Celebrating the feast of St. Brendan

On a clear day, an adventurer atop Mount Brandon can gaze into the Atlantic and see the rocky Three Sisters, the Skellig islands and other enticing glimmers on the horizon.

The Irish saint for whom the mountain is named did more than look. According to the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St. Brendan), the 6th century abbot set out in a leather-and-wood boat, with 17 other monks, to find the Promised Land in the West.

"Brothers, do not fear," said Brendan, in a text that may have been written as early as the year 800. "God is our helper, sailor and helmsman, and he guides us. Ship all the oars and the rudder. Just leave the sail spread and God will do as he wishes with his servants and their ship."

The rest is a long story, one that scholars have compared with the Odyssey and the storm-tossed travels of St. Paul. Today, some historians believe that Brendan's story is built on a framework of history, as well as spirituality. This has only added to the mystery surrounding the saint, whose feast day is May 16.

"Brendan is at the top of the Celtic canon, with Patrick and Columba," said composer Jeff Johnson, who has recorded two CDs blending jazz, rock, chant and the Navigatio. "But his story is more than just a good story. At some point you have to try to see yourself building that boat and getting in it and starting out on that voyage. ...

"That's when it hits you: A voyage to where?"

Anyone who wants to answer that question will need to study Celtic Christianity. But Catholic writer Connie Marshner warns that seekers should avoid the Celtic shelves in mall bookstores. A press release for one hot book captures the spirit of the current craze: "At a time when many people are seeking out traditional beliefs, but remain wary of overly confining disciplines, Celtic spirituality offers something for almost everyone."

"There are people out there selling this idea that the Celtic Christians were earthy, natural, free-spirited people who didn't care a lot about sin and doctrine and things like that," she said. "But if you read what the Celtic saints wrote or read about their lives, you quickly find out that just isn't true. They were very disciplined and very concerned about the sins of the flesh."

The Navigatio itself is built on monastic disciplines and a sense of mission. Monks didn't climb into tiny boats and brave the North Atlantic because they "wanted to get in touch with their inner feelings and find themselves," said Johnson. "They knew that other monks had made these kinds of journeys before. It was a leap of faith, but they knew what they were doing."

Two decades ago, scholar Tim Severin became convinced that they also knew where they were going. Following medieval designs, his team built a curragh out of Irish ash, covering the frame with 49 oak-bark-tanned ox hides laced with two miles of leather thongs. Then he made a 4,500-mile journey, hopping from island to island across the North Atlantic.

In "The Brendan Voyage," Severin notes that many details in the Navigatio are surprisingly accurate. The saint visits an island full of sheep, which sounds like the Faroe Islands, and sees a giant crystal pillar right where voyagers usually see icebergs. The boat is bombarded by burning rocks near the volcanoes of Iceland and encounters a dense cloud near the Promised Land, which may have been the fog zone at Newfoundland's Grand Banks.

But the big question remains: Why attempt this journey?

Brendan's monks were explorers, who expected to return from their journeys stronger and with lessons they could teach others, said Johnson. They also were missionaries who took incredible risks in an attempt to start monasteries, and the Christian communities that surrounded them, in the wild places on the edges of their world.

"The Brendan in that boat was a real person. He had his doubts and fears, like we do," said Johnson. "But it says a lot that we struggle to understand the kinds of disciplines that gave him the strength to do what he did. ... Maybe what the church needs today is more spiritual explorers. Maybe we need more monks."

Beyond 'Becky Goes to Bible Camp'

GREENVILLE, Ill. - After 35 years of work in television and sports, Bob Briner is a pro at spotting doors of opportunity in the numbers churned out by media-research firms.

So he wasn't surprised that the new Internet-based Digital Entertainment Network is poised to cybercast a show called "Redemption High." This post-MTV drama will, according to USA Today, center on "several Christian teens, a group almost completely ignored by broadcast television. ... The teens grapple with problems by asking themselves what Jesus would do in their situation."

The twist isn't who is producing "Redemption High," but who is not.

"It's stunning that the people at a hip outfit like DEN would see this opening right there in the demographics," said Briner, co-founder and president of ProServ Television in Dallas and a global pioneer in pro tennis and other sports media. "But of course they saw it! It should be obvious this audience is waiting out there. ... What's so amazing and so sad is that Christian people still can't see it."

The former basketball player and football coach laughed and waved his giant hand, like he was backhanding a pesky gnat. "Let's face it. Most Christians still won't get behind a project in the entertainment business unless you're gonna make 'Becky Goes to Bible Camp,' " he said.

Briner is a conservative churchman and he doesn't enjoy making this kind of wisecrack. Nevertheless, the 63-year-old entrepreneur has - beginning with a 1993 book called "Roaring Lambs" -- grown increasingly candid in his critiques of the religious establishment. His work has had an especially strong impact in Nashville, the Bible Belt's entertainment capital.

Now, after writing or co-writing seven books in six years, Briner is working with even greater urgency. The early title for his next book is "Christians Have Failed America: And Some of Us are Sorry" and he is writing it while fighting cancer.

Most Christians, he argues in the first chapter, are sinfully content to write for other Christians, sing to other Christians, produce television programs for other Christians, educate other Christians, debate other Christians and to only do business with other Christians.

"Shameful," he writes. "We have failed and are failing America. I am sorry. In failing to show up ... in the places that really count, where the moral, ethical and spiritual health of our country is concerned, we have left our country exposed and vulnerable to all the ills we now see besetting it. We have not provided a way of escape, even though we profess to know the way."

It's a sobering message. But the key is that Briner is a both successful - an Emmy winner who has worked with Arthur Ashe, Dave Dravecky, Michael Jordan and many others - and the kind of generous mentor who has voluntarily helped scores of rookies. A few years ago he sold his homes in Dallas and Paris and moved here to central Illinois to work in a one-stoplight town with students at his alma mater, Greenville College.

"Bob is a gadfly - but one with tremendous grace -- who prods the Church along and asks that we take risks, practice excellence and humbly direct praise to God," said Dave Palmer, an executive at Squint Entertainment in Nashville. Briner, he said, keeps stressing that work must be "recognized on its artistic merits first and not ghetto-ized by any confining terms."

Still, most believers find it easier to blame the secular media for all of society's ills, rather than doing the hard work of funding and creating quality alternatives.

"Basically, we continue to take the easy way out," said Briner. "You can't offer the gospel to people if you aren't there in the marketplace and if you have never earned the right to even talk to them. We have failed to give people the chance to choose good things instead of bad things. We have not offered them the best that we have. ...

"Producing a 'Chariots of Fire' every 25 years or so won't get it done. We have to produce a 'Chariots of Fire' every week or every day if we are serious about giving people an alternative worldview to what Hollywood is selling them."

What does it mean to be a martyr?

The Greek word "martyria" - which meant "witness" - appears throughout the books and letters that became the New Testament.

Believers witnessed both in word and deed. Then came persecution. By the time the drama of the early church reached the Book of Revelation of St. John, with its image of the Whore of Babylon "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus," the word "martyr" had changed forever.

"I'm not even sure we can understand what 'martyr' used to mean," said Fred Norris of the Emmanuel School of Religion in Elizabethton, Tenn. He is the former president of the North American Patristics Society for scholars who study the early church fathers. "Sacrifice doesn't mean much in this culture. ... So we use 'martyr' in a way that's quite silly. We say, 'Oh, she's acting like a martyr,' and we don't even mean it as a compliment."

There was more being a martyr than dying a tragic death and the word certainly didn't imply that someone had a death wish. The key, said Norris, was that the believer refused, in the face of terror and torture, to deny the faith. Thus, a martyr's death was a public witness.

Today, the word "martyr" is highly relevant in Uganda, China, Iran, Indonesia, Sudan and elsewhere. And last week in Littleton, Colo., the story of 17-year-old Cassie Bernall inspired many young believers to embrace the true meaning of the word.

In the days since the massacre, her story has spread worldwide through news reports and the Internet. The details may vary, but no one challenges the heart of the story. Classmates, other Christians and four members of her own West Bowles Community Church youth group witnessed her death in the Columbine High School library.

As the killers in the black trench coats approached, Cassie clutched her Bible and dove under a table. After playing cruel jokes on other victims, one gunman asked Cassie, "Do you believe in God?" She paused. Some witnesses said the smoking gun already was aimed at her.

"Yes, I believe in God," she said. The gunman laughed and said, "Why?" Then he killed her. Other witnesses told Time that Cassie, who a few years earlier considered suicide and bathed in the occult, also said: "There is a God and you need to follow along God's path." Then the killer said, "There is no God," and pulled the trigger.

Cassie's story is especially poignant because of this face- to-face confrontation, her public affirmation of faith and its immediate consequences, said Norris. This resembles the legal trials of martyrs who faced Roman judges. In this case, the believer was tried and executed by a peer who represented, in some bizarre way, a youth culture steeped in violence and death.

At least one other student, 18-year-old Valeen Schnurr, faced this life-or-death question. She also answered "yes," and was shot. She suffered nine bullet and shrapnel wounds - but lived. Others escaped the killing zone with their own physical, emotional and spiritual wounds.

"The early church had a different word for someone who was wounded or tortured and refused to renounce the faith," noted Norris. "This people were called 'confessors' and their wounds served as a witness to their faith. This gave them a special authority and they also served as an inspiration to others."

Only the spiritually blind have missed the symbolism in Cassie's death, as Vice President Al Gore, evangelist Franklin Graham and many news reports have focused on her final words. Preaching from a rough outline scribbled on four note cards, her youth pastor told the 2,000-plus gathered at her funeral that she was a witness before her death, in her death and, now, in the lives she has touched. In a video taped days before her death, Cassie simply said her goal was to be "a good example to non- believers and also to Christians.''

"What the church has talked about for 2,000 years, what every church in this world has talked about on a daily basis, Cassie, you did it," said the Rev. Dave McPherson. In the end, he told the crowd: "The ball is in your court, now. What impact will her martyred life have on you?"

A call to focus on the flocks

A few years after Roe vs. Wade, one of America's most passionate preachers publicly attacked the impact of legalized abortion on the powerless.

His National Right to Life News article ended with these words: "What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of person, and what kind of society, will we have 20 years hence if life can be taken so casually?"

The Rev. Jesse Jackson used to ask those kinds of questions, before he bonded with the Democratic establishment.

Now, two former Moral Majority leaders are bluntly asking ministers on the Religious Right if they will be able to avoid yielding to similar pressures to conform after an unholy union with the Republicans.

"Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," argues columnist Cal Thomas, who writes for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. "When a preacher or any other person who claims to speak for God, and who already holds sway over sometimes large numbers of people, is seduced by power, he can become destructive, not only to himself and to those he is charged to lead, but to the cause and the objectives of the One he is supposed to be serving."

In their book "Blinded By Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?", Thomas and the Rev. Ed Dobson of Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., stress that they have not abandoned any of the moral and religious convictions that once landed them jobs as top aides to the Rev. Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Va. Both say that moral conservatives must continue to be heard in both political parties, in mass media, in education and in a wide range of organizations that try to affect public-policy debates.

Nevertheless, both are convinced it's time for those who lead religious ministries and institutions to get out of politics and back to changing hearts, minds and souls. It is time, they insist, for shepherds to focus on their flocks.

God needs people who are called to work in politics to work in politics, said Dobson, during a visit to Washington, D.C., to hook up with Thomas for a "60 Minutes" interview. God needs spiritual leaders to help people through their churches and parachurch ministries. The danger zone, he said, is when ministers start devoting their time, gifts and resources to trying to vote in the Kingdom of God.

"Churches were created for ministry and it's wrong to try to use them for other goals," said Dobson, whose 6,000-member evangelical church is active in many morally conservative social causes, but shuns political efforts.

It's easy to understand the temptation, he said, because he felt it himself during the years when he often stood in for Falwell at political forums and on news shows.

"There is an illusion of access and influence and power when you are talking about the great issues of politics," said Dobson. "It makes you feel important. But what you are doing is trying to find a short cut to changing the culture. It won't work."

Church history could be repeating itself.

A few decades ago, many mainline Protestant church leaders became obsessed with progressive social causes during the era when the parents of the 1950s and '60s were struggling to raise the Baby Boomers. Mainline ministers briefly basked in the spotlight, while scores of their people took their spiritual questions elsewhere. Today, Bill Clinton's White House haunts many conservative pastors the way Vietnam haunted clergy on the left. Meanwhile, the Baby Boomers need help raising another massive generation of children.

The bottom line: Is the goal of the Religious Right to be as assimilated into the Republican Party as the National Council of Churches has been into the Democratic Party?

"One reason the National Council and World Council of Churches no longer have the moral power and authority they once enjoyed is that they married government to God," according to Thomas. "In the process, their moral power evaporated and they became, as the Religious Right has become, just another special- interest group to be appeased by politicians."

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."