to see the gory classic about flesh-eating, undead zombies and the shopping mall from hell.

"I wasn't really a horror movie fan," he said, flashing back to 1979. "But for some reason I bugged my dad until he bought two tickets. He said, 'OK, but I'm not sitting through that thing. Meet me outside when it's over.' "

The movie was sickening, disturbing, funny and haunting -- all at the same time. Paffenroth was hooked, especially by Romero's bleak, biting view of humanity's future. This wasn't just another commercial horror movie, the kind that cable-television channels play around the clock at Halloween.

Then a strange thing happened in college, when Paffenroth's work in the classics led him to St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and, especially, the medieval poet Dante Alighieri. To his shock, he found that his doctoral work at Notre Dame University was starting to overlap with his fascination with zombie movies.

Suddenly, the word "Inferno" had new meaning. He decided that Romero's zombies -- the living dead who had lost all self-control and reason -- were a modernized, bumbling, cannibalistic vision of what Dante called the "suffering race of souls who lost the good of intellect."

It was also clear that, as in Dante, there were higher and lower levels in this hell.

"The zombies live in the first five circles of hell and they stand for gluttony, rage, laziness and the most basic, crude sins," said Paffenroth, a religious studies professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. "A zombie is a human being who cannot control his appetites, who simply cannot stop eating and it really doesn't matter what kind of eating or consuming we're talking about."

But what makes Romero's movies truly disturbing -- at least for viewers willing to do more than revel in gory special effects -- is that the zombies are not the worst sinners on the screen. While the undead cannot control their passions, it is the living who sink to the lower circles of damnation, choosing to wallow in hate, pride, deceit, viciousness, greed, cruelty and other complex, twisted forms of sin.

In these bloody morality tales, it is the living who pervert reason to attack others, argues Paffenroth, in his book, "Gospel of the Living Dead." This may be a painful message for modern Americans to hear, including those who sit in church sanctuaries more often than movie theaters.

"Anyone who says that racism, sexism, materialism, consumerism and a misguided kind of individualism do not afflict our current American society to a large extent is not being totally honest and accurate," writes Paffenroth. Moreover, Romero's movies offer a "critique that could be characterized as broadly Christian, but which many modern American Christians may now find uncomfortable or unfamiliar."

Romero was raised Roman Catholic, but his scandalous movies never move past their images of damnation to provide a real sense of hope and salvation.

Still, Paffenroth finds it significant that his films attack secular institutions as much, or even more, than they attack religious institutions. It's obvious, for example, that scientists and politicians have done a poor job creating an earthly paradise. Also, the fact that zombies are human beings who have lost their souls implies that human beings have souls that can be lost, that they are more than materialistic animals made of flesh, blood and bones.

Human beings are free to make moral choices and, like the bored zombies and selfish survivors who fight for control of a shopping mall in "Dawn of the Dead," they ultimately become what they consume and have to live with their vices for eternity.

These zombie movies contain lots of bad news, including the rather un-Hollywood message that the wages of sin is death, death and more death, said Paffenroth. And the good news?

"I guess the good news in these movies is that sin is real," he said. "That's a hard message, but it can be good news if that helps us realize that our sins are real and that we can -- believers would say through God's grace -- turn away from sin. ... These movies certainly show that there will be hell to pay if we don't change our ways."

Pentecostal power 2006

Church historian Vinson Synan has made 20 trips to Latin America while studying the explosive growth of Pentecostal Christianity and he believes that it's time to state the obvious.

"We've reached the point where you're not going to be able to get along very well with many believers in the Third World unless you embrace the gifts of the Holy Spirit," said Synan, who teaches at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va.

"You just can't have a closed mind when it comes to healing and prophecy and speaking in tongues if you want to talk to people in places like Latin America, Africa and Asia. We?re talking about the whole church there -- almost all of the Protestants and many of the Catholics."

Synan has been saying this for decades in books like "The Old-Time Power" and "The Century of the Holy Spirit," and he isn't alone. Now, researchers at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (www.pewforum.org) in Washington, D.C., have released a wave of data from 10 nations documenting that the diverse 100-year-old movement called Pentecostalism has touched the lives of one in four Christians around the world.

The Pew team defined "Pentecostals" as members of older bodies such as the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ and the International Pentecostal Holiness Church. Then there are "charismatics" who are Catholics, Anglicans and mainline Protestants who embrace healing, prophecy and other spiritual gifts, yet remain in their own churches.

Together, these groups form what many now call the "renewalists." According to this study, these believers -- to cite four eyebrow-raising examples -- make up 60 percent of the population in Guatemala, 56 percent in Kenya, 49 percent in Brazil and 44 percent in the Philippines.

"Renewalists, as a group ? tended to have a very high view of the authority of scripture. They tended to be very regular in worship attendance. They tended to uniformly believe that Jesus is the only way to salvation," said John C. Green, senior fellow at the Pew Center in religion and American politics.

"They tended to be quite conservative or traditional on moral beliefs such as sexual behavior, the consumption of alcohol, divorce and so forth. ... But even in those countries where majorities of the population hold very traditional beliefs, renewalists tend to hold those beliefs more intensely and more extensively."

Another interesting part of this study, said Synan, indicated that "glossolalia," or "speaking in tongues," may no longer be the spiritual gift that defines charismatics and even many Pentecostals. Within the Assemblies of God, for example, there has long been a gap between an "old guard" that believes this experience of ecstatic speech is always the initial sign that someone has been "baptized in the Holy Spirit" and a "third wave" of younger believers who see it as a gift that some experience and some do not.

What truly unites "renewalists" is their belief that miracles and other signs of God's power, especially acts of healing, are real and can be seen in modern life. There is no question that this emphasis on the supernatural causes tension in some churches touched by Pentecostalism, especially tensions between Protestant and Catholic leaders in America and Europe and their Third World counterparts.

Meanwhile, there are conservative Protestants -- especially Calvinists and Baptists -- who reject Pentecostalism and its emphasis on prophecy and "glossolalia." Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, have decided to ban all foreign missionary candidates who confess that they practice a "private prayer language," another phrase often used to describe "speaking in unknown tongues."

Nevertheless, said Pew Forum Director Luis Lugo, "it is getting harder and harder to find non-charismatic Protestants in Latin America, Africa and many other parts of the world." Meanwhile, top Catholic leaders appear to have accepted the need for theological dialogue with the charismatics in their global flock.

At least, said Lugo, it's clear that some clerics in Rome can do the math.

"The Vatican knows that it will have to deal with this new reality and the trend there is definitely toward accommodation," he said. "The U.S. Catholic bishops have not been as open. But the growth of Catholicism in this country is among charismatic Catholics, especially among Hispanics and people moving here from Africa and overseas. There is simply no way to ignore that."

Facing some giant lessons

Like millions of other American kids, Alex Kendrick couldn't believe his eyes the first time he saw "Star Wars."

"I remember sitting in that theater, looking up at that big screen and thinking, 'I want to do that. I have to do that. If it's the last thing I ever do, I'm going to make movies,' " said Kendrick, the writer, director and actor whose low-budget "Facing the Giants" football flick has made headlines.

The evangelistic indie movie cost $100,000 to make and, showing on 418 screens in faith-friendly smaller markets, has made nearly $3 million at the box office in two weeks. It's backed by Provident Films, Sony BMG and Samuel Goldwyn films, but the critics have been merciless.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer noted: "It preaches to the converted -- literally." And then there was this Richmond Times-Dispatch love letter to Kendrick: " 'Facing the Giants' may have been made with all the best intentions in the world, but it was also made by writers who can't write, directors who can't direct, editors who can't edit and actors who can't act. And they're all the same guy."

It helps, however, to understand that the Southern Baptist guy at the heart of this movie has had a tough time turning his "Star Wars" epiphany into a career reality. He is learning how to make movies and "Facing the Giants" is only his second try.

Kendrick never had a real chance to study screenwriting, editing, directing or acting. When the time came to pick a career, he did what many young media-driven believers end up doing. He entered the ministry.

It's hard to explain to outsiders how this kind of thing happens.

"I kept trying to find people who felt the same way as I did," he said in an interview just before a ratings tussle with the Motion Picture Association of America that sparked a media firestorm. "I could see that movies were shaping our culture and I couldn't understand why so many other people couldn't see that. It was hard to find people who understood what I wanted to do."

Kendrick tried a Christian college, where there were no classes linked to entertainment and filmmaking, but ended up with an all-purpose degree in communications from Kennesaw State University near Atlanta. Then he went to seminary, but it was more of the same.

Eventually, he heard that Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., was seeking help with its 24-hour Christian ministry on the local cable-television system. This led to Alex and his brother Stephen being hired as "associate pastors of media" at this modern megachurch, the kind where the faithful sit in movie seats and the preacher stands between two giant video screens.

"Basically we were putting church on TV," said Kendrick. "We were filming services, concerts and special events. But my brother and I still wanted to make television shows and movies that told stories that connected with people."

Then they saw some research that helped the leaders of their church understand what they were saying about media.

In their book "Boiling Point," evangelical pollster George Barna and e-commerce professional Mark Hatch put it this way: "The world of entertainment and mass communications -- through television, radio, contemporary music, movies, magazines, art, video games and pop literature -- is indisputably the most extensive and influential theological training system in the world."

That clicked.

Before long, Alex and Stephen Kendrick and their supporters had "prayed in" $25,000 to create a movie called "Flywheel" about a morally confused used-car salesman. It did surprisingly well in a few local multiplexes and on DVD, considering that it was made with volunteer actors and technicians, using store-bought cameras, lights from Home Depot and the video-editing software in desk-top computers.

This led to "Facing the Giants," where a slightly larger budget let the church hire five professionals to run a movie "boot camp" for church members, as well as to film some of the football scenes. It was a strange place to study filmmaking.

The folks at Sherwood Pictures team have learned many lessons, but are well aware that they're just getting started -- at last.

"So many miraculous things have happened to make all this possible," said Kendrick. "We're doing the best that we can and we're learning ... I truly believe that I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing."

Hellish grudges can kill

The helicopters kept making circles in the air so that the cameramen could keep showing the dairy farms and country roads, the bonnets and wide-brimmed straw hats, the horse-drawn buggies and the one-room schoolhouse framed in yellow police tape.

Soon the facts started going in circles as police recited a litany about 600 rounds of ammunition, a shotgun, a semiautomatic pistol, a stun gun, explosives and, later, the killer's sick collection of chains, clamps, hardware and sexual aids. Witnesses said Charles Carl Roberts IV was angry with God, angry with himself, haunted by guilt, fed up with life and driven by a hellish grudge.

Then journalists began asking questions that went in circles, the questions that nag clergy as well as state troopers. Why? Why the Amish? How could God let this happen? How can justice be done now that the killer is dead?

"Like everyone else, I could not believe what I was seeing on my television," said Johann Christoph Arnold, senior elder of the Bruderhof communes. While sharing many beliefs with the Amish and Mennonites, the Bruderhof ("place of the brothers") embrace some modern technology. Still, these movements share European roots in pacifism, simple living and an emphasis on the sanctity of human life.

"The Amish are our cousins so I know some of what they must be feeling," said Arnold, in his thick German accent. "I know these parents are hurting, I know they are asking questions, but I know that they know the answer is forgiveness. ... Tragedy and pain can soften our hearts until they break. But if we trust God this will help us to feel compassion."

The gunman's stunned wife released a media statement that showed her understanding of her Amish neighbors and their beliefs. She knew she could appeal for prayers and forgiveness, even though outsiders might find her words hard to fathom.

"Our hearts are broken, our lives are shattered, and we grieve for the innocence and lives that were lost today," said Marie Roberts. "Above all, please, pray for the families who lost children and, please, pray, too, for our family and children."

Some of the Amish went even further. One woman told the Los Angeles Times: "I am very thankful that I was raised to believe you don't fight back. You should forgive."

To grasp the Amish point of view, it's crucial to understand that they truly believe God desires justice, but also shows mercy and "they believe that these are not contradictory things," said Arnold. "They know that God said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.' The Amish certainly believe that this killer will not go without punishment, but they also believe that his punishment is in God's hands."

These are hard words in an age when many Americans hold one of two competing beliefs about eternity and God's judgment.

Millions of believers -- lukewarm and fervent alike -- assume that the really bad sinners are the people who commit the really bad sins, those spectacular sins tied to violence, drugs and sex. These really bad people are easy to condemn to hell.

Meanwhile, many other people believe that all people are automatically going to heaven, no matter what they believe or what they do. According to this point of view, the massacre inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School will have no impact on the eternal destiny of Charles Carl Roberts IV.

Once again, the Amish believe that God knows all and that God, and only God, can judge. What the Amish emphasize, stressed Arnold, is that forgiveness is the only way that humans can break a cycle of violence and sin.

In this case, the gunman left suicide notes that showed that he was driven by guilt and a grudge that he would not surrender. It appears that Roberts could not forgive God and could not forgive himself.

In the end, this killed him and through him this grudge killed others.

"If you hold a grudge, it will live on in your heart until it leads to violence of some kind," said Arnold. "If you do not forgive, then you cannot be healed. Forgiveness can heal the forgiver as well as the one who is forgiven. This is what the Amish believe. It will be hard and it will take time, but this is what they now must strive to live out for all the world to see."

The new campus rebels

They are the campus rebels, the young women who refuse to play by the rules laid down by a male-dominated culture.

They wish that more young men would focus on their minds and souls, instead of their bodies. They are tired of crude social games that serve the desires of men rather than the dreams of young women.

They are rebels, the religious women who struggle with the frat-boy patriarchy that rules the modern university campus on nights and weekends.

"There is a mini-revolt going on out there and you'll find it in the Christian groups that you find on most campuses," said Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. "The students in these independent religious groups -- especially the girls -- are the new countercultural revolutionaries at our modern secular universities."

That's the good news. The bad news is that if alternative religious groups didn't exist on most campuses, then these young women would have "nowhere else to go if they are looking for the kind of moral support that they need to find some way around the 'let's get drunk and hook up' scene," she said.

Secular and religious researchers have tried to describe the causes and the effects of this alcohol-fueled sexual mayhem on mainstream campuses.

Thus, publications ranging from Christianity Today to Rolling Stone have published reports on this issue, with predictably different verdicts. Much of the news coverage has focused on novelist Tom Wolfe's profane morality tale "I Am Charlotte Simmons," in which a brilliant Christian from the North Carolina mountains suffers a moral collapse during her freshman year on an elite campus that is famous for academics, basketball and sexist lacrosse players. Many critics noted a resemblance to Duke University.

College administrators have responded by focusing on alcohol abuse and its impact on campus life. However, they have failed to realize that alcohol is linked to other moral issues, said Whitehead, author of a book on a related topic, "Why There Are No Good Men Left." Administrators must understand that campus gender roles have been turned upside down, with mixed results.

Only a few decades ago, men ruled the classrooms on most campuses, stressed Whitehead, writing in the progressive Catholic journal Commonweal. There were more male students and more male professors, resulting in powerful networks that dominated academic life. Women, however, controlled campus social life, with all of its formal and informal rituals of dating and courtship.

Times have changed.

"Women now rule the classroom," argued Whitehead. "With the strict enforcement of laws prohibiting gender discrimination and sexual harassment, the classroom has become more egalitarian and merit based. Women have flourished academically in this well-regulated environment.

"On the other hand, men increasingly set the rules for an unregulated social life. ... They've streamlined the old system. They've eliminated the time-wasting efforts to attend to women's wishes and gotten down to the fundamentals of adolescent male desire: playing competitive games, drinking with buddies and having sex with lots of compliant women. They've also taken charge of party venues and themes: they rent off-campus party houses, stockpile massive quantities of alcohol, hire strippers and organize female wrestling and wet T-shirt competitions."

It's hard to party harder than the guys who make the rules and the girls who are willing to play by them.

Yet, when reporters and researchers ask the right questions, even many young women who are not religious sound stunned by the choices they have to make when it comes to alcohol, clothing and sex. One Duke coed told Rolling Stone: "I have done things that are completely inconsistent with the type of person I am, and what I value."

Whitehead said that these young women often sound like they have been abandoned, rather than "empowered." Their confused statements sound like they want help, but don't know how to say so.

"In many cases their moral compasses have become so disoriented that they can't even describe how they feel," said Whitehead. "These young women feel bad, but they can't pin down why they feel bad. They feel guilty, but they've been taught that there's no reason to feel guilty about anything. ...

"Many girls sound like they want a way out. If their own parents and churches won't help them, who will? It sure doesn't seem like their colleges are going to."

Slicing the Veggies

If you were a television executive, which program do you think would offend the most viewers across America?

The first is a children's show featuring digital vegetables that sing and dance and tell silly parables. Each episode ends with a Bible verse and a witty tomato's reminder that "God made you special and he loves you very much!"

The second is a prime-time special in which Madonna sings her enigmatic ballad "Live to Tell" while hanging on a disco-mirror crucifix and wearing a crown of thorns.

If you decided that it's the vegetables that are too hot to handle, then you're on the same wavelength as NBC.

Actually, both shows got early green lights -- although the latter had to surrender its Bible verses and some key God talk. The man in charge of slicing the "VeggieTales" is Phil Vischer, the heart, mind and voice behind Bob the Tomato and many other characters. He has faced a crucial question while wrestling with NBC program guidelines: How much God is too much God?

"The parameters of what we're doing have not been clearly articulated," said Vischer, who works as a consultant for Big Idea, Inc., the company he created that is now owned by Classic Media. "It's kind of like hunting for the electronic fence in your yard. You keep walking until the back of your neck starts tingling and then you know that you've hit it."

However, he discovered a crucial clue while editing the broadcast version of "Minnesota Cuke and the Search for Samson's Hairbrush."

In the script, Larry the Cucumber is convinced Samson must have gotten his extraordinary strength from his hairbrush. No, replies Bob the Tomato, the Bible says that Samson's strength came from God.

"That line was OK," said Vischer. "Where we got into trouble was the next line, where Bob says, 'And God can give us strength, too.' The NBC people said we had to take that out, so we must have crossed a line right there. ...

"What God does in the past is OK as long as it stays in the past. But if you cross that line and say that God can affect your life in the present, then that's too much. That's reaching out to the audience and that's proselytizing or something. That's bad."

The rules get tougher when children are the primary audience, he admitted. Media executives worry about programs that blur the line between "values" and "evangelism." Still, anyone who studies modern cartoons knows that producers are constantly trying to shape the beliefs of children when it comes to the environment, racism, gender, self esteem and a host of other topics.

Thus, some angry conservatives sense a double standard.

"NBC has taken the very essence of 'VeggieTales' -- and ripped it out. It's like 'Gunsmoke' without the guns, or 'Monday Night Football' without the football," argued L. Brent Bozell III of the Media Research Center. "NBC is the network that hired a squad of lawyers to argue that dropping the F-bomb on the Golden Globe Awards isn't indecent for children. ... Or, as one e-mailing friend marveled: 'So, saying '(expletive) you' is protected First Amendment speech on NBC but not 'God bless you.' "

Also, some "VeggieTales" loyalists -- Big Idea has sold 50 million DVDs and videocassettes -- have posted notes at PhilVischer.com arguing that the grown-up believers behind the silly stories have "sold out" in the secular marketplace.

Vischer said the key is that edited "VeggieTales" episodes will be shown on television, but they will not replace products on store shelves. If children like what they see on Saturday mornings and want their own copies, they will end up watching the original versions -- with "the Bible verses and the rest of the God stuff still in there," he said.

The semi-open door at NBC, he said, is "kind of like being invited to sing at the White House. The good news is that you get to sing at the White House. The bad news is that they aren't going to let you sing all of your Christian songs because they might upset the ambassador from Saudi Arabia and some of the other foreign dignitaries.

"But it's still good, in the long run, that people at the White House get to hear your music. The goal is for them to want to hear more."

Please let Harry Potter die

Father Jonathan Tobias knows exactly what he will do when J.K. Rowling releases the final volume of the Harry Potter series.

The family tradition is that he reads the entire book out loud to his wife and two daughters. Then, when the final page has been turned, they start debating what will happen next.

Things will be different this time. However, the Eastern Orthodox priest knows how he hopes the last act plays out. Unlike many other ministers, Tobias doesn't want Potter to renounce magic or to lose his adolescent flaws. It would be awkward, he said, for the young wizard to "fall to his knees and make the sign of the cross." His suggestion is simpler than that.

Rowling should let Potter die, because that is what tragic heroes do.

"There is little decent tragedy around" in modern culture, said Tobias, at his "Second Terrace" weblog. "There is a lot of irony, where a non-heroic central character is pitched into the abyss of ambiguity. There is a lot of farce, where burlesque mummers traipse around in varying degrees of moral undress.

"But tragedy? No. ... We do not see the sense of the pollution of evil, and its uncleanness. We have no immediate feeling of the necessity to fix or to cleanse. And we haven't seen much of a fable where the story demanded, clearly, the surmounting and cleansing of evil -- even at the cost of real, hard sacrifice."

Tobias is one voice in a global digital chorus debating this issue at myriad websites with names like SwordOfGryffindor.com and The-Leaky-Cauldron.org. Potter fans have, after all, purchased more than 300 million copies of the six novels.

The faithful have been sweating ever since Jim Dale, the voice behind the U.S. audio-book editions, claimed that the author had told him Harry would die. Then Rowling stunned British television viewers by revealing that she had tweaked the finale (the last word is "scar") so that "one character got a reprieve, but two die that I didn't intend to die." And Harry Potter? She answered, "I can completely understand the mentality of an author who thinks, 'I'm going to kill him off because after I'm dead and gone they won't be able to bring back the character.' "

Podcasting guru Emerson Spartz of MuggleNet.com spoke for millions when he said he couldn't believe that Rowling would build her series around a "kid whose life sucks and then he dies."

Nevertheless, Tobias is convinced that Potter combines many characteristics seen in heroes through the ages. He was born to greatness, but suffered the tragic loss of loved ones. He has special gifts, glaring weaknesses and carries the burden of a haunting prophecy that hints at tragedy, triumph or both. Supernatural trials? Potter has seen it all.

"A hero is not perfect. In fact, his flaws are part of what make him great," said Tobias, pastor of St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church outside Pittsburgh. "By the end of a story like this one, the hero has simply become too big to remain in this world. This kind of hero is born for a purpose and he dies for a purpose."

Thus, it's significant that Rowling -- in an early interview with a Canadian newspaper -- noted that she is, in fact, a Christian. "Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said, 'yes,' because I do. But no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that and, I have to say that does suit me. ... If I talk too freely about that, I think the intelligent reader -- whether 10 or 60 -- will be able to guess what is coming in the books."

Also, Rowling has acknowledged the influence of beloved Christian works like the seven-volume "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis and "The Lord of the Rings" cycle by J.R.R. Tolkien. Both of these fantasy classics, noted Tobias, feature endings that combine death and rebirth, along with the bittersweet passing of a magical age.

"Part of being a hero is to have a great love and to be willing to make a great sacrifice for that love," he said. "It seems to me that Harry Potter has been walking down that same road. ... It's just hard to see him going home and settling down. He's been through too much."

Why eulogies have changed

Seconds after American Airlines Flight 11 passed overhead, another Franciscan brother ran to Father Mychal Judge's room in the friary to let him know the World Trade Center was on fire.

The veteran chaplain quickly changed out of his simple brown habit and into his fire-department uniform -- pausing only to comb and spray his hair. Judge was heading into danger, but he was also ready to face the cameras. Soon, a photographer captured unforgettable images of firefighters carrying the priest's body out of the rubble and his name was on the first Ground Zero death certificate.

"While he was ministering to dying firemen, administering the Sacrament of the Sick and Last Rites, Mychal Judge died," said Father Michael Duffy, at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in New York City.

"... Look how that man died. He was right where the action was, where he always wanted to be. He was praying, because in the ritual for anointing we're always saying, 'Jesus come,' 'Jesus forgive,' 'Jesus save.' He was talking to God and he was helping someone. Can you honestly think of a better way to die? I think it was beautiful."

Anyone who wants to know how to deliver a eulogy should study this poignant section of Duffy's remarks at the funeral of his close friend, said Cyrus Copeland, a former advertising executive who edited "Farewell, Godspeed" and the recent "A Wonderful Life," two collections of famous eulogies. The new book includes a chapter focusing on Judge and three other men who died on Sept. 11, 2001.

This one anecdote reveals two sides of the same man, mixing humor -- the final ritual of comb and hairspray -- with a vision of a faithful priest's willingness to risk his own life to provide comfort to his unique flock.

These days, said Copeland, the loved ones who gather at a funeral want to hear a celebratory toast to a life well lived, just as much or more than they want to face spiritual issues involved in their loss.

"People want honesty," he said. "They don't want to hear about the saint that nobody knew. They want to hear about the real Father Mychal, a man who loved the human soul, but also knew a good photo opportunity when he saw one. ? They want to hear about life, more than they want to hear about eternal life. Eulogies today are more human and they are becoming less religious."

Copeland is convinced there are several reasons that the art of the eulogy has changed so radically in recent decades.

For starters, most people alive today have grown up in a video age, surrounded by celebrity news and, more recently, the tightly edited rush of "reality television." They have seen their share of high-profile funerals. Millions wept as Lord Edward John Spencer spoke at the funeral of his sister, Lady Diana. Many watched as superstar Cher laughed and cried her way through a eulogy for her former husband, Sonny Bono.

Clergy rarely command the spotlight during these rites.

"It's important to remember that the celebrity memorial service was the first kind to be secularized," said Copeland. "So you expect to hear about heaven in a eulogy for Father Mychal Judge, with a priest in the pulpit. But eulogies for celebrities like Marilyn Monroe may not mention heaven at all. That's just the age we live in."

There's another practical reason that eulogies have changed so much. Friends and relatives are taking control of the microphone.

In the past, loved ones asked the family's pastor, rabbi or priest to deliver the eulogy. Today, it would be hard for most people to name such a person. Most modern families are scattered across the nation, divided by career choices and, far too often, broken relationships. Family members may not even share a common faith and they certainly have not spent most of their lives in the same neighborhood in the same city.

Clergy used to deliver about 90 percent of all eulogies. Today, "that number is about 50 percent and it's falling," said Copeland.

"So for many people a memorial service simply isn't a religious event anymore. It offers us a chance to say our good-byes to the dearly departed, but many people no longer think of this event as a bridge between this life and the next."

Georgetown revises its rules

David French knew what he was getting into when he signed up to study on a Churches of Christ campus in Nashville.

"When I went to David Lipscomb College, we all knew there was no drinking and there was no sex until you were married. We knew about the daily Bible studies and the required chapel services," said French, a Harvard Law School graduate who leads the Alliance Defense Fund's Center for Academic Freedom.

"There's nothing wrong with a private college trying to maintain a distinctive religious tradition, whether Jewish or Catholic or evangelical or whatever. The U.S. Constitution says that's fine. But you're supposed to tell students the rules up front."

Twenty years later, things haven't changed much at Lipscomb University and at many other religious schools -- yet students choose to enroll anyway. Meanwhile, other private colleges and universities have made headlines and inspired a few lawsuits by tweaking or overhauling their rules that affect faith and morality on campus.

That's why French wasn't surprised that Georgetown University administrators have decided to ban outside Protestant ministries from holding on-campus worship services, Bible studies, prayer groups or fellowship meetings. More than 50 schools -- including Princeton and Harvard -- have tried to do the same thing in recent years.

Georgetown leaders said the goal is a more unified Protestant voice on campus. Groups rocked by the decision say it's an attack on diversity.

"While we realize that this comes as a great disappointment, please know we are moving forward with this decision after much dialogue with the Lord," said the Rev. Constance Wheeler of the campus Protestant ministry office, writing to InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Chi Alpha and other evangelical groups affected by the ban.

The banned groups may be able to maintain some presence on the world-famous Jesuit campus if they can find evangelical or conservative Protestant professors to serve as official sponsors, said Kevin Offner of the InterVarsity staff. The problem is that they are having trouble finding faculty members who will stand with them.

"What we want to know is if different religious groups are going to be treated alike," said Offner. "To what degree do Catholic, Jewish and Muslim students on campus have access to national organizations that support them in their faith, while there's this funny stuff going on with the Protestants?"

Ministry leaders from off-campus have, in recent years, been required to sign a covenant written by mainline Protestants in the official Georgetown campus-ministry office. In one clause, they pledged to "maintain respect for the various religious traditions" on campus, while avoiding actions that could be interpreted as "denigrating or ridiculing" others. Ministers were asked to help students of all faith traditions, yet the covenant specifically prohibited evangelism or "proselytizing" among those who might be "vulnerable in their faith or personal lives." Another clause stressed: "I affirm the legitimacy of Roman Catholicism as a path to salvation."

There are some tensions between religious groups at Georgetown, especially in an era in which Muslim students and donors have played a big role in the growth of new programs and facilities. However, the strongest tensions on campus are caused by moral and cultural issues, not over-zealous Protestant evangelists, said Manuel Miranda, a conservative Catholic activist and Georgetown alum.

"There are far more Protestants who convert to Catholicism while at Georgetown than the other way around," he stressed. In his opinion, the key to the ban on independent Protestant ministries is "the fact that all of these groups take very orthodox positions on the crucial social issues, like gay rights and abortion. If anything, they're more Catholic on these issues than lots of Catholics there."

The bottom line, said French, is that a private school can do what it wants to do, as long as it keeps any written promises it has made to students. The Georgetown campus-ministry website says, "Welcome," "Shalom" and "Assalamu-Alaikum (Peace be upon you)." The university claims to welcome students of "every religious profession."

"The issue is whether Georgetown is doing a bait-and-switch routine," he said. "The school says it has a come one, come all approach to religion. But when evangelical students get there, they may discover that they don't have the same rights when it comes to free speech, freedom of association and freedom of religion. ... The university has to state its rules clearly and then live by them."