Odds & sods '99: God, Van Halen & beyond

The Epistle of James warns that it's crucial for gossips to mind their tongues.

"If we put bits into the mouths of horses ... we guide their whole bodies. Look at the ships also; ...they are guided by a very small rudder," notes the third chapter. "So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!"

Now let us turn to the third chapter of Van Halen.

"Rudder of ship, which sets the course," sings Gary Cherone, the rock superband's new vocalist and lyricist. "Does not the bit, bridle the horse? Great is the forest, set by a small flame. Like a tongue on fire, no one can tame."

Here's why I bring this up. Every year, I mark this column's anniversary - this is No. 11 - by sifting through 12 months of odds and ends (mostly odds). All the biblical allusions in "Van Halen 3" got me to thinking about the Gospel Music Association's struggles this year to determine what songs would be eligible for Dove Awards. At least 13 entries - notably Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me" and Michael W. Smith's "Love Me Good" - were ruled to be lacking in clearly Christian lyrical content.

So why didn't Van Halen get a Dove? What could be better than rockers singing words out of the New Testament? The "special thanks" notes inside the disc even included a nod to super-Calvinist theologian R.C. Sproul.

Here's some more samples from my "On Religion" files.

* The Ship of Fools web site offered a letter from a Toronto church where the pastor had to print two funeral leaflets in one day. He used his software's search-and-replace function to turn a service for a parishioner named Mary into one for a parishioner named Edna. All was well, until worshippers hit the creed, which now said that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost and "born of the Virgin Edna."

* A Christianity Online editor shared how his 3-year-old recited the Lord's Prayer solo at bedtime. She ended with: "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some e-mail. Amen."

* After my "Titanic" columns, a California friend sent me a prospectus for "Titanic II." It's set in heaven and Rose is in counseling, because lover Jack is mad that he only knew her for three days and her husband wants to know why a 60-year marriage meant so little to her. Meanwhile, people who didn't get in lifeboats are upset with those who did. Folks who spent their lives looking for the jewel are furious. Everybody has to spend eternity listening to "My Heart Will Go On."

* The Episcopal Diocese of Dallas created an appropriate Lenten gift for traffic-stricken drivers - a black, purple and white bumper sticker of the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner."

* Last summer I was eating breakfast in the cafeteria underneath the U.S. Supreme Court. I popped open my cranberry juice and found this under the lid: "Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere -- Gilbert Keith Chesterton." Yes, and what about law?

* Who says the religious left doesn't believe in absolutes? "A vote against impeachment is not a vote for Bill Clinton," said legal scholar Alan Dershowitz. "It's a vote against bigotry. It's a vote against fundamentalism. ... It's a vote against the right-to-life movement. It's a vote against the radical right. This is truly the first battle in a great culture war. And if this president is impeached, it will be a great victory for the forces of evil -- evil -- genuine evil."

* During an outdoor memorial concert for the Princess of Wales, David Hasselhoff of "Baywatch" prayed for her to stop the rain. It stopped. Meanwhile, National Review notes that the stone inside the shrine for Diana reads: "Whoever is in distress can call on me."

* Many have heard the one about the Zen master who asked a hot-dog vendor to "make me one with everything." One reader noted that, after handing over a $20 bill, the Zen master waited and waited and then asked: "Where's my change?" The vendor replied: "Change must come from within."

Preparing for Pascha in Serbia

In the fall of 1992, Serbian Patriarch Pavle came to Washington, D.C., to explain why he had led protests in Belgrade against Slobodan Milosevic's neo-Communist regime and why the Serbian Orthodox Church's Holy Synod was calling for a new government.

His National Press Club address drew a handful of reporters and none from major media.

This past fall, Bishop Artemije of Kosovo came to Washington, D.C., and warned that the prospects for peace were bleak as long as Milosevic held power. He urged U.S. officials to seek negotiations between Serbs who oppose Milosevic and Albanians who favor non-violence. After all, both Christianity and Islam teach the faithful to live in peace.

"We are especially concerned that the past United States policy ... to rely on Milosevic as a guarantor of peace is immoral and counterproductive," Artemije told the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. "We appeal to all Americans to understand that the conflict in Kosovo is not between the Serbian and Albanian people, but between a secessionist extremism on one side and an oppressive and unrepresentative regime on the other."

The bishop's visit passed with barely a notice.

Today, Milosevic's opponents in Serbia are hiding in bomb shelters or hiding from secret police in the final days before Pascha (Easter in the West) on the ancient calendar used in Orthodox Christianity.

"It's especially tragic that the world hasn't been able to hear the voice of the Serbian church through all of this," said Father Alexander Webster of the Orthodox Church in America, a historian who also is a chaplain in the U.S. Army National Guard. He is the author of "The Price of Prophecy," which details both Orthodoxy's triumphs and failures in the Communist era.

"It seems like everyone, from the White House on down, has been rushing to demonize the Serbs without asking if everyone in Serbia deserves that label. The reality is more complex than that."

While some Serbian bishops have blessed past military efforts, the church has consistently condemned Milosevic and all violence against civilians -- Albanian, Croat or Serbian. The church also has opposed economic embargoes that hurt Serbian civilians and "efforts to cut Kosovo out of Yugoslavia through military force," said Webster.

The roots of this crisis are astonishingly complex, ancient and bloody. In 1204, Western crusaders sacked Constantinople, massacring Eastern Christians and Muslims. In 1389, Serbian armies fought -- virtually to the death -- while losing the Battle of Kosovo, but managed to stop the Ottoman Empire from reaching into Europe. The Kosovo Plain became holy ground.

Leap ahead to World War II, when Nazi Germany tried to use Albanian Muslims and Catholic Croats to crush the Serbs. Then Communists - such as Milosevic - took over. In the mid-1990s, the United States all but encouraged Croat efforts to purge Serbs from Krajina, where they had lived for 500 years. The West has been silent as Turkey expelled waves of Eastern Orthodox Christians.

Since morphing from Communist to nationalist, Milosevic has skillfully used Serbia's array of fears, hatreds and resentments to justify terror in Kosovo and elsewhere by his paramilitary and police units. The Serbian strongman knows that Kosovo contains 1,300 churches and monasteries, many of them irreplaceable historic sites.

Retired New York Times editor A.M. Rosenthal, who once won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting in Eastern Europe, put it this way: "I do not get emotional about the history of Kosovo. I am not a Serb. Serbs do. ... Serbs are as likely to give up Kosovo willingly because the Albanians want it as Israelis are to give up Jerusalem because the Arabs want it."

Meanwhile, the Serbian bishops have released yet another statement reminding both sides that the "way of non-violence and cooperation is the only way blessed by God in agreement with human and divine moral law and experience." They also added the following prayer to worship services in Holy Week and Pascha.

"For all those who commit injustice against their neighbors, whether by causing sorrow to orphans or spilling innocent blood or by returning hatred for hatred, that God will grant them repentance, enlighten their minds and hearts and illumine their souls with the light of love even towards their enemies, let us pray to the Lord.

"Lord have mercy."

An American Orthodox pioneer

It takes extra luggage to hold the Byzantine miter and all the ornate vestments an Orthodox archbishop needs on a road trip.

Packing is even more complicated when Archbishop Dmitri Royster heads home to Dallas, because the faithful always give him gifts to please his hardcore Tex-Mex palate. Just before his suitcase snapped shut last week in Knoxville, Tenn., he slipped several bottles of fiery pepper sauce in among the layers of purple, gold and white silk brocade.

Archbishop Dmitri is a real Texan, even though his flowing white beard makes him look like an Orthodox archetype. But when the 75-year-old prelate speaks, the voice isn't from Greece, Russia, Eastern Europe or the Middle East. He grew up Southern Baptist in tiny Teague, Texas, before moving to Dallas.

"I think my sister and I were the first people who showed up at the Orthodox church in Dallas and wanted to convert," he said, laughing. "There might have been one other boy who married a Greek girl, but that was about it. ... It was three weeks before anyone noticed us."

That was 1941, decades before a rush of Orthodox converts in America and England began making headlines. The young Robert Royster was an American Orthodox pioneer.

The archbishop spoke fondly of his Baptist roots, which gave him a "deep commitment to Jesus Christ" and a love of scripture. However, he and his sister became disturbed when they noticed other churches had a radically different and much more ancient calendar. This was especially true just before Easter.

"Holy Week seemed to pass with little more than a nod," he said. "We really started asking questions when our church had a picnic -- a hamburger cookout, no less -- on Good Friday. ... There wasn't too much to Easter, either, other than singing 'Up From the Grave He Arose.'

The two teens found a history textbook, did some homework and began visiting the Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans and others. The Orthodox sanctuary was full of icons, the air was full of incense, the music was Eastern chant and the rite was, literally, Greek to them.

"It was a total assault on the senses and a real culture shock," said the archbishop. "But there was also an incredible sense of reverence. It seemed like we were taken outside of time. Soon, it didn't matter so much that everything was in Greek."

During World War II the young Texan learned Japanese and was trained to interrogate prisoners of war. Then he taught Spanish literature at Southern Methodist University. In 1954, he learned Old Russian and was ordained a priest in the Orthodox Church in America, which has increasingly emphasized worship in English. Dmitri became a bishop in 1969 and, years later, his Bible Belt heritage still makes him stand out in the Orthodox hierarchy.

While there are 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide, the 5 million in America have remained a well-kept secret, in part because the flock is divided into a dozen jurisdictions, each with ethnic and historical ties to a mother church abroad.

Dmitri watched in the '50s and '60s as Orthodox children slipped into American culture and a trickle of converts married into the church. Then many Orthodox Christians -- especially retirees -- moved into the Sunbelt and, in 1978, the Orthodox Church in America formed the 14-state Diocese of the South, with Dmitri as its bishop, and began mission efforts. The diocese newspaper includes pages in Russian, English and Spanish.

The growth of convert-oriented churches continued when a network of evangelical churches -- led by several former Campus Crusade for Christ evangelists -- joined the Antiochian Orthodox Church in 1987. Then, a controversial 1994 assembly of the Western Hemisphere's bishops issued a call for a truly American Orthodox Church.

"Orthodoxy now has a unique mission in America. We are past the age of the Diaspora," said Dmitri. "We are surrounded by so many changes in this culture. We used to be able to count on other churches to hold on to the major doctrines -- such as the Incarnation and the Trinity.

"But now it seems that many churches do not want to hold on to anything. ... So the Orthodox Church is having to come to the rescue."

Great souls, great truths

Soon after the 1961 breakthrough of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," with its hellish first glimpse inside a Soviet labor camp, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn published a radically different kind of story.

"Matryona's Place" described a peasant woman who quietly, but persistently, refused to be corrupted by the numbing policies of the Stalinist regime. Some people were evil. This elderly woman chose to be good. It was a matter of virtue, character and soul.

The story ended by saying: "We all lived beside her, and never understood that she was that righteous one without whom, according to the proverb, no village can stand. Nor any city. Nor our whole land."

Some people touch villages, while others mysteriously touch the world, notes journalist David Aikman, in his book entitled "Great Souls: Six Who Changed The Century." It offers portraits of six moral leaders whom the veteran foreign correspondent has either interviewed or studied during his nearly three decades with Time and other news publications. In addition to Solzhenitsyn, Aikman searches for common themes in the stories of Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel, Nelson Mandela, Billy Graham and Pope John Paul II. The first four have been awarded Nobel Prizes, an honor many believe the last two shepherds deserve as well.

"We can definitely see an element of the transcendent in each of these lives," said Aikman, during lectures this week at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Ga. "These are people who believe that there are solid, absolute truths that are worth living for and they were willing to die for those truths as well, if they had to."

Aikman focuses on one transcendent virtue or theme in each life. For millions, Mother Teresa became the embodiment of compassion. The pivotal moment in Mandela's life is when the once-arrogant revolutionary emerges after 27 years of imprisonment and, instead of spewing venom, consistently preaches messages rooted in forgiveness. Despite all odds, Graham has remained focused on salvation.

As Solzhenitsyn received the Nobel Prize, he said: "One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." Pope John Paul II has, in word and deed, consistently returned to the defense of human dignity. Wiesel has, after surviving the Holocaust, dedicated his life to the virtue that Aikman calls "remembrance," demanding that the living never forget the reality of the suffering and death caused by human evil.

While these portraits cannot replace full biographies, Aikman manages to highlight unforgettable details and images -- always pointing toward issues of faith, obedience, discipline, courage and hope. Each person wrestled with doubts and came to accept a unique, even holy, calling that could not be denied.

As a boy, Wiesel meets with a great rabbi to receive a blessing and then sees his mother emerge weeping from her private talk with the rabbi. The elderly man had prophesied that the boy would grow up to become "gadol b'Israel" -- a great man in Israel, a great leader of the Jews -- but that neither the rabbi or Wiesel's mother would live to see it.

There is the image of the Solzhenitsyn as a child, drawing comfort from an icon of Jesus hanging near his bed. Later, young Marxists rip his baptismal cross from around his neck. There is Karol Wojtyla, long before his papacy, falling spread-eagled on the floor to pray for deliverance as Nazi police miss his Warsaw apartment door. There is Mother Teresa, refusing to leave a Calcutta hospital until the staff surrenders and admits a dying woman whose body had been attacked by rats and ants. There is Mandela, praying and studying the Bible with a prison guard's son, then comforting the guard after the son's death. There is Graham, refusing billionaire H.L. Hunt's offer of $6 million if the evangelist would run for president.

"Greatness of soul is not the same thing as being a celebrity," said Aikman. "It's a matter of character. Each of these great people had the kind of character that, at some point, it began to affect and to infect those who were around them. Now, it's almost impossible to imagine what our world would have been like without them."

George W. Bush learns to 'testify'

George Bush never did learn to open up when anyone asked about his faith, salvation, family values and all those messy spiritual issues.

On one campaign stop, he was asked what he thought about as he floated alone in the Pacific Ocean after his plane was shot down during World War II. His response was chilly: "Mom and Dad, about our country, about God ... and about the separation of church and state."

Eventually, the Kennebunkport Episcopalian ran into a Little Rock Baptist who could preach, pray, weep, hug, sing and confess with the best of them.

Now, Bush's heir is poised to make a run at the White House. However, George W. Bush is a Bible Belt Methodist and appears to have learned a big lesson: it helps if a candidate can stand tall in a pulpit and, as born-again folks say, "give his testimony."

"Faith gives us purpose - to right wrongs, preserve our families and teach our children values," said the Texas governor, speaking to about 15,000 during a March 6-7 visit to Houston's Second Baptist Church. "Faith gives us a conscience - to keep us honest even when no one is watching. Faith changes lives. I know, because it has changed mine. I grew up in the church, but I didn't always walk the walk."

Bush then described a backslider vs. the preacher showdown he had in the mid-1980s with evangelist Billy Graham. Bush said their talks inspired him to "recommit my life to Jesus Christ" and to end what he has previously confessed was a rowdy era in his private life. Bush's testimony also included nods to Promise Keeper orator Tony Evans, Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and other prominent evangelicals.

Yes, this Bush also pledged his allegiance to church-state separation.

"The church is not the state and the state is darn sure not the church," he said. "Any time the church enters the realm of politics the church runs the real risk of losing its mission. ... Politics is a world of give and take, of polls, of human vision. The church is built on the absolute principles of the Word of God, not the word of man."

Bush's sermon on religion and politics was quickly buried in news about an Associated Press interview about abortion. As he has throughout the 1990s, Bush called himself a "pro-life person," yet he said most Americans do not share his convictions.

"America is not ready to overturn Roe vs. Wade, because America's hearts are not right," he said. "So, in the meantime ... what we ought to do is promote policies that reduce abortions."

Speaking to the press through a telephone news conference, Focus on the Family leader James Dobson urged Bush to be specific. "Don't give us double-talk. Tell us if you'll support pro-life judges. Tell us if you'll oppose giving money to Planned Parenthood International." At this point in the Bush campaign, Dobson said, "we don't know what he believes."

Bush's approach does resemble the fervent, yet vague, approach used for years by Bill Clinton. Back in 1986, Clinton even said he agreed with the "stated purpose" of an Arkansas constitutional amendment to "promote the health, safety and welfare of every unborn child from conception until birth." Clinton has preached many sermons on faith's positive role in public life.

It's easy to offer positive words about faith. The problem is that so many people -- both progressives and traditionalists - - currently believe their religious beliefs are under attack.

Bush stressed the positive at Second Baptist, calling for church-state cooperation that would unleash "little armies of compassion" to transform "one heart, one soul and one conscience at a time." Still, this strategy will raise questions. Some critics insist that cooperative efforts using tax money, or even tax incentives, blur the line between church and state. Others want to know why Bush welcomes faith-based alternatives to costly government social programs, yet shies away from similar alternatives in education.

Bush's remarks in Houston will be dissected by one and all.

"We have learned that government programs cannot solve all the problems in our society," he said. "Government can hand out money, but it cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives. It cannot fill the spiritual well from which we draw strength day to day. Only faith can do that."

For my father, a pastor

Anyone who grew up in a parsonage knows that "PK" stands for "preacher's kid."

Early on, I rebelled against that label. But I wasn't rejecting my father, my family or the faith. When people called me a "preacher's kid," I told them that my father wasn't a preacher -- he was a pastor. There's a difference.

My father passed away last week at the age of 82 and I thought this would be a good time to say, once again, what I said to him and to others many times -- I have always been proud of his work. Of course, it had been some time since the Rev. Bert Mattingly retired from the pastorate and from his post-retirement work as a hospital chaplain. That didn't matter. In Texas Baptist lingo, he was always "Brother Bert."

My father preached, but that wasn't what defined him. The joy, and burden, of the job is that there's more to it than that.

The job seems to be getting tougher. Ask Jim Dahlman, a veteran editor at Focus on the Family who has specialized in issues linked to the ministry. During one research project he read many letters from clergy and their families, some of which left him weeping. Some pastors weren't burning out -- they were crashing in flames.

"I read one letter after another from pastors or their wives talking about this overwhelming sense of loneliness and isolation," he said. "Over and over, they'd write things like, 'We're totally alone. We can't talk to anyone about what's going on in our lives or the pressure we're under. We're out here twisting in the wind.' "

The big pressure is for pastors to be ready and available to handle each and every crisis, no matter how minor. With family and friends far away these days, who do people call? Oprah? The all-night therapist?

Dahlman said people also expect pastors to be "lifestyle role models" with perfect homes and perfect spiritual lives. But it's a problem if the pastor spends too much time at family events or on prayer retreats. Church members expect well researched, practical and, preferably, entertaining sermons. But it's a problem if the pastor spends too much time studying and writing.

The clock is always ticking.

I'm convinced the main reason stress levels are so high is that so many people -- in pews and pulpits -- have forgotten that pastors are defined by who they are and what they stand for, not what skills they possess and what tasks they perform. Pastors can't be shepherds if people expect them to be superheroes.

Why was I proud to be a pastor's kid? This may sound simplistic, but I believe churches need to hear it -- again.

* My father was a pastor -- not a preacher, CEO, entertainer, clinical counselor, self-help guru or crisis-management consultant.

* He preached the Bible, not his feelings and experiences. Today, many urge pastors to make their lives open books -- often forcing a faked extroversion that has little to do with reality. This has more to do with life in an era of mass-media confessions than solid teaching or evangelism.

* My parents were united -- for 58 years -- by their love and commitment to ministry. Today, many churches place so much pressure on clergy schedules and spirits that they weaken the very foundations of their personal lives. This has led to clergy divorce rates that are as shameful as in society as a whole.

* My father wasn't a workaholic. It wasn't until college that I talked with other "PKs" and discovered how unusual it was that I spent many, many hours with my father. I'm convinced this was linked to a more balanced, realistic approach to ministry.

* He kept on loving God, his work and his people. I have never known a pastor who didn't wrestle with fits of melancholy. Good pastors are realists who face the reality of pain and sin. And then many heap criticism on them, micromanage their lives and expect miracles.

Truth is, I rarely saw my father move mountains. But I did see him preach, teach, pray and embrace sinners. I was proud that he was a pastor. I still am.

Oh be careful little hands what you do

It's amazing how Sunday school songs can stick with people for the rest of their lives.

"Oh be careful little hands what you do! Oh be careful little hands what you do," sang social activist Tony Campolo, as he led a recent Milligan College (Tenn.) chapel audience in the hand motions that children have learned for generations. "God is up above. He is looking down in love. So be careful little hands what you do."

This song may sound silly, but it's not.

"That song! That song ruined my dating life," shouted Campolo. "You know, I'd be out there in a car and just when I'm ready to make the move, this voice from heaven says, 'Be careful little hands, what you do.' "

This kind of slapstick sermonizing always brings howls of laughter, especially on college campuses. The 64-year-old storyteller delivers more than 400 sermons and lectures a year and few people are better at making students laugh, think and cry at the same time. But he also wants to inspire tough questions.

Campolo has heard one question more than any other, ever since the Labor Day call from the White House asking him to serve as one of President Bill Clinton's three pastoral counselors. The question could be phrased this way: Has he sung "Oh be careful little hands what you do" recently in the Oval Office?

"Everybody wants to know what I say to the president and what the president says to me," said Campolo, who is both an ordained Baptist minister and a sociology professor at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pa. However, he has honored the confidentiality of this relationship, because "I don't think that you can talk about the president and to the president at the same time."

In the pulpit, Campolo's thundering voice and hot emotions often threaten the volume needles on tape recorders. He has admitted that the president often endsup shouting back at him, even though Campolo is an outspoken Democrat and a sworn foe of the Religious Right.

While the preacher won't discuss these sessions with the press, his sermons frequently address issues that are at the heart of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. At Milligan College, for example, he noted that many believers forget that it's "quite possible to be forgiven and not to be cleansed." Many also forget that, when they wallow in their sins, they bring pain to God.

Christianity teaches that Jesus is truly divine and that his life and ministry - such as his sacrifice on the cross -- transcend human time. Thus, Jesus is constantly carrying the sins of the world and of individual sinners. During a visit to another campus, Campolo said he met a young man who was a perfect example of those who fail to take this doctrine seriously.

"He said, 'Yeah, I do a lot of things that are wrong, you know, a lot of stuff sexually. I'm really into it. But, you know, I believe it's all taken care of on Calvary,' " said Campolo. "I was furious. I said, 'The next time you're screwing around, I hope you can hear Jesus screaming in pain! Because at that very moment, as he hangs on Calvary, he feels your sin and is absorbing it!' "

It's normal to hear preachers use this kind of language. But during the past year, it has become common to hear the likes of Geraldo Rivera and Larry King leading discussions of sin and grace, repentance and forgiveness. While this has been a troubling experience for many people, Campolo believes it has been good for the country.

For one thing, people on both sides of the political aisle are being forced to seek common ground on moral issues.

"All of a sudden we realize that no one sins to himself," said Campolo. "When you commit a sinful act, it has a rippling effect that goes around the world and back. We recognize that there is no such thing as private sin, anymore. It's all connected. And what is more, we have this sense now that there are a set of absolutes out there. There is a right. There is a wrong."

Lent -- Fasting from TV

Some people give up candy or soft drinks, while others sacrifice something as major as caffeine or meat.

So far, so good. However, Father Michael Buckley thinks most Roman Catholics, and members of other churches that observe Lent, would find it easier to properly prepare to celebrate Easter if they took an even more drastic step - unplugging their televisions.

"The reality is that most people sacrifice small things at Lent in order to give the season a kind of a tone of self- sacrifice," said Father Buckley of Plainview, Neb., whose "On Media" column appears in about 90 Catholic newspapers. "People give up little things because we have trouble even thinking about making real sacrifices, anymore. Seriously, most Catholics no longer see themselves as different from the culture around them. This really shows up at Lent."

Making a symbolic spiritual change isn't an end in itself, during the 40 days between Ash Wednesday and Easter, which this year is on April 4. In Eastern Orthodoxy the season of Great Lent began with Forgiveness Sunday on Feb. 21 and ends with Pascha on April 11.

The goal is to create a zone of quiet for repentance and reflection. The defining signs of Lent are supposed to be fasting, prayer and alms giving, said Father Buckley. However, the season's message is usually drowned out by the noise of daily life. As radical as it sounds, one of the only ways to give Lent a fighting chance is to turn off, or to at least curtail the use of, the TVs scattered throughout most homes.

"You end up with more time for your family, for prayer, for the church, for life in general," he said. "But I think most people would find it much harder to give up television during Lent than to give up meat."

It's hard to fight this kind of battle without practical strategies.

For some people, a good starting point would be spending two or more hours reading for each hour that they watch television, said evangelical media critic Doug LeBlanc, in a recent Moody magazine column. Then, when he does turn on the TV, he has vowed to hit the mute button during every commercial.

"Commercials are not only loud and intrusive," noted LeBlanc, "but they sell a particularly noxious snake oil known as commercialism. I have enough trouble resisting the siren call of narcissism without reinforcing it during every commercial break."

But the big problem is that people use mass media - especially television news, sports, talk radio and music - as pseudo-shopping-mall "white noise" to cover gaps in their lives that hint at loneliness or a need for self-reflection, said LeBlanc. Clearly, many fear silence.

It's also possible to make better decisions about what to watch, as well as how much to watch, said James Breig, a columnist in Credo, an alternative Catholic weekly in Ann Arbor, Mich. Some could begin by listing their five favorite shows and then swearing off one of them, to invest that time in spiritual books. High-quality religious programs also turn up occasionally on history and arts channels and some parishes have begun collecting libraries of videotapes.

And it might help to put a Bible or prayer book near the TV Guide or the remote control.

"In an average week," Breig asked his readers, "which do you do more often: Watch TV or pray? Think of how often you say, 'There's nothing on,' and then watch that nothing."

The overarching problem is that, all too often, church leaders and members choose to ignore the role that all those televisions play in most homes and in the culture at large. Mass media are, in fact, the channels through which most people receive the stories, images and values that shape their lives -- hour after hour, day by day, season after season.

"The THING called a television, the actual box with a screen on it and some speakers, can do some good," said Father Buckley. "The problem is how people let television and the media take over their lives. That's a spiritual issue. I don't think that it's a reach to say that the role television plays in most modern homes is evil."

Adolph Hitler: A perverted Christian?

From Adolph Hitler's point of view, Christendom had it all wrong.

Jesus wasn't a humble savior who suffered and died on a cross to redeem all of humanity. For Hitler, Jesus was an angry, whip-cracking messiah who was tough enough to lead Germany to victory. Hitler's Jesus looked a lot like Hitler. The Christian messiah was too Jewish.

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter," said Hitler, in one 1922 speech. "It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by only a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned me to fight against them. In boundless love, as a Christian and as a man, I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord rose at last in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders."

In "Mein Kampf," Hitler went one terrifying step further as he attacked the "Jewish doctrine of Marxism." He wrote: "Eternal Nature inexorably revenges the transgressions against her laws. Therefore, I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: By warding off the Jews, I am fighting for the Lord's work."

What do these words mean? While historians have struggled to answer that question, one thing is certain: Anyone who uses the words "Hitler" and "Christian" in the same sentence will cause controversy. The most recent flare-up centers on remarks by President Bill Clinton at the 1999 National Prayer Breakfast.

"The problem is that Hitler was all over the map when he talked about religion, including Christianity," said journalist Ron Rosenbaum, author of "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil." "When it was useful for him to appear Christian, in order to manipulate the masses, then he did so. But then in private comments he was much more candid about his hatred of Christianity."

The result is a maze of questions. What did Hitler mean when he said "the Lord" or "Divine Providence" gave him spiritual visions and that an "inner voice" called him to redeem the German people and crush the Jews? And does the fact that Hitler called himself a Christian mean that it's proper for anyone else to call him a Christian?

What people say about Hitler usually reveals more about their biases and beliefs than about those of Hitler, said Rosenbaum.

Take Clinton's speech, for example. The president reminded his interfaith audience that many of the world's woes are "rooted in what we believe are the instructions we get from God to do things to people who are different from us." But just because people believe they're following God doesn't mean they're right, he said.

"I do believe that even though Adolph Hitler preached a perverted form of Christianity, God did not want him to prevail," said Clinton.

Conservative Christians immediately cried "foul."

In reality, Hitler's hate was rooted in a pseudo-scientific racism, not religious faith, said Rosenbaum. Thus, it would have been more accurate to say that Hitler preached a "perverted form of Darwinism, rather than a perverted Christianity." The most logical explanation for Clinton's comments would be that he was striking back at "conservative Christians and his other critics that he considers judgmental and mean-spirited," said Rosenbaum, who stressed that he also is a frequent critic of the Religious Right.

But this is business as usual, when it comes to discussions of Hitler and religion. Christians anxious to attack the occult can cite evidence that Hitler was a neo-pagan terrorist who hated God and saw himself as a god-like messiah. Atheists and agnostics blame Hitler's actions on his Catholic boyhood. Anti-Semites welcome any evidence that Hitler may have been part Jewish. The list goes on and on.

"It's like a Rorschach test. People see what they want to see and then they use Hitler as a way to settle arguments," said Rosenbaum. "Everyone wants to be able to say that their enemies believe what Hitler believed. What we can learn from all of this is that you can't trust anything Hitler said. If you are trying to understand Hitler, the last thing you can believe are his words."