Food and the basic faith groups

It's Yom Kippur. Will your Jewish grandmother serve shrimp-and-bacon hordeurves when the family breaks the fast?

It's Ramadan. Will your devout Muslim parents smile if you serve dinner several hours before sundown?

It's Good Friday. Will the Catholic college cafeteria serve hamburgers?

It's Thanksgiving. Can you predict the foods that will be on your mother's table? Will the German grandmothers bake Christmas cookies at the Lutheran church? Is the tuna casserole served at potluck dinners at rural Minnesota churches truly a sacrament?

When it comes to the rhythms and symbols of faith, it's easy to see the role that food plays, especially in the intense and emotional final months of the religious calendar.

"Food is all about the stories that define our lives," said Daniel Sack of the University of Chicago Divinity School, author of the book "Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture."

"I'm not just talking about religious rituals that involve food. ? For many church people, what happens in the social hall week after week is more important than what happens in the sanctuary. They come for Communion, but also for community."

Sack said food traditions -- with a big "T," as well as with a small "t" -- demonstrate why it's almost impossible to draw a line showing where religion ends and culture begins. Food is one of the basic building blocks of life and, thus, is one of the "passions" that religious believers have always struggled to keep under control.

Change what people eat and you change their lives. However, there are times when the religious significance of food is obvious and there are times when it is not. While studying this subject, Sack said he began sorting the different kinds of food traditions into four groups.

* Sometimes, the food becomes a holy object in and of itself. One example is when a Buddhist takes a food offering to a temple. In other cases, ordinary food becomes sacred as part of an intricate ritual that is defined by prayers and scripture -- such as the bread and wine in a Catholic Mass.

"What is crucial is that this sacramental understanding of food seeps into other parts of life," said Sack. "And we're not just talking about Christianity. If you start talking about bread and wine, it's hard to take that symbolism out of there."

* Most religious traditions, to varying degrees, claim some right to control the role that food plays in daily life. This is most obvious in faiths such as Judaism, with its "kosher" traditions, and in Islamic laws to establish what is and what is not "halal." In other faiths, believers fast from eating certain foods at different times of the week or year.

* In many cases, these sacred laws and traditions then begin to shape the festivals and the cuisine of a particular culture or ethnic group. At this point the line between Greek cooking and Greek Orthodox cooking starts to blur. What role does faith play in the menus of Ethiopian, Italian, Lebanese, Indian or Swedish restaurants?

* Food also reflects what people believe about family and community life. It would be strange to see conservative Evangelical leaders serve the same food at a men's dinner that they serve a luncheon for the women's group. Foods reflect social roles, too.

Sack said that every community, every family, cannot help but develop informal rituals linked to meals, because meals are such symbolic times of fellowship. And when the times change, so do the meals.

Consider the food served at youth-group meetings. Once, parents organized these meetings and prepared the food, helping to maintain a sense of watch-care and protection from the outside world. Today, most churches hire professional youth pastors who plan multi-media programs and -- naturally -- send out for pizza.

"When we assimilate at the level of the table, we have truly assimilated to the world around us," said Sack. "When you take this view of life, those parents are not just sending out for pizza -- they are sending a symbolic signal of acceptance of the surrounding youth culture. ?

"You see the same thing happening when people start lining up those fast-food boxes at church potluck dinners. Some megachurches even have food courts, these days. Who has the time to prepare those special dishes that people used to take to church?"

Tesser well, Madeleine L'Engle

Madeleine L'Engle found it amusing that her critics kept missing the obvious in her fiction.

Consider the magical women in "A Wrinkle In Time" -- Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. It's true that they have strange wardrobes and unique ways of speaking. Mrs. Whatsit is chatty, for example, because she is so young -- a mere 2,379,152,497 years, eight months and three days old.

When the elder Mrs. Which arrives from another dimension, her colleagues begin giggling. Why? Since she is meeting three human children, Mrs. Which elects to appear as a "figure in a black robe and a black peaked hat, beady eyes, a beaked nose and long gray hair." She is holding a broomstick.

Get the joke? For decades, L'Engle's fiercest critics kept missing it. Thus, "A Wrinkle In Time" -- which won the 1963 Newbery Medal -- became one of America's most frequently banned children's books.

"If you read the book, there is no way that they are witches. They are guardian angels -- the book says so. You don't have to clarify what is already clear," L'Engle told me, in a lengthy 1989 interview.

"Don't they know how to spell? W-H-I-C-H is not W-I-T-C-H."

This interview came during a time when L'Engle (pronounced LENG-el) had increased her already busy lecture schedule after the death of her husband of 40 years, actor Hugh Franklin. But L'Engle kept writing and talking about the themes that dominated her life -- faith, family and creativity -- until her health failed. She wrote more than 60 works of fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry and prayers during her life, which ended with her Sept. 6th death in Litchfield, Conn., at the age of 88.

Wherever L'Engle went, people kept asking her to explain her beliefs, from heaven to hell, from sex to salvation, from feminism to the arts. The writer did not hide her views, but rarely used the kind of language that so-called "Christian writers" were supposed to use.

Thus, her career was defined by a paradox: Many of her strongest admirers were evangelical Christians, as were most of her fiercest critics. Thus, it's symbolic that she donated her personal notes and papers to Wheaton College -- the Rev. Billy Graham's alma mater -- where they are part of a collection best known for its materials about the life of Christian apologist C.S. Lewis.

L'Engle was also candid about the role her faith played in her writing. She was, throughout her life, an Episcopalian's Episcopalian from New York City who was determined to keep describing the visions and voices that filled her soul. While her writing was often mysterious, she kept hiding the crucial clues right out in the open.

It's hard, for example, to miss the source of the climactic speech to Meg Murray, the heroine in the science fiction series that began with "A Wrinkle In Time."

"The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men," says Mrs. Who, who always speaks in quotations, such as this lengthy passage from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. "... God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty."

It's even clearer, in the next novel, that the children are backed by the powers of heaven. Meg finds herself face to face with a many-eyed creature with a 10-foot wingspan, a being with too many wings to count, wings that were in "constant motion, covering and uncovering the eyes." This is a biblical cherubim, yet another angelic vision. He stresses that he is not a singular cherub, and adds, "I am practically plural."

The goal, said L'Engle, was to create fiction that was unmistakably Christian, while writing to an audience that included all kinds of believers and unbelievers.

"I have been brought up to believe that the Gospel is to be spread, it is to be shared -- not kept for those who already have it," she said. "Well, 'Christian novels' reach Christians. They don't reach out. ... I am not a 'Christian writer.' I am a writer who is a Christian. I think that you have to be the best writer that you can be. Now, if I am truly a Christian, then that will show in my work."

Presbyterian alphabet soup, again

To follow Presbyterian news updates, outsiders need to learn a few key facts.

The Presbyterian Church in America is not the same thing as the American Presbyterian Church. Also, Orthodox Presbyterians are not to be confused with Bible Presbyterians, Cumberland Presbyterians, Reformed Presbyterians, Associate Reformed Presbyterians or Evangelical Presbyterians.

This Presbyterian alphabet soup became less complicated in 1983, when the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. joined with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the so-called Southern branch. This created the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which today has about 2.3 million members.

Is that clear? If so, take a deep breath because Presbyterian affairs are about to get more complicated as new divisions and unions reshape the churches that trace their roots to John Calvin and his Reformed branch of Protestantism.

"While we're seeing churches fly away from the core doctrines that once held them together, we're also seeing new bonds being formed that are truly interesting," said the Rev. Parker Williamson, whose work in the conservative Presbyterian Layman newspaper has made him a mainline Protestant lightning rod.

"We're seeing a realignment across the boundaries between our churches. This unity will be doctrinal -- not legal. There may not be a formal structure that forms out of all of this. We don't need a big new denominational headquarters to replace the old denominational headquarters."

These are, of course, fighting words at the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), which has been forced to downsize its Louisville staff several times in the past 15 years. Membership statistics and donations have declined in an era of conflict about biblical authority, ordination standards, sexual ethics and a host of ancient doctrines, especially the belief that salvation is found only through faith in Jesus Christ.

Meanwhile, these riptides of change have also affected the Layman, a newspaper born in 1965 when the old United Presbyterian Church began work on a modernized confession of faith. That fight reopened wounds from a 1924 battle, when its General Assembly decided that literal views of key doctrines -- such as the virgin birth, deity and resurrection of Jesus -- did not have to be used as a test for ordinations.

After decades of focusing on what has become the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Layman's August issue included several pages of coverage of events in the smaller Evangelical Presbyterian Church. In the future, said Williamson, it will include news about the Presbyterian Church in America and other conservative Reformed bodies.

This will get complicated because "lots of things are happening at once" as church leaders try to plan for the future, he said.

Some congregations have decided to stay in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), but their leaders are loosening their national ties. Williamson noted that leaders of the Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta have voted to try to stop their per-capita financial contributions from going to the national offices in Louisville. Instead, they want this money to back a new network called the Presbyterian Global Fellowship.

"So they're staying in the PCUSA, but they're doing what I call 'leaving, in place.' They're staying ... but they've made it clear that this isn't business as usual," he said. "Now that's the largest church in the denomination, so when it does something like that it gives cover for smaller churches and their pastors who have been afraid to take a stand."

Some churches are openly attempting to cut their mainline ties and join the New Wineskins/Evangelical Presbyterian Church Transitional Presbytery. Other congregations are revising legal documents that bind them to their regional Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) presbyteries, in case they want to exit in the future.

Leaders on both sides know it may take a U.S. Supreme Court decision to tie up the many loose ends in this legal fight -- affecting millions of dollars worth of pensions, endowments and church properties nationwide. Similar conflicts are shaking the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and other oldline Protestant bodies.

There will be unity in the future, said Williamson, but it will not look like the unity of the past.

"There isn't going to be a central, merged denominational office somewhere," he said. "The new church unity will be in new networks of people with common beliefs. It's going to look more like the World Wide Web, not the old industrial model."

Religion futures market 2007

When it comes to statistics about religion, Europe is an urbane continent full of empty cathedrals, while America offers rows of suburban megachurches.

Consider what happens when the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life asks a basic "salience question" to determine the level of interest in faith-related matters around the world. Participants are asked to answer "yes" or "no" in response to this statement: "Religion is very important to me."

About six out of 10 in the United States say "yes," noted political scientist Luis E. Lugo, who has directed the research center since 2004.

"There is not a place in Europe, even in Eastern Europe, that comes close to that kind of level of religious commitment," he said, during a religion-news seminar in Washington organized by my colleagues at the Oxford Centre for Religion & Public Life. Even Canada, he noted, now "looks like Europe on this question."

In Great Britain, 33 percent of those polled said religion was "very important" in their lives, compared with 27 percent in Italy, 21 percent in Germany and 11 percent in France. In Poland, the number was 36 percent, with Russia at 14 percent and the Czech Republic at 11 percent.

This rift between the old world and the new has existed for decades. Lugo said that when he discusses these statistics with Europeans they say, "Ah! See, we knew it. The United States is a very strange place. It's just full of religious zealots."

But then Lugo clicks to another chart as he describes what he calls the "religious futures market." The goal is to map the intersection of faith and demographics, including factors such as fertility rates and religious conversion trends in various nations. What happens when Lugo adds statistics from Latin America, Asia and Africa to his "salience question" chart?

The numbers are stark. In Guatemala, 80 percent of those polled said religion was "very important" in their lives. That number was 77 percent in Brazil and 72 percent in Honduras, but only 39 percent in Argentina.

And Asia? The "yes" total was 95 percent in Indonesia, 92 percent in India, 91 percent in the Philippines, but only 12 percent in Japan. And Africa? Senegal checks in at 97 percent, Nigeria is 92 percent and the numbers only declined to 80 percent in Angola.

Lugo said the typical response by Europeans to these numbers could be summed up in one word -- "Whoa!" Then there is nervous laughter.

So, when it comes to weighing the role of religion in world affairs, Europeans who worry about America have to ask: "Who looks strange now?"

"The world as a whole is even more religious than the United States," Lugo added. "So it is not the United States that needs explaining, in many ways, when it comes to religion, it is Europe that needs to be explained. Why this secular continent ... surrounded by a sea of religiosity?"

This global reality raises all kinds of questions, such as:

* Why are fertility rates linked to the fervency of religious beliefs? "The most secular parts of the world have the lowest fertility rates," he noted, "and the most religious have the highest fertility rates."

* How will Europe respond to high rates of immigration by religious believers, especially Muslims and Christians from Eastern Europe?

* Can the continent of Africa avoid being shaped by conflict between Islam and Christianity -- two growing, conversion-oriented faiths on that continent?

* How will the move of more Catholics into what Lugo called "high-octane Pentecostalism" -- inside the Church of Rome and in Protestantism -- affect Latin America, Central America and, finally, North America?

If researchers focus strictly on Europe and North America, they may conclude that secularism and liberalized forms of faith are on the rise. But if they look at the global numbers, said Lugo, they will see a completely different picture of the future.

"You don't have to be a genius to conclude that it is going to be more religious and less secular," he said. "There is not a European country, for instance, that is anywhere close to a replacement birth rate. Not even close. All of their populations are declining. ... So on that basis alone, you can predict that the whole religion question is going to become even more important, in terms of global affairs."

The ultimate movie stigma

As a rule, movie producers do not enjoy seeing America's most influential newspaper crucify their films.

"Reeking of self-righteousness and moral reprimand," spat Jeanette Catsoulis of the New York Times, a movie entitled "The Ultimate Gift" could be considered "a hairball of good-for-you filmmaking coughed up by 20th Century Fox's new faith-based label, Fox Faith."

Wait, there's more, because this "cinematic sermon" makes sure that its "messages -- pro-poverty, anti-abortion -- are methodically hammered home."

There were other reviews, good and bad. Still, the nastiness in strategic corners of the media caught veteran producer Rick Eldridge off guard, in large part because he truly thought that he was producing a mainstream movie, with mainstream talent, that was going to have a chance to reach a thoroughly mainstream audience.

What he didn't count on was getting stuck with two dangerous labels -- "Fox" and "Faith." Those words can turn your average media insider into a pillar of salt.

That's what happened to "The Ultimate Gift," turning this quiet cinematic fable into a cautionary tale for others who want to make movies that can appeal to viewers in Middle America, including folks who frequent sanctuary pews.

"I really felt this story had strong values that would hit home with the general market," said Eldridge, who is now pushing to promote the DVD of his movie. "I thought this was a moral-message film, but I was determined to make a movie that would speak to a wide spectrum of people. ... Then we got pigeon-holed into this little 'Christian' niche that really limited who would get much of a chance to see this movie."

The pivotal moment was when this 20th Century Fox project was moved to the new Fox Faith division, which meant "The Ultimate Gift" was sent to theaters with all kinds of faith-based strings attached. As the Fox Faith website bluntly stated: "To be part of Fox Faith, a movie has to have overt Christian content or be derived from the work of a Christian author."

Thus, mainstream critics were determined to find those moral messages and make sure potential moviegoers were warned in advance. This also meant that mainstream performers such as Academy Award nominee James Garner, veteran character actor Brian Dennehy and the young actress Abigail Breslin of "Little Miss Sunshine" discovered that they were -- surprise, surprise -- starring in a "Christian movie."

Crucial scenes were, as a result, seen through this lens.

The movie opens at the funeral of Howard "Red" Stevens, an oil tycoon who left behind both an impressive portfolio of good deeds and a bitterly divided family. The minister at the graveside, in addition to reading scripture, quotes the famous British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge as saying, "Every happening, great or small, is a miracle by which God speaks to us and the art of life is to get the message."

At another pivotal moment, the prodigal grandson whose coming-of-age story drives the plot is shown in a Catholic hospital chapel, consoling a leukemia patient. The girl is thinking about butterflies, heaven and her stressed-out single mother's future -- while facing a large statue of Jesus with his arms open wide. "I don't know much about God or Jesus, but I can promise that those arms are meant for you," says the young man.

But the statement that upset critics the most is offered by the young mother, as she describes their struggles after the girl's father abandoned them. The one thing she knows for certain, she says, is that her daughter Emily is the "best decision I ever made."

There is no need to deny that the movie contains religious and moral themes, said Eldridge. But for generations, Hollywood executives made successful mainstream movies that contained these kinds of words and images. Those movies were aimed at a broad, mainstream market -- not a narrow, political, sectarian, "Christian" niche.

"I told the Fox people this movie was going to resonate with the Christian audience and that's fine with me, because I am a Christian," said Eldridge. "But I was worried that this movie would get tagged as a little 'Christian' movie, like that was some kind of Good Housekeeping seal for the Christian marketplace. ...

"I think it's obvious that this is what happened and that caused some people to distance themselves from this movie. There was no need for that to happen."

Faith in St. Arbucks

As he drives to church, the Rev. Greg Asimakoupoulos always notices the Sunday crowd gathered at one of his favorite sanctuaries.

There are a dozen religious congregations on Mercer Island, even though the island east of Seattle in Lake Washington is only six miles long and three miles wide. It's easy to spot the signs for the major brands, including the Presbyterians, Mormons, Orthodox Jews, Episcopalians, Christian Scientists and others.

But Asimakoupoulos pays special attention to the flock at the cozy haven with the simple green-and-white sign. Even though he leads the Mercer Island Covenant Church, the evangelical pastor and poet knows this other "church" well, since he visits it faithfully.

Asimakoupoulos calls it "St. Arbucks." There are six on the island.

"We like to say that our church is a genuine community of faith, the kind of place people can feel at home," he said. "Still, you may have to go down the block to get to see that become a reality for lots of people. We need to be honest and admit that people are lining up to get into Starbucks, but they aren't lining up to get into many of our churches. Why?"

There is more to this, he stressed, than pricey consumerism pushed by an omnipresent global empire. For many of its customers, St. Arbucks represents more than the individualistic era that a wealthy character played by Tom Hanks mocked in the movie "You've Got Mail."

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks," quipped Manhattan tycoon Joe Fox, "is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee -- short, tall, light, dark, caf, de-caf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they are doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee, but an absolutely defining sense of self. Tall! De-caf! Cappuccino!"

It's true that local Starbucks offer their flocks a wide variety of choices, noted Asimakoupoulos. Meanwhile, the trend in many modern American churches is to embrace growth strategies that focus on music and programs that meet the needs of one type of person -- all the time.

At his own church, the pastor has even decided that it might be good to let people open the old-fashioned books in the pew racks and sing a few hymns, along with those pop-style praise choruses. Churches seem afraid of variety these days.

But the key to the success of St. Arbucks, he said, is that these establishments have become what researchers refer to as "third places" for people to gather or hide -- a safe zone between home and office. For generations, bars, diners, barbershops and a host of other locations have played similar roles.

This kind of hospitality has become rare in this rushed world.

Regulars at St. Arbucks are greeted by name and the baristas may have their favorite drink -- Asimakoupoulos is a grande-drip purist -- ready when they reach the counter. Many modern churches have grown so large that people cannot know the names of many people with whom they are praying.

It's also crucial that these coffee sanctuaries are open to all kinds of people. At the Starbucks a short walk from his church, the pastor -- people watching over the top of his laptop screen -- has even seen believers reading their Bibles.

Writing in Leadership Journal, Asimakoupoulos noted: "At St. Arbucks, I've seen a rabbi mentoring a Torah student. A youth pastor disciplining a new convert. High school girls working on a group assignment. A book club sipping mochas while discussing a fiction author's plot." Could churches try to be more open to outsiders?

However, the pastor has watched one ominous Starbucks trend. When he was a college student in Seattle, this local institution was about excellent coffee beans -- period.

These days, the place that many call "four bucks" offers CDs, gifts, pastries and super-sweet drinks of all kinds, hot and cold. Hardly anyone goes there for pure coffee.

"Maybe we can let that be a warning," said Asimakoupoulos. "It's important for our churches to think about what people want, but we can't lose sight of what people need. We have to keep offering basic faith, the faith of the ages. The extras are nice, but people also need the classics."

Final Harry Potter wars? Part II

Coming soon to a parish near you: Sunday school with Harry Potter.

This could happen if your congregation buys the new "Mixing it up with Harry Potter" study guides from the Church of England. The goal of the 12-part series is to use scenes from these omnipresent books and movies to help children discuss big issues such as death, sacrifice, loneliness, fear, mercy and grief.

"Jesus used storytelling to engage and challenge his listeners," said Bishop John Pritchard of Oxford, speaking on behalf of the curriculum. "There's nothing better than a good story to make people think, and there's plenty in the Harry Potter books to make young people think about the choices they make in their everyday lives."

In his introduction, study-guide author Owen Smith addressed the concerns many believers have voiced about J.K. Rowling's books. As most residents of Planet Earth know by now, more than 325 million copies of the seven Harry Potter novels have been sold so far.

"The magic in the books is simply part of the magic that J. K. Rowling has created, in the same way that magic is part of the world of Christian writers such as C. S. Lewis," said Smith. "To say ... these books draw younger readers towards the occult seems to me both to malign J. K. Rowling and to vastly underestimate the ability of children and young people to separate the real from the imaginary."

At least three kinds of critics have knocked Rowling's work, when it comes to religion. Some say the books are secular and contain no theological content at all, while, on the other side, many others insist that Potter-mania may lead to interest in witchcraft. Some simply say the books send mixed signals and should be avoided.

However, there are also at least three positive schools of thought about Rowling's take on faith.

* Like the Church of England educators, some supporters say the Potter books can -- at the very least -- be mined as acceptable sources of stories to help teach young people about faith. One early evangelical book making this case, "The Gospel According to Harry Potter" by Connie Neal, was blacklisted in many Christian bookstores.

* While Catholics have debated the merits of Rowling's work, a Vatican voice on culture has said the novels portray clashes between good and evil in a manner consistent with Christianity. Speaking in 2003, Father Peter Fleetwood noted that the author is "Christian by conviction, is Christian in her mode of living, even in her way of writing."

Rowling has confirmed that she is a Christian and a communicant in the Church of Scotland, which has Presbyterian roots. In one oft-quoted interview, she told a Canadian newspaper: "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."

Thus, this group of Potter supporters argues that Rowling is a Christian -- perhaps one with liberal beliefs -- who has chosen to write mainstream books containing Christian symbols and language. In other words, she is a Christian who writes books, but not "Christian books."

* Some go further and find elements of overt Christian storytelling -- especially in the new "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." They may, for example, see parallels between Potter's willingness to surrender his life to save others from the evil Lord Voldemort and the redemptive sacrifice made by the Christ figure in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by Lewis.

There's more. In a pivotal baptism sequence, Potter dives into deadly waters to recover a sword -- described as a "great silver cross" -- required to destroy evil treasures. Finally, there is a vision of life after death set in a heavenly "King's Cross" train station.

Literary critic John Granger of HogwartsProfessor.com has been making this argument for years. He thinks Rowling must be considered a "Christian artist," yet one who faces her own doubts and struggles.

"The Gospel messages and allusions in the series finale were so transparent and edifying, surely, I thought, the Harry Haters must be having second thoughts, if not regrets about things they have said with such conviction the past 10 years in print and from the pulpit," said Granger. "I haven't seen any sign of this. Have you?"

Final Harry Potter wars? Part I

Harry Potter and his best friend Hermione Granger arrived in the magical town of Godric's Hollow on a snowy Christmas Eve.

Carols drifted out of the village church as they searched its graveyard for the resting place of Lily and James Potter, who were murdered by the dark Lord Voldemort. First, they found the headstone honoring the family of Albus Dumbledore, the late headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The inscription said: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Then the Potter headstone proclaimed: "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." Harry was mystified. Was this about defeating the evil Death Eaters?

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," said Hermione, gently. "It means ... you know ... living beyond death. Living after death."

For millions of religious believers who embrace Harry Potter, this pivotal scene in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" -- book seven in J.K. Rowling's giant fantasy puzzle -- offers new evidence that the author is, in fact, a Church of Scotland communicant whose faith has helped shape her work.

The first inscription is from St. Matthew's Gospel and the second -- stating the book's theme -- is a passage in St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians about the meaning of Christ's resurrection. Is this part of what Dumbledore had called an all-powerful "deep magic" built on sacrificial love?

Nevertheless, for millions of Rowling critics the presence of scripture in this final book will not cancel a decade's worth of wizardry, magic and what they believe is vague, New Age spirituality. And besides, Potter clearly didn't recognize the unattributed Bible verses. Right?

Religious battles commenced soon after Rowling released "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." It didn't help that "Philosopher's Stone" -- a term from medieval alchemy -- was replaced with "Sorcerer's Stone" in U.S. editions. After the sale of 325 million-plus books worldwide, there are now at least three camps of Potter critics in these theological debates and three prominent camps of Potter defenders. The critics include:

* Some who insist these books are secular or subtly anti-religious. Writing in Time, Lev Grossman has argued that Rowling shares more in common with atheists like Christopher Hitchens than with J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, whose books were rooted in Christian faith.

"Look at Rowling's books," says Grossman. "What's missing? If you want to know who dies in Harry Potter, the answer is easy: God. Harry Potter lives in a world free of any religion or spirituality of any kind. He lives surrounded by ghosts but has no one to pray to, even if he were so inclined, which he isn't."

* Conservatives who think Potter-mania can lead to the occult. Some even oppose fantasy novels by Lewis and Tolkien -- which contain references to wizards, magic and demonic powers. The key is a Deuteronomy passage: "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or daughter pass through fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells. ..."

Focus on the Family's James Dobson responded to "Deathly Hallows" by saying: "Magical characters -- witches, wizards, ghosts, goblins, werewolves, poltergeists and so on -- fill the Harry Potter stories, and given the trend toward witchcraft and New Age ideology ... it's difficult to ignore the effects such stories (albeit imaginary) might have on young, impressionable minds."

* Believers who see mixed signals. Evangelical activist Chuck Colson, for example, praised the books in 1999, noting that they contrasted good and evil, while the main characters displayed courage, loyalty and self-sacrifice. "Not bad lessons in a self-centered world," said the founder of Prison Fellowship.

But Colson's latest statement warned: "Personally, I don?t recommend the Potter books. I?d rather Christian kids not read them."

Soon after that Colson commentary, however, current Prison Fellowship President Mark Earley gently praised Rowling's books and, above all, the role fantasy novels can play for readers numbed by modern life.

"The popularity of these books -- and, yes, even of the Harry Potter series -- reminds us that the yearning for hope, for good to win and evil to be vanquished, is no infantile desire," he said. "Rather, it is one of the deepest and most important parts of our nature, placed in us by the God of all truth."

NEXT WEEK: Believers who embrace Harry Potter.

Grilling the youth pastor

It's the question that preachers, teachers and parents dread, especially if they were shaped by the cultural earthquakes of the 1960s. But no one fears it more than youth ministers, who hear the private questions that young people fear to ask their elders. Youth pastors work in the no man's land between the home and the church.

This is the question: "Well, didn't you do any of this stuff when you were a kid?" The young person may be asking about sex, drinking, drugs, cheating or, perhaps, lying to parents about any of the above.

If youth ministers stop and think about it, they will realize that they usually say something like the following while trying to answer these questions, said the Rev. David "Duffy" Robbins, a United Methodist who teaches youth ministry at Eastern University near Philadelphia.

"If I answer that it's none of your business and the answer is between me and God, there's a pretty good chance you'll hear that as a 'yes,' " said Robbins, writing in Good News magazine. "If I answer 'yes' to your question, there's a pretty good chance that you'll take that as permission to make the same mistakes that I've made. If, on the other hand, I say 'no,' there's a good possibility that you might reason that then I couldn't possibly understand what you're facing or what you're going through right now.

"So, what that question amounts to is a lose-lose proposition for both of us, and I'm not willing to put us in that position, so I'm not going to answer that question."

There was a time when youth pastors -- not to mention senior ministers -- would have felt more confident answering.

There was a time when adults thought it was their duty to tell young people that some things were right and some things were wrong -- period. The assumption was that adults had a sacred duty to serve as moral examples and that was that. Candor was rarely part of the equation.

Then the pendulum swung in the other direction, said Robbins, and many religion leaders joined what is often called the "authenticity movement." The goal was to open up and level with young people in an attempt to impress them with displays of openness and vulnerability. By sharing the details of his or her own sins and temptations, the youth pastor hoped to gain credibility -- inspiring young people not to make the same errors.

But there's a problem with letting it all hang out, said Robbins.

"It so easy to get carried away and, before you know it, your whole body language and the relish with which people tell these stories can send the wrong signal. You may end up leaving a kid thinking, 'Well, I wonder if I could do something really bad like that. That sounds kind of cool.' "

The problem, he said, is that it's hard not to cross the line between honest, transparent disclosure and imprudent, naked exhibitionism. Nevertheless, it's true that young people need to hear that it's normal to struggle with sin and temptation and that there are adults who want to help them, because they have faced many of the same issues -- in the past and in the present.

"It is completely appropriate, for example, for the students in my youth group to know that I struggle with lust," noted Robbins. "On the other hand, if I continue by saying, 'In fact, Sally, your mom is a fox!' -- that crosses a line."

This kind of self-exposure has to have a purpose, said Robbins. It's a good thing for adults to acknowledge that they struggle with sin, but it can be destructive if that's the end of the story. Young people need to know that God "loves us the way that we are, but he doesn't intend to leave us as we are," he said.

"It's one thing for me to tell my youth group that I struggled with this or that sin and, with God's help, have managed to put it behind me," explained Robbins.

"It's something else to just say that I struggled and struggled and struggled and that there just doesn't seem to be a way to be forgiven by God and go on to lead a better life. ... That isn't much of a Gospel, now is it?"