'Independent,' yet 'Anglican'?

STAFFORD, Texas -- Father Tony Tripi's new church is called Tri-City Fellowship, a businesslike name that fits in among the signs for oil-tech firms, furniture warehouses, computer pros and everybody else that's floating in the sea of office complexes that encircles Houston.

"We're a fellowship and we serve Stafford, Sugar Land and Missouri City," said the Brooklyn-born priest, who in October led 300 of his parishioners out of the Episcopal Church of the Advent. "Some people were surprised that there isn't a saint in the new name - like St. John, or St. Mark, or whatever. But right now we've decided that we just need to say what we are."

"Tri-City Fellowship" sounds like one of the legions of user-friendly, entrepreneurial, freelance churches that have changed the face of modern Protestantism. But that's just the first part of the name. The second part is "A Christian Community in the Anglican Tradition."

In other words, Tripi's church claims that it is "Anglican," yet free of the legal structure and authority of the Diocese of Texas. As such, his parish resembles St. Andrew's Church in Little Rock, Ark., a controversial mission that has defied its local shepherd and now claims ties to a Rwandan bishop. Tripi's flock is linking up with Archbishop Moses Tay of Singapore.

Both of these cases are signs of the tensions between First World progressives and Third World traditionalists that dominated last summer's Lambeth conference in Canterbury. But the Tri-City Fellowship story also resonates throughout mainline Protestantism. It's becoming more common to see United Methodists bucking the United Methodist system to defend what they believe are core Methodist beliefs. The same thing is happening with Presbyterians, Lutherans, Disciples and so forth.

At some point, said Tripi, doctrines must be more important than denominations.

"My telephone keeps ringing with calls from people throughout the mainline world," he said. "People are saying, 'We are right where you are and we're having to look at doing exactly what you've done.'... They're all caught up in systems that have become oppressive and that aren't getting the job done. "

Obviously, Houston Bishop Claude Payne disagrees with this analysis. He notes his conservative record on evangelism and morality, including hot-button issues of sexuality. He considers Tripi a rebel who has abandoned his altar -- leaving behind the parish's property, assets and sizable debts. But he also disagrees with the priest's conviction that orthodox bishops must attack those who want to revise church doctrines. The bishop believes that is too negative.

"Christ needs no defenders. ... Many portions of our church that are issue-driven continue to decline," he wrote, in letter to Tripi's parishioners. This is true on left and right, because those on each side get "so possessed and obsessed with fighting that they are hardly attractive to those who are lost. It is tragic, each struggling so desperately to 'uphold the truth' as they understand it, that they cease to be in a posture of sharing the truth."

Sadly, the bishop said he must lead efforts to defrock this priest because "failure to do so would undermine the structure that enables us to be an Anglican Church."

Tripi admits that he's "guilty, as charged" of rebelling against the Episcopal Church and he is willing to endure a trial to "make a public witness" about why he took this stand. The key, he said, is that when bishops are consecrated each takes a vow to "guard the faith, unity and discipline" of the church.

So defending church unity does require bishops to defend the faith of the ages, said Tripi. This is true even if it causes division in the present. Meanwhile, his freeborn church already has 500 members and is preparing for life in the crowded and confusing church marketplace.

"I am an Anglican priest," he said. "I also believe that our church stands with other Anglicans around the world. There will be a short season in which folks like us have to be separated. We will have to step aside and leave the Episcopal Church. But we are going to be brought back under the same umbrella soon -- I think sooner than anyone can imagine."

Judgment Day for Clinton?

After the altar call urging sinners to come find salvation, the Rev. Rex Horne read an urgent appeal from a long-time member of Little Rock's Immanuel Baptist Church.

In his handwritten letter, Bill Clinton "expressed repentance for his actions, sadness for the consequence of his sin on his family, friends and church family and asked forgiveness," said a two-sentence press release issued after that Oct. 18 service. Worshippers later declined to say if he named specific sins and the pastor refused to release the two-page text, even to church members. The audio engineer also turned off the church's tape recorder while the letter was read.

And that was that. Responding to outside calls for Clinton to be disciplined, Horne told the Arkansas Baptist newspaper that Immanuel always approaches "the work of the Lord as an autonomous church."

One Arkansas Baptist State Convention official did say that the crisis created "an odd in-between time between forgiveness and justice." But the Rev. Mike Seabaugh said Immanuel's positive response to Clinton's letter showed that "this issue has been dealt with on a spiritual level."

Maybe it did and maybe it didn't, according to "Judgment Day at the White House," an unusual book rushed into print by an ecumenical group of theologians, historians and ethicists, including many outspoken Democrats. It opens with a "Declaration Concerning Religion, Ethics and the Crisis in the Clinton Presidency" (www.moral-crisis.org) which, as of this week, has been signed by 157 scholars.

The declaration includes this stinging critique: "We believe that serious misunderstandings of repentance and forgiveness are being exploited for political advantage. The resulting moral confusion is a threat to the integrity of American religion and to the foundations of a civil society. ... We fear the religious community is in danger of being called upon to provide authentication for a politically motivated and incomplete repentance that seeks to avert serious consequences for wrongful acts."

The result is what Democrat Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago calls the "politics of forgiveness" in which spiritual confession kicks in after efforts to defeat prosecutors and crime labs. Plus, "there is something suspect about a dynamic of forgiveness-seeking that takes place only after various forms of polling ... have gone forward to determine how this strategy will 'play' with the public," she said.

In addition to seeking his home church's forgiveness, the president has confessed his sins at an interfaith prayer breakfast, publicized a tag-team of friendly clergy counselors and allowed his lawyers use "sinful" as one of their main adjectives describing the Monica Lewinsky affair.

The White House has baptized a political and legal crisis in religious images and language, said theologian Gabriel Fackre of the United Church of Christ, who edited "Judgment Day at the White House." The bottom line: the confession of "private" sins trumps a trial for "public" crimes.

"This denial that the private and the public spheres of life are connected is especially troubling," said Fackre. "In reality, it's impossible to separate the two. If you don't have honor, fidelity, honesty and integrity in your personal life then, sooner or later, the causes you work for in public life are going to be imperiled."

On top of that, many people seem to be radically editing centuries of doctrine on repentance and forgiveness, he said. After all, "even the process of religious confession is incomplete without some evidence of amendment of life and a willingness to accept the consequences for one's actions."

Then again, perhaps Clinton represents today's Christian mainstream. After all, it's hard to define "lying" in an era in which so many churches keep debating whether there are any eternal truths and doctrines, argued theologian Stanley Hauerwas, another Democrat who teaches at Duke University. Perhaps the president - like most Americans - truly believes the purpose of faith is to provide "meaning" in his "inner life" and any personal problems should be absolved through Christianized therapy, called "pastoral counseling."

"It is not just that President Clinton has no sense that a public sin requires public penance," said Hauerwas, "but that American Protestantism has no sense of it either. ... The question before Christians is not whether Bill Clinton should be impeached, but why he is not excommunicated."

Religion News '98 -- The Bible, sex & perjury

There were only two people in the office, so historians may never know the truth about some of the most important meetings in William Jefferson Clinton's life.

No, this isn't about the Oval Office.

These pivotal talks would have taken place in the Rev. W.O. Vaught's office at Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, or at the Arkansas governor's mansion. The young Clinton claimed the feisty Southern Baptist as his spiritual father and constantly sought his wisdom about complex moral issues. Vaught died just as Clinton rose to national prominence.

It was Vaught who told Clinton that the Bible didn't forbid the death penalty. He also said that personhood begins with the first breath, because the Bible says life was literally breathed into man at creation. This helped the governor decide that abortion wasn't murder.

Still, it's impossible to know if the future president ever asked his pastor what the Bible does or doesn't say about adultery and the moral status of sexual acts other than intercourse. But somewhere along the line, according to Monica Lewinsky and others, Clinton became convinced this was another complex issue on which he was going to have to read the Bible and, claiming his doctrinal freedom as a Baptist, make up his own mind.

The rest is history. Thus, members of the Religion Newswriters Association have voted the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal - with its undercurrents of sin, confession and forgiveness - as 1998's top religion news story. The president also was named Religion Newsmaker of the year, finishing in a tie with Pope John Paul II, who marked the 20th anniversary of his pontificate with ``Fides et Ratio,'' another encyclical on faith, reason and moral absolutes.

Debates about Clinton, the Bible and sex are sure to continue. After all, the president's biblical exegesis is the linchpin for his claim that he didn't commit perjury by denying under oath that he had a "sexual relationship" with Lewinsky. How could he knowingly have lied if he sincerely believes the Bible doesn't teach that oral sex and masturbation equal "sexual relations" or sexual intercourse?

"Perhaps we should just say that Clinton is being very literal - legalistic even -- about how he reads the Bible, when it serves his purposes to do so," said Baptist theologian Stanley Grenz of Vancouver's Regent College, author of "Sexual Ethics: An Evangelical Perspective." "It's true that the Bible may not clearly address each and every kind of sexual act. But if Clinton is using that as a justification to split hairs, then he has simply missed the spirit of everything the scriptures have to say about marriage and sex."

The other top stories in the 1998 Religion Newswriters Association poll were:

2. One million Cubans worship with Pope John Paul II in Havana's Revolution Square, where he calls on Fidel Castro's government to offer new religious and political freedoms. The pope also criticizes the U.S. trade embargo.

3. A United Methodist court fails, by one vote, to convict the Rev. Jimmy Creech of Omaha, Neb., of violating church doctrine by performing a same-sex union ceremony. The church's Judicial Council later strengthens the law against such rites.

4. The Southern Baptist Convention, meeting in Salt Lake City, resolves that wives should "submit graciously'' to the "servant leadership'' of their husbands.

5. The murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student in Wyoming, leads to even more debates about homosexuality, including the work of ministries led by former gays and lesbians.

6. The Vatican expresses remorse for the cowardice of some Christians during the Holocaust. But its defense of Pope Pius XII draws criticism from some Jewish groups. The pope later canonizes Edith Stein, a German Jew who converted to Catholicism and died in Auschwitz.

7. Led by Third World traditionalists, especially from Africa, the 13th Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops declares homosexual practice incompatible with scripture.

8. Debate about the morality of assisted suicide increases as Michigan attempts to prosecute Dr. Jack Kevorkian on charges of murder, after "60 Minutes" airs a tape showing the death of one of his patients.

9. National Baptist Convention President Henry Lyons confesses an ``improper relationship'' with an aide and is indicted on 56 federal charges, including extortion and fraud.

10. Texas executes Karla Faye Tucker -- a pick-ax killer turned born-again Bible teacher -- despite appeals from the pope, broadcaster Pat Robertson and others.

One holiday, many angels -- on sale now

Undertakers bury people, tax collectors collect taxes and Mannheim Steamroller makes Christmas albums that bore into shoppers' psyches like the whine of a dentist's drill.

This year's offering from synthesizer-superstar Chip Davis and company, "The Christmas Angel: A Family Story," uses "Silent Night," "Joy to the World" and other classics to accompany a new fable. Here's the plot: Darth Vader plays the Grinch who stole Christmas, who is touched by an angel in a near-death light show in a Norse Netherworld that resembles a video-game arcade, or something like that.

Finally, the heroine uses nonsectarian liturgical dance to heal the troubled Gargon. The libretto states: "But the terrible mask fell away from his face, and a new, kindly visage appeared in its place. For the terrible Gargon was merely thus: An old Christmas angel, somehow villainous. The magic released the Lost Souls from their jail, and now they were transformed back into Christmas Angels."

The kids and toys live happily ever after and Jesus never shows up.

The key to this story, said philosopher Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary, "is that, deep down, we're all really luminous beings of natural goodness. Evil is just an illusion, or an accident, and it can be easily overcome with a mere trick or magic. There's no sense of sacrifice or struggle. This isn't the message of Christmas, to say the least."

But it's hard to be sure what "The Christmas Angel" is all about, because it offers such a bizarre blend of symbols and messages. "It's like a Rorschach test," said Groothuis. "I guess people are just supposed to see whatever they want to see."

'Tis the season to be vague -- so be careful out there. Christmas has become a laugh-to-keep-from-crying holiday.

* Another strange disc was "The Ultimate Lounge Christmas," from Essential Records, a major player in the Contemporary Christian Music market. I can understand a secular label releasing a leopard-skin package of lounge-versions of Christmas classics, as an ironic toast to a post-modern holiday. Why would a Christian company do this?

"Lounge music," said singer John Jonethis, "has the unique ability to liven up any celebration, or bring a peaceful reverence to sacred classics."

* The most recent issue of The Door ("The World's Pretty Much Only Religious Satire Magazine"), carried a Christmas greeting from the staff on its back cover. It features a painting of the Madonna and Child that had been altered, using digital editing, to depict Bill Clinton in the arms of Monica Lewinsky. The baby Clinton has his hand down the front of her dress.

* Up in Alberta, Canada, Telus Mobility quickly pulled an advertisement in which one of the Three Wise Men offers the baby Jesus a deal on the company's prepaid cell-phone service.

* Over in England, the Anglican hierarchy and the Roman Catholic Church protested a French Connection UK "XMAS" ad campaign featuring a blunt acronym of the company's name. The statement by the company said the ads were merely supposed to make shoppers "do a double-take and smile." Many did not.

* The Windham Hill music company came up with this year's perfect marketing slogan for a pluralistic holiday: "One Heaven, Many Angels, All Believers Can Fly."

* Yes, my fax machine heated up when the Levi Strauss company asked the private Makkos Organization in New York City for permission to put a Christmas tree near its Central Park ice-skating rink. The plan was to unveil the tree on Dec. 1, World AIDS Day, and to decorate it with a festive selection of condoms. The request was denied.

* Cuba's Communist Party made news by ending a three-decade effort to stifle Christmas. But while celebrations return to Havana, the seasonal culture wars here keep escalating. As pundit George Will noted, the "potential for litigation is limitless" in America. After all, those supposedly safe wreaths began as symbols representing a crown of thorns. Those sweet candy canes stand for shepherds' staffs and, later, the crosiers carried by bishops -- such as St. Nicholas of Myra.

Where will it end? A lawsuit in Cincinnati is challenging the constitutionality of the law making Christmas a federal holiday.

The dilemma of the December Dilemma

It happens about the time shopping malls hire their Santas, schools schedule "Winter Concerts" and televisions start radiating even more images of children clutching trendy gadgets.

That's when Jewish groups hold "December Dilemma" forums to help parents survive "the holidays." In isolated segments of society, the season continues to be called Christmas.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg thinks this is all really strange.

"I always feel like an outsider, but not because it's Christmas," said the veteran editor of the Intermountain Jewish News in Denver. "I feel like an outsider because so many Jews are talking about their 'December Dilemmas' and I don't have a 'December Dilemma.' In fact, I think the whole 'December Dilemma' concept is strange because it presupposes that what's going on in some other tradition is automatically going to take up a lot of space in a Jew's life."

In other words, Goldberg believes Jewish groups actually need to hold forums asking why so many Jews feel such strong conflicts this time of year. Ironically, the true "December Dilemma" is that Jews need to talk about a "December Dilemma" in the first place.

It's especially poignant, said the rabbi, that so many Jews fear that their children will "feel deprived" if they miss the commercialized and quasi-religious parade that dominates popular culture in December. He said this usually means there is a "hollow place" in the lives of these families, a place that should be filled with Judaism's own daily, weekly and seasonal cycle of traditions and teachings.

A child in a family that enjoys Jewish life and faith is less likely to crave a Christmas tree. Here's another irony: children who have, December after December, been taught the true meaning of the modest holiday called Hanukkah are also less likely to try to coerce their parents into turning it into a Jewish super-holiday. This year, the eight-day "festival of lights" begins at sundown on Sunday (Dec. 13).

But if a family's life is dominated by television, pop music, movies, shopping and other activities that have little or nothing to do with their faith, then it will probably feel tension during these media-mad and highly secularized holidays.

"I don't deny that many people truly feel conflicted and confused during this season," said Goldberg. "But I believe that this is evidence that something is radically wrong in the lives of many Jews. This is very sad."

Truth is, millions of Jews no longer practice Judaism and many others blend elements of other religions - such as Buddhism - into their faiths. Of America's 4 million to 6 million Jews, a 1990 poll found that 1.1 million claim no religious faith at all and another 1.3 million actively practice another faith. Researchers found only 484,000 American Jews who regularly attend synagogue or temple services.

Obviously, the "December Dilemma" also affects millions of homes in which one parent is Jewish, to one degree or another, while the other is Christian, to one degree or another.

Here's how Ellen Harris of Palo Alto, Calif., described December with Santa Claus and a menorah: "My husband and I aren't sure about faith, but we do feel that cultural and moral educations are important for our kids. They don't identify themselves as Jews or Christians, although they talk about both faiths openly. I think it is healthy for them to know the differences and for them to know about things that don't have answers." She offered her views on "Melding The Religions" in Disney Online's "December Dilemma" pages.

That says it all. However, Rabbi Goldberg is convinced that a small, but fervent, minority will avoid spinning in the holiday blender by turning to quieter celebrations built on Jewish tradition. And for the majority, its sense of season schizophrenia will probably fade.

"The whole concept of the 'December Dilemma' is based on the idea that people still feel some tension between their Jewish faith and what's going on around them," he said. "One would have to conclude that, as more Jews lose any real sense of Jewish identity, we will hear less and less talk about a 'December Dilemma.' "

Texas Baptists face the sex wars

For two decades, Southern Baptists have been so busy fighting about the Bible that they've been some of the only church folks who weren't fighting about sex.

Those days are gone. A band of conservatives recently broke away from the moderate Baptist General Convention of Texas and formed a new body called the Southern Baptists of Texas. The rebels said the BGCT wasn't tough enough on abortion and homosexuality.

"We've got to get away from this thing of getting away from God's word," said the Rev. Miles Seaborn of Fort Worth, the group's president.

This convention, which currently includes 183 churches, immediately proclaimed that "all human life is sacred, specifically life in the womb" and pledged it would reject churches that condone homosexual acts or have "pastors or deacons that are practicing homosexuals."

This makes it sound like the old Texas convention, with its 5,700 churches, has openly backed abortion and gay rights. At its recent gathering, the BGCT backed laws requiring parental consent 48 hours before minors could have abortions. But it declined to vote on condemning abortion "in all cases except when the mother's life is in danger" and leaders ruled out of order a motion to deny funding to any Baptist medical institution proven to perform abortions. It also defeated a call to affirm the right of local churches to ordain gays and lesbians.

Texas is one of the last fronts in the 19-year civil war in the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist right - which is weak in Texas, but runs the national body - remains united on social issues and committed to "biblical inerrancy," the belief that the Bible is without errors of any kind.

"They know who they are. They are the people who are opposed to what they see as theological liberalism and modernism," said philosopher Mike Beaty, who teaches at Baylor University in Waco, a hub for Texas moderates. "But the moderate camp includes all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs and these people have been united more by what they're against - fundamentalism - than by what they are for."

Facing a national conservative tide, moderates have rallied around the "four fragile freedoms" of Baptist life - "Bible freedom," the "soul freedom" of individuals to interpret the Bible, "church freedom" that focuses power at the local level and "religious freedom" that strictly separates church and state. The result is what Beaty called a "tradition-less tradition" that fears any effort to coerce individual believers and congregations.

Thus, the University Baptist Church in Austin protested last spring when the BGCT said its gay-rights stands clashed with "scriptural guidelines." The Rev. Larry Bethune asked: "What could make these Baptist principalities and powers act in such an un-Baptist way, throwing aside our deepest Baptist ideals of soul freedom, liberty of conscience and local church autonomy?"

And there's another issue that won't go away - Bill Clinton. Many Southern Baptists are furious about a Newsweek article arguing that the president's moral flexibility is linked to his Baptist heritage. A key conservative, the Rev. Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., even said Zippergate is an "indictment of the generation of moderate and liberal Baptist leaders who served as Bill Clinton's moral advisers, and are now his enablers in a lifestyle of gross immorality and irresponsibility."

The Texas Baptist newspaper called this "despicable demagoguery" and noted that conservatives haven't drawn similar conclusions from news accounts of scandals in their own camp. Editor Toby Druin noted that "the Bible I read says, 'Thou shalt not commit adultery' " and this sin has touched both moderates and conservatives.

Then again, that depends on how one defines "sin" and "adultery."

Once upon a time, Southern Baptists lived in a Bible Belt that seemed isolated from most troubling trends. It was easier to stress the positive, such as evangelism and missions, when only liberal churches far away quarreled over nasty, negative issues such as abortion and sex.

"It seemed like we could all read the Bible for ourselves and then we pretty much agreed on what it said, at least on these kinds of issues," said Beaty. "It seemed like the culture was on our side and we were speaking the same language. It was easier back then."

Walking with C.S. Lewis

He always took the early, slow train from Oxford, so he could say his prayers and enjoy the scenery before he arrived at the tiny station at the foot of the Malvern Hills.

C.S. Lewis rarely tinkered with the details of these trips, since the goal was always the same -- to walk and talk with friends. He wore a rumpled tweed jacket with the obligatory leather elbow patches, baggy wool pants, walking shoes and an old hat. He had a battered rucksack and he never carried a watch.

His host was George Sayer, his former pupil at Magdalen College and a close friend for three decades. They usually walked the 10-mile Malvern ridge, with its lovely views of the distant Welsh hills, the Severn valley and the Cotswolds. But sometimes they strayed elsewhere, joined by other colleagues.

"Beauty was so important to Jack and so was good conversation," said Sayer, using the nickname Lewis preferred. "What could be better than putting the two together? One could not have found a better walking companion."

Sayer gazed out the sunny garden window in his sitting room, which served as the starting point for their travels. Then he laughed out loud.

"You should have seen Jack trying to walk with J.R.R. Tolkien! Once Jack got started a bomb could not have stopped him and the more he walked, the more energy he had for a good argument," said Sayer. "Now Tolkien was just the opposite. If he had something to say, he wanted you to stop so he could look you in the face. So on they would go, Jack charging ahead and Tolkien pulling at him, trying to get him to stop - back and forth, back and forth. What a scene!"

That was long ago. It has been nearly a quarter of a century since Sayer led Malvern College's English department and a decade since he wrote "Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times." This year, fragile health prevented Sayer from fully participating in events marking the centenary of Lewis' birth on Nov. 29, 1898. Lewis died on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day as President John F. Kennedy.

It's hard to say why Lewis remains such a dominant figure, said Sayer. The former atheist did have a unique ability to handle tough questions in a way that was both intellectual and popular. Lewis also wrote many different kinds of books - from children's literature to apologetics, from science fiction to literary criticism. Readers start reading one form of his writings, such as "The Chronicles of Narnia" fantasies, and then graduate to another, such as the more philosophical "The Problem of Pain." Many have been drawn to his work through two movies called "Shadowlands," based on the story of the Oxford don's marriage to American poet Joy Davidman.

Much of this "would have infuriated Jack because he rejected all attempts to analyze writers by dwelling on their personal lives," said Sayer. "He called this the 'personal heresy.' It is very ironic that so many people have such an astonishing attachment to C.S. Lewis as a person, or to the person that they perceive him to have been."

This trend began during the writer's lifetime. Lewis was, of course, thankful that millions embraced his work. But Sayer said he grew frustrated that so many readers - especially Americans - hailed him as a celebrity, yet failed to dig deeper into the issues that most challenged him.

Lewis would probably be distressed, said Sayer, to discover that the books that made him an effective apologist in the 1940s and '50s are so popular decades later. He would ask why mainline Catholics and Protestants writers now attack Christian orthodoxy, rather than defend it. Lewis would ask why so many evangelicals keep writing books for the people already in pews, instead of focusing on those outside the church.

"Jack was a highly intellectual man, yet he was also very emotional," said Sayer. "The man I knew was highly persuasive, quite comical and very entertaining. Above all, he loved a good argument and he rarely passed up a chance to jump into the thick of things. He would want his admirers to take his work and push on, not to stay in the same place."

Veggie sales, Veggie sales

It didn't take long for Phil Vischer to create the following prime directive for his computer-animation studio: "We will not portray Jesus as a vegetable."

The folks at Big Idea Productions will do just about anything for a laugh when creating their VeggieTales versions of Bible stories. But Vischer is committed to keeping a safety zone between the sacred and the hip, even while Bob the Tomato, Larry the Cucumber and friends storm the kid-video castles of Disney, Viacom, Newscorp and Time Warner Inc.

"There's a biblical core to the stories we tell and people have to know that will always be there," said Vischer. "So the major plot points are sacred, but we get to have fun with the details. People have to understand that we're not competing with Sunday school. We're competing with Saturday morning television. We're in a different ball game."

So the Bible remains the Bible. But Joshua is a cucumber in a robe and green peas carry the Ark of the Covenant around Jericho while grape slushees rain down from the walls. A tiny asparagus named Dave spins a slingshot around his head and slays Goliath the pickle. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego survive the fiery furnace of a candy czar who wants them to worship a towering chocolate bunny. Virtual vegetables prance through music videos that are as bizarre as the regular music videos they are mocking.

The result is a phenomenon that has Christian bookstore owners dividing life into two eras - "B.V." and "A.V." Big Idea Productions has sold 6 million half-hour videos, with 4 million units shipping in 1998 - the first year of a distribution pact with Lyrick Studios that put VeggieTales in WalMart, Target and other secular outlets. An 11th video release, "Silly Songs 2: The End of Silliness?", goes on sale this weekend.

Meanwhile, Vischer is taking calls from movie studios and cable bosses. The Veggies make their TV debut on Dec. 19 in a primetime PaxTV special built around the company's "The Toy that Saved Christmas" video.

It was back in 1991 that Vischer got tired of making Pop Tarts dance, beer bottles spin and graphics sparkle for corporate clients in Chicago. Using funds from family and friends, the Bible-college reject began creating vegetables that told Bible stories, after deciding that candy bars might worry parents. Either way, it was cheaper to animate figures with no limbs. Today, Big Idea has about 70 employees, but Vischer said he isn't sure about that number since he keeps running into new people in the hallways.

Some major VeggieTales influences are obvious, such as Dr. Seuss and Monty Python. Some are less obvious, such as communications theorist Neil Postman's classic "The Disappearance of Childhood" and the work of media entrepreneur Bob Briner, who chides modern Christians for abandoning work in art and culture.

While it would be hard to push a creed in a for-profit company, Big Idea isn't ashamed of its big ideas. Its mission statement includes a list of blunt "we believe" statements, such as: "Popular media, used irresponsibly, have had a profoundly negative impact on America's moral and spiritual health." Company goals include enhancing "the moral and spiritual fabric of our society" and leading "a revolution reintroducing Christian values into popular media."

Vischer doesn't hide the fact that he wants to create a recognizable, quality brand name with clout -- like Nike, Starbucks, "Touched By An Angel" and, yes, Disney. But this takes time. Most attempts to promote faith in the marketplace have taken a one-shot, zap-them-with-the-Gospel approach.

"It's like, 'Bonk!' We hit people in the head with a Christian brick and, when it bounces off, we can't understand why it didn't work," he said. "Of course, we also used up all our money making that one brick and we can't buy anymore air time or tell anymore stories because we haven't created a real company that makes money so that we can stay in the game for the long haul. So we throw our brick and quit.

"What we want is for people to fall in love with our characters and grow up with them. We want to have a lasting impact."

Slavery, faith & the marketplace

Two years ago, Christians were sold as slaves for as little as $15 in Southern Sudan.

This statement is no longer accurate, but not because the Khartoum regime has stopped trying to bomb, massacre, starve, rape, torture and kidnap Christians, animists and even other Muslims into submission. No, fluctuations in currency rates have simply raised the price to $50 or $75.

"When we go in to buy people's freedom, we budget $100 per slave to pay for the whole operation, which includes transportation into places where the regime doesn't want us to go," said Jesse Sage of the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group. "But here's the most sobering reality: you can still trade one human being for three cows, or the other way around."

All of this is taking place far from most pews and news cameras. Thus, two years ago, an interfaith coalition organized the first International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church. This Sunday, worshippers in about 100,000 churches - from Southern Baptists to Catholics, from Pentecostals to the Orthodox - will pray for those who are living and dying as martyrs.

These prayers are one expression of a wider movement against all religious persecution, which led to the recent passage of the International Religious Freedom Act. President Clinton signed the bill into law on Oct. 27.

In the words of former New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, the term "persecution" means: "Blood, fetters, death, wherever, and to whatever religious minorities -- in the Iran of the ayatollahs, in the China of the Communist Politburo where Catholics and Protestants who wish to worship as their faith dictates have to risk their freedom and worship underground, in Pakistan where Christians by the scores have been imprisoned for 'blasphemy' against Islam, in Tibet where pictures of the Dalai Lama are displayed only on pain of prison, or in the Sudan where Christians and members of ancient African faiths are massacred by the Islamist Government."

The act creates a Commission on International Religious Freedom -- with three members appointed by the president, two by the Speaker of the House, two by the Senate majority leader and one each by the House and Senate minority leaders. It will have its own budget, the power to "take testimony and receive evidence" and must publicly release at least one annual report of its findings. The White House and what Rosenthal has called the "trade-uber-alles lobbies" fiercely opposed the bill and defeated efforts to impose economic sanctions.

"Protectors of the status quo have been able to keep the facts buried," said Jewish activist Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute. "They've been able to cast doubt on whether religious persecution is real. We won that battle, because this new commission can put facts on the record. What we weren't able to do was get the same kind of sanctions and policies focused on thug regimes -- like Sudan -- that were aimed at the apartheid regime in South Africa."

Prayers and facts will remain the primary weapons in the fight against persecution. However, many religious schools have begun collecting funds, literally, to purchase the freedom of slaves. This past weekend, about 250 students from 60 colleges gathered at Georgetown University for a conference organized by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom.

The keynote speaker was Baroness Caroline Cox, a British nurse who now serves as deputy speaker in the House of Lords. She has led numerous teams of doctors and journalists into Southern Sudan. She recently interviewed a Catholic leader who survived a raid on the village of Mayen Abun. Many where slaughtered, including his brother, and his sister was one of those taken as a slave. Santino Ring's words were haunting: "We're trying to hold a frontline of Christianity here, but we feel completely forgotten. Doesn't the church want us anymore?"

"That's what our persecuted brothers and sisters feel," said Cox. "They have no evidence the church wants them at all. All of us who've worked with the persecuted church come back humbled, inspired, enriched, beyond anything we can describe. If the day comes that they become martyrs, we must celebrate their martyrdom. But we must make sure it's not in vain, because that martyrdom is for our faith."