Facing the 'fantasy world' of media

The pastors who wear Roman collars believe they can see the wreckage caused by pornography and other media addictions whenever they stand at their altars and scan the faces before them.

While researchers continue to debate the links between mass media and in real life, the members of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops have heard enough. The bishops think it's time to admit that sordid images sometimes can become reality -- leading to moral numbness, shattered marriages and, in some cases, rape, murder and child abuse.

Decades of statistics cannot be ignored. But priests also know what they hear in confession booths and counseling sessions. The spiritual fathers see the dark side of the media lives of many families.

"From long pastoral experience, the Church knows that many people do experience a connection between pornography and tendencies toward these personal and social ills," wrote the bishops, in a 28-page statement approved on a 207-11 vote at their spring meeting. "Research today supports this pastoral experience, in particular with regard to pornography that is sexually violent. Individual studies have observed such negative consequences with regard to nonviolent pornography that is degrading in its use of women as sexual objects."

As a rule, Americans try to blame others for this sad situation. Many blame Hollywood. Others blame the government for deregulating so much of the marketplace in which modern media giants frolic, or blame legislators for failing to pass stricter laws, or blame law officials for failing to enforce laws already on the books.

But the bishops noted that consumers must share much of the blame, since so many use their entertainment dollars to create and sustain a "fantasy world" full of sex and violence. "Many more consumers fail to speak out about the lesser but still offensive examples of sexually explicit or violent material they come across every day in mainstream media," said the bishops.

Truth is, it's time for everyone -- even those who think they don't consume high doses of media -- to stop looking for scapegoats and to realize that pornography and violent media of all kinds affect the culture as a whole. This issue will not go away. Most Americans, said the bishops, seem to be so distracted by daily waves of titillating media signals that they no longer can even tell right from wrong.

Meanwhile, many parents seem to be waving white flags of surrender, creating a moral vacuum in the most crucial media- education school of all -- the home. Parents should not be too quick, noted the bishops, to "denigrate their own influence," even when their children's lives seem to be dominated by hostile media. For starters, parents need to fight the pop culture's efforts to shove family members into tiny, isolated, age-defined media niches.

"While we hesitate to place additional burdens on parents in today's complex world, we urge them ... to know the media to which their children relate and to help them understand the messages they send," said the bishops. "Parents should be clear about the media they reject. Sharing the reasons why a video game is too violent or a particular show lacks good values about sex can contribute to a youngster's moral growth."

All of this raises an important question: Will church leaders take these issues seriously? The bishops suggest that pulpits and adult-education classes be used to increase awareness of the effects of pornography and violent media. Parental guidelines, the "V-chip" and increased feedback to the news and entertainment industry may help. Clergy may need to specifically link media issues to celebrations of the Sacrament of Reconciliation -- another name for confession. Parish leaders need to develop media resource centers and discussion groups, to help families make practical changes in their lives.

After all, it would help if the church helped parents walk their talk.

"There must be times," wrote the bishops, "when the almost continuous noise from televisions, radios, computers and telephones -- often while the family is together for meals -- gives way to quieter times for family discussion, prayer and homework. Many parents, no less than children, need to become less media dependent."

Copernicus. Galileo. Newton. Darwin. Freud. Spong?

Anglicanism begins and ends with The Book of Common Prayer.

Obviously, this volume is full of prayers -- morning prayers, evening prayers and prayers for all the times in between. There are hundreds of pages of prayers for Holy Communion, baptisms, ordinations, funerals and other events and most begin with "O God," "Heavenly Father," "Eternal Lord God" or similar phrases. The working assumption is that the God of the Bible hears these prayers and can answer them.

Wrong, argues America's most famous Episcopal bishop.

The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong believes the time has come for intelligent Christians to grow up and admit there isn't a personal God of any kind on the receiving end of these prayers and petitions. The bishop of Newark fired this shot over the bow in a recent missive containing 12 theses, starting with: "Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead." The logical implication appears as his 10th thesis: "Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way."

Traditionalists will jeer him, writes Spong, just as they attacked Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Freud. Also, this call for what one bishop describes as a "virtual atheism" may cause fireworks in Canterbury at next month's once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of the world's Anglican bishops -- including Spong.

"The renewal of Christianity will not come from fundamentalism, secularism or the irrelevant mainline tradition" of Catholicism or Protestantism, writes Spong. "History has come to a point where only one thing will save this venerable faith tradition at this critical time in Christian history, and that is a new Reformation far more radical than Christianity has ever before known. ... This Reformation will recognize that the pre- modern concepts in which Christianity has traditionally been carried will never again speak to the post-modern world we now inhabit. This Reformation will be about the very life and death of Christianity."

After ditching theism, the bishop says it's "nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity." He rejects miracles in general, humanity's fall into sin and any belief that the Bible contains revealed, transcendent moral laws. He rejects the virgin birth, resurrection and ascension of Jesus as historical events.

In some of his most sweeping language, Spong writes: "The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed." Later he adds: "The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment."

Spong asked for open debate and 50 bishops responded with a letter publicly disassociating themselves from his views. "A bishop of the Episcopal Church," they note, "vows to guard and defend exactly the truths John Spong now denies. As a bishop he requires those he confirms and those he ordains to confess beliefs he himself now repudiates. Such self-contradiction is morally fraudulent and spiritually bankrupt."

The bishop of Newark's supporters cheerfully note that nearly 100 bishops have signed an earlier Spong statement opposing traditional church teachings on marriage and sex. As for the statement of disassociation, none of the 50 bishops dared to break communion with Spong or called for him to be disciplined. One Spong supporter, Father J. Michael Povey of Pittsfield, Mass., notes the bishop's Anglo-Catholic and evangelical critics didn't even call for public rites praying for the bishop's conversion. "I have to ask," adds Povey, "why is this statement so spiritually wimpy?"

The bottom line is that Spong yearns for a media-friendly trial and the candor it will force on his church. Also, bishops on an Episcopal court in 1996 -- hearing charges against one of Spong's assistant bishops -- decided that their church has no "core doctrines" on sex and marriage. However, the bishops said some "core doctrines" do exist, including doctrines that "God became incarnate in Jesus Christ," "Christ was crucified," "Christ rose again" and "There will be a day of judgment."

The question facing the Lambeth Conference is whether a specific bishop can get away with attacking the few specifics in Anglicanism's doctrinal core.

Big hats and black-church tradition

WASHINGTON -- Viewed from their balconies, the pews in traditional black churches looked like waves of polished wood curving down to the pulpit and, through decades of Sundays, the crests were topped by graceful rows of women's hats.

Before the sea change of the 1960s, it was much more common for women to cover their heads in congregations of all kinds. Nevertheless, visitors would have to have been blind not to see that there was more to the hats in black churches than mere fashion.

"This is part of part of a distinction between the work-day world and that whole Sunday-go-to-meeting tradition," said Gail S. Lowe, curator and principal researcher for a new Smithsonian Institution exhibit on African-American faith. "If your whole week was ruled by uniforms and aprons and work clothes and boots, then you kept one good suit and you kept one really nice dress.

"And if the culture says that ladies are supposed to cover their heads, and the culture certainly said that the Bible said you were supposed to do that, then that meant you needed a hat. And if you needed a hat and it was Sunday, then you needed a SUNDAY hat. So the hats became more and more elaborate, to say the least."

On one level, this symbolized reverence for God, said Lowe. It also displayed respect for the church and for the authority of elders. But there was one more level to this tradition: a hunger for beauty and for self-respect in the generations leading up to the Civil Rights Movement.

A display of Sunday hats is merely one detail in the mosaic of this latest offering by the Smithsonian's Center for African American History and Culture. However, similar themes of tradition and change appear throughout the aisles of the exhibit, which is entitled "Speak to my Heart: Communities of Faith and Contemporary African American Life." It will remain open through the spring of 2000 and the museum plans a traveling version of the exhibition.

One of the most striking items is a set of glass-and-brass doors from Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in Houston -- doors that had once served as the entrance to a segregated movie theater. Another display features bricks and a burned lamppost from First Baptist in Centralia, Va., one of several churches hit by arsonists in the 1990s.

But most of the museum cases feature more subtle signs of what has changed and what has stayed the same -- from the formal white gloves on a statue of a deaconess to the flowing robes of liturgical dancers and female pastors. "Speak To My Heart" also covers a wide range of religious traditions, including the worship and work of Muslims, Black Hebrews and others with African roots.

While black-church life has certainly changed in recent decades, it's impossible to predict which changes are permanent and which traditions will simply evolve into new forms, said Lowe. The key is that black Americans are, like so many others in this culture, picking and choosing which spiritual rites and symbols speak to them on a highly personal level.

"My generation doesn't wear hats. Why? Because we hated all of that," said Lowe, who attends a progressive Christian Methodist Episcopal congregation. "We understood that women wore hats because of modesty and because of the traditional values of the community. So we all said, 'That has to go. We're not going to do it.' "

But most of the pastors' wives, or "first ladies" of the congregations, kept the tradition alive, along with the revered older women often known as the "mothers of the church." And then the cultural search for African traditions led some women to try wearing forms of headdresses. Many Muslim women continued to wear simple head coverings. A few younger women simply decided gloves and hats were fashionable.

"Today, you may see hats or you may not see hats," said Lowe. "The key is that this is all a matter of personal choice. The theology is no longer there to back up the tradition. The links to the past are almost gone. Whether that's good or bad depends on your point of view."

Women and children first

WASHINGTON -- The train from New York City was jammed as Matthew Chancey traveled back to the nation's capital after this spring's meeting of the Titanic Historical Society.

Lucky passengers sat shoulder-to-shoulder while others spent four hours on their feet. As he stood, Chancey quietly became angry when he noticed those seated included young and middle-aged men, while the throng swaying in the aisles included several elderly women. One pregnant woman eventually slumped to the floor to rest. No one offered her a seat.

"I saw the same thing in other cars," he said. "I started thinking about the Titanic. Certain principles are eternal. They are timeless. They deserve to be defended. One such principle is the idea that men are supposed to make sacrifices on behalf of women and children. What I saw on that train was just another sign of what we've lost."

This hasn't been an easy year to talk about the Titanic and traditional values, in the wake of director James Cameron's blockbuster about romance, modern art, class warfare and social rebellion. Nevertheless, Chancey and others in the Christian Boys' and Men's Titanic Society are doing everything they can to resurrect an earlier interpretation of April 15, 1912. This message is summed up in a sermon delivered only three days after the tragedy.

The Rev. Henry Van Dyke of Princeton, N.J., stressed that the Titanic left behind more than debts, sorrow and bitter lessons about North Atlantic icebergs, lifeboats and technology. This was a morality play that taught a sobering rule for life.

"It is the rule that 'the strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak'," he said. "Without it, no doubt, we may have riches and power and dominion. But what a world to live in! Only through the belief that the strong are bound to protect and save the weak because God wills it so, can we hope to keep self- sacrifice, and love, and heroism, and all the things that make us glad to live and not afraid to die."

To promote this unabashedly old-fashioned message, the Christian Boys' and Men's Titanic Society has reprinted one of the first books about the tragedy, "The Sinking of the Titanic," and is producing a documentary, "Women and Children First: The True Legacy of the R.M.S. Titanic."

One reason the Titanic story remains so intriguing is its blend of human drama with cosmic themes of fate, sacrifice and sin. It is the "closest thing we have to a modern Bible story," said Douglas Phillips, president of the two-year-old society. Also, this was the "the last stand of an older order" of cultural values, the last time when people heard the cry "women and children first" and obeyed without challenging its basic assumptions, he said.

"It isn't our goal to project a pristine, idealized view of the Titanic. That wouldn't be true," said Phillips. "And we know there were all kinds of people on that ship -- Christians, Jews, agnostics and everybody else. What we are saying is that there were certain values, certain absolutes that these people accepted and were willing to die for. One of those truths was that the groom dies to save the bride."

Here in Washington, an 18-foot granite statue symbolizes how this message has slipped into obscurity. It shows a robed man rising out of the waves, his arms outstretched like a cross. At least 25,000 women, led by First Lady Helen Taft, donated $1 each to build it. The engraving reads: "To the brave men who gave their lives that women and children might be saved."

This Titanic memorial once had a prominent position near the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge. Today it's hidden behind Fort McNair, next to the waters of the Washington Channel. Few people see it, other than occasional fishermen and joggers. On a recent afternoon, the back was stained where men had used it as a urinal. A soiled condom marked the spot.

"If you ask a cabbie to bring you to the Titanic Memorial, they'll drive around for an hour or more. You could end up just about anywhere," said Chancey. "It seems like nobody has a clue where this statue is and what it stands for."

Who can be excused from class?

Try to imagine what would happen if the following scene took place in a "Religions of the World" class in a public school.

First, the social studies teacher explains the history of Pentecostal Christianity and offers a statistical snapshot of the movement. Then he says that students need to experience Pentecostalism, in order to understand it. So they are told to kneel, lift their hands high and try to join in as he speaks in tongues. Afterwards, the students sing a few choruses of "Jesus, name above all names" and are given an assignment to watch Pat Robertson on "The 700 Club."

What would happen? Many parents -- Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, agnostic or whatever -- would scream bloody murder. If school officials insisted on spending tax dollars on these lessons, many parents would certainly ask that their children be excused or allowed to attend alternative classes.

This imaginary scene would never take place, of course. Nevertheless, this church-state nightmare is a mirror image of scenes Mathew Staver keeps hearing about at the Liberty Counsel office in Orlando. Parents call and describe classes in which their children are given an overview of various world religions. So far, so good. But some report that their children are then guided into experiential lessons in which they join in rites and prayers totally foreign to the faith practiced in their homes.

The result is one of the tensest standoffs in today's church-state arena, alongside older battles over evolution and sex education.

"One of the main things we keep hearing about is classes where students are told to pretend they're part of some other faith, especially Eastern religions such as Buddhism," said Staver. "They may be shown meditation techniques and asked to take part in simulated rituals -- lighting candles and learning to do certain chants. ... Obviously, some parents feel threatened."

When parents complain, some school officials are cooperative. But some are not.

This raises obvious questions: If it's wrong to spend tax dollars in support of Christianity or Judaism, then shouldn't it be wrong to similarly fund activities that criticize these faiths or that promote other religions and rites? And what happens if millions of parents start asking that their children be excused from all school lessons that are even remotely linked to religion?

Last week, the White House released a revised set of guidelines intended to help ease these kinds of tensions. After all, said President Clinton in his weekly radio address: "Our founders believed the best way to protect religious liberty was to first guarantee the right of everyone to believe and practice religion according to his or her conscience; and second, to prohibit our government from imposing or sanctioning any particular religious belief. That's what they wrote into the First Amendment. They were right then, and they're right now."

Education Secretary Richard Riley noted that these guidelines were virtually unchanged from a 1995 set, which drew support from an unusually broad coalition -- from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Association of Evangelicals. However, one of the few revisions will affect students seeking relief from objectionable lessons. This change came after the Supreme Court declared the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional.

The earlier guidelines said that if officials could not "prove a compelling interest in requiring attendance the school would be legally required to excuse" students from objectionable lessons. The new guidelines, however, state that schools "enjoy substantial discretion" in such cases and that "students generally do not have a Federal right to be excused from lessons that may be inconsistent with their religious beliefs or practices."

Since 1995, said Staver, schools have been doing a much better job of allowing free speech about religion. However, it's hard to predict how state officials will react to this revised excusal clause in the guidelines.

"Students have a right to free speech," he said. "They also have a right not to have to listen to speech they find offensive, even in the classroom. Perhaps students and parents will be able to raise a free-speech objection the next time one of these cases comes up. ... But that's new ground that we haven't plowed yet."

Define 'marriage.' Please.

It was time, once again, for a political leader to step to the microphone and debate the politics of morality with America's most outspoken Roman Catholic prelate.

This time, Cardinal John O'Connor had used his pulpit in St. Patrick's Cathedral to deliver a diplomatic, but forceful, sermon attacking a New York City Council plan to create "domestic partnerships" equal to marriages. After quoting centuries of secular and sacred texts, he stressed that the church believes unconditionally that "no human authority can make any other state of life equivalent to marriage."

To which Mayor Rudolph Giuliani could only respond: There he goes again.

"You know, we have a division of church and state in the United States and it's a healthy one," the Republican mayor, who is a Catholic, told reporters in a press conference later in the day. "We're all here because people left other places because someone wanted to enforce their religious viewpoint as the view of the state."

And one more thing, noted Giuliani: "Domestic partnerships not only affect gays and lesbians, but they also affect heterosexuals."

Ironically, O'Connor and Giuliani were in totally agreement on this latter point. The cardinal's seven-page homily -- the printed text was provided for reporters -- included no direct references to homosexuality. The closest he came to mentioning this hot-button subject was to say that traditional moralists who have examined the domestic partnership proposal have "understandably raised questions about the morality of extramarital genital relationships, whatever the sex of the parties involved."

When religious traditionalists wade into public debates about sexuality, yet strive to avoid references to homosexuality, gay community leaders often accuse them of trying to hide their homophobia by using an ecclesiastical code. This tension reveals a truth that is rarely discussed during heated sex debates in American pews and public institutions. While it's true that the Bible contains relatively few verses that clearly forbid homosexual activity, it contains page after page of references to marriage and extra-marital sex.

This makes the stakes in public debates over "marriage" even higher than they are in clashes over the legal and moral status of homosexuality. It's impossible for anyone, on either side of the aisle, to discuss one issue without raising the other. All roads lead to a political land mine -- the definition of marriage or any new state of life that takes its place. This then affects the meaning of the word "family."

Looking down from their pulpits, and far into the future, the cardinal and other religious conservatives should be able to do the math -- for every same-sex domestic partnership there will almost certainly be dozens of state-sanctioned semi-marriages for heterosexual couples.

It would be impossible to raise an issue that touches more men, women and children, said O'Connor. As Pope John Paul II has written: "The family is the 'first and vital cell of society.' It is from the family that citizens come to birth and it is within the family that they find the first school of the social virtues that are the animating principle of the existence and development of society itself."

The changes that are sweeping through cities such as San Francisco and New York will inevitably lead to similar disputes elsewhere. Right now, noted the cardinal, marriages performed in New York City are recognized as valid in the rest of the state and in other states. It is natural to ask what status new "domestic partnerships" will have elsewhere. This question then leads to others, such as: What happens when these vague unions end?

"A spouse has a right to support from the other spouse," said O'Connor. "Will a domestic partner have to provide support? A spouse has certain rights with regard to property. What would be the case in domestic partnerships? What would be the legal effect on children? What of the question of filing joint tax returns, pension rights, etc.?"

Out in the pews, others must have been thinking of another question that looms just ahead: What are the rights of domestic grand partners?

Reggie White sacks a purple dinosaur

WASHINGTON -- Whenever a preacher starts getting personal, picky and downright pushy, Bible Belt folks like to say he has quit preaching and "gone to meddling."

A lot of folks have been saying that, and much more, about the Rev. Reggie White lately. The Green Bay Packer legend recently offended legions of people with a sermon to Wisconsin lawmakers that attacked abortion, called homosexual acts sin and offered up a colorful series of ethnic anecdotes, while arguing that all racial groups must see each other as part of God's image.

As if that didn't make enough people mad, this week White stood up in the nation's capital and said God wants to start messing with the ordinary day-to-day sins of people who think of themselves as conservatives. The man that many call the greatest defensive lineman ever even had the audacity to sack a purple dinosaur.

"How many of you wives have a hard time getting your husband's attention when he's watching TV?", he asked, drawing nervous laughter at a luncheon in which he and his wife Sara were honored by the conservative Family Research Council. "How many of you husbands have a hard time getting your wife's attention when she's on the telephone?... How many of us can get our children's attention when they're watching cartoons?

"Why are Barney and Mickey so much more popular than Jesus? Because the world is trying to feed us ... and trying to get us to idol worship."

White didn't back down on the issues that caused the Wisconsin firestorm and he drew cheers by saying that journalists keep mangling his religious convictions and images. He also came out swinging at CBS, accusing the network's executives of yanking an on-air job -- which he said was worth $6 million -- when faced with pressure from gay-rights groups. CBS denies this, while the superstar's supporters have begun talking about a lawsuit.

But the ordained Baptist minister focused most of this sermon on subjects closer to pews and family-room couches. He talked about heterosexual sins, how many parents are failing in the moral education of their children and how racial and denominational divisions among believers stunt their public witness. He even blamed the church, in part, for the negative role he believes the news and entertainment media play in American life.

White recently completed a two-week juice fast and, during this time of intense prayer, he said God gave him yet another vision. "I've been ripped because of this," he said, and then spoke to the media personnel in the room. "You've got your cameras on? God spoke to me. He said this. He said that what the enemy does is he communicates his evil message, he distributes his evil message and then he gives the resources to those whom he has influenced to promote his evil message."

In other words, said White, Satan is a media mogul, the "prince of the power of the air," who has mastered the art of communicating through television, radio, music, movies and newspapers. But this doesn't mean mass media are automatically evil or that the church hasn't made it's own media mistakes. Simply stated, religious believers are now suffering the consequences of decades of decisions to flee from the world of mass media.

"We said it was of the devil, when it was of God," he said.

It's time to stop running away and to get involved, said White, noting that Korea's most powerful evangelical church has begun publishing a major daily newspaper. Religious believers need to begin putting more movies, television comedies, radio programs and music into the marketplace and be more aggressive as consumers, he said..

Many of his critics celebrated when his job with CBS fell through. But what this media acid bath taught him, he said, is that it's impossible to ignore the cultural role played by mass media. Now he wants to try to do something positive about that, although he declined to discuss the details of this vision just yet.

But he did issue this challenge: "I'm tired of the devil pushing us around. ... God is trying to give people some guts to speak out on truth.''

Martin Marty remains on call

As the old saying goes, for most American newspapers a front-page religion story has three essential elements -- a local anecdote, new poll data and a quote from scholar Martin Marty.

Need a quote on God and politics? Call Marty. Liberal or fundamentalist demographics? The clout of suburban believers? Hollywood spirituality? Salvation for extra-terrestrials? Conflict in (name any church) pews? Call the University of Chicago Divinity School and anyone who answers will know what to do.

The church historian is, as Time said, America's "most influential living interpreter of religion." He has written 50- plus books, popular and scholarly, 40-plus years of weekly Christian Century columns and his Context newsletter will soon turn 30. Marty has become the one religion expert in many media rolodexes, the undisputed champion of pithy quotes shedding light on a dizzyingly complex subject many would relegate to the shadows of civic life.

"Even religion that aspires to be at home in the public can be in the dark, unless we have trained eyes to see it in the gallery, in the mall, in the university, in the market and all of the other places," he said, in a recent Minnesota Public Radio address.

It is Marty's style to light candles instead of cursing this darkness. Researchers in his current Public Religion Project have one rule -- no whining. The goal is to cheerfully educate religion-impaired media pros, educators and civic leaders instead of griping at them.

Many people are simply afraid, since religion does have a dark side that keeps making bloody headlines around the world, Marty said. As a colleague once told him: "Religion is a lot like sex. If you get it a little bit wrong, it's really dangerous."

Those who don't understand religion's power tend to be more scared than they need to be. They are, said Marty, like Medieval cartographers who filled empty spaces in their maps with beastly images and the warning: "Here be monsters." This fear causes many public leaders to try to tackle some of today's most urgent problems without using all of the positive resources -- such as faith-based volunteer groups -- found in American life.

Meanwhile, many people believe it's OK for others to have private beliefs, so long as they stay out of the public square. This is an old tension. However, today there is a new wrinkle. An increasing number of Americans, said Marty, embrace "spirituality," and welcome its presence in public life, while opposing such a role for "organized religions" they find threatening.

"So many people," he said, "now speak in terms of, 'I'm not religious, but I'm spiritual.' ... Those of us who study religion say that this is just one more of the religions that are out there."

Religious faith is, in fact, a force that is almost impossible to pigeonhole, said Marty. It doesn't just spring to life on Sunday morning or Friday at sundown. The secular blends with the sacred. City skylines contain steeples as well as skyscrapers and chaplains carry Bibles and holy oil in hospital hallways. No one should find it strange that people act on convictions born in 3 a.m. meditations on death and eternity. It's perfectly normal for prayers and mysticism to affect people's actions in daily life -- even in politics.

In recent years there has been increased public debate about the proper and improper uses of religion, said the historian. The roots of these tense exchanges go back 200 years or more, to a time when enlightened cultural leaders decided that religion's days were numbered.

"We got into our systems the notion that every time we looked out the window there would be less religion than there was the last time we looked and ...that whatever form of religion survived, it would be quiet, passive, reconciled, dialogical, ecumenical and interfaithy," he said. "Instead, every time you look out the window there's more, not less, and the prospering forms are extremely intense."

This makes many people nervous and they ask: Is it good or bad for religion to play a prominent role in public life?

The answer, said Marty, is "yes."

Get used to it.

Rich Mullins -- Enigmatic, restless, Catholic

Father Matt McGinness had never heard the song playing on his car radio, even though "Sing Your Praise to the Lord" was one of superstar Amy Grant's biggest hits.

"Gosh, I really like that song," the priest told a musician friend that night back in 1995. "Well, thanks," responded Rich Mullins. This mystified the priest, who asked what he meant. "I wrote that," said Mullins.

McGinness hadn't realized that Mullins was that famous. The priest simply knew him as another seeker who kept asking questions about doctrine, history and art and was developing a unique spiritual bond with St. Francis of Assisi. At the time of his death in a Sept. 19 car crash Mullins was taking the final steps to enter Catholicism.

"Rich had made up his mind and he wasn't hiding anymore," said McGinness, chaplain of the Newman Center at Wichita State University. "But I really don't think it's fair to make him the poster child for Catholic converts. ...The key to Rich is that he was searching for a deep, lasting unity with God. He was such a reflective man and that quality brought him both peace and a great deal of anxiety."

Even friends described Mullins as "enigmatic" and "eccentric" and there was much more to him than hit songs, led by the youth-rally anthem "Awesome God." Grant summed up his legacy during last month's Dove Awards in Nashville, in which Mullins received his first "artist of the year" award.

"Rich Mullins was the uneasy conscience of Christian music," she said. "He didn't live like a star. He'd taken a vow of poverty so that what he earned could be used to help others."

McGinness said Mullins often said he felt called to a life of chastity and service, while staying active in music. It was hard to predict his future. His final recordings are slated for release on June 30 as "The Jesus Record."

"Rich didn't know for sure if he was called to ministry, which in the Catholic context would be the priesthood," said McGinness. "He also feared that converting to Catholicism could mean losing his audience. ... He knew there might be rough days ahead."

It's crucial to remember that Mullins grew up surrounded by fiercely independent brands of Protestantism such as the Quakers and the Churches of Christ, said his brother David Mullins, minister at the Oak Grove Christian Church in Beckley, W. Va. This taught him to fear formality and hierarchies, while also yearning for a faith that united people in all times and places - - with no labels.

"Rich had a very low view of church structures, but he had very high ideals about what the church could be," said his brother. "He was sincerely drawn to Catholicism, but he also wondered where he would fit in the Roman Catholic Church."

Nevertheless, Mullins' recent music was steeped in Catholicism, from his autobiographical album "A Liturgy, A Legacy & A Ragamuffin Band" to his "Canticle of the Plains" musical about a Kansas cowboy he called St. Frank. His greatest-hits set was filled with photos of Celtic churches, crucifixes, nuns and statues of Mary. He quoted G.K. Chesterton and Flannery O'Connor, defended the pope and told one interviewer: "I think that a lot of Protestants think that Pentecost happened and then the church disappeared until the Reformation. So there is this long span of time when there was no church. That can't be if Jesus was telling the truth."

After playing telephone tag for a week, McGinness and Mullins talked one last time the night before the fatal accident. Mullins was going to Mass weekly, if not more often. He was ready to say his first confession and be confirmed. They set a meeting in two days. Others said Mullins was aiming for Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis.

"There was a sense of urgency," said the priest. "He told me, 'This may sound strange, but I HAVE to receive the body and blood of Christ.' I told him, 'That doesn't sound strange at all. That sounds wonderful.' ... Of course, I'll always remember that conversation. Rich finally sounded like he was at peace with his decision."