Learning to preach in fog

The question was so simple that Haddon Robinson wasn't sure he had heard it correctly.

"What is Christmas?", asked the man in the next airplane seat, once he learned that he was chatting with a seminary professor. The businessman thought he knew, since he was an ordinary American who had grown up surrounded by old movies and television specials. Then he asked, "What is Easter?" That led to, "What do you mean by 'resurrection?' " Robinson described the biblical accounts of God raising Jesus from the dead.

"This man said to me, 'Do all Christians believe that?' I said, 'All Christians should believe that,' " said Robinson. "Then he said, 'That's interesting. I think I knew about Christmas. But I didn't really know about Easter.' "

This puzzled Robinson, but later something clicked. Some Christmas hymns have made it into popular culture and almost everyone hears snippets of the story year after year. But where -- via mall, multiplex and mini-satellite dish -- would anyone soak up Easter images? For millions of viewers the resurrection is what happens at the end of "The Matrix."

If missionaries came to America, they would immediately spot the dominant role played by mass media and, especially, visual entertainment media. They would study the moral and religious messages in mass media, seeking insights into the lives of potential converts. This is how missionaries think. But this is not how religious educators think and, thus, few clergy are taught to think like missionaries.

Robinson has been studying these issues since the mid-1950s, during his doctoral work in communications at the University of Illinois. Today, he is a distinguished professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological outside Boston and, in 1996, received national media attention when Baylor University named him one of the top 12 preachers in the English-speaking world.

Effective speakers study the forces that shape the people to whom they speak, said Robinson. Today, that means taking visual media seriously.

"Television is omnipresent," he said, in a sermon that swept from oral traditions and clay-tablet libraries to satellites and computer networks. "The way in which people get ideas, the way in which they shape their ideals, comes not because they read books, but because they see it, they visualize it. It's on television. ...

"That has shaped the way we think. ... It affects the way that we preach. It affects the heart and core of communication."

Robinson preached that sermon exactly 10 years ago, while serving as president of Denver Seminary. Little has changed. Robinson said that he knows of no seminary that requires future ministers to take a single course on how mass media affect American life.

If anything, the situation has gotten worse, he said. While the ecclesiastical elites ignore the subject, megachurches often uncritically embrace virtually every new technology. Many churches are adding expensive digital equipment in their sanctuaries and leaping into multimedia music, drama, humor and sermons illustrated with movie and TV clips. Clergy quickly discover that they're expected to use this gear in every service. The audience demands it.

"The pastor is thinking, 'Now that I have all of this stuff, where can I throw it in?'," said Robinson. "All of a sudden, rather than thinking of the most effective way to communicate a message, you're thinking about all that money you've spent. ...You're thinking about media, where before you were thinking about your message."

Robinson's advice to preachers, young and old, is that they worry less about using mass media and more about learning what is shaping the souls of their listeners. Today, every flock includes many listeners who understand little or nothing about the Bible or basic doctrines. In fact, he said, their heads and hearts are full of conflicting images and values, the result of years of spiritual channel surfing.

This was already true a decade ago. Robinson said that preachers must realize that they work in a hostile technological environment, one that "communicates with images. It doesn't come out and argue. It just simply shows you pictures, day after day after day after day. Before you realize it, in the basement of your mind, you discover that you have shifted your values and many times you've lost your faith."

The offering-plate rules

The pastor preferred to spend the moments just before the main Sunday service in prayer.

But the two men who knocked on his door were leaders in his conservative church, and they insisted that their mission was urgent. What they said ended up in one of the stacks of congregational case studies that put flesh on the sobering statistics inside John and Sylvia Ronsvalle's "Behind the Stained Glass Windows: Money Dynamics in the Church."

"We want you to stop talking about inviting other people into this church," said one of the men. "There are too many new people now. We don't know half the people who come here and there are new people in leadership positions." If the pastor kept preaching evangelistic sermons, then they vowed to leave -- creating a financial crisis that would threaten the church mortgage.

They wanted their church to stay the same. That's what they were paying for.

"It's hard to understand, but we know that some people don't want their churches to grow," said Sylvia Ronsvalle, who, with her husband John, leads empty tomb, inc., in Champaign, Ill. For two decades they have worked in hands-on ministry to the poor, while also operating a small think-tank (www.emptytomb.org) that analyzes 30-plus years worth of data on giving in religious institutions, both liberal and conservative.

"Some people may not even want other members of their church to give more money and support new ministries," she added. "It's sad, but it's true. There are lots of people out there who can't see past the doors of their own church."

Right now, church workers all across America are mailing annual statements covering donations. Here is one of the unwritten laws: 20 percent of the members give up to 80 percent of the annual budget. In most cases, 50 percent or more give little or nothing. Studying these rather utilitarian issues, said the Ronsvalles, quickly leads to other questions. Why are so many content to see their congregations limp along when it comes to evangelism, missions and benevolence work? Why do people give what they give?

The answers are rarely comforting.

* Some people make major donations in order to control the institution that frames life's major transitions. As the old saying goes, people want a church when it comes time to "hatch, match and dispatch" family members. Some act as if they are purchasing shares in a beautiful building for these events and, as every clergy person knows, they care deeply about what that building looks like.

* Many people view their offerings as payment for services rendered by the staff and clergy. Perhaps they want witty and practical sermons that please their intellects or emotions. They expect clergy to visit them in the hospital and offer pastoral counseling -- for free -- in times of crisis. Youth pastors must heal and entertain their sons and daughters, answering awkward questions feared by parents.

* Others are buying a culture. For some members, this may be classical-quality, or even cable-television quality, music or drama. Some use the church as a social club, or the focus of ethnic identity. The church and its clergy may even be expected to carry water for a powerful family's favorite social causes, either liberal or conservative.

* Finally, the Ronsvalles' research shows that many church members sincerely see giving as a matter of faith, the natural result of gratitude and a biblical vision. The question that haunts empty tomb, inc., is how to help clergy conquer their fears of challenging members to share with others, especially in an age of plenty. Right now, charitable giving in some denominations has fallen to levels lower than in the Great Depression.

"There are people out there who are sinners and they aren't going to obey God and his Word. They're just not going to give the way they should, even though they sit in church week after week," said John Ronsvalle. "They may think the church doesn't need them to give or maybe they just don't see the need to, quote, spend their money on what the church has to offer, unquote. ...

"The question is whether they want to love other people, in the name of Jesus. In the end, that is what they have to want to invest in -- the hearts and lives of others."

Boil Ashcroft in holy oil

Hours before taking his U.S. Senate oath, John Ashcroft knelt before his elderly father.

The Rev. J. Robert Ashcroft sat on a deep couch, while others stood to lay hands on his son's head in an ancient dedication rite. The frail Pentecostal patriarch -- whose journey included studies at New York University and the presidency of a liberal arts college in the Ozarks -- began swinging his arms, trying to get up. Ashcroft later wrote that he urged his father to stay seated.

"John," he replied, "I'm not struggling to stand, I'm struggling to kneel."

Evoking another biblical symbol, the father anointed his son's forehead with oil. In place of the traditional olive oil, someone provided vegetable oil.

The father gave his son a final blessing and then died the next day.

Media gossips offered a twisted take on this scene last week. Here's the Washington Post's spin on one of the holiest moments in the senator's life.

"Clinton White House wags have dubbed controversial attorney general nominee John Ashcroft 'The Crisco Kid'," said the "Reliable Sources" column. "We phoned the folks at Proctor & Gamble ... to ask their reaction to Ashcroft's unorthodox use of the product." A spokesperson said, "Crisco is a great moisturizer for dry skin, and people have used it as a lubricant. ... (We) prefer that people cook with it."

Cue the laugh track. Obviously, Ashcroft's supporters have not been amused as his faith has been dissected and ridiculed in the public square. But they should not have been surprised, said theologian Gabriel Fackre, of the liberal United Church of Christ.

Cruel things happen when the poetry of faith gets jammed into political headlines. Some of Ashcroft's enemies would rather talk about holy oil, speaking in tongues and Bob Jones than about his work in the U.S. Senate, the National Governors' Association, the National Association of Attorneys General or at Yale and the University of Chicago.

"Ashcroft's critics didn't like it when he told people at Bob Jones University that here in America we can say, 'We have no king but Jesus,' " said Fackre. "Of course, when he said that, he was echoing the words of the early Christians who declared that 'Jesus is Lord' and refused to say that 'Caesar is Lord.'

"So far, so good. But the problem is that when someone like John Ashcroft says that, he also feeds ammunition to all his critics who say that he wants to wed that Christian confession to his own political agenda."

Truth is, two different conversations need to take place about legal and religious issues in public life. The first is rooted in the public's right to expect officials to follow what Fackre called "universally discernible norms" of law and moral conduct. It's one thing to say the president is sinning. It's something else to say he is lying, stealing or cheating.

But Christians may "conduct a second conversation with a president who professes to be a believer," said Fackre, writing in Christianity Today. "This conversation draws upon biblical teachings to which both parties give allegiance, such as matters of repentance and forgiveness, the grace of God, Christian vocation and its responsibilities, the temptations that come with power, and the like."

Americans may be confused about all this, since these "two conversations" overlapped so often during the Clinton era that they created a bitter cacophony.

Some conservatives unintentionally aided Clinton by acting as if he could be impeached for bad theology. Clinton's team then accused his critics of neopuritanism, noted Fackre, even if their calls for his resignation were clearly part of a doctrinal debate between an evangelical president and other born-again believers. And through it all, Clinton used emotional religious language to respond to waves of legal accusations, skillfully suggesting that repentance and pastoral counseling equaled public accountability and justice.

It was a mess. Now, the war of words over Ashcroft is blurring these lines again.

"I do not know his soul," said Fackre. "But John Ashcroft must realize that the religious words he speaks to other Christians will sound totally different when his critics turn around and use them against him. This may not be fair, but that's the reality of it."

Bobos 'r US

Every Saturday, journalist David Brooks and his family can choose between three services at their synagogue in Washington, D.C.

Rabbis lead a mainstream, almost Protestant, rite in the sanctuary. Then there is an informal "Havurah (fellowship)" service led by lay people, including a 45-minute talk-back session. The erudite leaders often pause to explain why the Torah's more judgmental and dogmatic passages don't mean what they seem to mean.

Finally, throngs of young adults pack the wonderfully named "Traditional Egalitarian" service, which features longer Torah readings, a rigorous approach to liturgy and what Brooks called a "somewhat therapeutic" seminar blending spirituality and daily life.

"It can get pretty New Age-y," said Brooks, at his Weekly Standard office. "It's as if you're in an Orthodox shul and then Oprah Winfrey comes on."

It was a rabbi in Montana who gave Brooks the perfect word -- "Flexidoxy" -- to describe this faith. This is what happens when Americans try to baptize their souls in freedom and tradition, radical individualism and orthodoxy, all at the same time. One scholar found a Methodist pastor's daughter who calls herself a "Methodist Taoist Native American Quaker Russian Orthodox Buddhist Jew."

It doesn't make any sense, but it looks good and feels right. And that's the key to the hearts of the intellectuals, artists, politicians and entrepreneurs who came to power after the 1960s. When it comes to the culture wars, they are lovers, not fighters.

Brooks calls them "Bobos," which is shorthand for "bourgeois bohemians." Their yin-yang worldview -- part '60s idealism, part '80s work ethic -- now dominates academia and politics, Hollywood and, recently, Wall Street. But the Bobos, said Brooks, struggle when they try to fly solo through life's major transition times, such as marriage, birth and death.

"Can you have freedom as well as roots? Can you still worship God even if you take it upon yourself to decide that many of the Bible's teachings are wrong?", he asks, in his rollicking book "Bobos in Paradise."

"Can you establish ritual and order in your life if you are driven by an inner imperative to experiment constantly with new things? ... The Bobos are trying to build a house of obligation on a foundation of choice."

The book's spirituality chapter ends with a glimpse of "Bobo Heaven," in which a sophisticated Angel of Death leaves a materialistic superwoman to spend eternity in her perfect Montana summer house, with National Public Radio on every channel. Is this heaven or hell?

Brooks stressed that millions of Americans are sincerely struggling to live better lives, while simultaneously refusing to accept traditional religious creeds and dogmas. They have been taught, after all, that they must call their own shots, write their own creeds. He quips: "You've got to think outside the box. ... You've got to be on the edge. You've got to be outside the box that's on the edge."

For Bobos and their followers, said Brooks, the idea of "one, universal truth is not even something that they have consciously rejected. This concept is not a part of their world. They have never even really considered the idea that one religion might be true and all the others false, or even that there is one true way to approach the moral universe, and all the others are false."

But Bobos do not consider themselves moral relativists. They do make judgments. They even have creeds, said Brooks, but they are built on concerns about aesthetics, health, safety, science, self-esteem and, especially, achievement. This approach to life may even include an appreciation for "spirituality" and religious rituals. Bobos are willing to buy and consume many high-quality religious products and services.

"They have very concrete ways of faking a morality, especially when it comes to the rules that go with achievement," said Brooks. "You do whatever is best for your career and your long-term interests. ... So when it comes to religion, they want to be very positive and upbeat. It's all about encouragement and grace. They avoid the bad parts, which means the judgmental parts."

The bottom line: Does your congregation have what it takes? Can it afford to be Bobo-friendly?

Sin, safety, candor and free speech

The landscape was buried in snow, but there wasn't a ski slope in sight.

The 19,000 students gathered on the University of Illinois campus last week were asking what to do with their lives, but they weren't networking with corporate recruiters. A multi-racial rock band was shaking the concrete clamshell called Assembly Hall, but the lyrics were not MTV-friendly.

"Oh God, break our hearts," sang the standing-room-only crowd at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's 19th Urbana Mission Convention. "For the sin in our lives ... for the sin in our land, break our hearts. We cry out. We need your help. Come back to our land."

This five-day conference drew college students from 100 lands and would have attracted CNN and USA Today if its emotional rallies and 1,200 hours of seminars had focused on sexuality, the environment or even world trade. But it isn't news when students spend Christmas break on a frozen prairie talking about world missions, racial reconciliation and poverty.

Then again, "sin" talk may soon be newsworthy. InterVarsity and other such groups are, in fact, becoming controversial. Missionaries are under attack around the world and, in America, even careful believers can get caught in crossfire from the culture wars.

Right-wing pro-lifers picketed many Urbana 2000 sessions, claiming that InterVarsity has softened its opposition to abortion. Meanwhile, InterVarsity leaders are ramping up to respond to attacks from the left by homosexual activists. These are tense times.

"We have had more challenges to our basic right to exist in campus settings during the past two years than in the previous 55 combined," said Steve Hayner, president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA. "It's not just us. ... This is hitting Catholics and Muslims and others. What we are seeing is a growing challenge to religious free speech -- period."

Last spring, a confidential debate inside one campus chapter lurched into the news when a lesbian student told the Tufts University student judiciary that she had, under a campus nondiscrimination policy, been unfairly denied an InterVarsity leadership role. The Tufts Christian Fellowship was first banished, then placed on probation and finally allowed to re-draft its charter to state that its leaders "must seek to adhere to biblical standards and belief in all areas of their lives."

InterVarsity created a "Religious Liberties Crisis Team" in response to this dispute and similar cases on five other campuses. Then attorney David French of Cornell Law School and Tufts InterVarsity staff member Curtis Chang produced a sobering handbook for others who will face similar conflicts.

French and Chang noted: "In a free country, individuals or groups are permitted to form schools that serve only Christians, or only Jews, or only Muslims, or only gays." For traditional Christians at private schools, the "sad reality is that there may come a time when you are no longer welcome... and there is nothing that any lawyer can do to change that decision."

After all, if Christian colleges can create lifestyle codes that support their beliefs and reject others, then secular private colleges are free to create codes that support their beliefs and reject other beliefs -- such as the doctrine that sex outside of marriage is sin.

Nevertheless, believers can insist that colleges play fair when enforcing written rules, noted French and Cheng. The Tufts handbook clearly said it was university policy not to "discriminate on the basis of religion." InterVarsity could quote this early and often.

Campus ministry leaders are learning that good intentions are not enough. They must be proactive and stop trying to gloss over conflicts about doctrine, said Gregory Fung, a Harvard University graduate who currently leads the Tufts fellowship. Truth is, there's no non-controversial way to discuss subjects such as sin and repentance. It's better to state a ministry's beliefs clearly, rather than trying to play it safe.

Safety is hard to find, these days.

"We did what they asked us to do. We went to their tolerance classes," said Fung. "You think the institutions that teach tolerance won't turn around and bite you. But they do. We thought the people who taught all those classes would be tolerant. ... No way. They were determined to cure us of our intolerance."

Red states, blue states, me states, you states

The Year of our Lord 2000 was the year of The Map.

You know the one: red states, blue states, false states, true states, me states, you states.

No, this isn't one of those fake Dr. Seuss poems that flooded the Internet during the White House war that threatened to steal Christmas. This column is about the annual Religion Newswriters Association poll to determine its top 10 news stories.

Religion specialists in the secular press said the top story was the selection of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, "an observant, yet modern, Orthodox Jew" as the first Jew nominated by a major U.S. party to serve as vice president. Both parties courted religious voters, this time around. I agreed, but added a sentence on my ballot noting that exit polls later showed that the greatest divisions in American life still center on clashing moral, cultural and religious beliefs.

Which brings us back to The Map, the amazing USA Today graphic that showed the 676 Al Gore counties in blue and the 2,436 George W. Bush counties in red. It was a refined version of the election-night television maps that started pundits chattering about big states vs. small states, big-city life vs. small-town values, East and West coasts vs. the Heartland.

"The divide went deeper than politics. It reached into the nation's psyche," said Washington Post sage David Broder, on Nov. 8. Gore won by 27 percent among voters who praised the economy. Bush won by 30 percent among those worried about spiritual decay. Broder concluded: "It was the moral dimension that kept Bush in the race."

The national psyche? This election cut America's soul. It pitted a resurgent Religious Left vs. a demure Religious Right, oldline churches vs. megachurches. It wasn't secularists vs. the religious, as the Democratic duo of a Southern Baptist and an Orthodox Jew made clear. But clearly there were religious overtones in the hot cultural issues.

This election was Hollywood vs. Nashville, "Sex in the City" vs. "Touched by an Angel," National Public Radio vs. talk radio, "Doonesbury" vs. "B.C.", "Hotel California" vs. "The Okie From Muskogee." It was The New York Times vs. National Review Online, Dan Rather vs. Rush Limbaugh, Rosie O'Donnell vs. Dr. Laura, Barbra Streisand vs. Dr. James Dobson, the Supreme Court vs., well, the Supreme Court.

It was hard to ignore exit-poll questions about "religious observance," noted conservative Kate O'Beirne. "About half of the Republicans attend church at least once a week; nearly half of the Democrats go to church seldom or never. ... Married folk in the countryside who attend church have more conservative views on abortion, gun ownership, gay rights and the role of government."

What happens next? Keep studying The Map.

The other top stories in the RNA 2000 poll were:

2. In a historic pilgrimage, Pope John Paul II prays at Jerusalem's Western Wall and, meeting with Holocaust survivors, expresses deep sadness at acts of hatred against Jews by Christians. He holds strategic meetings in Jordan and in Palestinian territories.

3. Hopes for an agreement between Jews and Palestinians dim after Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount spark waves of violence between Israel and Palestinians. Talks at Camp David break down over control of the Old City in Jerusalem.

4. Vermont approves same-sex unions despite protests by state's Catholic bishop and other clerics. The United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA) defeat proposals to bless gay unions. Episcopalians pledge "pastoral care" for those living in "life-long committed relationships" outside marriage.

5. The Southern Baptist Convention bans women from serving as church pastors and adds more conservative language to its Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement.

6. Vatican issues Dominus Iesus, restating Catholic doctrine that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, alone, and that the true church "subsists"' in its fullness only in the Catholic Church. Many criticize the document's tone as anti-ecumenical.

7. Former President Jimmy Carter exits the Southern Baptist Convention, citing its swing to the doctrinal right. Also, the Texas Baptist Convention votes to withhold more than $5 million from SBC seminaries and executive committees.

8. Pope John Paul II, in a solemn penitential rite, asks God's pardon for sins committed against other groups by members of the Catholic Church.

9. The Episcopal Church's General Convention approves pact with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, clearing the way for mutual recognition of clergy and hierarchies.

10. The Rev. Vashti McKenzie of Baltimore becomes the 2.3-million-member African Methodist Episcopal Church's first female bishop.

Oh joy, a Christmas vision

There are only 365 shopping days, give or take a few, until next Christmas.

And all the people said, "Oh joy."

"Honestly, there's an argument to be made for Christians pretty much conceding Dec. 25th -- just handing it over to the secular world -- because we're just not getting anywhere," said Dan Andriacco, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati. "I'm not saying that we give up on Christmas. I'm saying that we need to stop thinking of Christmas as what happens on Dec. 25th."

In a recent St. Anthony Messenger article, Andriacco joined a growing chorus of Catholics, Lutherans, Orthodox Christians and others urging churches to skip "The Holidays" and start following centuries of Christian traditions. At the very least, this would mean honoring the four-week penitential season of Advent (Nativity Lent) preceding Dec. 25 and then celebrating the 12-day Christmas festival that continues until the Jan. 6th Feast of the Epiphany.

What would this mean? Here are some tips, from Andriacco and others.

* Here's a tough one: Invite St. Nicholas into the Advent season, rather than Santa Claus. As a rule, Americans ignore the Dec. 6th feast of St. Nicholas of Myra, the 4th-century patron saint of endangered children and the poor.

"The real guy is a better example than Old Goodiebags," writes Beliefnet.com columnist Frederica Mathewes-Green. "He's a man of courage and compassion, and the kind of person you'd like your children to know."

A renewed St. Nicholas emphasis would offer wonderful opportunities to share stories and gifts with children, but also to emphasize another tradition -- gifts for the needy. My suggestion? Churches could, on the Sundays between St. Nicholas Day and Christmas, collect diapers and blankets for new mothers who need help.

* It's crucial, said Andriacco, to celebrate Christmas during Christmas, instead of during Advent. This may mean avoiding shopping malls or taping favorite Christmas movies and specials to watch later, to avoid the tidal wave of ads. It will mean going against the flow.

"If we are really going to get into the spiritual disciplines of a season of waiting, a season of rest, then we will simple have to slow down and party less," he said.

* The season offers deadly traps, even for the idealistic. Some have tried to replace expensive gifts with handcrafts and keepsakes. Writer Julie McCarty noted that this, ironically, may require busy people to pour more time into preparations. The last thing many people need right now is even higher expectations. The goal is to save time for faith and family, not to create more work in the name of simplicity.

"Experience has taught me that I am simply not going to stitch a quilt, stencil homemade Christmas cards, or assemble a memory book for each niece and nephew," she confessed. "My closets stand as witnesses to my unfinished projects from Christmases past. If Martha Stewart enjoys making her own wrapping paper, let her do it."

* The days before Christmas are a traditional time to go to confession, for those in sacramental churches. This is highly appropriate today, since "The Holidays" produce more than their share of burdens. Christmas also should be a time for reconciliation with family members, rather than drowning out their voices with waves of football games and movies.

* The December calendar in most homes and parishes is a train wreck, with concerts, parties and services competing with the private schedules of singers, volunteers and clergy. Then many people have to travel. By mid-month, folks are wiped out.

Here's a radical idea: Put some of next year's concerts and parties in the actual 12-day season after Dec. 25. Take your choir caroling on the 10th day of Christmas and you'll be the only show in town. You might get arrested for being subversive, but it would be worth the effort.

"If we take the church calendar seriously, then that will automatically steer us away from many of the trappings of the secular season," said Andriacco. "So we're not saying that people should skip Christmas. Just the opposite! We're saying, 'Let's celebrate all of it. We want the real Christmas.' "

Hanukkah -- freedom or death

It's almost time to fire up the big menorah in the public square.

It's time for office workers to mix blue-and-silver Hanukkah decorations with symbols of Christmas, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice and, this year, Ramadan. It's time for school children to fry potato-and-onion pancakes and spin four-sided dreidels with Hebrew letters that stand for "a great miracle happened here." It's time for parents to max out their charge cards.

Party planners can find many alleged "carols" on the Internet, such as this revised Santa Claus verse: "They're grinding their swords, sharp as a pin, a guerilla war, they're going to win. Maccabees are coming to town." Let's skip the even sillier "Eight Days of Fire," sung to the Jerry Lee Lewis classic.

The bottom line is that the eight-day "festival of lights" begins at sundown on Thursday, Dec. 21. For millions this has evolved into a super-holiday matched one-on-one in a cultural showdown with Christmas.

Hanukkah is here, but what are folks all fired up about?

"The problem, as any rabbi will tell you, is that Hanukkah has traditionally been a minor Jewish festival," observed Columbia University historian David Greenberg, at Slate.com. "It commemorates the successful Israelite revolt in the second century B.C. against their Syrian oppressors, and their refusal to assimilate into the prevailing Hellenistic culture. Specifically, it celebrates the miracle in which, according to lore, a day's worth of oil fueled the candelabra of the Jew's rededicated temple for eight days."

Hanukkah has a unique message, but one that often is drowned out as millions -- of all races and creeds -- stampede to the shopping mall. Many say that Hanukkah celebrates religious liberty and religious pluralism. Others emphasize its message that Jews must defend the purity of their faith, when they are tempted to assimilate into a dominant culture.

I found myself dwelling on this second Hanukkah theme during a Dec. 8 press conference by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. This was not a Hanukkah event -- but it could have been. Around the world, religious minorities are under attack when they refuse to buckle under to oppressive majority regimes.

This commission accused U.S. officials of timidly defending religious liberty. For example, a State Department report in 1999 criticized seven "countries of "particular concern" -- Burma, China, Iran, Iraq, Sudan and particular movements in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. The commission pressed, unsuccessfully, for the inclusion of four more in the 2000 report -- Laos, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan. It must be hard for U.S. diplomats to admit the situation is getting worse, instead of better.

The commission's Dec. 8 critique included reports on abuses in all of those lands and more. In Iran, four Baha'is have been sentenced to death for apostasy and "Zionist Baha'i activities." In China, violent crackdowns continue on the Falun Gong movement and Protestant and Catholic churches that refuse to kneel before state. Regional officials in China executed at least eight Uigher Muslims on charges of "splitting the country."

The list goes on and on. Efforts to control religious minorities can be seen in Russia, where legislation threatens to the "liquidation" of thousands of small religious groups. Even the French National Assembly has created a list of 173 "dangerous sects" -- including the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Unification Church and even some Baptists -- that could be shut down if believers are caught committing crimes of "mental manipulation."

"Even the Europeans are headed in the wrong direction," said Jewish conservative Elliott Abrams, chairman of the religious freedom commission. "What's even worse is how that is going to be cited by (regimes) that are aggressively oppressing their religious minorities. They'll be saying, 'Look, we're modeling parts of our laws on what they're doing in Belgium and France.' "

The most appropriate time to remember the plight of oppressed religious minorities is the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, said Abrams. But it sure wouldn't hurt if this solemn, and historically accurate, theme appeared amid the glitter of "the holidays."

"Hanukkah is the festival of freedom," he said. "But what often gets lost is that this meant freedom or DEATH. ... Millions of believers around the world face the same choice today."

Martin Marty and the soul of DC

A glance down from an incoming airplane is all it takes to see that Washington, D.C., is messed up.

Long ago, architect Pierre L'Enfant had of vision of grand plazas combined with a simple, logical grid of streets. But now visitors see politics all over the place. The Supreme Court sits in judgment across the street from the U.S. Capitol, which wrestles with the White House for symbolic supremacy on the map. Highways run into rivers and the National Mall, while cathedrals gaze down from distant hills at memorials to the secular saints.

Where is the heart of Washington? And if a city doesn't have a heart, where is its soul?

"We are in a society called 'pluralist,' "said historian Martin Marty, during a recent speech entitled "Building the Holy City on the Hill" for the College of Preachers at National Cathedral. "Our cities don't have that single axis. They don't have walls. They may have beltways, but they keep no one out. Commerce, industry, religion, academic life, media life, malls, all ... throw this off."

So Washington is not a New England village, in which all roads and energies converge on one marketplace, one government hall and one church, he said. People inside the Beltway worship all kinds of things in all kinds of places. Thus, it's hard to pinpoint the "soul" of America's complex and fragmented capital.

"It is a secular city," said Marty. "Believers may interpret it as God's gift, but it's not organized on those lines."

Nevertheless, he insisted that Washington does have a "soul," which he defined as: "The integrated vital power of any organic body that is full of awareness, openness to possibilities, expressive of freedom and having purpose." The good news for the city is that powerful displays of "soul" often follow moments of pain, conflict, sickness and anger. So he urged his listeners to keep their eyes open, right now.

During his 35-year career at the University of Chicago, Marty has been much more than a scholar whose 50 books and 40 years of Christian Century essays helped define an era of church history. His work has repeatedly bridged the wall between academia and the news. Any mention of his name is usually accompanied by the Time magazine quotation proclaiming him America's "most influential living interpreter of religion."

And Marty remains the master of finding grace in chaos -- such as the storms currently gathering over Washington. For starters, he said, it's safe to say that no one on Capitol Hill is talking about building utopia anytime soon, in this day of almost supernaturally thin voting margins, non-existent mandates and bitter 50-50 splits over virtually every moral, cultural and political issue in sight.

This is good, he said, since most attempts to build utopias lead to bloodshed and war. Often, people who are divided, and know it, manage to get more work done than the people plagued by delusions of unity and perfection. The most crucial, creative decisions are almost always made right after the best-laid plans fall apart, after the utopian quests go astray. That is when progress often takes place in a fallen world full of flawed people.

"I am assuming," said Marty, "that the search for the holy city of Washington is going to go wrong, because you have to work with the crooked timber of humanity -- conflicting interests, conflicting wills, conflicting visions of the good. ... We never say that we learn by trial and rightness, nor by trial and triumph. No, we learn by trial and error."

It's true that anyone searching for "soul" in Washington can look in churches. There are, he noted, 92 brands listed in the Yellow Pages -- between "chiropractors" and "cigars." But they also should search in schools, where a janitor may help a student through a troubled day. They should visit an unheralded recovery program for prostitutes. "Soul" may even show up in efforts to replace out-of-date voting machines. Angels live on many of the city's forgotten streets.

Washington isn't perfect. That's the good news. And don't worry, said Marty, about times of conflict. Never forget that " you can't get justice without argument."