Ash Wednesday for Baptists: Why not?

As worshippers entered the dim sanctuary, they could tell that this wasn't the usual Wednesday night prayer meeting in the First Baptist Church of Gretna, Va.

First, there was quiet music, candlelight and a meditative atmosphere. After awhile, worship leaders began reading verses from the Psalms, such as: "Have mercy upon me, O God. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is ever before me." Then everyone sang "Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me!"

Finally, participants were invited to walk the aisle and have ashes applied to their foreheads in the shape of a cross. Yes, First Baptist in Gretna held an Ash Wednesday service last year and it will do so once again next week, opening the Lenten season that precedes Easter.

"To tell you the truth, we didn't do the sign of the cross on the forehead part at first," said the Rev. M. Glenn Graves, describing the rites that began three years ago in his church. "That kind of thing tends to freak Baptists out, you know? So we just let them stick their own hands down in the urn the first time and get ashes all over themselves."

For one thing, the ashes were really thick and hard to handle that first year. Christians have long added to the symbolism of these rites by using ashes created by burning palm branches saved from Palm Sunday the previous year. But there's the rub. Palm Sunday rites are almost as rare in Baptist circles as Ash Wednesday services. Since Graves didn't have any old palm leaves around his church, he burned a dried-out Christmas tree instead. Since then, he has found that friendly florists will hand over a few palm branches.

"We could do Palm Sunday, but that would open up Holy Week and there you go," he said, laughing. "Then my people would really accuse me of being a Baptist-Episcopalian-Roman Catholic. That's the thing about traditions like that. They all seem to be connected and once you use one of them it's hard to know where to stop adding things to the calendar."

Graves is convinced many people in Protestant pews would welcome a chance to find symbolic ways to deal with sticky issues such as sin, repentance, forgiveness and their own mortality - even if the "new" rites are really centuries old. After asking a few tough questions, his flock has accepted Ash Wednesday as a chance to face "the dark side of their souls," he said.

"For those of us who are new at this, it is awkward, much like our confessed sins," he wrote, in an article in Baptists Today, a national newspaper for those in the "moderate" wing of Baptist life. "However, the shared, solemn occasion has left a mark on us like the dark ashes we carry on our foreheads."

First Baptist in Gretna - located about 38 miles south of Lynchburg - hasn't based its rites directly on a Catholic liturgy or the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer. Instead, Graves said he adopted a very Baptist approach to tiptoeing into ancient traditions. He went to a mainline Protestant bookstore and bought a copy of "The New Handbook of the Christian Year." Then his church started experimenting.

Graves suggested that churches that want to try Ash Wednesday services should start with their own frameworks of scriptures and familiar music about sin and repentance - such as "Amazing Grace." For some people, this more formal approach to worship may seem like "going through the motions," he said. But for many others, it will provide a chance to form ties to believers in the past.

"Sometimes you just have to pull some stuff from here and some stuff from there and then give it a shot," he said. "Because I'm a Baptist, I'm free to pick and choose. I'm free to choose the parts of a liturgy that I'm comfortable with and to avoid the parts that I know will make my people uncomfortable. You have to find out what works for your people."

Peace, justice, life & Truth

No gathering of Catholic social activists would be complete without rows of cars outside with bumper stickers containing the famous words of Pope Paul VI: "If you want peace, work for justice."

To which Pope John Paul II would add a hearty "Amen."

But that's just once thread in a larger garment. During this recent American tour, the pope again stressed that it's impossible to talk about peace, justice and freedom without raising other issues that make many people, including some Catholics, very nervous. How can a society do what is good, he asked time after time, when few can agree on what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false?

"America first proclaimed its independence on the basis of self-evident moral truths," noted the pope, during an evening prayer service in St. Louis. "America will remain a beacon of freedom for the world as long as it stands by those moral truths which are the very heart of its historical experience.

"And so America: If you want peace, work for justice. If you want justice, defend life. If you want life, embrace truth -- truth revealed by God."

This one statement captures the big ideas of John Paul's pontificate. However, this ethic remains hard to fit into bumper stickers, T-shirts and headlines.

Thus, the pope's words will once again cause cheers and moans on both sides of the political aisle and in many Catholic and Protestant sanctuaries, said Mennonite theologian Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action. Nevertheless, it's obvious that John Paul's goal is to defend the sanctity of life by attacking what he calls a "culture of death" that kills human dignity and hope. This is the overarching issue.

"People on the left will love what he had to say about the death penalty and racism and caring for the poor," noted Sider, a veteran coalition-builder among evangelicals and Catholics of varying political views. "But many liberals are going to squirm because he ties these issues directly to traditional Christian teachings on abortion and euthanasia and family life. Meanwhile, some people on the right will squirm because the pope made it very clear that he links these pro-life issues to the death penalty and poverty, sickness, hunger and even the environment."

In the statement that drew the most media attention, John Paul said that "the Gospel of God's love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel." Thus, the church needs more believers who are "unconditionally pro-life," even when this stance seems to be harder to defend, he said.

"A sign of hope is the increasing recognition that the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil," said the pope, during the St. Louis Mass. "Modern society has the means of protecting itself, without definitively denying criminals the chance to reform. ...I renew the appeal I made most recently at Christmas for a consensus to end the death penalty, which is both cruel and unnecessary."

While exchanging greetings with President Clinton -- who backs both the death penalty and abortion rights -- John Paul stressed that he believes America is undergoing a "time of testing" that will profoundly impact the rest of the world in the coming century. This can be seen, he said, in America's bitter conflicts about whether to declare "entire groups of human beings -- the unborn, the terminally ill, the handicapped and others considered 'unuseful' - to be outside the boundaries of legal protection."

And again, the pope added: "Only a higher moral vision can motivate the choice for life."

"The pope is dead on target by returning to the larger issue of today's debates over the reality of truth," said Sider. "We live in an age of incredible relativism in this society and even in the church. We live in a land that seems to have lost its way. ... So the pope isn't backing down on any of this. Those of us who really care about these issues can only hope that people are still listening."

Sister Winifred's veil: This is not a news story

Whenever Pope John Paul II travels, the events that receive the most attention are his spectacular public Masses and encounters with heads of state and other dignitaries.

But these tours also include quieter rites and meetings with priests, nuns and lay people. The pope leads prayers, delivers words of advice or encouragement, offers his blessing and shares a few moments of fellowship.

In other words, these events are rarely "newsworthy." This depends, however, on one's point of view.

Sister Winifred Mary Lyons was one of 130,000 New Yorkers at a 1995 papal Mass in Central Park and, later, she was in St. Patrick's Cathedral when John Paul led the recitation of the rosary. Afterwards, she had a brief chance to meet the pope. Years later, she still has trouble describing what she believes was a holy moment.

"As I walked out of the cathedral, I met a friend to whom I immediately said that I was going to return to wearing a veil," said Sister Winifred, a pro-life leader in the Archdiocese of New York's schools. "I could not believe I was saying it. The words were not mine."

It would be hard to make a more symbolic decision. It had been 23 years since Sister Winifred set aside her veil and started wearing "secular clothes" while going about her work in the Sisters of Charity. During the 1960s and '70s, she was one of thousands of women and men in religious life who rode the waves of change that rolled through Catholicism and the culture. She dyed her hair and pierced her ears. Her peers changed and so did she.

The first time she tried on her veil, again, she looked in a mirror and saw an image of herself as she was years earlier. This startled her, she said, and she literally lost her breath. In an essay in the New Oxford Review, she explained how this simple veil has brought her a renewed sense of her ties to the past, while her daily work continues to carry her into the present.

Sister Winifred thought she might encounter some resistance to her decision. But in all honesty, she said, this has not been the case, even though she knows that many people - in holy orders and in the pews - consider this a "monumental decision" after a tumultuous era.

The reactions of people around her have been quite touching, she said.

"Being greeted on the street was something I had totally forgotten. Moreover, the witness value has overwhelmed me: I know I cause others to think about God, if only for a few seconds, and I realize afresh the public dimension of the consecrated life and the hunger there is for it in this world. Again, this is something I had forgotten. I am in no way negating the witnessing I did and which all women Religious do, daily, but we do it after we identify ourselves. Wearing the veil, we do it in spite of ourselves."

It's fairly easy, she said, to describe the outward manifestations of this "public dimension" to her decision. She can see it in people's eyes and hear it in their voices. Once again, total strangers walk up and ask her to pray for them. It's easy to detect an increased vulnerability and openness in the people she sees in her work - especially among the women she counsels and consoles in crisis pregnancy centers.

Yet her decision wasn't about taking some kind of a public stand, she said. The biggest changes that have taken place since her return to wearing a veil haven't been on the outside. This really isn't a news story, she said. It's just part of her story.

"It's very difficult to put this into words. The change on the outside is important. I know that," said Sister Winifred. "But what happened to me on the inside has been so much deeper - deeper than all of the external changes. It is this inner reality that is so much more important. ... Yet that's the part of this that is beyond words. It's a mystery to me, too."

CCM Crossroads II -- Do the math

As she pulled into traffic, Elaine Benes turned on her boyfriend's car radio and began bouncing along to the music.

Then the lyrics sank in: "Jesus is one, Jesus is all. Jesus pick me up when I fall." In horror, she punched another button, then another. "Jesus," she muttered, discovering they all were set to Christian stations. Then the scene jumped to typical "Seinfeld" restaurant chat.

"I like Christian rock," said the ultra-cynical George Costanza. "It's very positive. It's not like those real musicians who think they're so cool and hip."

Notice how the lords of Must See TV stuck in the knife and gave it a sneaky little twist, noted rocker Charlie Peacock, who has two decades of experience in both the secular and sacred markets. Contemporary Christian music -- or CCM -- is "positive," not "cool" or "hip." It's nice, meek and safe. After all, these aren't "real" musicians.

"Positive and nice. Helpful and friendly," writes Peacock, in his upcoming book "At the Crossroads," about the identity crisis in the thriving CCM industry. "Sounds more like a description of the Ace Hardware man than music informed by a story so ... real that it involves every action, emotion and thought under the sun - a complex, bloody, beautiful, redemptive, truthful story."

Since Christendom is built on a story that is literally larger than life, Peacock's wonders why CCM is smaller than life. The Bible is full of sin, death, doubt, love, hate, anger, war, lust and other messy subjects. The faith of the ages wrestles with the bad news before reaching the Good News. Yet many Nashville executives would agree with the "Seinfeld" gang that CCM products must be tamer than the "real" pop, country and rock albums they mimic. Truth is, no one expects CCM to appeal to many listeners who aren't already true believers.

This is, noted Peacock, a mighty strange strategy coming from people who say one of their main goals is evangelism. He also wonders if it does believers much good to consume only "positive" messages that please them, comfort them and appeal to what marketers call their "felt needs."

Some critics go even further. Writing in the New York Times, critic Nicholas Dawidoff said CCM is simply "mediocre stuff, diluted by hesitation and dogmatic formula, inferior to the mainstream popular music it emulates." But he added: "There's no reason why contemporary Christian performers, if they allow themselves to explore their talent and emotion more completely, can't successfully combine virtuosity and moral virtue."

Mark Joseph of the MJM Entertainment Group in Southern California, has dug into sports history and found an even more provocative judgment. "As with baseball, strange bedfellows have colluded to keep musicians with Christian beliefs in the modern-day equivalent of the Negro Leagues," he wrote, in Billboard. This arrangement allows Christian companies to lock up their artists, while the biases of the secular marketplace remain unchallenged.

On the other side, some purists say CCM is soul sick because its artists crave mainstream success and respect. This camp claims that it's time to return to a strict "ministry" model in which performers stick to the biblical basics - recording only explicitly Christian songs -- and stop seeking to "crossover" into secular charts.

The bottom line, said Peacock, is that gifted Christians make all kinds of music -- from classical to jazz, from pop to edgy rock -- and it doesn't help anyone to enforce one narrow definition of "Christian music." People who run CCM companies must learn to reach the ears of unbelievers as well as believers, he said. This will, at the very least, require radically different marketing techniques and a more real-life-oriented approach to lyrics.

This would even allow some Christians to successfully write songs that appeal to non-Christians, even if that breaks the CCM rules and might, in the short run, seem unprofitable.

After all, noted Peacock, "an audience of 100 Satan punks and 10 Christians does not constitute a CCM consumer base. An audience of 95 Christians and five Satan punks does. If you're thinking something doesn't add up, you're right. Whether it adds up or not depends on whose math you're using."

CCM Crossroads -- Myths, fishbowls & reality

It's an archetypal image in Nashville mythology - a young singer pulling into town with a one-way bus ticket, a guitar, a pack of songs and big dreams.

The ones Charlie Peacock meets also carry worn-out Bibles and are convinced God wants them to use their music to save souls.

"I've come into contact with my share of aspiring Christian recording artists," said the veteran of two decades of secular and sacred work as a songwriter, performer, producer and record- company executive. "If I had a nickel - make that a dollar - for every time one of them told me he was writing with unbelievers in mind ... I'd be as rich as Bill Gates."

The problem is that singing to unbelievers isn't what Contemporary Christian Music artists actually do. They sign contracts to produce what Peacock calls "a kind of Christianized pop-rock music - music which changes with the pop music of the surrounding culture."

It's a niche product called "CCM" and selling it has become a $500 to $1 billion-a-year business, depending on who does the counting. As a rule, CCM is sold in Christian stores to Christian consumers, who hear it played on Christian radio or at Christian concerts. These professionals are paid to preach to the choir.

Contemporary Christian musicians know they have to use explicitly Christian images and code words or their core fans will revolt. They also know they have to avoid many controversial, gripping, soul-wracking issues that are fair game for secular performers. This makes it hard for CCM artists to write openly and honestly about the pains and joys in their real lives.

The rare "crossover" artists who succeed on the religious and mainstream charts face even greater pressures. If Nashville is a fishbowl in which celebrities struggle to maintain a smidgen of privacy, then CCM stars live in a fishbowl perched over a Bunsen burner.

"There are so many people who are way too obsessed with their favorite CCM artists. This means they are just as obsessed with entertainment as anybody else in this culture, only they're obsessed with Christian entertainers instead of secular entertainers," said Peacock, who recently finished writing "At the Crossroads," a book describing what he believes is an identity crisis within this industry.

"Either way, this isn't healthy. ... I can't tell you how many people tell me that they don't even go to church anymore because CCM has become their church. They see their favorite CCM stars as ministers, not musicians. Stop and think about that."

No one has inspired more soul searching than pop diva Amy Grant, whose songs have evolved from praise choruses into smooth statements of quiet faith and a few nagging doubts. In 1991 her innocent, yet flirty, "Baby, Baby" video infuriated many fans, who accused her of selling out for secular success. Last year, many insiders said her "Behind the Eyes" album shouldn't be considered for a Gospel Music Association Dove Award because it contained few, if any, clearly Christian lyrics.

Now, Grant and her husband Gary Chapman, a singer-songwriter who hosts TNN's "Prime Time Country" talk show, have announced their separation after 16 years of marriage. The singers asked their fans to pray. Meanwhile, the tabloids are preying.

Once again, it's time for debates about the state of CCM's soul. The bottom line, argues Peacock, is that many of these painful tensions are rooted in clashing views of "what this music is supposed to be and what it's supposed to accomplish."

After all, there are outspoken religious conservatives who still believe that music that includes any elements of rock 'n' roll is, by definition, Satanic. Others insist that CCM must return to being merely a tool of evangelism, especially with the young. Meanwhile, there are millions of evangelicals - usually grooving in megachurch pews -- who have yanked every imaginable style of pop music right into their worship services.

"If I could wave a wand and make it all go away so we could start over, would I do that? You bet," said Peacock. "But that isn't an option. The question is: What are we going from here?"

'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.