Charlie Ward, sinner

Every Sunday, countless Christians around the world recite an ancient prayer that begins: "I believe, O Lord, and I confess that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who did come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief."

Anyone who can say that last phrase without a mental pause isn't paying attention. The tendency is to do a few quick mental calculations in which one's sins are contrasted with those of, let's say, Timothy McVeigh or Robert Downey, Jr. But it was St. Paul who first confessed that he was the "chief of sinners" and that means that these words have clout. Christianity teaches that this phrase applies to each and every sinner.

I thought about this prayer during the NBA-playoffs controversy about New York Knicks guard Charlie Ward. While leading a Bible study that was visited by New York Times reporter, Ward said: "Jews are stubborn .... Why did they persecute Jesus unless he knew something they didn't want to accept?"

The reporter said, "What?"

Ward replied, "They had his blood on their hands." He opened his Bible and read from the Gospel of Matthew: "Then they spit in Jesus' face and hit him with their fists." Ward added, "There are Christians getting persecuted by Jews every day. ... People who are raised Jewish and find Christ, and then their parents stop talking to them."

The media storm was spectacular, to say the least. Two comments by Washington Post scribes will suffice.

Sports writer Michael Wilbon said Ward is "someone who tries to push his religious beliefs on other people, a proselytizing, self-righteous and self-absorbed character who thinks that he and a few others have tapped into the truth and that anyone who doesn't believe exactly what he believes is going straight to hell."

While strongly defending Ward's right to free speech, political columnist Richard Cohen noted: "To insult Jews while playing for a New York team and to use the New York Times and a Jewish writer as your medium either shows breathtaking gall or a touching belief that nothing untoward was being said. It was the latter, undeniably."

Both of these writers represented large segments of the American public that were appalled by Ward's words. I am convinced, however, that several other comments need to be made about this latest fight over salvation and the public square.

First, no one can deny that what Ward said was highly offensive, in large part because he spoke out in an age in which any public defense of absolute truth is sure to offend millions. This is a serious issue for anyone -- pope or politician, evangelist or entertainer -- who attempts to defend traditional Christian teachings on heaven and hell.

However, as offensive as Ward's comments were, it didn't help that many journalists edited them to resemble the views of conspiracy crackpots who preach that a cabal of Jews exists for the sole purpose of oppressing gentiles, especially Christians.

What Ward said was offensive, but not as offensive as what many journalists reported that he said -- that Jews persecute Christians, period. The sad truth is that Ward was right when he said that many Jews are disowned or attacked by their families after they convert to Christianity. It's true that conversions cause division and pain, as well as joy.

But it's almost beside the point to mention these other issues, in light of one huge mistake that looms over Ward's comments.

What he said was highly offensive. But in the eternal scheme of things, Ward's words were not nearly offensive enough. Jesus was crucified after a complex and ugly drama in which legions of people -- Roman officials, competing elites inside a splintered Jewish hierarchy, a street mob representing all of humanity -- ended up with bloody hands and stained souls.

The faith of the ages teaches that all are guilty. Sin is sin. Sinners are sinners. Ward forgot to judge himself, along with everybody else.

So what should Ward have told journalists? According to centuries of Christian tradition, he should have said that Jesus came into the world to save sinners, "of whom I am chief."

Anglican World Wide Web wars, Part II

No one in the Episcopal Church hierarchy knows what will happen at Christ Church in Accokeek, Md., once push really comes to shove.

But everyone knows the bitter battle for control of the 303-year-old Colonial parish is a big story, perhaps even a pivotal one in the global Anglican wars over sex, salvation and the Bible. But it's getting hard to pin down the precise details.

What happened last week when parish leaders denied Washington, D.C., Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon access to their altar? How many parishioners worshipped inside? How many joined Dixon for her quick Mass on a nearby basketball court and how many of those were imported activists? Who heckled whom? How many bishops joined in this liturgical circus? And what in the world really happened when a parish officer collided with the bishop's husband?

The firebrand cyber-scribe David Virtue reported that, during chaos caused by a heckler, "junior warden Frank MacDonough stepped forward to take control of the situation. Immediately Dixon's husband David M. Dixon stepped forward and placed both his hands on the shoulders of the warden pushing him back. A verbal exchange ensued." MacDonough finally exclaimed, "You don't put your hands on me."

Virtue added: "I have been informed that there is every likelihood that charges will be pressed against both Dixons. The complaint against Jane Dixon is for trespassing and against David Dixon for assault."

That would certainly be news. However, an Episcopal News Service (www.dfms.org/ens) story about Accokeek didn't mention the shove in question and neither did the next day's Washington Post report.

Everyone has a story to tell. But, these days, the stories that are shaping life in the Episcopal Church and other religious bodies are often laced with conflicting plots and details.

The web is like that. Thus, some consider it a font of venom and warped information. Others believe it's opening doors that must be opened. After all, as St. Luke warned religious leaders: "Whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed upon the housetops." A modern paraphrase might be: "Don't say things that you wouldn't want to see on the Internet."

"The big boys," said Virtue, "have always assumed that they get to control all of the juicy information in the church. Well, they can't do that anymore and they're freaking out."

The Accokeek battle is the kind of story that has sent rising numbers of Anglican readers -- around the world -- to the "Virtuosity" (www.orthodoxanglican.org/virtuosity) site for online reports. Virtue's critics have a name for this -- propaganda.

"A lot of journalism in the Episcopal Church today ... is nothing short of muckraking. It's descended to that level," said Bishop Steven Charleston of Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts, speaking to the national Episcopal Communicators. "There's so much glop that goes on to email systems and into print that is considered to be news -- it's just shameful."

Virtue and other web conservatives are not alone. The church's left wing has long looked for news and commentary in the sprawling site created at Rutgers University by Louie Crew (www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew), founder of Integrity for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Episcopalians. He now sits on the national church's executive council. Other readers turn to AnglicansOnline.org and a host of establishment sites.

The bookish leader of the Episcopalians keeps trying to tame the Internet tornado.

Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold wants journalists who cover his church to "take the high road" and focus on "the work of reconciliation" while weaving together the "divergent dimensions of truth that exist among us." Sadly, he told a forum at the Episcopal Media Center, there is a lot of "dubious communication that is making its way round the church, serving highly partisan ends and serving ... causes of division and conflict, characterized by untruths and misrepresentations."

These are the kinds of Zen-like quotations that make Virtue cackle with glee and rush to his computer.

"Let me unspin all of that," he said. "The World Wide Web is driving these guys nuts, so they want to nail my hide to the wall."

Anglican World Wide Web wars, Part I

Soon after the Episcopal Church voted to offer "pastoral care" for those in "life-long committed relationships" outside of Holy Matrimony, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey met with some American bishops who were worried about the future.

Once upon a time, views aired in a private Lambeth Palace gathering such as this may have been discreetly shared with other bishops or edited into a safe, uplifting press release.

Today? Forget about it.

"My motto is 'Take no prisoners,' "said evangelical David Virtue, a raging cyber-scribe who never uses a flyswatter when a baseball bat is available. "If I hear something, I'm going to put it out there and I don't care who gets mad."

Relying on a source inside the Lambeth meeting and others caught in the fallout, his "Virtuosity" (www.orthodoxanglican.org/virtuosity) email list reported that Carey was worried that the Episcopal Church's sexual agenda could cause a schism. Carey and these bishops were said to have shared their concerns with U.S. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold.

Anglican Communion News Service editor James Rosenthal struck back, issuing a bulletin on Nov. 2 that quoted Carey saying that Virtue's report was "a bare faced lie."

But then the Church of England Newspaper confirmed key elements of Virtue's report. Then Carey's own staff asked that the Rosenthal bulletin be withdrawn. Lambeth Palace said the story containing the "bare faced lie" quotation "didn't emanate from here."

Journalists do not enjoy being called liars. Virtue wrote Rosenthal: "I expect a ... retraction or I will sue you. You have defamed me."

That is where this tempest in a British teapot stood until May 9, when Rosenthal released a public apology, conceding that his press release "lacked clarity and the content was inaccurate." He asked all news services, web pages and email lists to kill the story.

There is one big unanswered question: Where did the "bare faced lie" quote come from? At midweek, Lambeth press aides and Rosenthal's office had not responded to numerous inquiries about this issue.

What is happening? All over the ecclesiastical map, bishops and bureaucrats are learning that the wise crack is true -- freedom of the press really does belong to people who own one. The web has given legions of people the ability to ship documents, speeches, transcripts, letters, statistics, fact sheets, opinions and embarrassing press reports into scores of pews and pulpits.

A Canterbury press release goes all over the world. But so does a Virtue email carving up a bishop's revealing remarks in a local parish forum that was captured on tape.

While only 3,000 users have signed up to receive his press reports, that number includes 30 or more traditional Anglican writers and editors -- in Canada, Latin America, Asia, Australia and, especially, Africa -- who forward his work to thousands of their own cyber-subscribers. Many of them click "forward" once again.

Virtue claims to have 80,000 readers. His critics on the Episcopal left dispute this and have conducted their own investigations, trying to undercut that statistic. Of course, those critics have their own web sites and email lists.

The official church press is no longer the only game in town. Ask the Presbyterians or the Baptists. Ask the United Methodists or the Greek Orthodox bishops. Ask just about anybody. The World Wide Web wars are turning up the heat in a growing number of religious sanctuaries. This, in turn, affects how the shepherds relate to their flocks.

After all, noted journalist Andrew Carey of the Church of England Newspaper, when Episcopalians read denominational press releases, it seems that their church is "in perfect health, and merely trailblazing for a more enlightened Christianity. The rest of the Anglican Communion will follow -- you mark their words!" Yet when they open an email from Virtuosity or the Third World bishops, it seems the Episcopal Church and "other liberal provinces ...are on a downward spiral into hell, if they have not already arrived."

It does little good, he said, for clergy to moan about this. The web has changed the rules of the game.

Carey the journalist should know. His father is the archbishop of Canterbury.

Who is praying for McVeigh?

As every movie buff knows, condemned prisoners always get to say a few final words.

Some apologize, while others protest. Some repent. Some rant. All have a last chance to confess to an eternal judge.

A decade ago, an infamous killer in South Carolina quietly offered words of thankfulness and acceptance. When Rusty Woomer died in the electric chair, he was not the man whose Quaaludes-and-whiskey fueled binge had left four tortured and dead.

"I'm sorry," said Woomer, whose prison years included many acts of selfless service to others. "I claim Jesus Christ as my savior. My only wish is that everyone in the world could feel the love I have felt from him."

It's hard not to contrast this with the arrogance shown by America's greatest terrorist, said the Rev. Lee Strobel, a former Chicago Tribune legal-affairs reporter who is now a writer and teacher at the massive Saddleback (Calif.) Community Church. Nevertheless, anyone who takes Christianity seriously must pray for a moment of repentance and grace before Timothy McVeigh is executed by lethal injection.

"After he is declared dead, McVeigh will stand trial once more," said Strobel, before the now-delayed execution date. "This time, there will be no secrets, no defense attorneys, no legal maneuvering, not rationalizations, no excuses. And unless something happens before then, he will be found guilty once again and sentenced to a hellish eternity in a place utterly devoid of hope. ... This will not make God happy."

During his media offensive, McVeigh has said his last blast of political rhetoric will include lines from William Ernest Henley's "Invictus." In this anthem of defiant individualism, the poet briefly thanks "whatever gods may be," yet concludes:

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scrolls,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

That doesn't sound like a humble confession of sin. Strobel's sermon, entitled "What Jesus Would Say to Timothy McVeigh," noted that the bomber has refused to apologize and even called his youngest victims mere "collateral damage." Thus, McVeigh has become the soldier from hell -- a poster boy for all that is evil. Can this man be saved?

"God is just, but God also is merciful," said Strobel. "So McVeigh's soul can saved. That is the word of hope that he needs to hear. ... There is always a chance that someone can repent and be forgiven. We are supposed to believe that, no matter what."

Debates about heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, become even more complex when linked to an issue as explosive as the death penalty. Strobel said he opposes the death penalty, in part because of the cracks in the justice system that he probed during his years in journalism. He also would agree with Pope John Paul II that nations today can efficiently fight crime "without definitely taking away the possibility of self-redemption."

Strobel said Christianity clearly teaches that McVeigh -- whatever his legal fate -- can repent and find salvation. So the most disturbing question is not, "Can McVeigh be saved?", but, "Why aren't more believers praying that he will be saved?"

Of course, there are "universalists" who don't believe in hell and, thus, believe that McVeigh will go to heaven with everyone else, no matter what. People who hold this belief tend to stay quiet during the days just before the execution of notorious criminals.

Meanwhile, other believers proclaim salvation by grace, but in practice this doctrine of radical forgiveness tends to make them nervous, said Strobel. Most people find it easier to imagine God forgiving their own "garden-variety sins," or those of a kindly neighbor, than God forgiving the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Karla Faye Tucker or, should he repent, McVeigh.

But sin is sin, said Strobel.

"If anyone ought to know how much he needs God and how much he needs to be forgiven, it ought to be Timothy McVeigh. But that doesn't mean we're supposed to be cheering as he dies and calling him the world's greatest sinner. Doing that only makes it harder for us to see the sin in our own lives and how badly we all need to be forgiven."

Mother's Day for the earth mothers

Few moments are as precious to mothers as the hushed rituals of bedtime.

Kristin Madden's memories include watching her 3-year-old son use the first personal altar he built on his father's old ironing board. He covered it with a blue cloth and added rocks, a baby tree, an earth flag and his hatching-dragon sculpture. Then the two of them would snuggle and talk about magic and the travels he would take in his dreams.

Finally, they would say a favorite prayer, such as: "Now I lay me down to bed. Great Spirit, bless my sleepy head. As I journey in my sleep, I know the Dragons my soul will keep. Mother Earth and Father Sky, watch over me here where I lie. Fairies please carry my love to all. Relations and loved ones, I do call."

Kristin Madden is a tutor in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. Pagan mothers say bedtime prayers, too. They also celebrate Mother's Day, which is natural since they focus their spirituality on nature and, literally, Mother Earth.

The pagan pantheon includes female and male deities and most rites are rooted in cycles of birth and death and the four seasons. Madden stressed that it's hard to make sweeping statements about the legions of groups in this complex and evolving movement. However, most Wiccan believers emphasize feminine and lunar traditions, as well as spells and witchcraft. Druids blend masculine and feminine symbolism and are more solar oriented.

This is certainly an interesting time for magical families, said Madden, who was raised in a single-parent pagan home in the heady 1960s and now lives in Albuquerque, N.M. The pop-culture powers that be are so fascinated with the occult that this has turned into a problem for many pagan parents, especially recent converts. Children often think that what's happening in movies and on television is real, she said. "You hear kids saying things like, 'Wow! Cool! You're mom's a witch? Can she cast a spell on someone for me?' "

In Hollywood, this is the age of "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," "Practical Magic," "Charmed" and "The Craft." Oprah Winfrey is leading Middle America in prayers to the spirit of the universe and covens can be found in many liberal Christian seminaries. Pentagon debates about pagan chaplains, naked worship and sacred daggers offer the first glimpses of another constitutional issue -- the separation of coven and state in the age of faith-based initiatives.

Works friendly to neo-paganism, especially Wicca, fill shelves in mega-bookstores. In the wake of the New Age explosion, pagan publishers are producing waves of their own books, from "Astrology & Your Child" to "Secrets of Western Sex Magic." Madden is the author of "Pagan Parenting" and the "Shamanic Guide to Death and Dying."

And everyone is pondering the kid-culture earthquake triggered by You Know Who.

"The whole Harry Potter thing has just taken off and glamorized everything. It makes it seem like all of this is about spells and magic," said Madden, who has chosen not to read the J.K. Rowling books with her 5-year-old. "It can be hard to get children to remember that what we're about is faith and spirituality ... Many pagan parents consider Harry Potter a mixed blessing."

Pagan parents realize that they live in a culture dominated by a "lip-service" brand of Judeo-Christian values. The key, said Madden, is that the mainstream fears any form of rigorous faith that "isn't normal" and becomes counter-cultural. Thus, she is considering home schooling to avoid having to compromise her family's strong beliefs.

Ultimately, this entire neo-pagan revival is about choice, she said. More and more Americans are claiming the freedom to find their own gods and goddesses, their own rituals, their own truths and their own brands of spirituality. This revival is about believers insisting that they can be their own priests and priestesses.

"As a pagan believer, I am very hopeful," she said. "America is really coming along and becoming more open and tolerant. ... People are out there searching for a personal relationship with a god and with nature. They don't want dogma. They want new experiences and their own kind of spirituality. They are ready to try all kinds of things."

The Gray Lady's gospel crusade

Dr. Warren Hern had "just finished performing an abortion for the last patient of the morning" when he heard that James Kopp had been arrested in France for the 1998 murder of a Buffalo, N.Y., abortionist.

Readers of the New York Times learned this symbolic detail in an op-ed piece entitled "Free Speech that Threatens My Life" in which Hern attacked the fiercest critics of his late-term abortion practice in Boulder, Colo. His column followed an editorial restating the paper's unwavering support for abortion rights, which underscored a page-one story about the arrest.

This three-punch combination several weeks ago indicated that the Times wanted newsmakers and opinion shapers to realize that this was more than an abortion story. This was a parable about the meaning of life and truth. An earlier profile of the anti-abortion extremist in the newspaper's Sunday magazine made that absolutely clear.

"The question of Kopp's innocence or guilt is finally less absorbing than the consequences of his search for a higher good, sure and unchanging, to sustain him in a fallen world," concluded David Samuels. "It is a shared if unspoken premise of the world that most of us inhabit that absolutes do not exist and that people who claim to have found them are crazy."

So take that, Pope John Paul II. And you too, Billy Graham.

This remarkable credo was more than a statement of one journalist's convictions, said William Proctor, a Harvard Law School graduate and former legal affairs reporter for the New York Daily News. Surely, the "world that most of us inhabit" cited by Samuels is, in fact, the culture of the New York Times and the faithful who draw inspiration from its sacred pages.

"It is rare to see a journalist openly state what so many people at the Times seem to think," said Proctor, whose book "The Gospel According to the New York Times" analyzes themes in more than 6,000 articles from the past 25 years. "But it's true. They really are convinced that the millions of people out in Middle America who believe that some things are absolutely true and some things are absolutely false are crazy and probably dangerous, to boot."

Proctor, meanwhile, is absolutely convinced that this affects the newspaper's work on moral and theological issues, ranging from abortion to education, from the rights of unpopular religious minorities to efforts to redefine controversial terms such as "marriage" and "family."

But critics are wrong if they claim that the New York Times is a bastion of secularism, he stressed. In its own way, the newspaper is crusading to reform society and even to convert wayward "fundamentalists." Thus, when listing the "deadly sins" that are opposed by the Times, he deliberately did not claim that it rejects religious faith. Instead, he said the world's most influential newspaper condemns "the sin of religious certainty."

"Yet here's the irony of it all. The agenda the Times advocates is based on a set of absolute truths," said Proctor. Its leaders are "absolutely sure that the religious groups they consider intolerant and judgmental are absolutely wrong, especially traditional Roman Catholics, evangelicals and most Orthodox Jews. And they are just as convinced that the religious groups that they consider tolerant and progressive are absolutely right."

Naturally, believers in the flocks that are ignored or attacked tend to get mad and many try to ignore the Times. This is understandable, said Proctor, but precisely the opposite of what they should do. He urges the newspaper's critics to pay even closer attention to what it reports, while contrasting its coverage with a variety of other wire services and publications -- across the political and cultural spectrum.

Trying to avoid the New York Times is like fighting gravity, said Proctor. It is the high church, the magisterium, for the artists, journalists and thinkers that shape popular culture.

"If people tune all that out," he said, " how are they going to know how to defend their own beliefs? People need information and they need discernment. The first part of that statement is just as important as the second part. ... What are you going to do, try to pretend that news and information don't matter?"

Reading the Sporting Jews

When scribe Jonathan Tobin selected his all-Jewish baseball team, it was tempting to pencil in Rod Carew at second base.

This would have given his fantasy Maccabees squad its third Hall of Famer, with Hammerin' Hank Greenberg and southpaw Sandy Koufax. When you're talking baseball holy writ, it's impossible to overlook Carew's 3,053 hits and seven American League batting titles.

The Baseball Online Library took a leap of faith and put Carew in its Jewish All-Star Team. After all, he married a Jew and they raised their children in the faith. But Carew never converted, despite years of rumors. Thus, Tobin sent his team into cyberspace competition without Carew's .328 lifetime average.

One passionate reader reacted to the column (at JewishWorldReview.com) by saying: "OK, so he never converted. What's important is that he's still a better Jew than most of the Jews today who are not even raising their children in the faith. I say we should count him!"

Truth is, there's more to this than pundits seeking another excuse to argue about baseball and culture while enjoying a ballgame and kosher hot dogs. The search for what the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent editor calls "The Sporting Jews" offers intriguing insights into the puzzle of American Jewish identity.

Jewish immigrants once yearned -- like members of any religious or ethnic minority -- to find their own heroes and role models in a new land. Thus, Tobin said Jews grew up watching their elders point in history books while saying, "Look! Eddie Cantor is a Jew. Look! Irving Berlin is Jewish." It was important to thrive everywhere from Main Street to Hollywood and Vine. And then there was the sports page.

Athletics wasn't even on the "radar screen" in the old Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, he said. But it was impossible to deny baseball's role here, especially in the thriving urban neighborhoods into which Jews moved in the cathartic, agonizing decades before and after World War II.

Millions of Jews cheered when Greenberg opted out of a 1934 World Series game that fell on Yom Kippur. Decades later, Koufax declined to pitch on the opening game of the 1965 World Series, once again on Yom Kippur. Who could have imagined living to see such open displays of pride and Jewish identity?

"What could be a better symbol of this new Jew, this Jew who was finally living in a land where he could be comfortable in his own skin, than to be able to find Jewish heroes at the ballpark? ... I think it's hard for us to grasp how important someone like Greenberg was at that time. He was an icon of this new Jewish experience in America," said Tobin.

That was then.

Today, American Jews live in the age of Jerry Seinfeld and Joe Lieberman. Today, it's hard to imagine a time when the word "assimilate" would have sounded good to Jewish leaders. A century ago, millions of Jews were anxious to claim a new sense of identity -- as Americans. Today, the question is how many will choose to claim an old identity -- as practicing Jews.

The statistics are now familiar. Jews have declined from 4 percent to 2 percent of the U.S. population. While a 1990 survey -- currently being updated -- found 5.9 million Jews, researchers said 1.3 million practice another faith and 1.1 million claim no faith. Only 484,000 American Jews regularly attend temple or synagogue services.

While doing assembling his Maccabees roster, Tobin researched whether he could list current Philadelphia catcher Mike Lieberthal, who has a Jewish father. In the Phillies yearbook, he saw that the Lieberthal family picture showed them posed in front of a Christmas tree. He took that as a sign.

"There is a phrase that we use these days to describe people who convert to Judaism or step forward to publicly claim their Jewish identity. We call them 'Jews by Choice,' " said Tobin. "What we need to realize is that, in 2001, all Jews in America are 'Jews by Choice.' That is the reality of our situation. ...

"That seems humorous, when we're talking about hunting for Jews in the major leagues. But it isn't funny, otherwise. This is serious."

Year 13 -- A brand name for your soul

Anyone strolling through last year's National Funeral Directors Association convention could catch glimpses of Baby Boomer heaven.

The Baltimore exhibits included "fairway to heaven" caskets for those especially devout golfers and NASCAR models for true fans that have seen their last race, at least in this life. The goal, said a convention spokesman, is to offer dying consumers the same kinds of choices that they demanded in life.

What's next? Allowing people to defray some funeral expenses via product-endorsement logos, like the ones on golf caps and racing cars? If there is a Harley-Davidson casket -- yes, there is one -- can a Lexus model be far behind? Could a user re-boot his Microsoft casket?

I cannot answer such soul-wrenching questions. But every year I do mark this column's anniversary by weaving together a few bizarre items that loiter in my files. For year No. 13, the designer-casket news snapped into place next to a story from The Financial Times.

It seems that the prestigious Young & Rubicam advertising agency is convinced many brand names have become substitute religions. They provide meaning for millions of believers who gradually become what they consume while taking communion, so to speak, at the mall.

"The brands that are succeeding are those with strong beliefs and original ideas," said an agency report. "They are also the ones that have the passion and energy to change the world, and to convert people to their way of thinking though outstanding communications."

When true believers think of Apple, Calvin Klein, Gatorade, Volvo, MTV, Starbucks, Nike and Virgin, they don't just think of products. These uncompromising "belief brands" help establish a sense of identity, according to Young & Rubicam. They are icons that define lives.

Are ad men our new priests and evangelists? With that in mind, ponder this.

* Up in Vancouver, some Canadian Christians were not amused by "Second Coming" ads for the Playland Amusement Park, which included a turnstile clicking ominously to "666." The park had just added two new rides -- the "Hellevator" and the "Revelation."

* While many were offended by "Yo' Mama's Last Supper," a work of modern art that depicted Jesus as a nude black woman, an exhibit in Chicago offered up "The Last Pancake Breakfast," with Christ as Mrs Butterworth.

* Leaders of Southern California's 600,000 Muslims were not amused by Los Angeles Times ads juxtaposing images of bikini-clad California women with women in Islamic attire, linked by the slogan "Connecting Us to The Times." The newsroom staff protested, too, and the ads were soon phased out.

* In other multicultural news, shoppers noted changes in Nativity images last year in London. In a few, Joseph had been omitted to avoid offending female single parents. Wire-service reports also described tableaus in which a female figure replaced Joseph, to appeal to what the survey called those with "Sapphic," or lesbian, "inclinations."

* Here's another British innovation with mass appeal. The Anglican vicar of All Saints Parish in Guildford advertised a Harry Potter service complete with wizards, costumes, broomsticks, "Muggle songs" (hymns) and a non-flying version of a "quidditch" game.

The church's doorway was decorated as the King's Cross Station platform on which J.K. Rowling's characters catch the train to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There was even a serpent banner for the ominous House of Slytherin, along with other Hogwarts decorations. The London Times said other parishes quickly requested copies of the liturgy.

* Can one purchase inner peace and salvation? The satirists at www.TheOnion.com have their doubts. They published a fake press release for an imaginary snack meant to ease the "hideously bleak emptiness of modern life. ... We're proud to introduce T.C. McCrispee's as the antidote you've been reaching out for. Our tasty new snack cracker will, if only for a few lovely moments, significantly lessen the aching, gnawing angst that haunts your very soul."

Participants in taste tests testified that the "satisfying crunch distracted them from the parade of tears that is life." A faux spokesperson summed up the campaign: "We're selling more than a cracker here. We're selling the salty, unctuous illusion of happiness."

Yes, Columbine was a God thing

The weeks before Easter are rich with ancient images of suffering, sacrifice, death and hard choices.

One of the biblical texts focused on martyrdom, during a Mass two years ago at Saint Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Littleton, Colo. The visiting preacher tried to make this concept come alive.

Imagine that a spiritual war is raging, said Bishop Sam Jacobs of Alexandria, La., as he paced among the pews. What if someone burst into the church with a gun? What if he pointed it at people's heads and asked if they believed in God? Who would bravely say "yes"?

Youth minister Jim Beckman said the bishop asked the young people: "What if someone came into your school with a gun and did that?"

The words didn't register at the time. But that flock included many of the parish's 300-plus teens from Columbine High School. They remembered the sermon a few weeks later -- after April 20th.

"I don't understand how anyone can deny the spiritual dimension of what happened at Columbine," said Beckman. "The repercussions of the shootings have continued to dominate our ministry here in so many ways. ... Yes, we survived and, yes, we will prevail and, yes, we have hope to carry on, in the name of Jesus Christ. But this tragedy raised spiritual issues that are not going to go away in a few months or even years."

Many state officials insist that the massacre wasn't "a God thing." They can chant this mantra, but the facts cry out that there was more to Columbine than familiar questions about school discipline, mass media and gun control.

The killers wanted to make a statement about good and evil, about morality and anarchy, and they succeeded. The first combatants to march into the church-state minefield at Columbine were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

"Eric and Dylan told us why they did what they did," said Wendy Murray Zoba, senior writer at Christianity Today. "They were acting on the laws they had been taught by their culture. There is no God. You are your own god. There is no eternal law. You make your own law. The material world is all there is. Power is what matters. You just do it."

Thus, Harris wrote on his Web site: "My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law, if you don't like it, you die. If I don't like ... what you want me to do, you die." In the pre-rampage videos, Harris vowed to shoot Christians in the head. He was furious at Christians who shared their faith with others. Witnesses said he went out of his way to shoot students who were praying out loud. He asked several if they believed in God.

Clearly, said Zoba, "Eric Harris had a God problem." And as their "judgment day" approached, Klebold looked into a camera lens and said: "We're going to have followers because we're so ... god-like." He added: "We're not exactly human. ... We have bodies, but we've evolved ... one step above you."

In her book "Day of Reckoning," Zoba writes: "There is no other way to explain what overtook these boys than to call it raw evil -- not the Hollywood version but the religious kind." Thus, "Columbine rests uneasily in so many hearts. ... If hell, as it were, opened up and temporarily held sway in those hallways that day, such an occurrence would mean the existence of a spiritual world, and worse, a spiritual battle. And that, to many ... is irrational and creepy."

If there is spiritual evil, then that also implies that there is spiritual good and that's a hard equation to discuss on the evening news, in political debates and in classrooms.

"Something has gone terribly wrong in this culture," stressed Zoba. "I still think America hasn't faced the issues that were raised at Columbine, in part because there is always the next shooting, the next controversy, the next something to distract us. ...

"But there were big spiritual questions raised at Columbine and they will not go away on their own. If the church tries to just move on and get past this, then where will those spiritual questions be answered?"