A new Presbyterian Reformation?

The two men spoke on the same topic, on the same day and at luncheons early in the same gathering -- the 211th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

But Harvard University minister Peter Gomes and ex-gay counselor Joe Dallas found radically different messages when they opened their Bibles.

Right now, said Gomes, the forces of biblical literalism are waging a campaign of "textual harassment" against those who want to welcome gays and lesbians into the ministry and bless same-sex unions at church altars. But progressives must not surrender to those who are bound by "fear and ignorance," he told the Covenant Network of Presbyterians.

"The cause is just," said Gomes, an openly gay Baptist who leads Harvard's Memorial Church. "The experience of the gospel is in your direction. You are sailing with the wind of the Holy Spirit. You are on the Lord's side."

The Covenant Network luncheon Monday symbolized one side in what Presbyterian politicos call the "Battle of the Amendments," which continued all this week at the assembly in Fort Worth, Texas. After a year of debate, the church's regional presbyteries in 1997 voted 97 to 74 to add Amendment B to its Book of Order, stating that ministers must "live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness." A year later, the presbyteries voted 59 to 114 to defeat Amendment A, which would have required "fidelity and integrity in all relationships."

Dallas spoke at a luncheon sponsored by OneByOne, a ministry within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) created to minister to "those in conflict with their sexuality." He stressed that those backing a pro-homosexual view of ordination and marriage have based their arguments on their feelings and experiences, not on scripture.

"The real question in assessing relationships is not, 'Is it loving?', but, 'Is it right or wrong?'," said Dallas, who lived for years in gay relationships before he got married and became an ex-gay leader. "The scriptures on homosexuality are unambiguous in both testaments. The only relationship considered best is a monogamous relationship between one man and one woman."

That's one way to read the Bible, said Gomes. But as inheritors of the Protestant Reformation, he said Covenant Network supporters could believe in the vitality and authority of the Bible without "bowing down to some inerrant text or to some absolute school of exegesis" from the past.

"God speaks in the present tense," said the Harvard theologian. "Now, it is interesting to know what the Spirit was saying to the churches in Antioch, what the Spirit was saying to the churches in Chalcedon, even what the Spirit was saying to the churches in Geneva. But it is equally important to ask, 'What is the Spirit saying to the churches today, in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), in the last year of the 20th Century?' "

Gomes was preaching to the choir. Covenant Network leaders already have portrayed themselves as the true defenders of a tradition that allows each generation to reform earlier interpretations of scriptures, creeds and confessions. As a touchstone, they cite a 1924 document written when other Presbyterians defeated a conservative attempt to enforce "biblical inerrancy" and literal interpretations of the virgin birth, the atonement and the resurrection.

"With respect to the interpretation of the Scriptures, the position of our church has been that common to Protestants," noted the Auburn Declaration. While Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches stress the authority of centuries of church teachings about the Bible, "our church lays it upon its ministers and others to read and teach the Scriptures as the Spirit of God through His manifold ministries instructs them, and to receive all truth which from time to time He causes to break forth from the Scriptures."

Winning this debate over the Bible and tradition remains crucial for the left in today's battles over sexuality, marriage and ordination, said Barbara Wheeler, president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, in a paper circulated by the Covenant Network.

"We must," she said, "develop a clear, compelling demonstration that our understanding of ordination will make the church more Presbyterian than it is now, or we will not prevail."

Death of a seminary visionar

Early in his first pastorate, the Rev. Clyde McDowell was hit with one crisis after another and none of them seem to have been covered in his seminary textbooks.

The son of a church member got caught up in a bad drug deal. Then a girl ran away from home. Then a boy was tossed out of school for threatening someone with a hunting knife. Then there was a guilty wife and an angry husband and a messy sexual affair. Then McDowell had to climb out on a roof to talk to a suicidal member of the youth group, who was holding at shotgun.

His early sermons and church board meetings were tough, too.

"I felt like I was lost and nobody had given me a set of directions," he told me, a decade ago. "I knew a lot about the Bible, but I didn't know how to be a pastor."

McDowell survived and then thrived. Then, in 1996, the 46-year-old pastor accepted the challenge of being a seminary president. He was emerging as a new voice in a critical debate about the future of seminaries. But doctors discovered he had a brain tumor only 16 months after he became president of Denver Seminary. He died on June 7.

It's crucial to understand that McDowell did not want to "modernize" the process of seminary education, but to embrace an older model. He wanted ministers to do their studies while surrounded by flocks of real believers and the experienced shepherds who lead them.

Today, most seminaries are structured like graduate schools and teach clergy a specialized theological language that often makes it harder to talk to lay people, said the Rev. Leith Anderson, a nationally known author and megachurch pastor who is serving as Denver Seminary's interim president. It helps to contrast this with the approach used in medical schools, in which students are quickly given a white coats and, under the watch-care of mentors, asked to do case studies on real people while continuing classroom work.

"Would you want to go see a doctor who had been to med school and had taken all the right courses, but had never touched a patient the whole time he was there?", asked Anderson. "Would you want to be that first patient? I think not. So, would you want to be in somebody's first church if they had taken all the right seminary courses, but had never had any contact with real people and real pastors? I think not."

Nevertheless, many faculty members believe the core courses in the archetypal seminary curriculum have been carved in stone. Meanwhile, stressed-out pastors face media-saturated homes, workaholic parents and children who seem mature and frighteningly immature at the same time. When it comes to spiritual answers, their people are as likely to turn to Oprah and "The X-Files" as to church programs.

Many growing churches have responded to all of this by ceasing to hire seminary-educated men and women. Some train their new leaders on their own.

These issues were swirling around Denver Seminary in the early 1990s, when I taught courses there focusing on mass media and popular culture. I led a number of forums with McDowell at the nearby Mission Hills Baptist Church, which grew from 600 to 1,700 members during his 13-year tenure. His vision was already taking shape.

At some point, he said, people needed to know that pastors truly understood the issues they faced in daily life. This would require more than adding a few course titles in the seminary curriculum and increasing the amount of audio-visual equipment on campus. While he didn't what to short-change the study of doctrine, he had decided that seminaries couldn't settle for teaching truth as a list of statements on a test.

Competent, healthy pastors, he said, must be able to live the truth, as well as write academic papers about it.

"They must be truth implementers," stressed McDowell, in one 1997 essay. "They must know how the truth applies to this age whether it's the Age of Aquarius, the Age Wave or the New Age. In this age of unbelief, belief comes hard to those who only hear the words of preaching, but see little evidence in life."

Ignoring the shepherds of Kosovo

It's tricky for anyone to sign a document in Belgrade these days with the word "peace" in the title.

But back on April 19th, while air-raid sirens screamed overhead, an interfaith quartet of shepherds released a gripping statement to their Yugoslavian flocks and to the world.

"Even as evil cannot be overcome by evil, so peace and harmony cannot be attained by war," said the seven-paragraph "Appeal for Peace," released from the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate. "To be a peacemaker is the greatest duty and most noble obligation of every man. That is why we are not afraid to be the first to extend the hand of peace to one another. In the name of our future and our common life together, we pray to God and appeal to all men of good will to endeavor with maximum effort to end this war and resolve the problems by peaceful means."

The document was signed by Serbian Patriarch Pavle, Catholic Archbishop Franc Perko, Mufti Hamdija Jusufspahic and Rabbi Isak Asiel, all of Belgrade. Together, they called for all bombing and fighting to cease and for the return of refugees to their war-ravaged homes - both the ethnic Albanians fleeing the paramilitary units of Slobodan Milosevic or Serbs fleeing the Kosovo Liberation Army.

This cry for broader negotiations in the Balkans followed a "Kosovo Peace and Tolerance" declaration released on March 18 in Vienna. This longer, more detailed document was signed by a quartet of Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim and Jewish leaders from Kosovo.

Officials in NATO alliance should have the highest possible motivations to support coalitions seeking common ground in the Balkans, said Father Irinej Dobrijevic of Cleveland, who accompanied the Rev. Jesse Jackson during his unofficial mission to Belgrade, leading to the release of three American prisoners of war.

If so, ignoring the Vienna and Belgrade interfaith statements represented "major missed opportunities to support those who wanted to promote democracy" and defeat Milosevic, who is a holdover from the Communist era, said Dobrijevic, during a Capitol Hill forum this week focusing on Kosovo, sponsored by the conservative National Clergy Council. "We missed the boat when we failed to listen to these kinds of mainstream, moderate religious and intellectual leaders."

The panel of clergy and scholars addressed the question "Does might make right?", probing Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant teachings on war and how they might apply to the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia. The forum covered territory from St. Augustine's "City of God" to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the failed Paris accords, with many stops in between. Some argued that this war is unjust, or even evil, while others said its humanitarian goals were just, but questioned NATO strategies. Everyone agreed that it's hard to evaluate whether a military effort is morally justified when no one can agree on its goal. Was this a war to protect ethnic Albanians, topple Milosevic or cut Kosovo out of Yugoslavia?

Whatever happens next, it's hard to imagine anyone traveling the road to peace without the help of religious leaders in Yugoslavia - the very voices that Milosevic has attempted to silence and that Western diplomats and media have consistently ignored.

This was perfectly symbolized when Orthodox Bishop Artemije of Kosovo stood knee-deep in the snow outside the chateau at Rambouillet -- locked out of the tense negotiations between leaders of NATO, the KLA and the Milosevic government. The most radical elements of the Serbian regime have even labeled Artemije a traitor to his country, due to his years of activism on behalf of all refugees and his efforts to force a new government in Belgrade, including five U.S. trips in a year before the bombing began.

"The greatest victim of your NATO bombs is not what is demolished and broken or killed and wounded (however great that number may be), but rather something which you stopped from developing," the bishop of Kosovo later wrote, in a letter to Western leaders.

"Before your bombs, democratic forces existed here, open and with potential; there existed a democratic process, however embryonic. There existed a hope with these people, that with your support the process of democratization would come to life and prevail. All of that is gone now."

Star Wars -- the only parable in town

The Rev. Calvin Miller is one Southern Baptist preacher - a seminary professor, no less - who openly admits that he communed with the Star Wars faithful on the opening day of "The Phantom Menace."

He pretty much got what he expected - high tech fantasy and lowest-common-denominator mysticism, stone-faced knights and wisecracking sidekicks ready for toy-store shelves. George Lucas keeps offering a pinch of Freud, a shot of Oedipus and a baptism into Buddhism. Miller grimaced, but wasn't shocked, when the mythmaker even tossed in a virgin birth and a messianic prophecy.

"We have to understand that people are out there hunting for metaphors to help them make sense of their lives," said Miller, who teaches preaching at Samford University's Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala. He also has written more than 30 works of fiction and nonfiction, including a set of poetic novels entitled "The Singer Trilogy."

"This is what we all do. We pick a metaphor and then we indulge ourselves for 50 or 60 years. Some people change in midstream. ... We need metaphors and narratives that tell us who we are. It shouldn't surprise anyone that millions of people find these big stories at the movies."

In the classroom, Miller tries to convince seminarians that pastors should help people interpret the myths they buy at the mall -- to separate the wheat from the chaff. Preachers also can lay claim to a rich Judeo-Christian heritage of storytelling, he said. In the Bible, the doctrine and the drama are intertwined. For centuries, rabbis told dramatic stories and then interpreted them. Priests inspired the young with vivid accounts of the lives of the saints.

In other words, the fires of hell would not consume the sanctuary if a preacher dared to speak the words "a long time ago" and then told a parable in the pulpit.

"No one can deny that art and drama and icons and stories are important parts of human life and have been part of the church's traditions for centuries," said Miller.

But this is a tough sell, these days. In most congregations, the word "sermon" means a verse-by-verse explanation of scripture, perhaps enlivened with occasional illustrations from daily life. Thus, most people hear academic lectures at church, then turn to mass media to find inspiring tales of heroes and villains, triumph and tragedy, sin and redemption, heaven and hell.

Part of the problem, argues Catholic writer Roberto Rivera, is that science has claimed the right to define what is and isn't real. Scientists, of course, insist that truth be found through propositions and hypotheses, not through symbols and stories. In response, the church has tended to ask worshippers to subscribe to a list of propositions about God, rather than offering them sweeping, dramatic narratives about God's work in history.

Yet people still yearn for stories that feed the soul. If traditional religious groups keep offering "arid propositions that leave us cold and bored," people will seek other sanctuaries, said Rivera. The Star Wars series is merely one example of this trend toward stories that are highly commercialized, yet undeniably spiritual.

"If you want to engage people where they really live, you've got to reach for more than their heads or even their hearts," said Rivera, a researcher with the Wilberforce Forum led by evangelical leader Chuck Colson. "You've got to engage their imaginations. ... If you want to teach moral lessons, there's no substitute for a good story."

Thus, legions of Lucas disciples fill their homes with icons and statues and gather on thousands of World Wide Web sites. Many yearn for a personal audience with Lucas. Star Wars has a lot going for it as a spiritual story, noted Rivera. Its devotees don't have to get up on Sunday mornings and there's no moral code to make them uncomfortable.

"The problem," he said, "is that, after you've lined up, memorized the dialog and made the pilgrimage to Skywalker Ranch, what have you got to show for it? And, heaven forbid, what if 'The Phantom Menace' disappoints? What's your fallback position? After all, it's still only a movie."

The Star Wars nativity story

Every epic story needs a central character and he has to come from somewhere.

So the key moment in the cosmos of mythmaker George Lucas is when Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn asks Shmi Skywalker to identify the father of her mysterious young son, Anakin, who will someday become the evil Darth Vader.

"There is no father," she replies, in Terry Brooks' novel "Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace," which is based on the screenplay by Lucas.

"I carried him, I gave birth to him. I raised him. I can't tell you any more than that."

It seems the slave boy was "conceived not by human contact, but by the essence of all life, by the connectors to the Force itself, the midi-chlorians," a form of life living in the blood. "Comprising collective consciousness and intelligence, the midi- chlorians formed the link between everything living and the Force," explains the novel.

This leads to the final details in this nativity story. The priestly Jedi have long pondered an ancient prophecy that "a chosen one would appear, imbued with an abundance of midi- chlorians, a being strong with the Force and destined to alter it forever." The chosen one would "bring balance to the Force" -- balance between the darkness and the light.

Once upon a time, Star Wars raised one big question for parents and clergy: Is the Force the same thing as God? Now, the first chapter of the saga that many scholars believe has shaped a generation is raising more questions, even if Lucas scoffs at believers who dissect his work.

Why use the title "chosen one"? Was this a miraculous conception? Is Qui-Gon a John the Baptist figure? Perhaps Anakin Skywalker is the Moses who will liberate his people? If the Force is God, and the midi-chlorians help channel the Force, then what are the midi-chlorians? Did Lucas shred the Holy Spirit and then inject the results into his characters' blood streams?

"When you look at literature you find myths and messiahs and saviors everywhere. That's fair and everybody does that," said Alex Wainer, a Milligan College colleague of mine whose doctoral work focused on mythic archetypes in popular culture, including Star Wars. "The problem isn't that Lucas is creating a heroic myth and using religious symbolism. But he has taken all of the religions, put them in a blender and hit the button."

While many critics will say that the gospel according to Lucas is too vague, the problem for many traditional believers will be that his story has become too detailed. The use of the virgin birth motif, and the title "chosen one," may even cut through the entertainment fog that envelopes most consumers when they enter a movie theater.

"Lucas is getting so specific that his work is losing its metaphor quality," said Wainer. "He isn't just using an occasional religious theme. He is creating a whole religious system and the more questions he raises, the more he's going to have to answer. He's on the verge of de-mystifying his own myth and he may end up killing the whole thing. It's like he's trying too hard."

For years, Lucas has said that his goal is to create a framework in which children can learn about good and evil, right and wrong. However, he also is painting a picture inside this frame. While he clearly believes that children need moral guidance, he also urges them to follow their emotions, not religious dogmas.

As Qui-Gon tells the young Skywalker: "Concentrate on the moment. Feel, don't think."

"I see Star Wars as taking all the issues that religion represents and trying to distill them down into a more modern and easily accessible construct -- that there is a greater mystery out there," Lucas told Bill Moyers, in a recent Time interview. "I remember when I was 10 years old, I asked my mother, 'If there's only one God, why are there so many religions?' I've been pondering that question ever since, and the conclusion I've come to is that all the religions are true. Religion is basically a container for faith."

The time for broken communion?

It's been seven years since Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison faced the fact that some of his fellow bishops worship a different god than he does.

The symbolic moment came during an Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in Kanuga, N.C., as members met in small groups to discuss graceful ways to settle their differences on the Bible, worship and sex. The question for the day was: "Why are we dysfunctional?"

"I said the answer was simple - apostasy," said Allison, a dignified South Carolinian who has a doctorate in Anglican history from Oxford University. "Some of the other bishops looked at me and said, 'What are you talking about?'"

Many Episcopalians, he explained at the time, have embraced the work of theologians such as Carter Heyward, a lesbian priest, seminary professor and author of books such as "Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God." Allison asked the bishops how they would deal with those who say they serve a god that is "older and greater" than the God of the Bible.

Some of the bishops said they either shared this belief or could not condemn it.

When the time came to celebrate the Eucharist, Allison knew what he had to do in this particular circle of bishops. He declined to share the bread and the wine, but didn't publicize his act of conscience. Now, the retired South Carolina bishop has openly crossed a line in Episcopal canon law, signaling his belief that "broken communion" is becoming necessary between many bishops, their priests and their flocks.

This past Sunday (May 16), Allison served as celebrant in a Mass for members of St. Paul's Parish in Brockton, Mass., who have been evicted from their sanctuary after clashes with Diocese of Massachusetts leaders who are liberalizing church teachings on marriage and sex.

For 10 weeks, the orthodox outcasts have been worshipping on the sidewalk outside their old church. A cell of diocesan loyalists now has legal rights to the building and the name, St. Paul's Parish. On Sunday, the 72-year-old Allison joined about 100 worshippers - including Anglicans from Nigeria, Uganda, Liberia and Haiti -- in a procession around the corner to meet in a gymnasium at a Seventh-day Adventist church.

Allison was supposed to have received Massachusetts Bishop Thomas Shaw's permission before leading rites in his diocese. He didn't do that.

"I definitely broke canon laws. I freely admit that," said Allison. "Right now, I think it would be a badge of honor to be censured by the House of Bishops. Of course, if they put me on trial they will give me a platform to discuss the key issue - which is what I believe and what they no longer believe."

The Brockton case is important for several other reasons. First, clashes over the rights of existing parishes, and independent missions, are increasing -- in the Carolinas, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Washington, Georgia and Texas, as well as other cases in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, emerging American networks - such as the Association of Anglican Congregations on Mission - are seeking new spiritual and even legal ties with Third World conservatives who won major doctrinal battles with First World progressives at last summer's Lambeth Conference in Canterbury.

And finally, said Allison, similar tensions over the ties that bind exist in other folds, such as the United Methodists, old-line Presbyterians, the Disciples and many Lutherans. In most cases, these conflicts appear to be about marriage and sex, with fights over same-sex union rites and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals getting the ink. But these sexual issues are signs of deeper divisions.

It's tragic to have to talk about breaking communion, said Allison. But it's also impossible to ignore the doctrinal cracks in the foundations of so many churches.

"I know that we can't go around giving everybody orthodoxy tests all the time," he said. "But right now we can't agree about what the creeds mean, what the scriptures mean or even on the ultimate issue of who God is. At some point we will have to be honest and say that if we are not united in one faith, how can we be in communion with one another?"

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?"