Religion news '97 -- celebrity trumps saintliness

After the shock, came grief and after the grief, came waves of praise and admiration that raised Princess Diana from superstar, loving mother and humanitarian to mass-media sainthood.

It didn't take long for a few commentators to ask a blunt, but obvious question: Would the death of a living saint such as Mother Teresa produce anywhere near the same outpouring of emotion around the world?

Then Mother Teresa died. It was impossible for editors and producers to avoid comparisons between their handling of the deaths of these two remarkable women who were both on a first- name basis with the world. What to do? If they gave Diana's funeral more coverage than Mother Teresa's death, this would only prove that celebrity trumps saintliness. Yet decreasing Diana coverage might prove financially catastrophic. Even playing the stories side-by-side awkwardly implied equal status.

The Religion Newswriters Association's ballot to determine the year's top 10 religion stories began with a simple reference to the "life and death of Mother Teresa" and didn't include a clear reference to Princess Diana. The passing of Mother Teresa was voted as the top story on the religion beat and she also was named religion newsmaker of the year.

Yet it's impossible to discuss the public impact of the tiny nun's death without mentioning Diana. The juxtaposition was simply too ironic. This was, as Time magazine put it, "The Year Emotions Ruled," and the emotions generated by Diana's photogenic life simply had more mass appeal than those inspired by Mother Teresa's.

The Evangelical newsmagazine World bluntly decreed that the "conjunction of Mother Teresa's death with that of Princess Diana shows once again the instructiveness of God's providence. The two women were both media sensations, but they were poles apart in terms of the world's values. One enjoyed the highest social status of all; the other identified herself with the lowest of the low. One helped the unfortunate by sponsoring fundraisers; the other by washing the sores of lepers and ministering to the dying. One was the height of fashion, wealth, and glamour; the other wore a white and blue sari, but exuded a far different kind of beauty."

But perhaps it was a caller named Terry who, during the Rush Limbaugh radio show, best expressed the tensions many felt while watching Diana's media star outshine that of Calcutta's saint of the gutters.

"We wanted to be like Diana and not many of us wanted to be like Mother Teresa. And that's sad," she said.

The other nine events in the RNA's 1997 list were:

* The Promise Keepers movement draws a million or so men to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in an emotional display of repentance and commitment to marriage, family life and racial reconciliation. Then a coalition of religious and secular groups rallies hundreds of thousands of black women in the streets of Philadelphia.

* Shortly after posting mysterious revelations in cyberspace, guru Marshall Applewhite and 38 members of his high- tech Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide -- claiming that the Hale-Bopp comet would carry them to a higher spiritual level.

* Scottish scientists clone Dolly the sheep, raising myriad questions about what happens when researchers begin playing with the building blocks of creation.

* After 32 years of talks, four old-line denominations -- the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ -- agree to full communion, including the recognition of each other's ministries and sacraments.

* Led by the Southern Baptist Convention, a coalition of conservative Protestants and Catholics attempts to boycott the Walt Disney empire.

* Shaken by reports of scandals, National Baptists vote to retain the embattled leader of the nation's largest black church.

* The U.S. State Department releases a long-awaited report on religious persecution, shortly before 8 million Americans in about 50,000 Protestant and Roman Catholic congregations take part in prayer services for persecuted Christians around the world.

* Facing an invasion of alternative religions and other Christian churches, Russian lawmakers pass a strict law to protect the favored status of Russian Orthodoxy.

* Oregon voters reaffirm the status of physician-assisted suicide.

Is Christmas funny, or what?

Some of the rhythms are ragged, but it doesn't take a doctorate in musicology to figure out what melody fits these lyrics.

"On the 12th day of the Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival, my significant other in a consenting adult relationship gave to me, 12 males reclaiming their inner warrior through ritual drumming, 11 pipers piping (plus the 18-member pit orchestra of members in good standing of the Musicians Equity Union...), 10 melanin-deprived testosterone-poisoned scions of the patriarchal ruling class system leaping, nine persons engaged in rhythmic self-expression, eight economically disadvantaged female persons stealing milk products from enslaved Bovine-Americans. ..."

It happens every year on the Internet, about the time TV networks start serving up holiday specials and newspapers uncover new stories about battles over crhches, candles and concerts in the public square. Something snaps out there in cyberspace and armies of anonymous scribes begin churning out holiday satires.

"Everybody has an opinion on what's happening to Christmas, and I mean everybody," said Chris Fabry, a radio humorist with the Chicago-based Moody Broadcasting Network. He is the author of the satirical "Away With The Manger: A Spiritually Correct Christmas Story."

"If you're a strong Christian, then you really care about what Christmas is supposed to mean. If you're a secularist, who only cares about the orgy of gift giving, then you're still going to get caught up in the crush at the mall. Even if you are a rabid atheist and you don't buy any of this, then Christmas still matters to you because you're surrounded by all kinds of things that push your buttons. Everybody reacts."

Here's what it looks like on the Internet. First, someone writes something funny - like a scientific analysis of why sleighs can't fly, a lawyer's analysis of the Nativity story, a detailed corporate plan to downsize Santa's workshop or a news report about Microsoft's takeover of Christmas '97, which will be delayed until mid-1998. Then the wag sends it to a list of e- mail friends. Then people start adding variations of their own. Then someone posts it on the World Wide Web, where others copy it and pass it on. Then it ends up in church bulletins. I get stacks of this stuff, since I write about religion.

One newspaper copyeditor sent a set of punchy headlines - one word per line in massive type -- that journalists might write for news reports during that first Christmas season. The list included: "Angel accosts woman," "Peace offer told," "Baby called 'savior'," "Kings recant pledge" and "Mary mulls events." I offered one with a feature-story spin: "Sheep home alone."

Another winner was a version of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," as written for an academic journal. It ended with the narrator proclaiming: "But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility; 'Ecstatic yuletides to the planetary constituency, and to that self-same assemblage my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period between sunset and dawn."

Christmas is getting funnier and sadder. Fabry writes large doses of this brand of humor, from "Silent night, Solstice night, all is calm, all half price" to "Good liberal men, with zest, hire lawyers to protest. ... File a suit today, file a suit today." In his novelette, Christians led by an ex- Marine march on city hall chanting: "You can't take our holiday! It's in our heart and here to stay! Sound off! JESUS! Sound off! HE'S BORN!"

But he also raises serious questions about what happens when so many believers let a cynical tone slip into their celebrations. It's one thing to criticize Christmas, American Style. It's something else to become so fatalistic, and spend so much time mocking "The Holidays," that Christmas is dead on arrival.

"We can laugh, to keep from crying, along with everybody else at Christmas," said Fabry. "But we have to laugh at ourselves, too, and realize that we're part of the problem. ... If I don't see something wrong with the way that I am, if I only see myself as better than everybody else, then I've missed the point."

A Traditional Christmas -- Not

JONESBOROUGH, Tenn. - History is serious business in this picturesque town that once served as the doorway to the wilds beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Civic leaders constantly call their town "Historic Jonesborough" and note its birth in 1779. This time of year, they strive to turn their brick sidewalks, street lamps, churches, shops and inns into a living Victorian postcard. This year's theme is the "Twelve Days of Christmas" and the calendar is packed with exhibits, concerts, dinners and storytelling events.

But the actual 12-day Christian festival called Christmas - which begins Dec. 25th - is totally empty on the calendar. The second day of Christmas is Dec. 26th, and it's empty. The third day of Christmas is Dec. 27th, and it's empty. And so forth and so on until the Jan. 6th Feast of the Epiphany, and that's empty, too.

Don't mutter "Bah! Humbug!" Even Ebenezer Scrooge was granted a vision of the entire season - from the holy rites of Christmas Day to the parties of the Twelfth Night.

"Oh, we're just using the 'Twelve Days of Christmas' as a kind of umbrella theme for all kinds of activities that everybody wanted to do at Christmas," said Steve Nelson, in the town's tourism office. "We kind of kicked things around for a while and that's what we came up with. We're just using the images of the song. We know that all of this isn't historically accurate."

So while the publicity proclaims that this is a "traditional," "Victorian" Christmas, it really isn't, said Nelson, who has been a church choir director for 41 years and understands the details of the Christian calendar. But the month of December is simply too packed to worry about all of that.

Of course, the irony is that the actual days of the Christmas season are wide open. No one would have trouble fitting in concerts, parties, sales and services between Dec. 26th and Jan. 5th.

"Sure, you could go ahead and do your parties then, but everyone would think that you've lost your blooming mind," noted Linda Measner, a hostess at the Historic Jonesborough Visitors Center. "If you went caroling after Christmas Day, people might throw things at you."

Everyone knows that the cultural tide called "The Holidays" begins soon after Labor Day and has swamped the World Series, Halloween, Thanksgiving and the Dec. 6 feast day of St. Nicholas. The main casualty has been the reverent four-week Christian season known as Advent, which leads up to Christmas. After Dec. 25th, America slides into a season of bowl games and the National Football League playoffs.

It's a corporate thing. As the old saying goes: America's economy is powered by two giants - Uncle Sam and Santa Claus.

Nelson noted that Jonesborough is managing to hold a community-wide service of Bible lessons and carols, a traditional rite in which the 12-day season begins with the glow of candlelight late on Christmas Eve. Of course, the community's service of lessons and carols will have to be on Dec. 17th.

"We just had to get done what we could get done," he said. "Most of our churches have even moved their Christmas cantatas up to Dec. 21st this year. I think the important thing is that the whole community is involved."

Meanwhile, down on East Main Street, the owner of the Old Towne Christmas Shoppe sat surrounded by hand-made decorations and twinkling lights. For most people, this season has turned into an obstacle course of commercial and cultural obligations that has little or nothing to do with faith and family, said Joanna Anderson. It's getting to the point that many people don't even mind admitting it.

"I really wish there was some way we could get people to go back to the old ways. I know that everybody is supposed to say that, but I really, really believe it," she said. "Things are out of control. People wouldn't want to spend 12 days lingering over Christmas and having a good time or thinking about what it means. Everybody has to rush off and do a bunch of other stuff."

Spirit filled or Spirit fooled?

Saving souls rarely makes news, unless somebody starts saving lots of souls in a bizarre way that looks really spooky on videotape.

The mass-media sawdust trail has, in the 1990s, led to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship and to the Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Fla. So far, several million people have attended well-documented rites in which worshippers collapse in tears or laughter or say that they have found healing for various addictions or diseases. Meanwhile, critics keep sounding warnings about fraud and heresy.

It would be easy to dismiss this as merely another mating dance between camera-friendly Charismatics and jaded journalists who love a wild story. But one outspoken evangelical is convinced something else is going on - another clash between faith rooted in human emotion and faith built on centuries of scripture and tradition. The new super-preachers may look and sound like conservative Christians. But radio commentator Hank Hanegraaff is shouting what many are saying quietly: some of these super preachers are New Age prophets in Christian clothing.

"What was once relegated to the ashrams of occultists, you can now experience at the altars of many huge churches," said Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute in Southern California. "This is all about human experience overwhelming biblical truth. ... When people start saying that doctrine is a bad word - look out. When people start talking about the mind being the obstacle to enlightenment - look out."

Hanegraaff's recent book, "Counterfeit Revival," attacked the very foundations of the modern Pentecostal revival that has touched much of Protestant Christianity, and even Roman Catholicism. He is in the thick of a new media storm swirling around the preachers in Brownsville. Yet note this paradox: Hanegraaff and his family attend a Charismatic church, the Pacific Hills congregation in the Calvary Chapel movement.

The bottom line: miracles are always controversial. Yet the churches that are growing -- worldwide -- are those that preach a supernatural faith. There are, of course, skeptics who believe that biblical accounts of supernatural events are merely tales of ancient frauds. Others, often liberal Christians, say the Bible is full of myths written before science explained many mysteries. On the other side are many conservative Christians who argue that the biblical accounts are true, and that God still performs miracles, but that believers stopped receiving miraculous "gifts of the Holy Spirit" soon after the birth of the early church. Others say modern believers may be able to perform some miracles, but not others. The arguments go on and on.

On top of that, there are splits in the Pentecostal camp centering on clashing views of "speaking in tongues," an ecstatic experience in which believers are said to speak in a "heavenly" language. Some Charismatics say this occurs to some, but not all, "Spirit-filled" people. Others insist that anyone who has not done this is somehow "less mature." Some ultra-traditional Pentecostal believers go much further and argue that someone cannot go to heaven unless they have received the true "baptism of the Holy Spirit" and spoken in tongues.

Thus, many people engaged in bitter fights over events in Toronto and Pensacola have totally different understandings of how God works through the church and scripture. These debates have been raging for a generation and there is no sign they will end anytime soon.

Nevertheless, many who fiercely disagree with some of Hanegraaff's pronouncements will agree with one major theme: some Charismatics are spewing joyful revelations about life and faith that threaten the authority of scripture and centuries of sobering church teachings. Above all, their emphasis on everyday miracles tends to deny the reality of sin and human suffering. It makes healing and happiness more important than repentance and salvation.

"It doesn't matter if the people who are having all these highly personal experiences are liberals or New Agers or whatever," said Hanegraaff. "Pure personal experience has a very, very, very bad track record when it comes to providing truths on which people can base their lives. ... What we're seeing is more people moving from faith to feeling and from facts to fantasy."

Beauty and the Priest

Katherine Landsberg's great-grandfather died in a Stalinist purge.

Her grandparents were born in Russia and she grew up among Russian ?gris in the United States. She is a faithful member of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a proud, ultra-traditionalist body that has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and his family as martyrs.

This helps explain why Landsberg went to Chicago's massive Water Tower Place mall last weekend on a personal mission, distributing educational leaflets as moviegoers flocked to see the first showings of 20th Century Fox's holiday-market offering "Anastasia." She is yet another example of a trend: true believers frustrated by entertainment industry invasions of holy ground.

"I just couldn't help myself," said Landsberg, a professional writer with an Internet firm. "I know Hollywood does whatever it wants to do with portrayals of historical figures, especially religious figures. ...But I don't think it's appropriate to make a silly movie about a martyr. Anastasia was a real person. This girl was brutally murdered. Leave her alone."

Landsberg's leaflet featured a photograph of the young grand duchess and the story of her life and execution, with the rest of her family, by Bolsheviks in 1918. Later, a series of impostors claimed to be Anastasia or some other royal sibling who miraculously survived.

"Now, 79 years after the execution of the Romanovs ... there has emerged a new impostor -- one who, without remorse, will finally succeed in capitalizing on this tragedy," wrote Landsberg. "Please share this true story with your children in order to help prevent the distortion of history."

Mall security guards eventually asked her to leave, so she headed out to a suburban mall. This weekend, she plans to print up 200 more leaflets and do it again. Most people accepted her work without comment. Others bluntly asked why she was making such a fuss about a movie.

Landsberg's answer is simple: whether its makers intended to or not, "Anastasia" has painted a cartoon face on an icon. Everywhere she looks, on posters, billboards and television, she sees flirty images of a teenybopper princess who, in reality, did not live happily ever after.

Out in Hollywood, a 20th Century Fox spokesperson said the studio has no plans to release an official statement in response to "the handful of complaints" it has received. The movie's official World Wide Web page - in a niche between those for "Alien Resurrection" and "Home Alone 3" - doesn't mention any of the heroine's ties to Orthodox Christianity.

The movie itself is yet another comic confection pitting a perky heroine against a symbol of supernatural evil. In this case, the film could have been called "Beauty and the Priest."

The villain, Father Gregory Rasputin, is a holy man who is portrayed as having sold his soul to place a curse on the Romanovs. Anastasia accidentally escapes the revolutionaries and, after various chase scenes and musical extravaganzas, finds romance in Paris. In a pivotal scene, she looks to the sky and asks for "a sign" to lead her to "home," "love" and "family." Yet there are no positive religious figures to oppose Rasputin and God is never mentioned.

The producers of "Anastasia" say the film includes 350,000 animation drawings, in 1,350 scenes and was built on years of research. Yet no one seems to have discovered the religious themes in the real story.

"I bear them no grudge, because I really don't think they had a clue," said Bob Atchison of Austin, Texas, who leads a research and restoration project on the Romanov family's palace outside of St. Petersburg. He also operates an Internet site (http://www.pallasweb.com/anastasia) dedicated to the grand duchess, through which he has received many letters from people who are upset about the film.

"It really doesn't look like the people at Fox knew what they were dealing with," said Atchison. "Perhaps they didn't even know that she has been canonized as a martyr. ...But the truth is the truth and the facts are out there. Perhaps the lesson here is that it pays to do your homework when you start messing around with people's faith."

Airing out the Promise Keepers hotel

Lyndi McCartney knows that legions of feminists rank her husband as public enemy No. 1, while scores of Christian conservatives consider the Promise Keepers leader a prophet.

But after 35 years of marriage, she thinks of Bill McCartney as a big hotel - with lots of rooms that needed to be unlocked and aired out.

"Bill has had to let God into those rooms one at a time," she said. "Just my luck, but my room was at the end of a long hall. Eventually Bill did let God into the room of our marriage. ... God still has some work to do, but it's been a blessing to get that door open."

The hotel had a room for his alcoholism and another for his coach's temper. There was one for his hot-and-cold approach to parenting their four children and another for his take-no-prisoners religious life, first as a hard-driving Catholic and later as an evangelical activist. One huge room was lined with trophy cases full of football obsessions, from his youth as an over-achieving linebacker to his workaholic life atop the college-football polls.

In the early 1990s, the hotel gained an impressive chapel. But the biggest irony in the story of Mr. and Mrs. Promise Keepers is that it was adding this last room that almost doomed their marriage. Lyndi McCartney realized that her husband was just as hooked on ministry as he was on coaching.

"As PK grew, every ounce of Bill's time was spent on this additional love in his life," she said, in one of her commentaries in "Sold Out," a spiritual autobiography by Bill McCartney and journalist David Halbrook. "Instead of his time being consumed during football season, it was consumed all year long - in the name of an organization that promotes being a godly husband and father. ... I grew to resent PK as just another thief that stole my husband away from me."

She hid in the empty nest of their home outside Boulder, Colo., fighting depression and bulimia with the aid of stacks of self-help books. She saw her only daughter deliver a second child out of wedlock -- both fathered by football players. Lyndi McCartney lost 80 pounds and thought about suicide. About this time the coach confessed that, shortly before his 1974 "born again" conversion, he had committed adultery.

Bill McCartney's wife hit bottom and he finally heard the crash.

In the new book, he notes that he had once vowed to "forsake all others" and honor his wife. But, "the truth is, until the day I resigned as head football coach at the University of Colorado in November 1994, I usually forsook Lyndi in favor of all others. I can tell you their names: success, competition, career, FOOTBALL." This was insane, and sinful, idolatry.

Today, Lyndi McCartney is quietly riding the roller coaster of her husband's work as leader of a controversial social movement, while urging him to walk his talk. She said she enjoys taking him to beaches and watching him attempt to unwind. She often times dinner conversations and they recently set a record -- three hours. She also is sharing what she has learned.

"Back when I was just the coach's wife -- quote, unquote -- I thought that I had a unique perspective," she said. "I thought that the way coaching dominates a man's life was totally unique. ...But I have met so many women whose experiences are like mine." This is especially true of the wives of workaholic ministers. In recent years, she said, she has learned about "this added little guilt thing" that unites them. It's hard to complain about your husband's boss when the boss is supposed to be God. It can be just as hard, or harder, for ministers to repent and keep their promises to their wives and children.

"You wouldn't believe what these guys say," she said, describing a meeting with one prominent pastor. "He came right out and said it: 'I have to do God's work. My family will just have to wait and try to understand.' ... That's just the same sinful human stuff, isn't it?"

Growing pains in American Orthodoxy

Throughout his 16-city U.S. tour, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has faced a good news, bad news situation.

The good news is that Orthodox Christianity is growing in America. Then again, the bad news is that Orthodox Christianity is growing in America. This creates tensions. As the Old World's symbolic leader, Bartholomew has offered many glowing words of praise, and some sharp criticisms, of the New World's feisty flock.

"Orthodox Christians, who live in a country where full religious freedom reigns and where adherents of various religions live side by side, ... constantly see various ways of living and are in danger of being beguiled by certain of them, without examining if their way of life is consonant with the Orthodox Faith," he said, at Holy Cross Seminary. "Already, many of the old and new Orthodox ... are stressing different, existing deviations from correct Orthodox lives."

Many Americans use "worldly criteria" to judge church leaders, said Bartholomew, who is considered the "first among equals" among Orthodox patriarchs. Other converts are, due to ignorance, hanging on to Roman Catholic and Protestant teachings or arbitrarily altering liturgies. This can be observed in the way some Americans sing their chants or in the style of icons they venerate. Some fail to grasp Orthodox architecture or yearn to sit down too much during worship.

Bartholomew couldn't have chosen a more symbolic place to deliver this sobering sermon on Oct. 30. The Brookline, Mass., seminary has been at the heart of a bitter dispute in the church.

Last winter, a Palestinian seminarian punched a Greek priest after refusing repeated sexual advances during a dormitory party. The faculty disciplinary committee investigated and urged expulsion for the Greek. Instead, Archbishop Spyridon of America deposed the school president and fired three faculty members on the disciplinary panel. Many screamed "cover-up" and Greek-American newspapers have carried reports about a powerful clique of homosexual priests and monks close to the hierarchy.

"This storm isn't about American rebels rejecting the authority of their bishops," said Dean Popps of McLean, Va., a leader in a network of angry laity. "This is about corruption and immorality and incompetence."

Greek politics also have affected attempts to build unity among America's dozen other Orthodox jurisdictions, each with its own foreign ties. In 1994, an unprecedented conference of American bishops called for the birth of a true American Orthodox church. But Bartholomew crushed the effort. On Oct. 25, a ranking prelate linked to that effort publicly told Bartholomew that it's time for Orthodoxy to stop being a "tribal," "ghetto" faith in this mission field.

"While we profess our conviction that the Orthodox Church is catholic and apostolic, we live in a way which gives priority to cultural and ethnic loyalties," said Metropolitan Theodosius of the body known as the Orthodox Church in America, which has its roots in Russian Orthodoxy. "While we know very well that we are united in the Orthodox Faith ... we present ourselves as divided and even competitive communities. Thus, what we profess and affirm as our faith is contradicted by how we live and act as a church."

In reply, Bartholomew said these words placed a "heavy burden" on him.

There are other signs of division. Reports continue that Bartholomew will carve the Greek archdiocese here into several districts, each with a bishop directly beholden to him. The divided U.S. flock would lose clout and stay under Istanbul's control. Meanwhile, the future of the unified Orthodox Christian Mission Center is unclear and conflicts continue about Spyridon's role in the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America.

At some point, the mother church must stop dominating its child, said Harry Coin, a Boston-area layman who runs an Internet site -- www.voithia.org -- about the controversies. "Voithia" is Greek for "help."

"No one wants to make some big change in our tradition, like having female priests. And this isn't about doctrine. No one is debating who Christ is," he said. "But we do need bishops and archbishops who understand that an American church is growing and can accept that. ... We also need trustworthy men who will be solid moral examples for all the people who are coming into our churches."

An anonymous voice in China

Alex Buchan has a source inside the Communist Party in China.

The Hong Kong-based reporter calls him a "high-ranking official" active in Chinese efforts to monitor and control religion. This source is a secret Christian. Buchan won't say whether a recent meeting took place in Hong Kong or during the journalist's latest trip into China. However, the contents of this anonymous interview will cause discomfort on both sides of America's fierce debates on religious persecution.

Americans must realize that Chinese officials deny that "discrimination" equals "persecution," said the source. Chinese Christians automatically lose many educational and economic rights. They can practice their faith only in settings controlled by the Communist Party, which also judges whether they are "heretics." That's discrimination.

Persecution is when believers are "thrown in jail, beaten, harassed, physically abused in some direct fashion," he said. "Now I may be too far up the tree to know what's going on at the roots, but I would be very surprised if there were more than a couple of hundred people incarcerated for their Christian faith. ... It is wrong to say there is no persecution, but it is minimal when you consider the Christian community may number more than 50 million."

So is the glass half empty or half full? Those calling for sanctions will say it's appalling that hundreds are in jail for openly practicing their faith. Those seeking increased ties with China will say this statement is another sign of progress.

This assumes that anyone reads the interview. If Buchan worked for the New York Times or CNN, it would have been discussed by politicians and pundits during Chinese President Jiang Zemin's recent U.S. media blitz. After all, news reports often cite mysterious "high-ranking officials." However, Buchan doesn't work in a prestigious newsroom. The veteran British reporter works for Compass Direct, a Christian news service covering religious-liberty issues.

If the New York Times printed this interview, it would be news. But Compass Direct carried it, so it's merely data on the Internet. Many will doubt that Buchan's source is real. So, if the cell door slams on a priest in China, and CNN doesn't report it, does it make a sound?

In a totalitarian society, noted Buchan, it's easy to quote those who make the laws, such as Communist leaders, and those who obey the laws, such as state-sanctioned clergy. The problem is reaching those, such as his source, who oppose the laws.

"To dissent openly in China is a huge undertaking, often involving exile and the disgrace of one's family," said Buchan. Many Chinese believers "want to tell the truth, but they want to stay too. So its truth without attribution. Take it or leave it. They didn't make the rules."

Compass Direct has been breaking stories that occasionally filter into other media. One example: the arrest of Protestant house church leader Xu Yongze for "heresy" and his eventual sentencing to 10 years in a labor camp.

According to Buchan's source in China, these kinds of repressive acts have increased in recent years, but the overall trend has been towards freedom. "There is much more religious freedom today than 20 years ago and all indicators suggest that there will be much more freedom in 20 years. ... China is committed to capitalism, which will continue to open the country up to Western ways, and the Maoist ideology -- the motor of past persecution -- is worn-out."

This is essentially the viewpoint of the White House and others who say that economic change will produce improved human rights, not vice versa. But the anonymous official also stressed that China continues to fear, and misunderstand, the power of religious faith.

"Buddhism especially is booming in the provinces," said the source. "It's the fastest growing religion by far. But Christianity is also growing, especially among educated young people. ... To a generation that genuinely thought religion had been virtually exterminated, its resurgence is puzzling. 'Where did religion go, if it wasn't destroyed?', said one of the Party leaders to me recently. I answered: 'It went where it always is -- the heart.'"

Lambeth '98 -- The Americans are coming!

Once a decade, the Anglican Communion's bishops gather in Canterbury to celebrate the ties that bind.

This time around, a global coalition is preparing for the 1998 Lambeth Conference in a most unusual manner. It's bishops have done everything they can -- short of lighting a beacon in the British cathedral's high tower -- to issue a warning: "The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!"

For two decades, Episcopalians have been fighting over the Bible, sex and marriage, with homosexuality getting the most ink. A month ago, 50 bishops and archbishops from 16 nations met in Dallas to discuss how to keep America's ecclesiastical sexual revolution from reaching their altars. The oldline Protestant sex wars have gone global.

Now, 37 participants in this "Anglican Life and Witness Conference" have sent an unusually blunt letter to each American bishop asking why so many of them are ordaining priests who are sexually active outside of the Sacrament of Marriage and letting their clergy perform same-sex union rites. The U.S. church now has a de facto policy allowing these actions.

"Why in this matter have such bishops failed to consider the judgment of their colleagues in other parts of the Anglican Communion, nor taken into account the repercussions of their actions in different areas of the world?", asked the bishops. "Do those who perform or sanction such ordinations and blessing knowingly set aside the authority of scripture and the doctrine of marriage given by God in creation and affirmed by his Son, Jesus Christ?"

The foreign bishops - mostly from Africa - asked American bishops to respond by the first of the year, either in writing or in face-to-face meetings. And, in a publicly released statement, the bishops didn't duck another painful issue: the possibility that American doctrinal innovations may shatter global Anglican unity at the level of bread and wine.

"Accountability ... calls us to provide a clear understanding of the bounds of eucharistic fellowship," they said. "Those who choose beliefs and practices outside the boundaries of the historic faith must understand they are separating themselves from communion and leading others astray. Sadly, that reality of broken fellowship can extend to individuals, congregations or even whole dioceses and provinces. Where this happens, we call for repentance and return."

These statements follow two other pre-Lambeth developments. During a February meeting of archbishops in Jerusalem, several participants - openly or privately, depending on who describes the scene - briefly suggested that the Episcopal Church's delegation be banned from Lambeth. This was followed by the conservative "Kuala Lumpur Statement" from 80 bishops in 20 of Anglicanism's 35 provinces, meeting in Malaysia.

Events at Canterbury will be shaped by two sets of numbers. The first is that 75 percent of the world's 70 million Anglicans now kneel in the rapidly growing, and strongly orthodox, churches of the Two-Thirds World. The second is that the First World's shrinking churches still have more bishops and larger trust funds, which provide crucial gifts to foreign churches. Nearly 750 bishops have been sent Lambeth invitations and almost a quarter of those who can afford to go will come from the Episcopal Church, which has about 2 million members.

Plus, it may be hard for conservatives to make a stand because planners have scheduled no plenary legislative sessions. Instead, most of the July 18- August 9 conference will consist of small-group meetings and formal papers on these topics -- "Called to Full Humanity," "Called to live and proclaim the Good News," "Called to be faithful in a plural world" and "Called to be One." This last topic could, ironically, cause the most division.

Most First World bishops will seek soothing sensitivity sessions that produce nuanced relationships, commitments to further dialogue and, at most, the traditional Anglican response to a crisis - a compromise conceived in a study committee. The Two-Thirds World bishops want clarity, before it's too late.

The coalition that formed in Dallas didn't mince words: "It is not acceptable for a pro-gay agenda to be smuggled into the church's programme or foisted upon our people and we will not permit it."