Why churches are silent on sex

All David Morrison has to do to find out what gay activists and religious conservatives are saying about each other is open his own mail.

"I guess the only way to end up on all the mailing lists that I'm on is to have lived my life," said Morrison, a thirtysomething journalist in Washington, D.C.

In college, he was a homosexual activist who specialized in arguing with Christians. Then he graduated into volunteer work with AIDS networks. In 1992, he burned out and embraced a gay-friendly brand of liberal Christianity. Today, Morrison is devout Roman Catholic who affirms all of his church's teachings on sex and marriage, including its stance that homosexuality is an "objective disorder." He has written an unusually candid book called "Beyond Gay" that challenges many dogmas on the religious right as well as on the lifestyle left.

As he reads his mail, Morrison said he is struck by a sad and ironic fact: He doesn't recognize the people that these culture warriors keep writing about.

"When you read the stuff on the gay mailing lists, conservative Christians are 10 feet tall and all-powerful and on a crusade to crush their enemies and destroy the freedoms that all Americans hold dear," he said. "But if you read what the conservative Christians are writing, it's the gays who are 10 feet tall and all-powerful and ruthless and they're taking over America. ... I always wonder: Who are these all-powerful people?"

Obviously, homosexuality remains a hot-button issue in most religious groups, from the Southern Baptist Convention to Reform Judaism and all points in between. There's no sign this will change anytime soon. But Morrison said he senses a radically different reality at the local level. In pulpits and pews, there is silence.

Why is this? Morrison has some theories of his own.

* Congregations rarely welcome realistic discussions about sex, whether from the pulpit or in religious education classes. Talking about heterosexual sex is bad enough. If they were honest, said Morrison, most conservatives would have to admit that they want gays and lesbians to simply go away, not to share their tough questions and painful life stories. This code of silence also applies to the parents of homosexuals, especially workaholic fathers, with their feelings of guilt and dread.

* As a rule, religious groups have trouble addressing feelings and issues faced by single adults -- period. "Few people," he said, "ever stop and ask: What does God want single people to do with their lives? What is their unique, God-given role in the body of Christ?"

* Militants on both sides hate to admit it, but many questions about the roots of sexual orientation remain unanswered. In his book, Morrison admits that some homosexuals, through prayer and therapy, are able to take significant changes toward heterosexual orientation. But this doesn't seem to be true for all -- including himself. The reality is that many people struggle to define themselves, as they experience both heterosexual and homosexual feelings.

"I think this is liberating, in a way," he said. "It means that everybody faces temptations. It means that feelings of confusion about sex are more common than some people want to admit. But this also means that more people find the subject threatening."

* Many clergy are afraid to admit that some married people wrestle with homosexuality, a fact that Morrison regularly encounters in Internet correspondence linked to a chastity-based Catholic support group called Courage. Of course, some pastors also fear confronting the reality of heterosexual sin in their flocks.

* Finally, many conservatives -- in their hearts -- believe that same-sex sins are truly more sinful than heterosexual sins, or non-sexual sins, for that matter. They believe that God considers gay sex more sinful than adultery or pre-marital sex. But they don't want to confess that this is what they believe.

So they remain silent.

"Let's face it," said Morrison. "It's always harder to confront the sins that are in our own lives or in the lives of people in our own families. That's just they way we are. That is what makes sin, sin, and so very personal."

Jerusalem, the in-between city

JERUSALEM -- Hidden in the maze of passageways and shrines that is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the Chapel of St. Nicodemus.

In this lesser-known sanctuary there is an electric light.

The intricate details of life in Jerusalem's holiest Christian site are governed by a Turkish "Status Quo" declaration from 1852, which tells the Roman Catholics, Greeks, Armenians, Copts, Syrians, Jacobites and Ethiopians what they can and can't do in their corners of the church. But tensions remain, along with scores of unanswered questions.

So Daniel Rossing knew he was in trouble when his telephone rang at Israel's Ministry for Religious Affairs and a caller said that the light in St. Nicodemus chapel had burned out. He quickly confirmed that both the Syrians and Armenians were claiming the right to do this simple maintenance task. Leaders on both sides warned him: We will fix the light in the morning.

"I had to do something -- fast," the veteran diplomat told a pack of journalists, during a recent walking tour of the Old City.

A reporter called out: "So, how many patriarchs does it take to change a light bulb?"

"No, no, that's not the point," said Rossing. "Let me finish."

Before dawn, Rossing slipped into the church and, when no one was watching, did what he had to do. Then he called the Syrian Orthodox bishop and, raising his voice in mock anger, told him that he had dragged himself out of bed to inspect the Chapel of St. Nicodemus only to find that the light was working just fine. Then he called the office of the Armenian patriarch and yelled exactly the same message.

Did Rossing change the bulb? In Jerusalem, it's best not to answer this kind of question.

"Yes, it was a game," said Rossing, who now serves as director of the Jerusalem Foundation's Christian Communities desk. "But there are a lot of dangerous conflicts and divisions in this city. ... In the end, I will always advocate that people learn how to play games, if they possible can."

Jerusalem is an ancient city with modern problems and a modern city with ancient problems. It is a Jewish city, a Christian city and a Muslim city. Everyone is part of a majority group, when viewed from one perspective, and a minority group, when viewed from another perspective. Police regularly encounter people claiming to be Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Mohammed or all of the above. The experts call this "Jerusalem syndrome."

The bottom line, said Rossing, is that Jerusalem is stuck at "a point of confusion somewhere between heaven and earth."

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is a perfect example. Many pilgrims are disappointed when they enter and discover that, instead of one unified sanctuary, the church is like a liturgical chess board, on which players representing many church traditions move in intricate patterns that symbolize ancient divisions as well as common roots. Visitors expect to find perfection. Instead, they find the human as well as the holy.

"Holy Sepulcher isn't perfect. But it's real," said Rossing. "The same thing is true of Jerusalem. Many of this city's problems have no solution. ... We have to live in the in-between-ness of this city. Jerusalem is a laboratory of the in-between."

Rossing told a dozen true-life parables that made the same point. For example, an Eastern Orthodox church once received a donation to add two ornate domes, topped with Byzantine crosses. The problem was that this sanctuary was across the street from an enclave of ultra-Orthodox Jews. When the Jews looked up, to pray toward the Temple Mount, they could not avoid seeing these crosses. This was awkward, to say the least.

Israeli officials knew they could not require the Christians to remove the crosses. So Rossing asked them to turn the crosses -- a one-quarter turn. For the Jews across the street, the crossbeams vanished. All they saw were poles pointing up.

"Jerusalem is not a city that needs, and I know I am using loaded, provocative language, final solutions to these kinds of problems," said Rossing. "We have to take little steps. We have to learn to turn the crosses 90 degrees."

The pope, the rabbi and a story from the past

JERUSALEM -- In Pope John Paul II's first Christmas sermon, he shared his dream of making a pilgrimage to Israel, Jordan and the painful patchwork of land in between.

Any papal trip is a big news story. But the best way to grasp the historic nature of this pope's journey into the spiritual minefield called the Holy Land is to see it as a global story built on generations of personal stories -- some beautiful, some horrific. It's like an ancient mosaic that includes many shattered pieces, but the image is still there for all to see.

Here is one of those stories. It's a story that even brought tears to the eyes of some journalists, when told by the chief rabbi of Israel.

"The pope and I, we have some memories that we share ... about the time of Holocaust in the city of Krakow," said Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, who was an 8-year-old orphan when liberated from the Buchenwald death camp. "The pope even knew my grandfather. ... He told me he remembers seeing him walking to the synagogue on Shabbat, surrounded by children."

It was these roots that reminded the chief rabbi of a story, one documented in historian Martin Gilbert's classic volume "Holocaust Journey."

In the winter of 1942, Jewish parents were forced to make agonizing choices as the Nazis swept through the ghettos of Poland. Moses and Helen Hiller rushed in secret -- carrying 2-year-old Shachne -- to the home of some family friends, a childless Catholic couple named Jachowicz. The mother begged them to take the boy and gave them the address of family members in Washington, D.C.

The Hillers were taken to a camp that was only 40 minutes away -- Auschwitz.

"Three years passed," said Rabbi Lau. "World War II ended and they did not come back. The boy was a very Catholic boy and, by the age of four, he knew by heart all of the prayers of the church on Sunday. He understood that he was a Catholic boy, the child of the Jachowiczes. Nobody knew any different."

Finally, they decided to have Shachne baptized. They went to the nearest church in the village of Wadowice, where a young priest was completing his training. But before the rite was performed, Mrs. Jachowicz confessed the details of the boy's past. They loved the child, she said. They wanted him to stay in their home and in their church.

Father Karol Wojtyla listened and then asked one question: What do you think the boy's parents would want you do?

This devout Catholic woman was honest, said Rabbi Lau. She said, "I don't have to imagine. I know. I will never forget. My friend, Helen Hiller, my neighbor, stood at the door, giving the last look on her baby, which was in my arms, and she said to me ... 'In case, God forbid, that we will not come back, please, do all the efforts to give Shachne back into Jewish arms.' "

The priest was gentle, but firm. He would not baptize the child. Father Wojtyla, of course, became a bishop, then an archbishop, a cardinal and, in 1978, Pope John Paul II.

During an historic meeting at the pope's mountain retreat, Castel Gandolfo, the chief rabbi said he had a chance to ask John Paul -- almost 50 years later -- if the story was true. Yes, this was one of several such cases, said the pope. Also, the pontiff knew that the boy made it to America, where he had, in fact, become an observant Jew.

A story of this kind does not answer all of the questions that loom over dialogues between Catholics and Jews, or erase centuries of misunderstandings and betrayals, said Rabbi Lau. But what it does is suggest why this pope has made so many efforts to reach out to Jews, which John Paul calls the "senior brothers" of a monotheistic family.

"What I believe is this," said the chief rabbi. "John Paul knows, in his very heart, through his own experiences, our sufferings in the darkest time of history. I understand that he understands us."

The gospel according to Grisham

Something mysterious happened in the wilds of Brazil when the morally bankrupt lawyer Nate O'Reilly finally found missionary Rachel Lane, the illegitimate heir of a one of America's richest men.

She didn't want $11 billion. Instead, she wanted him to repent, be healed of his alcoholism and claim an outrageous gift -- new life. The lawyer confessed his sins and then prayed his way through a case of jungle fever. But weeks later, he sat shaking in a pew, wracked by doubt. He wept and listed his many sins, one more time.

The story continues: "Nate closed his eyes ... and called God's name. God was waiting. ... In one glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God. He held nothing back. He unloaded enough baggage to crush any three men. ... 'I'm sorry,' he whispered to God. 'Please help me.' As quickly as the fever had left his body, he felt the baggage leave his soul. With one gentle brush of the hand, his slate had been wiped clean."

For decades, Christian writers have called this kind of plot twist the "Billy Graham scene," referring to the moments in Graham's old movies where the music swells and the protagonist gets born again. One reason "Christian" fiction is supposed to be so bad -- and noncommercial -- is that the genre's unwritten rules require zap-the-sinners conversion scenes.

These folks need a new excuse. The scene described above is from "The Testament," the 10th bestseller by John Grisham, that Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher with all the super-sized sales statistics. His new legal thriller, "The Brethren," can be found anywhere on the planet -- except in "Christian bookstores."

So far, three of his 11 novels include conversions of this sort, said Grisham, during a recent "Art & Soul" conference at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. The novelist rarely speaks publicly -- his family lives quietly on farms near Charlottesville, Va., and Oxford, Miss. -- and he knew his appearance in such a high-profile Southern Baptist venue would take him into the tense turf between the Bible and the New York Times bestseller list.

"I am a Christian who writes novels. I'm not a Christian writer," he explained. "I'm not writing Christian literature. When I was a lawyer, I was a Christian who was a lawyer and tried to live my faith -- not just in my profession, but in every thing that I would do. I think God is involved in (my writing), as with all the other aspects of my life."

When asked the source of his writing skills, Grisham noted that he studied accounting in college -- drawing a roar of laughter. In law school, he emphasized tax law. He has never taken a creative writing course. But it was crucial, he said, that his mother "didn't believe in television." Instead, their family faithfully took three steps after each move -- joining a Southern Baptist church, getting new library cards and finding a little league baseball diamond. The books soaked in and so did the sermons.

Later, Grisham's courtroom experience inspired his first novel, "A Time To Kill," especially the soul-searing testimony of a young rape victim. Church mission trips to Brazil inspired "The Testament." Another church project led to "The Street Lawyer," which was written in a 51-day frenzy after a freezing night in a homeless shelter.

The key, said Grisham, is that people who want to write suspense novels have to master that craft, with all of its ironic details and elaborate plot devices. Writers either learn how to do that, or they don't. Once someone has mastered the craft, then he can try to weave in a deeper message. It rarely works the other way around.

"Sometimes when I finish a book, I know I've done the best I can do. I know the story works," he said. "I know that the people are real and their problems are real. When I finished 'The Testament,' I was very proud. I'll do more books like 'The Testament.' I go back to those themes. I can see a few coming down the road.

"But I can't do it every time out. I have to watch it, because I'm writing popular fiction and you can't preach too much."

Bauer's sojourn in e-mail hell

The walls and shelves in Gary Bauer's new office are bare, since he only left the presidential campaign trail a few primaries ago.

But his e-mailbox is bursting and his fax machine is still humming, after his endorsement of Sen. John McCain's long-shot insurrection.

Bauer has been hearing from Christians "in Timbuktoo" who hope he spends eternity in a sizzling location -- ASAP. But he has been just as stunned by the reaction of Beltway insiders, folks he has known since his Reagan White House days. They accuse him of being a schismatic heretic. Apparently, many GOP strategists believe the so-called Religious Right is exactly what journalists and Democrats say it is -- a voting bloc that obeys a few all-powerful masters.

Read Bauer's lips: There is no monolith.

"I can't tell you how many times Republican leaders have said, 'GARY, where are these people going to GO? Wait a minute, you don't think they'll go vote for AL GORE?'," he said, mimicking a dismissive tone of voice.

"I say, 'Yes, some of them will.' There's this idea that evangelicals are conservative across the board, when, in fact, many are working class and lower middle-class people who ... would be liberal on some economic issues," added Bauer, who grew up in blue-collar Newport, Ken. "If they go to the polls thinking about abortion and gay rights, they'll vote Republican. But if they go to the polls wondering who's going to preserve their social security and who wants to make sure they have legal redress if their HMO mistreats them, then they may vote Democratic."

Politicos can't jam millions of white Protestants into a box plastered with a "Religious Right" label, said Bauer. Meanwhile, morally and culturally conservative voters also can be found among traditional Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Hispanics (Catholic and Protestant), black evangelicals, Jewish conservatives and in other pews.

It's also crucial to remember that the media hellfire that followed Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina win didn't take place in a vacuum. It followed two remarkable years of bitter debate about the role that Christian leaders, especially clergy, should play in politics.

Focus on the Family patriarch James Dobson kicked things off in 1998 by accusing the GOP establishment of betraying Christian voters and said it might be time to abandon the party, even if that meant handing Democrats the White House and Congress. Dobson noted that he could not bring himself to vote for Sen. Bob Dole.

A year later, Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation wrote a much-quoted epistle arguing that while religious activists have won a few political victories, they have done little to cleanse the "ever-wider sewer" of American culture. His bottom line: It's sinful to put too much faith in politicians, including Republicans.

Then two former Moral Majority leaders wrote a controversial book in which they said ministers and the ministries that they lead should flee partisan politics and focus on the spiritual needs of their flocks and of nonbelievers. Journalist Cal Thomas and the Rev. Ed Dobson of Grand Rapids, Mich., stressed that they believe many Christians must be active in the political arena -- but not clergy.

Now, Bauer's open rejection of Bush -- the establishment candidate -- has provoked a fiery rebuke from James Dobson, including digs about McCain's personal life. Clearly, Dobson and his former Family Research Council colleague are not on the same map.

The ground is moving. But while Bauer stressed that is in full-time politics to stay, he isn't ready to say that the church and other religious institutions should be silent when America's hottest political debates veer into religious territory.

"All of the issues that really matter -- whether its racial reconciliation, rebuilding the family, how we treat the poor, setting a place at the table for all of our children -- center on profoundly moral questions," he said. "If they're going to be dealt with without having American citizens who come from a faith perspective leading the charge, then we're unlikely to come up with the right answers."

However, he said he has seen more evidence lately of "politics transforming Christians, than of Christians transforming politics."

Just another Sunday at Saddleback

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- The Saddleback Community Church bleachers were still filling up when the jazzy Latino pre-service music faded and, with a "One, two, three!" countdown, the 13-piece band rocked into their opening hymn.

"I wanna be like You. Live everyday, the way that You want me to," sang the throng, watching the JumbroTrons. "It's getting better. I read Your letter. These are the words you said to me. Love the Lord with all your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself. These are the things that you must do, and my grace will see you through. ... It's all about love. Hey!"

Saddleback looks like a textbook megachurch, the kind that keeps inspiring sociologists to rush to their computers. The Rev. Rick Warren and friends mailed 15,000 invitations to their first service in 1980 and the church had 10,000 members before it built a sanctuary. Today, 15,000 or more attend five "seeker friendly" weekend services. The sunny baptismal pool welcomes a river of newcomers, with 1,638 baptized in 1999.

Outside the 3,000-seat worship center, booths offered programs for families, blended families, single parents, separated men, separated women and people struggling with almost every difficulty life can offer. Inside, the choir bounced through a reggae chorus, an oldie from 1979 and a gospel-rock anthem. Then Warren took center stage, dressed down in khakis and a black knit shirt.

"We've been looking at thinking clearly about your problems, about your relationships, about change, about sex, about stress," he said, starting one of many strolls away from the traditional pulpit. "But there's one area where people are more confused than probably any other area. It causes more divorces than sex. And it is finances, it's 'Til debt do us part.' "

The crowd laughed, because Warren is a witty storyteller and commentator on Orange County life. On this day, he told many in his flock: "You're spending money you don't have on things that you don't need to impress people you don't even like." This creates Saddleback Valley syndrome, with dreams and debts creating workaholism, then exhaustion, then depression, then shopping sprees, then more debt.

But this wasn't a megachurch sermonette for folks used to clutching a TV remote. Warren regularly preaches between 50 minutes and an hour, working his way through a dozen scripture passages and waves of illustrations from the news and daily life. Seeker-friendly sermons do not have to be short and shallow, he said.

"The idea that postmodern people will not listen to a 'talking head' for 45 minutes is pure myth," he said. "Of course, most people, including many preachers, couldn't hold an audience for 10 minutes. But that's due to their communication style, not the supposed short attention span of unbelievers. Any communicator who is personal, passionate, authentic and applies the scriptures to real life will have no trouble holding the attention of our generation."

Critics may scoff, but this Southern Baptist congregation is committed to developing techniques to help churches with 150 members, as well as 15,000. Saddleback services rarely include comedy and drama, because small churches struggle to find talented writers and actors. Saddleback rarely uses high-tech media in its services, because small churches don't have the resources to do so.

That's OK. Warren said that "if all seekers were looking for was a quality production, they'd stay home and watch TV, where millions are spent to produce half-hour programs."

But most of Warren's sermons do include breaks in which church members offer testimonies -- sometimes chatty, sometimes wrenching -- about how their lives have been changed by prayer, Bible study, giving and service. Why do this? Because all churches can ask members to offer testimonies.

Churches don't have to be shallow to appeal to the heads and hearts of unbelievers, stressed Warren. In fact, just the opposite is true.

"Unbelievers wrestle with the same deep questions believers have," he said. "Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Does life make sense? Why is there suffering and evil in the world? What is my purpose in life? How can I learn to get along with people? These are certainly not shallow issues."

White House religion -- words and deeds

The more Richard Nixon talked about his faith the more his enemies complained about it.

Critics of the troubled president accused him of hiding behind a smokescreen of "White House religion," which an Associate Press report described as "personalized piety detached from its social demands." Liberal church leaders said Nixon was using Christianity as a shield. Critics said he needed to get some new religious advisers, instead of surrounding himself with clergy who would only tell him what he wanted to hear.

Sound familiar? A quarter of a century later, it was the Religious Right's turn to complain while a president kept talking and talking and talking about forgiveness, sin and grace, rather than facing tough issues of repentance, justice and integrity.

That's the problem with White House religion. What you see is rarely what you get.

It's so much easier to offer positive talk about personal feelings and faith, rather than to answer divisive religious questions about the public square. That was true in Watergate, Fornigate and, now, the Y2K White House race.

"It's all very ironic," said Gabriel Fackre, a theologian in the highly progressive United Church of Christ. "One of the lessons we were supposed to have learned from the Clinton crisis was that a leader's private affairs are not supposed to be very relevant, when it comes to judging him as a public leader. We were not supposed to confuse the personal and the public."

But there's a problem and it's one that haunts Republicans and Democrats. In reality, it's impossible to separate these two spheres of life. "They are distinguishable, but inseparable," said Fackre, a Democrat who edited a controversial volume about the Clinton scandals entitled "Judgment Day at the White House" and recently wrote a sequel called "The Day After."

The "character issue" looms over America's political landscape, even if the candidates are afraid to discuss it with any degree of candor. Instead, the major players are offering variations on the classic "White House religion" formula -- talking warmly about their private faith, while batting away pesky questions about religious issues in public life.

Thus, Gov. George W. Bush keeps giving his testimony, but seems gun-shy when asked to describe how his personal faith is linked to his public convictions. Sen. John McCain preaches about character and the faith of his fathers, but won't discuss his moral and cultural views. Vice President Al Gore keeps showing up in pulpits, talking about his lively faith, but loathes questions about his days as a Southern Baptist-friendly Tennessee politician. Former Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader Bill Bradley insists that his faith is strong, yet totally private.

Everyone would rather discuss or how they were born again, rather than discuss the details of partial-birth abortion. It's safer to talk about spirituality and renewal than to make a case for or against private-school vouchers in the tense age after Columbine High School.

Right now, American politicians keep saying that faith is good, but it's clear that talking about the details is deadly. The subject is just too hot. So candidates keep shouting their testimonies, rather than answering detailed questions about policies.

What goes around, comes around. Back in the 1970s, noted Fackre, progressives used to attack conservatives whenever they failed to link their evangelistic words with efforts to change society. Thus, they said conservatives like Nixon were guilty of separating "their words and their deeds." Then, during the Clinton crisis, the political and theological left turned around and chanted: "Why don't you take him at his word? He said he's sorry. What more do you want?"

At the moment, everyone seems to have a plan for talking about their religious convictions, but no one wants to discuss how their faith will affect their actions, said Fackre.

"The common theme in all of this is the need to link word and deed," he said. "It matters what our leaders say they believe. But it's even more important to see who will answer questions about what they want to do, as president. We have to be able to make a decision about whether they will walk the walk, not just talk the talk."

He was God's man, not God's coach

On Friday afternoons, Tom Landry and his secretary used to work their way through hundreds of letters from Dallas Cowboy fans around the world, answering every one of them.

A few years before owner Jerry Jones shoved him out the door, Landry received a letter that left him shaken and speechless. A mother was worried because her 10-year-old son was still depressed, even though it had been weeks since the Cowboys failed to make the playoffs. Could the coach help?

"I really didn't know what to say," Landry told me, back in 1987. "That breaks your heart. ... Sometimes, things can just get out of hand."

Nevertheless, the coach also knew there had been times when his relentless, methodical approach to his work crossed the same line. The public saw the stoic general pacing the sideline, nattily dressed in office clothes and his trademark fedora. But sometimes, he admitted, his composure cracked after bitter losses and he wrestled with anger and depression. Landry learned to call this problem by its proper name.

"I know that's a sin," he said. "I learned that I could go home, get down on my knees and confess that to God. I mean, what is football next to God?"

Last week, the Hall-of-Fame coach lost a one-year battle with acute myelogenous leukemia. He was 75. Landry was the Cowboy's first coach and, in nearly three decades, turned his tacky expansion team into "America's team," winning two Super Bowls, five NFC crowns, 13 divisional titles and 270 games.

Along the way, the Texas native also became a legend in a state in which it is an understatement to say that football is often confused with religion.

Anyone who grew up in Texas in the 1970s knows why the Cowboys' stadium was built with that big hole in the roof.

Why's that, you ask? So that God would have an unobstructed view of his team.

Some fans called Landry "God's coach." Landry didn't like that. It's true that he was a leader in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. But he was not the kind of gridiron evangelist who claimed that God gave him the power, when he was an all-pro defensive back, to make game-saving plays. As a coach, he never hinted that God whispered game-winning plays in his ear.

There have always been players who, when facing reporters after the big game, stick in a plug for Jesus as the ultimate coach and teammate.

That was not Landry's style. While he never publicly criticized this brand of muscular Christianity, he went out of his way to promote another approach. Landry was, after all, a mainline Methodist and not given to emotional displays. The athlete with whom he was most closely identified was quarterback Roger Staubach -- a devout Roman Catholic.

Landry delivered a more sobering message.

Truth is, the bottom line for most people is the bottom line, said Landry, speaking in a Leighton Ford crusade in Charlotte in the early 1980s. Many people think that they worship God, but they really bow down to money, success and ego. This is true for all kinds of highly driven professionals -- not just athletes.

"We have to learn to look for higher things in life," he said. "Now, God does want us to use all our talents to the best of our abilities and, if you're a football player or a coach, that means you're supposed to do your best to win. I want to be a winner and I want to seek excellence. ... But I have had to learn to keep my priorities straight."

It was about the time that he took the Dallas job, said Landry, that he realized "football had been my religion." His faith and his family were getting the short end of the stick. After that, he prayed for God to deliver him from his obsession with football, not to deliver him victories on the field.

"It probably doesn't hurt for people to pray for their team to win, but that doesn't mean they'll win," said the coach, laughing. "Besides, there are much better things to pray about."

Because Ideas Have Consequences

The powers that be at Hillsdale College applauded when Chuck Colson delivered his lecture that was, with a nod to Fyodor Dostoevsky, entitled "Can man be good without God?"

But there was one problem. When the Christian apologist reviewed a version of his text prepared for Hillsdale's "Imprimis" newsletter, he saw that all of his references to Jesus were missing. When Colson protested to Lissa Roche, the college president's daughter-in-law and strong right hand, she said it was campus policy not to "use the Lord's name in any of their publications." President George Roche III finally allowed two references to Jesus.

In hindsight, it was a highly symbolic dispute.

This was long before Lissa Roche shot herself in the head and before George Roche IV said his wife had confessed to a 19-year affair with his father. Then President Roche resigned. Then officials on the Michigan campus began hinting that Lissa Roche had been unstable and delusional. Then, as the media storm raged, insiders began trying to draw a line between "Christian education" and merely "conservative education."

"What Roche was trying to do at Hillsdale ... was to create a strong pro-family, pro-traditional values institution -- but keep it secular," said Colson, in a radio commentary. "Many politicians try to do the same thing, giving us the impression that we can create a good and just society on our own, without reference to a transcendent moral authority. ... It just doesn't work."

The map of American academia is dotted with "Christian colleges" that have evolved into liberal carbon copies of their secular counterparts. Hillsdale offers a rare academic cautionary tale about a secular brand of conservatism.

The key is that "Christian colleges" must not cut the ties that bind them to their churches, according to Father James Tunstead Burtchaell, former provost of the University of Notre Dame. In his book "The Dying of the Light," he shows how colleges keep following the same path on issues affecting finances, faculty, morality, doctrine and student recruiting.

In America, most religious schools began as tiny, struggling communities led by clergy and other church leaders who mixed ministry and academics. They had modest goals and emphasized teaching. While they stressed personal piety, they also -- because they needed tuition dollars -- tried not to be too exclusive. "Chapel services" were religious, but they were not true church services.

The schools that survived eventually attracted wealthy donors and broader community support. These schools could then afford better faculty, which, by definition, meant ranking prestigious degrees and scholarship above church ties and spiritual leadership, said Burtchaell, during a Washington, D.C., conference on trends in Catholic higher education.

Campus religious life would remain vital, for a few decades, but led by chaplains and campus ministers. Faculty members vanished during services. Later, this faculty indifference on religious issues would turn into cynical sniping and then open hostility.

This kind of college, said Burtchaell, has a head and a heart, but they are not connected. The bank accounts and secular accreditation reports are solid, but the spirit is weak.

As Christian colleges gained "sophistication and financial stability, they naturally suffered church fools less gladly," he said. Besides, defending divisive doctrines was bad for fundraising. Eventually, "worship and moral behavior were easily set aside because no one could imagine they had anything to do with learning," he said.

"You know the battle is lost," said Burtchaell, "when a school has no meaningful ties to a church, no real sense of accountability or communion, yet its leaders keep talking about its religious heritage or some vague sense of cultural values. ... That cannot last. The church is the ground of the faith, not the college."

Meanwhile, Hillsdale has reassured supporters that its work will go on, unchanged.

The first post-scandal issue of "Imprimis" -- with its motto, "Because Ideas Have Consequences" -- ended by saying: "Hillsdale is not a church-affiliated college. We do not represent any denomination, but we are an institution that has never forgotten its Judeo-Christian roots. ... We at Hillsdale College consider the sons and daughters who have been entrusted to us for a short while as most worthy of the highest things."