Articles – Page 188 – Religion Online

The Ultimate Church

Remember the superchurch movement of the 80s, when megachurches were in genesis and the glorification of largeness ran rampant throughout the Christian world? Remember how church-growth pastors the world over set seemingly preposterous membership goals?

How remote it all seems in the year 2005, now that last century’s novas of growth have been eclipsed by a Southern California supernova, an empire builder who 23 years ago brought into existence a huge amorphous web of ecclesial polity, the logical consummation of superchurch thinking. He dubbed it the "ultra-church":

First Ultra-Church of Southern California, to be precise. I am speaking, of course, of the Rev. Dr. Roy "Solomon in a leisure suit" Dude.

Forget Korea, Taiwan and Brazil; disregard Lynch-burg, Hammond and Garden Grove. First Ultra of Southern California makes the Crystal Cathedral look like a house church. It lays claim to 2.5 million souls. It adds about 10,000 new members to its roles every month, 333 per day, 13.9 per hour and one every five minutes. Dude has 166,279 cell groups, 172,346 deacons and 12,820 full-time staff (9,543 of which are ordained clergy) The numbers are beyond comprehension: average Sunday worship attendance is 552,364, a figure amassed in 11 services averaging over 50,000 each. Worship is enhanced by 431 choirs, 25 orchestral groups, 30 children’s choirs and 16 handbell choirs. Festival day processions look like the Rose Parade. Dude’s yearly "backdoor loss" is the size of a small denomination.

I -- along with 29 of my fellows -- sat reeling in this vertiginous onslaught of numbers, thrown at us courtesy of a videocassette detailing the history and goals of First Ultra. In fact, each of us had one in hand as part of the opulent "visitor recognition package" presented to each first-time visitor. (The climax of the proceedings comes at the end of each Sunday service when one tag is drawn from a hopper of visitor name tags and a new car is given to that visitor.)

We sat in the Love Room, clad in black slickers with three-inch high white letters spelling "LOVE" on the back and awaiting our guide for the 9:00 A.M. Love Tour.

Along with the grounds and facilities, it was the tour guide I wanted to see. Being an ex-usher myself, I took considerable interest in Head Usher Simon Glibface, the brains behind the revolutionary visitor recognition program at First Ultra. The man had grown to legendary stature in conservative Christianity. Indeed, when is the last time you’ve seen an usher featured on the cover of Christianity Today? ("The Sensation with the Carnation: The Ultimate Usher for the Ultimate Church," March 16, 1998.) With his subsequent usher textbooks, autobiography (There Is life Beyond Name Tags, Dude Books, 2001) , magazine (Badge and Bulletin, the only ushering magazine including a centerfold portrait) and cultlike following, Glibface had almost singlehandedly brought ushering into the sunlight of ecclesiastical celebrity~To his fame are credited such innovative strategies as parhug valets; tour guides, computerized seating readouts- for latecomers, and Roy Dude University’s School of Usherology. The man had revolutionized the field. It was his brainstorm to coordinate the corps by color-coded tuxedos: sky blue for the parking valets, lime green for the greeters and bumblebee yellow for the transportation corps. To keep his finger on the pulse at First Ultra, Glibface traditionally gave the 9:00 A.M. Love Tour.

When he stepped through the door with the conclusion of the video at promptly 8:58A.M., a shiver swept the room, It is one of the sensations one recognizes immediately at megachurches, one of the permutations of the secular manifested onto the religious -- a nimbus of celebrity that hangs above those in power. Were Dude himself to stride through the door, the hushing would be augmented exponentially. Dude has taken the role of superchurch preacher to its logical end. Nobody expects a man like Dude to be pastoral. Nobody expects him to counsel or remember names or recall faces. If Dude spent ten minutes with each of his parishioners, the task would consume his every minute -- waking and sleeping -- for more than 49 years. No, when church growth overwhelmed the evangelical market back in the ‘80s, the superchurch became the goal, the prize to be won. Seminary students no longer wanted to shepherd -- they wanted to ranch. And men like Dude transcended even the status of rancher; they became kings.

We strolled onto the gangway, high above the 52,000-seat sanctuary. Through glass windows we could view, seven stories below, the foyer on our right, and on the left the sanctuary, filling rapidly to capacity. Upbeat, rhythmic music filled the sanctuary as two 4,000-member choirs, one clad in fire-engine red robes, the other in silver, swayed in chorus to words flashed on two of five 60-foot Jumbo-o-Tron screens. The song leader -- a mere ant with waving arms from where we stood -- loomed larger than life on three other screens. Everybody sang. High-speed ramps whisked latecomers to their seats. Dude would "appear" later, Glibface said. Dude preached 46 Sundays a year, or at least a three-dimensional 40-foot-by-20-foot laser image of Dude’s head did. Dude himself never showed.

First Ultra had subscribed to the multicongregational superchurch model, Glibface explained, offering distinctive worship experiences catering to differing tastes. Thus, six services were in the Reformed tradition -- three informal, three traditional -- four services were charismatic, and, as a sop to the creedal, confessional, liturgical, sacramental types -- I was one of those -- they offered "the 9:00 P.M. hour."

"Communion must take days," I marveled, envisioning 52,000 marching down for the common cup: "Not quite," Glibface returned. "We found that communion cut into our attendance by as much as 40,000, and the services still ran well into the wee hours. Once we sang an entire hymnal, one verse of each, during the distribution. Of course, that was before Dr. Dude decided on the auxiliary stations." Glibface swept his arm over the perimeter of the sanctuary. "Forty-foot doors open and complete chancels slide forward with ministers and everything all set up. There are 18 of those. Of course the speed ramps help. Nobody walks. A person can get from the back row to the altar in 23.7 seconds. But, now he bade us move on as 30 people clad in black "JOY" slickers entered the gangway.

"What about baptisms?" a woman asked as our faces were pulled back from the G-force exerted against them on the high-speed escalator that whooshed us to main level. "We do those in late spring," Glibface said. "We used to simply haul everybody over to Playa del Ray or El Segundo and do it in the ocean, but the city fathers squawked about extra lifeguards and whatnot, plus 10,000 to 20,000 people in white robes invading the beach area freaked out the surfers, so we decided to keep to our 100-meter, fully landscaped reflecting pool behind the altar." He looked specifically at me. "For the sacramental hour 12 fonts pop up hydraulically on the sides of the chancel."

He led us into the "Cry Room." Rows and rows of cribs stretched toward the horizon. "Three thousand crib capacity, with one-way windows and acoustically perfect sound," Glibface was saying as we watched thousands of mothers seated beside their babies listening to the service through headsets. "We have on hand 16,000 rattles, 4,000 dolls, 2,000 washettes, and 4,000 crib mobiles. That facility there," he pointed toward a monstrous bin, "has the capacity to process 50,000 diapers a day."

Now the largest church in the world, a religious organization to dwarf even that of the mighty Cho -- guru to millions in the Korean revival of the ‘80s and ‘90s -- First Ultra-Church of Southern California is the quintessential church-growth success story.

Dispatched from seminary fresh-faced and spitting into his hands, a fighting-the-forces-of-smallness dynamo, Roy Dude arrived in 1982 with the charge of starting a mission in the beach community adjacent to Los Angeles International Airport. In a move that made his peers look like disciples of negativism, Dude immediately named his yet-to-be-established congregation the First Ultra-Church of Southern California. He billed himself as the greatest possibility thinker since Elijah; the greatest builder since Solomon. He conducted weekly television services from a rented recording studio. (Schuller at least had preached to people in cars.) Dude preached ‘to no one, yet his technological mastery was so facile that, via adept video splicing and sound effects, his broadcast presented an eerie verisimilitude of the real thing, an eeriness that carries over to this day.

Only after he had received the first 1,000 phone calls, then and only then, did he conduct an actual, live worship service before actual, live worshipers. No tedious pounding on doors and inviting people to church; no struggling through tough days in elementary school media centers; no hand-to-mouth existence. None of that for Roy Dude. He started big and kept getting bigger.

By 1991 Dude had constructed a 10,000-seat sanctuary and set his sights on outdrawing the Los Angeles Dodgers -- a goal realized the next year, a year the Dodgers went to the Series. In 1995 he purchased the Los Angeles International Airport when LAX moved to its current home on landfill five miles off the coast (downwind from the 2,000-foot smog fans) One year later, faith projections were seeing reality in the present 52,000-seat sanctuary known colloquially as "the Dudedome."

Glibface had opportunity to gloss the high points in the First ‘Ultra story as we exited the cry room and gathered about him in the middle of an enormous cavern that, once worship was over, would be instantly transformed into the coffee and fellowship area with -- I had to ask -- 8,000 coffee urns. We turned a corner in the enormous foyer and saw a huge sign that read, "To the trains," with an arrow pointing to the right; another reading "To the sanctuary" pointed left. Interior directional signs. Amazing! Basic church-growth principles employed even at this level.

Once aboard, Glibface told the story of the trains, a tale he termed "one of the greatest triumphs over the forces of negativism in the history of the Christian church," and it dealt with the single most inviolable principle in all of church growth: All is negotiable save one thing -- parking. Once the lots are 80 percent full, it’s time for expansion.

"For five years we ringed the sanctuary with lots," Glibface said. "And when those were filled, we paved lots behind them, and more behind them. Finally, in 2001, attendance plateaued at 1.8 million. And curiously, our lots were only at 71 percent capacity. It was a crisis time for First Ultra. Dr. Dude prayed and fasted for a week on Mt. Baldy and when he came down he imparted to us the Principle of Distance Strangulation: People will not willingly walk more than .75 miles from parking spot to sanctuary. At a ballgame, maybe. At church, no way. We had near-empty lots sitting a mile from church. Obviously, some type of surface mass transportation system was needed. Dr. Dude toyed with purchasing surplus Army helicopters -- they seat 55. But finally he chose light rail. We experienced a little backdoor loss from that -- 200,000 members. But we gained that number back in no time."

The train had come to rest in front of a building. I could see the sign "Faith Tower." I craned my neck for a look up. Faith Tower, one of four 40-story monoliths -- the others were Hope, Charity and Hezekiah Towers -- stood at the eastern terminus of the rail system; it was testimony to Dude’s emphasis on education and cell groups. He had 13,794 Sunday school classes spread throughout the four towers in classes ranging from five students to 6,000, with an average ratio of one teacher to 20 students.

We stepped through the sparkling unloading station -- Christian Muzak urging us on -- and into the lobby of Faith Tower, where phalanxes of red-clad adjutants lined the walls awaiting the opportunity to assist. Coffee urns ringed the foyer. Bibles were stacked -- seemingly in unlimited supply -- for those who failed to bring their own. A huge, four-sided electronic sign stood in the middle listing the myriad classes scheduled, their location, whether seating was available and where the vacant seats were located according to a digitized floor plan. We peeked into Room lA, a 6,000-seat auditorium on the first floor before filing out of the tower’s south entrance onto a lush grassy area the size of a football field, strewn with benches and tables, the ubiquitous fountains, waterfalls, ornamental lakes, statuary and reflecting pools. Rising prominently at the east end of this plain was some exemplary topiary -- bushes fashioned into 30-foot figures of the apostles (a sort of shrubbery version of St. Peter’s in Rome) It was impressive, all right, but the evergreen sculpture between the next two buildings was the one I wanted to see.

We zipped in and out of Hope, and there it was. I stopped and gaped. Others reached for their 110’s. Some at the fringes of our group gasped and fell to their knees. Even Glibface, who had seen it thousands of times, allowed a mirific glint to pierce his otherwise unctuous visage. Spreading here before us was a wall of shrubbery, some 100 feet high, and into that wall had been carved four heads, three of which bore full facial characteristics, one of which stood blank. This was what I had heard so much about -- Mount Growthmore.

"Doctors McGavran, Wagner and Am," Glibface intoned in empyreal reverence. "Need I ask who the fourth head is reserved for?" I said playfully, a remark Glib-face tossed aside with a wan smile. "Cho?" I taunted. "Schaller?" But we were off.

"Taking attendance must be a chore," I said, again thinking of logistics. Glibface plunged into the details. Two main-frames and 1,500 people working round-the-clock from early Monday through mid-Wednesday every week were necessary to take attendance -- church, Bible class and cell group. Anyone missing three consecutive times receives a note in the mail. Miss a fourth and a deacon is at the door. It made perfect sense. When numbers are your raison d ‘être, you must pay the price to get those numbers. Knowing that you reach millions is hardly enough. Cold numbers are the key.

But we were running late. The 9:00 A .M. service would be dismissed in mere minutes. That was something I, in my logistical caprice, longed to see. Fifty-two thousand parishioners coming out of church and 52,000 different ones going in. I expected to witness something akin to the last five minutes of Pompeii. Lucky this was not the Midwest in winter, with 52,000 pairs of boots and rubbers thrown into the mix.

While speeding through a tunnel of luxuriant palms on our way back to Sanctuary Station, I decided to pop the million-dollar question: "What of community?" I asked. "Does anybody know anybody else?" Surely, this was the apotheosis of numbers for numbers’ sake -- the fulfillment of prophetic voices from the mainline of the 1980s.

Glibface had heard the plaint many times over. His eyes sparked as he leveled me in his sights and proceeded to offer the well-worn 60-member argument. In any congregation of any size the maximum number in a friendship circle is 60, he said. There are 60 you know by name, 60 you visit, 60 who constitute your group. All others are strangers, or close to it. "In the multicongregational structure," he explained, "the Bible class serves as the fellowship format. The people you know and love gather there."

"But then First Ultra is not one church, but many little churches," I said. "To claim the grandiose numbers is playing the ultimate numbers game."

"Oh, we do have congregational events," Glibface returned. "Last year’s church picnic was spectacular. We caravaned out to the high desert. One hundred thousand cars on Interstate 15. The entire fleet of Sunday school buses (1,582 54-seat school buses) We had Christian singers, Christian entertainment acts. The biggest church picnic ever. Four hundred seventy tons of potato salad on hand. Two hundred thousand gallons of grape soda, 67,000 father-son softball games, 55,000 co-ed volleyball games, 3 million water balloons .

I waved my arms in surrender, hoping to stanch this logorrheic flow, this tour de force of numerolatry. But, alas, to no avail.

" . . . and, for the first time in First Ultra history, we broke the 2 million mark in bratwursts. And, of course, the event had its spiritual side too. Our annual exercise in proclamation evangelism was an unrivaled success. Every person had a placard with one word of the bible on it, five feet by two feet. We proclaimed Scripture word for word all the way to Hosea 13. Almost stretched to Needles. Next year we’re shooting for the entire Old Testament."

Glibface inhaled, a prolepsis of more numerological effluvium, but we had arrived at Sanctuary Station. The tour had ended. Streams of people sped past the windows of our halted car, in transit either to the sanctuary, the Sunday school complex, or the adjacent esplanade, a porticoed promenade lined with shops and stalls offering the latest in ecclesiastical amenities. One store sold Roy Dude teaching tapes, another Roy Dude preaching tapes, another Roy Dude books, another Dudedome snow globes. There was a library, a bookstore, a credit union, a barber shop, and, to accommodate the yen of the hungry First Ultra parishioner, 52 restaurants.

Glibface offered us a genial send-off. We handed our slickers to a janissary at the door (who subsequently rushed them to the Love Room for the 10:30 A.M. Love Tour) , stepped off the train, negotiated the phalanx of greeters that had mustered for us -- we were each met by a personal escort at the end of the phalanx -- and were thus shunted off in whatever direction we wanted.

I wanted breakfast. I hurried toward the esplanade and Roy Dude Restaurant Row. I would miss the service, yes, but -- well, there’s a Sunday every week. Besides, where else can you get immediate seating at 10:00 A M on a Sunday?

Social Teaching and Social History: Learning from the Early Church

Christians who seek answers to these burning questions recognize the New Testament as an essential resource. Champions of various viewpoints often draw upon particular texts, like the Beatitudes or Romans 13. But since the New Testament itself contains various kinds of social witness -- as its use both for and against slavery and patriarchy, for example, shows -- debate can degenerate into mere thrust and parry of proof-texts with no possibility of resolution, or of even honest concession that both sides can claim biblical warrant. Which parts of the New Testament should be appropriated for the modern Christian social-religious agenda -- and how?

Any adequate answer must begin by trying to understand the social teachings of the New Testament within the social history of early Christianity. A significant contribution-to that investigation as being made by Gerd Theissen of the University of Heidelberg, West Germany. This past spring at the Andrew C. Zenos Lecture Series at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago, Theissen took up four controversial topics in both early Christianity and the modern world: political revolution, benevolence, peace. and human value. He carefully situated the position or positions taken by the early church on these four topics within the historical, socioeconomic and political contexts. Theissen’s work illumines the complex world inhabited and confronted by the early church, and can stimulate important insights on our modem social dilemmas and inform appropriate Christian responses.

Consider the question, Did the Jesus movement have a revolutionary character ? Defining revolutions as "sudden changes in the struggle for distribution [of power, fortune, education and status] and legitimacy, in which the structure of distribution is changed without keeping to the rules of valid social and cultural life," Theissen distinguished between a power-revolution (which the Christians believed God would bring in God’s kingdom) and a value-revolution in which "the lower classes as well as outsiders assumed the outlooks and standards of the upper classes." In a climate of increasing separation between upper-and lower-class values in the Jewish society of first-century Palestine (witness the "pagan" lifestyle of the Herodian ruling class) , the Jesus movement called for a return to the traditional kingly values of power, wealth and education -- but now possessed by the lower classes. In order to understand fully the revolutionary character of this value shift, one must understand that the appellations "son of God," "peacemaker," "lover of enemies," "benefactor" and "wise one" in Greco-Roman antiquity belonged to the emperor or the king. The novelty of the Jesus movement’s value-revolution was not in its espoused values (which are aristocratic) as much as in who claimed them: "People who had been persecuted, and considered to be the lowest of the low, claimed to realize that which the propaganda of the rulers had always merely promised."

Yet the value-revolution which the Jesus movement called for entailed more than just a switching of chairs in the political paradigm. The Jesus movement was not, according to Theissen, a political revolution, but a charismatic movement which defined a strategy not of social reform but of cooperation with the kingdom of God, which will come of itself. In anticipation of the coming kingdom, humankind can do three things: pray, perform miracles, and engage in ethical and religious change and renewal. Here Theissen pointed to the unavoidable ambivalence of New Testament social teaching: it offers an explosively political vision without a political strategy. The enduring legacy of this ambivalence continues to be played out today in Latin America, South Africa, Poland, Northern Ireland and throughout the globe, as Christians seek to enact this revolution of values amid great conflict about appropriate Christian political strategies, focusing precisely on the contents of this prescribed "ethical and religious change and renewal."

On the matter of redistributing goods and helping others, Theissen argued that in early Christianity we find a merging and mutual correction of two different structures of social benevolence: that of the ancient Near Eastern authoritarian monarchies, in which charity and compassion are shown by the upper classes to the lower classes, and’ that of the Greco-Roman republican townships, in which philanthropia is extended between persons of equal social status. The former type of help within the socially stratified communities of early Christianity has long been recognized, but Theissen challenged the view that it is the only model for help which we find there. He rightly and ominously warned that if it were, "the Christian ethic of charity and compassion would be a morality dependent on authoritarian social structures." He uncovers in early Christianity a form of benevolence in which those who receive help in turn help others, through a work-ascetic motif" of fasting and hard work. This practice receives even greater impetus in the "moral aggressive motif" of hostility to wealth in early Christianity. Theissen does not hesitate to bring his observation to bear on the modern world: "I am convinced that we need both the responsible rich benefactor and the great social program. But we should evaluate them by the criterion of whether the recipient of help is participating in the process of help as an equal and is empowered or not.. . Early Christianity developed (together with Judaism) a form of social aid which fulfills this criterion." The insidiousness and collapse of the American welfare system, precisely because it fails to meet this criterion, graphically illustrate Theissen’s point. If we listen to the full legacy of the early church’s social aid teachings and practices, we may be redirected toward more humane and effective forms of social welfare that do not perpetuate the very political systems that occasion such inequities.

In the shadow of nuclear weapons and the fear of nuclear suicide, Theissen looked at concepts of peace in antiquity and early Christianity. He argued that there was a correlation in antiquity, a "socio-mythic parallelism," between actual military success or defeat and religious symbolism and expectation. During times of military success (such as during the Maccabean period) , one finds a militarized religious imagination, and during times of military defeat or impotence a corresponding demilitarized religious imagination (such as with Philo of Alexandria and Jesus of Nazareth under the all-encompassing grip of the Pax Romana, the peace of the Roman Empire)

Having shown the extent to which religious convictions are shaped by sociopolitical factors, Theissen proceeded to demonstrate the creative power of religion as it responds to challenges from the socio-political order. In particular, the early Christian concept of peace, the Pax Christi, a "social peace" that does not depend on military power, developed as a response to the military control and success of the Pax Romana. Indeed, only under the umbrella of the Pax Romana could the formulation of the Pax Christi have been achieved. The resulting early Christian social peace is a demilitarized but not depoliticized peace. This social peace refers first of all to the relations inside the Christian communities, and then to non-Christians, and finally to the Pax Romana.

Theissen concluded that for the modern world, peace must also be a concern of all, not just of the governing classes. But he emphasized that where we differ from the early church is in our motivation for peace: we seek peace out of fear, fear of nuclear, annihilation. From his analysis emerges perhaps the most important task of all for modern Christians: Christians should not only advocate peace to fend off the negative threat of nuclear war, but must articulate, espouse and live a positive vision and motivation for peace that is grounded in the biblical tradition. For American Christians this also raises the serious question of historical memory. How powerful can the image of peace be in a country where, for example, half of its schoolchildren cannot identify Adolf Hitler or Vietnam? To the extent that Theissen has shown how religious visions of peace are of necessity linked with military and political conditions, this failure of American historical memory may well ultimately destroy the power of the religious imagination and its symbols.

Finally, Theissen explored the conceptions of human worth in both philosophical humanism (exemplified especially in ancient Stoic philosophy) and biblical humanism (in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament) The test case for these systems of thought is their attitude toward people at the top or fringe of the social order: emperor, slaves, aliens and barbarians, and women. Where philosophical humanism attributes intrinsic value to each human being because all have a shire of the divine wisdom or reason within them, biblical humanism attributes value to each human being because she or he is made in the image of the great Creator. It is for this reason that biblical humanism, unlike philosophical humanism, can affirm human worth not merely independent of but in contradistinction to earthly status. This difference, is ultimately rooted in their respective cosmologies: philosophical humanism sees the world order as determined (and therefore sanctioned) by the divine reason, whereas biblical humanism contains an apocalyptic vision that awaits a great cataclysm and an eschatological reversal. Both the biblical and philosophical humanisms that emerged in the first and second centuries C.E. were fostered by and responded to two enormous social changes: new discrepancies of status (the same person could occupy more than one role in a pluralistic and mobile society) , and the downward mobility of values. Because these same circumstances are prevalent in the modern world, the clash between philosophical and biblical humanisms continues in our time. In American society, I would argue, this clash can be seen in the nature of our anonymous individualism. This individualism has dismissed both the extrinsic and the intrinsic value of each human being in favor of material and professional indices of success that most people believe are due to luck as much as anything else (hence the increasing popularity of lotteries) Because the apocalyptic worldview of the early church has now been replaced with the desperate and meaningless finality of possible nuclear annihilation, eschatological expectations and hope for reversal of human fortunes have given way to a "present-only" scheme of refetence even in Christian theology. This ultimately can only evade the questions of justice and theodicy that the eschatological vision (however inadequately) answered.

Theissen’s Zenos Lectures have provided a significant paradigm for analyzing the social teachings of early Christianity within their complex and specific situations. Modern efforts to seek social justice, which recognize more and more the need for sophisticated social-economic analysis, cannot leave that insight behind when seeking guidance from the Bible. Comparing Theissen’s reconstruction of the early church’s social teachings and practices with the situations faced by modern American Christianity suggests that some of the varieties and conflicts we observe today are natural and perhaps inevitable outgrowths of the early church. This insight is both illuminating and disturbing. At the same time, we need to acknowledge points of dissimilarity between the early church’s teaching and that of the modern church, especially those that speak of peace.

In the final analysis, however, we are left with the question, of the role of these New Testament social teachings in the life of the church. As a social historian, Theissen assumes that the New Testament’s social teachings and the actual social behavior of the communities that preserved and revered these teachings coincided. Could one, however, do accurate social description of modern Christians on the basis of their proclamations?

Coming to Grips With an Aging Church

The rapid decline in birth rates from 1960 to 1980 and the extended life span of people 65 and older have changed the face of many religious institutions. Not many of the aging churches yet match the situation of one church I know, in which 90 percent of the members are 60 years and older. But each year the graying of the congregation increases in synagogues and mainline churches. Only in conservative and fundamentalist churches do younger ages predominate.

In the U.S. today people are generally living longer than in previous years. More than 10 percent of all citizens are over 65. And the elderly population itself is growing older: in 1985 the 65-74 age group was nearly eight times larger than in 1900, the 75-84 group was 11 times larger and the 85-plus group was 22 times larger. All older groups will continue to increase, with aging persons making up one-fifth of the population shortly after the year 2000. By 1990 there may be as many as 50,000 100-year-old Americans.

The Census Bureau projects that the 1986 figure of 29.2 million people 65 and older will jump to 34.9 million by 2000. Ten years later there will be 39.2 million seniors.

In their 1987 study American Mainline Religion: Its Changing Shape and Future (Rutgers University Press) , Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney point out that the percentage of members 50 years of age and older has increased sharply in mainline churches. From 1957 to 1963 the number of 50-and-over Episcopalians increased from 36 to 47 percent; the rise for United Methodists was from 40 to 49 percent; for Lutherans 36 to 45; for Presbyterians 42 to 49; and for Baptists 33 to 40. White Protestants are older than black Protestants, and liberal Protestants are older than conservative and fundamentalist Protestants. Black Protestants and conservative Protestants have both maintained larger numbers in the 18-34 and the 35-54 groups.

The United Church of Christ and the Church of Christ, Scientist, have the oldest constituencies, with mean ages of more than 50. Pentecostal and Holiness church members, on the other hand, have a mean age of 41.2. Whereas almost 40 percent of the nation’s population belongs to the 18-34 age category, only 26 percent of the Reformed Church, 21 percent of the United Church of Christ, and 26 percent of the United Methodists fall into that bracket.

The spectacular growth in the number of people of mature age in our country has been accompanied by a parallel increase in organizations and service agencies concerned about aging. Groups such as the American Association of Retired Persons have had a marked increase in numbers and importance. Congressional actions have broadened and enlarged Social Security, Medicare and other benefits.

But the churches and other religious groups lag behind, rarely responding to the changes in their membership. For example, the Religious Education Association (REA) , an organization supported by the mainline churches, recently conducted a study on the relation between religious faith and human development. The survey divided people into age categories of 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, and 50 and above. To a gerontologist, such a breakdown is misguided, for there is as much difference between 50 and 60 or 70 and 80 as there is between all those age groups and any younger category. Those who set up the study apparently didn’t recognize that even people "over 50" have different lives, expectations, problems and outlooks. The REA’s conclusions concerning the "50 and above" group are bound to be faulty, and its assumptions seem symptomatic of churches’ and synagogues’ general ignorance of the fundamental changes taking place in their own organizations.

A small number of national churches and synagogues maintain special aging offices, with staffs and budgets, and some of these Orthodox, Jewish, Protestant and Catholic bodies are members of the National Interfaith Coalition on Aging. But they represent less than 10 percent of the more than 250 U.S. religious bodies. One Protestant church is currently phasing out its Office on Aging, and will later incorporate gerontological concerns in its Education and Congregational Nurture Unit. A rough sampling of denominational publications reveals only occasional references to the aging situation.

There is also limited concern about issues of aging at the local church level. While serving as a volunteer consultant for the Interreligious Liaison (IRL) office of the AARP, I wrote to 20 leaders of New Mexico’s denominations concerning programs they might wish to setup. I offered to provide films, literature, speakers and even promotion funds to help them put on a conference on the church and aging. I received only two-replies.

Perhaps churches identify aging with failure, dying churches, or even death itself. As membership totals decline, older people may be seen as the culprits. But the healthiest segment of today’s church is its senior membership. Membership decline can be blamed on secularization, on the breakdown of earlier loyalties, or on the greater freedom and independence, of the younger generation, but not on aging itself or on the aging.

Those clergy inclined to blame or ignore the aging may know little about them. Only a very small number of seminaries offer solid accredited courses on the implications of a graying church for ministry. Earl N. Kragnes of the IRL/AARP estimates that perhaps only 20 seminaries even offer pastoral courses on the topic. A few seminaries consider these courses basic to the theological education of prospective ministers and rabbis, and therefore require them for graduation. Occasionally they are incorporated in courses on pastoral theology. One seminary student responded to my inquiry, however, by saying: "Sure, we have courses on the implications of gerontology for the ministry. We do the same thing medical schools do with their classes on geriatric medicine: they are scheduled for 8:00 AM. Saturday!" In an article on ministry and aging in a recent issue of the Connection, published by the American Society on Aging, James Seeber listed only three outstanding seminary aging programs.

The National Interfaith Coalition (NICA) and the IRL/AARP have worked together to educate seminaries on the need to include this new discipline. In 1985, 50 seminary professors and deans gathered to consider what courses should be taught and how they could encourage and stimulate the seminaries to teach gerontological insights in theology.

More recently the IRL/AARP office published a substantial document: Aging Society -- A Challenge to Theological Education. Twenty-four scholars in eight disciplines prepared stimulating material suggesting a theological basis for seminaries to consider and later provide courses in the church and aging field. Both NICA and the AARP hope that gerontological insights will someday pervade the entire seminary curriculum.

It will probably be some years before most national religious bodies set up offices on aging, or before a significant number of theological institutions add gerontology-informed courses to their curricula. Even more years will pass before trained seminarians move out into the local parishes and engage in a ministry fully sensitive to all age groups in the congregation and the larger community. What may arouse the churches to new efforts is the coming wave of aging baby-boomers. But it is crucial that local leaders -- lay as well as clergy -- begin to lead churches in an enlarged ministry, one that takes full measure of the age structure of the congregation.

Leaders must see the graying of their churches as both a serious responsibility and a golden opportunity. The responsibility is to render service to older parishioners and to other seniors in the community. The opportunity lies in the mature manpower and womanpower within each church that can be inspired, directed and put to work in the local church or in a creative neighborhood ministry.

Perhaps the first thing a local church can do is tackle the issue of how aging is viewed. Far too many limiting and condescending stereotypes about aging still exist. Women and men of advanced years are not the grannies or funny old men depicted in the comic strips or on TV. They are not even what parents and grandparents were a generation ago; they are a new creation, something unique in history. They have a vital present and a hopeful future. They have much to give both to their families and to the larger society.

More accurate assessments of aging must also touch older people themselves. Whereas many of them are fully emancipated from the stereotypes -- Shakespeare’s "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything" -- demeaning characterizations are still too common. Some churches are helping people of advancing years recognize their range of possibilities. Churches genuinely concerned about a rich and abundant life for all persons can begin a vital ministry with the aging.

The relation of the church to its older members has been seen mostly as a one-way street: ministry to and for seniors. But as Arthur Flemming suggested to the NICA/AARP conference for seminary faculty in 1985, the church can minister not only to and for older persons but by, with and through them. Some churches now see themselves as service agencies whose aim and purpose is to use all their members, old as well as young, in serving the frail elderly and other older people in need. In The Role of the Church in Aging: Implications for Policy and Action Michael C. Hendrickson wrote:

The appropriateness of the religious sector serving as a principal provider for the elderly can be supported for a number of reasons. First, it represents a multi-institutional, strategically dispersed set of facilities and agencies which are in close proximity to where the majority of older persons live. . . . Second, churches, collectively, have been the main gatekeepers of the volunteer resources in this country. As such, they are strategically poised to organize and equip the volunteers needed to serve as informal care givers for the frail elderly.

Many churches are training older volunteers to engage in a unique ministry. A survey of the local congregation determines what members or neighborhood people are housebound, needing companionship or more detailed attention like Meals on Wheels, grocery shopping or transportation to the doctor. Included here are regular visits to nursing homes, whose residents are usually the most neglected and the worst-off of the older age groups, sometimes forced to endure shocking conditions. These important services require no special training beyond serious concern and faithfulness.

Meeting some needs does require special training, however. Social agencies can counsel religious leaders as to how their people may best serve others with special needs. Retired Senior Volunteer Persons can provide a community list as to where church volunteers are needed.

Perhaps the most acute aging issue today is long-term care: keeping the frail elderly in their own homes and out of nursing homes. This topic is now before Congress, but it is also a local concern, and religious bodies can provide creative alternatives such as homemaker services and adult day-care centers to enable older folk to continue their lives in familiar surroundings.

Churches can obtain books on the aging issue, as well as "how to" manuals through denominational channels and secular sources. There is a new Journal of Religion and Aging, and raw materials are available through NICA (Athens, Georgia) and IRL/AARP (Washington, D.C.) Haworth Press in New York also has a small library of excellent recent books on the broader theme.

One hopes local efforts will set in motion a trickle-up effect, inspiring more home boards and committees to look squarely at the fact of an aging church. Both enlarged and refined community and national efforts are essential. Does the church know it’s aging? Has it acted on that knowledge? Only in part. There is much yet to be done to meet the new opportunity for service.

The Homeless: On the Street, on the Road

In August, starting from our home in Ohio. we drove our sultry, un-air-conditioned, ten-year-old Buick west, searching out the homeless and talking with shelter providers who act as their advocates. We had already spent time in the East working on a book about the homeless. Now we wanted to meet their counterparts in the Midwest and Far West. We listened to them on streets, under bridges, beside boxcars, in shelters, parks, Travelers Aid offices, their own dilapidated autos and ours. As we talked with shelter providers, we also became involved in debates over responsibility of the church and of the state for care of the homeless.

Who are they? Unlike the skid-row “derelicts” who seemed to be the typical homeless in the ‘60s, the street people today embrace the whole gamut of humanity: the “new poor,” the mentally disabled, evicted families, elderly single people, hoboes, alcoholics, drug addicts, abused spouses, abused young people and cast-off children. Everywhere we were told that their numbers were growing, even in summer, and that the increase in the number of single women and of families was of special concern.

How did they get to the streets? Not surprisingly, loss of jobs is the primary factor. Another precipitating cause is loss of social benefits. Many mentally and physically disabled people who once qualified for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) have been declared ineligible. Hundreds of thousands of “working poor” families who received supplemental Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) have been eliminated from the rolls or have had their benefits drastically cut. Sixteen-year-olds in AFDC families are now excluded from the budget if they drop out of school. Hence many leave home in order to ease the burden on their families. Food stamps, Medicaid and nutritional and social services have been cut, so that many people must dip into resources reserved for housing.

Alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence are other causes. They can hardly be separated from economic factors. Unemployed husbands unaccustomed to spending full days with boisterous children have been taking out their frustration on their families. Domestic violence has been on the rise everywhere.

Between 40 and 70 per cent of the homeless in various American cities are mentally disabled. Most are victims of the nationwide policy of deinstitutionalization that has dominated the mental-health field since the mid-’60s. The rationale is that patients belong in communities, and that with psychotropic drugs, patients’ behavior can be controlled through regular visits to neighborhood mental-health centers. The reality is that most of the centers envisioned were never built. Thousands of patients have been discharged without a plan providing for outpatient treatment, or even for housing and SSI benefits. Many ex-patients wandering the streets do not know their rights, and cannot navigate the welfare system.

One of the most widespread causes of homelessness is displacement. As downtown areas are “gentrified,” as convention centers rise to puncture the skyline, families dwelling in cheap apartments or disabled single people living on Supplemental Security Income in single-room occupancy hotels are shoved out. Rarely does the city take responsibility to find them housing. In the absence of a meaningful federal housing program, their only alternatives are paying for housing that can easily cost over 50 per cent of their income, begging for space on the floor of a relative’s crowded apartment -- or wandering the streets.

Yet if one talks to those who must call the street “home,” one discovers that their stories are never simple. Rarely does a single cause account for a homeless person’s situation. We remember, for instance, a thin, blond Ohio woman with hunted eyes and a twitching mouth. A widow with three children, Janice had had a part-time clerical job paying minimum wage; her total earned income then was $215 a month. Until 1982, through a complex system of employment “disregards” designed to provide an incentive to work, she had also received a supplement of $237 from AFDC. When the employment “disregards” were cut, leaving her with only the mandatory work deduction of $50 (intended to make up for taxes, transportation and lunches), she was left with an income of only $377 ($150 above the maximum AFDC payment in Ohio for a family of four). From this she had to pay $220 in rent. Two months later she was evicted. After spending three nights in a craterlike abandoned building, she and the children found asylum in a temporary shelter. But the stress of the situation, compounded by the heritage of abuse she had suffered in childhood, took their toll. As her employers put it, Janice began acting “peculiar.” They decided to include her in layoffs. Today she and her children are separated; they live in a foster home, she in a shelter. While Janice is getting therapy, she has not found a job. Her depression has scarcely changed. The shelter may soon close for lack of funds.

Most of the homeless on the road might be classified as “new poor.” In reality, there are two categories of new poor, we discovered: members of the middle class and those who always were marginally poor, but more recently have plunged into destitution.

All the wandering jobless to whom we offered a ride belonged to the second group. These “flew poor” had always had insecure jobs as waiters, gardeners, maintenance men, nonunionized factory hands, assistant mechanics, assistant carpenters, assistant electricians -- and other assistants. “I can do anything,” we heard over and over. But unlike the tinkers of another era, these people had no societal status. Marginal though they were, our car companions held “middle-class values”: they were clean, neat and polite; they even refused offers of food. With bravado, they spoke of the next job. Most of them disliked sleeping in missions or shelters, which they associated with “bums.” Instead, they slept under the stars, in bus stations, at truck stops, or -- when they had a few dollars -- in run-down hotels. From time to time, they used missions for showers, or as a last ditch. Always they made a careful distinction between themselves and hoboes. They would rather risk the dangers of being robbed by a motorist or being jailed for hitchhiking than the perils of being jammed together with the rough riders of the rails.

Hoboes represent only a small fraction of the homeless, although their numbers appear to be growing. Those we met projected the same romantic image of themselves that the public seems to hold. “We’re antiestablishment,” the “grand duke of the hoboes” told us in Denver “We need to be free, and we like excitement. Passengers never see or feel what we do on top of a boxcar, as the train speeds through deserts and mountains.”

Yet most hoboes also work, if sporadically: they pick fruit, wash dishes, take maintenance jobs. They also sell their blood. Some admit that if they could do it all over again, they’d choose a job and a home. Indeed, the rallying cry at the hobo convention in Portland, Oregon, this summer was a demand that the government furnish jobs.

One of the biggest hassles for the homeless on the road as well as those on city streets is struggling with an inequitable, irrational welfare system. Although AFDC is a national program, the ratio between federal and state contributions varies from state to State. Thus, in New York, a mother and three children could receive as much as $297 plus $253 worth of food stamps and a housing allowance of up to $218. In Ohio, the same family would receive $327 and $253 worth of food stamps, but no housing allowance. Few states pay for housing. In the Supplemental Security Income program, designed to support the indigent blind, disabled and aged, the federal government pays a minimum “floor” (now $304 monthly for an individual with zero income) and allows states to add to that sum. Most do not.

General Relief (also known as General Assistance) is the lowest category of all. Its Overt purpose is to help singles and childless couples under 65 whose unemployment benefits have run out, or who were never eligible in the first place. Its covert purpose seems to be to exclude the “undeserving poor” from “handouts,” for it is based on the implicit assumption that chronically unemployed people who are neither disabled nor aged are able to find work. The federal government contributes nothing to General Relief. Hence it varies from state to state, and even from county to county. In out Ohio county, the OR recipient gets $116 monthly (to pay for rent and all personal expenses), together with $76 worth of food stamps. In San Francisco, his or her counterpart receives $248 plus food stamps. In many states GR does not even exist. Reno, Nevada, for example, derives millions of dollars in revenue from casinos and slot machines, but provides no GR program. Nor does it maintain a public shelter. The penniless transient is eligible for a limited stay in one of two missions -- plus free directions to California.

Those wandering jobless who do make it to states with GR find that their hopes for a bit of security are illusory. Although San Francisco offers $248 a month, the average rent in a fleabag hotel is $220. Jobs are extremely hard to find. Eventually many “new poor” join the ranks of the chronically homeless.

The hard-core chronically homeless are the mentally disabled and young people (especially blacks) who have never had a real job and possess no marketable skills. While many of the latter become addicted to alcohol or narcotics, it is usually their idleness and hopelessness that lead to abuse, and thence to the vicious cycle of joblessness/homelessness/Substance abuse.

For the mentally disabled, in particular, survival hangs on tenuous threads. In the tight housing situation, SRO hotels discriminate against them because they are seen as strange, lice-ridden and noisy. When SSI checks fail to arrive on time, many are unable to muster their forces for a trip to the welfare office. Those few domiciled in foster homes frequently are so neglected, or even mistreated, that it is little wonder that some leave and take to “sleeping rough.”

Life on the streets is compounded of fear, frustration and boredom. Fear of freezing to death, or of torrential rains that can be as bone-penetrating as the cold. Fear of younger homeless men who prey on old men and on women. Among teen-agers, fear that authorities will pick them up and send them back to the unhappy situation from which they are running away. For almost all of the homeless, fear of the police.

Frustration hounds those who line up at welfare offices, only to be told that they haven’t filled in the 14^th sheet of a 15-sheet form, or that the worker can’t answer their questions. (In our informal survey, almost never did a welfare worker know the regulations or the standard of benefits in another department.) It hounds those who stand in line for an hour or more, sometimes in the rain or snow, to get a meal in a soup kitchen. It dogs those who spend their days hunting for an unpoliced spot to put their heads down to sleep, or a place where they can defecate in private. Perhaps nothing destroys one’s dignity more than having to relieve oneself in an alley.

Boredom: What does one do with a day that seems to stretch out infinitely before one? Only a few cities have drop-in centers where one can retreat from the elements, shower, wash clothes and watch television. Passersby seem to look through one. Companions are often too exhausted to talk. A sense of worth disintegrates. Even if one has never drunk before, one drinks now, in order to be able to absorb a little more cold and discomfort and harassment, to soften the edges of hopelessness. One drinks to feel that one is somebody.

Basically there are four types of shelters: missions, church-affiliated centers, public shelters, and those supported by some combination of church, public and private funds.

The shelters vary enormously. Some are so bad that it is not surprising that a few of the homeless(a minority) prefer the streets. Other shelters are true havens. The larger ones are more apt to be dirty and dangerous. A few have only one toilet for a hundred or more men. Most close their doors tight at 6:00 or 7:00 A.M. The rationale is that everyone should be out looking for work (even the aged, and the physically and mentally disabled). The larger the shelter, the more regimentation.

The missions themselves vary from city to city. At the 200-bed Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, every new client is confronted with a spiritual counselor whose mission is to save him from perdition. The director holds the men in line by yelling at them, and carries a huge ring of keys, locking himself into his office when talking with visitors, and locking every door shut as he takes them on a room-to-room tour. At the 15-bed Salvation Army mission in Laramie, Wyoming, the young director exacts no penitence. Instead, he cooks dinner for his guests, then sits down at the brightly painted kitchen table to listen to them. Although a few Salvation Army missions still require a sermon for supper, most directors have come to the conclusion that you cannot force religion on others. Most missions, whatever their religious perspective, are apolitical: they are more concerned with individual souls than with the social causes of homelessness.

Church-affiliated shelters tend to be smaller and their atmosphere more familial than their public counterparts. Like a great many missions, some of the shelters run by church groups make a point of managing without any government support.

Only a few Cities (notably New York, Boston, Chicago and Washington, D.C.) run public shelters. In almost all cases, they have been established only after a protracted struggle with groups of concerned citizens. Public shelters are often located in armories or abandoned schools, and the atmosphere is institutional. Yet in the absence of enough private shelters, they are indispensable.

Actually, many of the public shelters are run by a church group or a council of churches on contract to the city. Another arrangement is for the city to reimburse cheap hotels or private shelters for lodging clients who come to the city’s emergency services. A third example of public/private cooperation is one in which local government contributes block-grant funds or technical assistance to a project directed by church groups.

One such cooperative venture is the Downtown Emergency Service Center in Seattle, opened in 1979 through the efforts of the Church Council of Seattle and other groups. Today it is funded by the city (in the form of block-grant money), the county (which supports two mental-health case manager positions), the United Way, churches, businesses and individual donors. The churches provide many volunteers, the backbone of most shelters.

In the center, which is said to receive “the dregs of humanity in Seattle,” 230 people sleep in the two barnlike rooms. At eight o’clock in the evening the men in one room are sleeping or reading on floor mats, while others watch television or play cards with noisy gusto. In one corner, guests drink black coffee and talk. In the other room, a section has been fenced off for older men, most of whom are sleeping. The larger section is reserved for women. Some lie staring up at the ceiling. Some toss fitfully in their sleep. Three groups of women sit in circles on their mats, exchanging experiences.

The program director tells us that the level of violence has dropped drastically, but it has taken a lot of work. “I walk back and forth all night, listening to those who moan or can’t sleep, counseling them. We’ve allowed them to come in at noon -- and they line up long before that, even in summer. They see it as safe, as a refuge from the streets. We don’t have the resources to serve food, only black coffee. But we’ve started women’s groups, referral services, and medical services staffed by volunteers. We’re trying to create a milieu in which people can develop their strengths and discover that they can help others, too.”

A few people in the field maintain that government should assume complete responsibility for the homeless. At the other end of the spectrum is the philosophy represented by the Catholic Worker: all big government is dangerous; caritas emerges not from the tax system but from changing hearts and minds. If every household took in one homeless person, there would be no need for shelters or a welfare system. In any case, to depend on outside resources is hazardous. The best shelters are small, are sponsored by the parish, and reflect that community’s concern. Such refuges are quietly opening all over the country, people in the Catholic Worker houses of hospitality told us.

In reality, most clients and shelter providers -- and even many public officials -- agree that the private and religious sectors can do a better job than the city. Their shelters are less bureaucratic; the staff is motivated by the belief that before God every human being has worth. Moreover, the operating expenses of public shelters generally range from $10 to $20 a day per client; many private church-run facilities run on two dollars a day.

Yet most church-affiliated shelter providers have concluded that they cannot do the job without government assistance. The numbers of homeless continue to grow; the department of Health and Human Services, headed by a Reagan appointee, Richard Schweiker. reported in late November that estimates of homeless persons across the nation have risen from 1.5 million to 2 million. Despite President Reagan’s easy predictions, churches and voluntary groups have never been able to fill the gap caused by federal cuts in social programs. “Our resources are stretched to the limit,” church leaders tell government officials. “But give us funds, buildings, technical aid, and we’ll do the nitty-gritty work.”

Unfortunately, most cities are burdened with heavy financial problems, many of them caused by federal cuts. The federal response is barely perceptible. In December 1982 the House subcommittee on housing and community development held hearings entitled “Homelessness in America.” Shelter providers, homeless people, city officials, governors and clergy presented statistics testifying eloquently to the desperate need. Many practical proposals were presented, including requests for more community development block-grant funds, the use of empty federal buildings, the release of surplus food from federal depositories and relaxation of SSI restrictions. The jobs bill that was finally passed provided only $100 million for both food projects and shelter programs. If one counts 2 million Americans as homeless and another 2 million as hungry, the quotient is $25 per person. The recently passed housing bill did include $60 million for shelter, but nothing for food projects. This is a mere drop in the bucket of need.

Despite these frustrations, cooperative ventures between the public and private sectors are growing. In Cleveland, two shelters for battered women have been staffed by Catholic nuns and professional social workers; support has come from churches, private donations, block grants and a special surcharge on Ohio marriage licenses. In Chicago, the only public shelter that includes men is administered by Catholic Charities. In Washington, D.C., confrontations with groups of concerned citizens resulted in the city’s agreement to open three public schools for public shelter. Today the District of Columbia supplies the funds, while the Council of Churches administers the program.

New York City has worked out what may well be a model arrangement with an ecumenical network of 110 churches and synagogues (collectively known as the Partnership for the Homeless) which either open their own doors or provide volunteers, resources and guest referrals. Last winter they provided beds for more than 450 people a night (out of a homeless population estimated to number at least 36,000). Now Partnership is working with the mayor’s office and other concerned groups on a more ambitious plan: rehabilitation of more than 1,000 city-owned apartments to provide permanent housing for almost 4,000 homeless families and individuals. At a cost of at least $28 million, the project represents the first large-scale attempt to give the homeless a chance to qualify for an affordable home.

The churches have risen to the challenge of homelessness better than other sectors of society. Nevertheless, some religious leaders would agree with John Steinbruck, pastor of Luther Place Memorial Church in Washington, D.C., who charges that “the churches have not done enough. Some in Washington have spent millions for new facades and nothing on the homeless. It’s easier to get into Fort Knox than into most churches. Too many have forgotten the biblical mandate to welcome the sojourner. A church should be a hospice.”

Steinbruck’s church is just that. A chapel in the building becomes an emergency shelter for women each night. Houses belonging to the church have been transformed into a network that includes a clinic, a free food store, a day center for women, two transitional shelters for women, a temporary shelter for refugee families and a home for Lutheran Volunteer Corps members who serve the homeless and hungry.

Other churches have welcomed the homeless by allowing them to sleep in the pews. Still others use a hall in the church, rent buildings in the neighborhood or press the city to make warehouses and schools available.

Some churches, looking beyond emergency shelter, have joined with others to buy up decaying apartment buildings and rehabilitate them into decent low-cost housing. A few have transformed single-room occupancy hotels into semipermanent residences with supportive services.

Shelters are not the real answer to homelessness in the richest and most powerful country in the world. They are a Band-Aid on wounds whose source lies in the very structure of our society. But they do represent one step, an action in which almost anyone can become involved. Working to create a safety network of hospices may help us to reflect on the causes of homelessness, and to ponder the paradoxes of power.

Thomas Berry and a New Creation Story

Yet despite all these developments a Yale study has found that in America, the more a person participates in religious services, the less concern he or she is likely to have for nature. Many people of faith are calling religious groups to confront the attitudes that have fostered a progressive devastation of our planet, and to fulfill the biblical mandate to assume stewardship over the natural world.

Is stewardship enough? Do we need a more profound identity with the natural world, one that sees human and other earthly beings as members of a single community? This is the view of Thomas Berry, a Passionist priest who calls himself a geologian, a prominent spokesperson of what is often termed the eco-spiritual movement.

Christians need a new cosmology, a new creation story, says Berry. We must understand the universe as something both psychic-spiritual and material-physical. Human beings are integral to it -- indeed, the human is "that being in whom the universe reflects upon and celebrates itself in a special mode of conscious self-awareness."

"We have lost our sense of courtesy toward the earth and its inhabitants, our sense of gratitude, our willingness to recognize the sacred character of habitat, our capacity for the awesome, for the numinous quality of every earthly reality," he writes. Berry believes that the capacity for intensive sharing with the natural world lies within us, but has become repressed by an addiction to "progress." We have arrogantly assumed control over other creatures, deluding ourselves with the notion that we know best what is good for the earth and ourselves. Ultimately, custody of the earth belongs to the entire earth community.

Such ideas do not always sit well with traditional Christians, nor with the followers of the other two principal Semitic religions, Islam and Judaism. Yet Father Berry does not fit the common image of a radical nonconformist. He is a soft-spoken, retiring person with a gentle smile, bright eyes and disheveled, whitening hair. Those who sit in his plant-filled sun veranda overlooking the Hudson find their eyes drawn to the majestic red oak outside the window. This great tree has endured more than 400 years of nature’s buffets, and has withstood even human-made disasters, like the massive tremors from a gas tank explosion that uprooted a neighbor oak several years ago. To Berry it stands as a symbol of hope. Indeed, he chose to dedicate his book The Dream of the Earth to "the Great Red Oak beneath whose sheltering branches this book was written."

The Riverdale Center for Religious Research, which Berry founded in 1970, is his present home. He calls it a place for "studying the dynamics of the planet earth and the role fulfilled by humans within the functioning of the universe." Situated across from the Palisades, it is a fitting place to contemplate the fate of the earth, and to meet with scientists, educators, environmentalists and people of many faiths from all over the world. He speaks often at conferences, and although he sometimes looks frail, he finds it difficult to say No. He seems, at age 74, to be propelled by a sense of urgency.

Berry has always felt an affinity with fellow earth-creatures. Throughout his boyhood years in Greensboro, North Carolina, he often roamed the hills, delighting in the flowing streams, the singing birds and the meadows. "Even at the age of eight," he recalls, "I saw that development was damaging nature."

Early on he decided that monastery life would provide the best environment for contemplation and writing. He spent ten years in various Passionist monasteries, pursued his doctorate in history at Catholic University, then spent a year studying Chinese in Peking. Later he became chaplain with NATO in Germany, traveled in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and went to England to meet Christopher Dawson, the distinguished historian of cultures. Berry taught Japanese and Chinese history at Seton Hall University, helped found an interuniversity faculty seminar on Oriental thought and religion at Columbia University and an Asian Institute at St. John’s, established Fordham’s history of religions program, became an adviser to Global Education Associates and served as president of the American Teilhard Association. Throughout these years he has furthered his studies of the American Indian world. His knowledge of Sanskrit and Chinese has enabled him to delve even deeper into the classics of the Eastern religious traditions.

As the ecological crisis deepened, Berry became convinced that it is not enough to seek technological solutions. An effective response requires a more profound change in our vision, developed in a religious context. Western religious traditions, however, are too distant from this new sense of the universe, he says. Indeed, Christianity has encouraged our alienation from the natural world. The Bible’s emphasis on a transcendent, personal, monotheistic deity has diminished our sense of divinity in nature. Especially since the 16th century,, Christianity has focused on redemption and paid relatively little attention to creation experience. Although a general sensitivity to the natural world persisted in Christian consciousness up through the Middle Ages (witness the medieval bestiaries) , gradually nature slipped out of that consciousness. Classica1 Christian theology stressed the spiritual nature of humans as against the physical nature of other beings. It considered the natural world to be an object, without subjectivity or rights, and certainly not as participating with humans in a single earth community. Other factors inhibiting the church from developing a new understanding of creation are the patriarchal nature of the ecclesiastical establishment and the expectation of a millennial period in which human strife will be overcome and superseded by a reign of peace and justice.

Berry began to recognize how powerfully religion shapes cultures when he read Dawson’s Religion and Progress. Eric Voegelin’s writings deepened his understanding of how the Bible generated a sense of direction and purpose in Western history. This sense of direction has its creative side, says Berry, but it has also helped erode spontaneous sharing with the natural world, entranced people with the idea of progress, and given them a compulsion to control natural processes. Now we regard scientific technology with the same reverence that classical culture had for religious worldviews. We are consumed by a mystique of management.

Other important Western philosophers who influenced Berry include Thomas Aquinas and Giambattista Vico. From Aquinas he learned that God from the beginning intended integrity and harmony for the total cosmic order. Berry’s idea that we need a planetary socialism -- indeed, an ultimate universal socialism -- is based on Aquinas’s statement that because the divine goodness "could not be adequately represented by one creature alone, he [God] produced many and diverse creatures, that what was wanting to one in the representation of the divine might be supplied by another." Vico’s view of history as a developmental process, involving the age of the gods, the age of the heroes and the age of humans, each age characterized by a distinctive type of consciousness, excited Berry. From this he proposed that humans have moved through five stages of cultural development: the tribal-shamanic, neolithic, classical, scientific-technological, and now the emerging ecological period.

The works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a professional paleontologist as well as Jesuit philosopher, also exerted a formative influence. Teilhard’s importance, Berry believes, lies in his comprehensive vision of the universe as a psychic-spiritual as well as a physical-material process, his perception of the human as the consciousness of the universe, and his shifting of the focus of Western religious concern from redemption to creation. Fundamental to Teilbard’s cosmic perspective is his appreciation of the mystical quality of the scientific venture.

But Berry finds Teilhard’s framework limited for an ecological outlook. Teilhard, he says, fails to comprehend the destructive impact of modem civilization. Fascinated with "progress," he inherited an imperialistic attitude toward human-earth relations. That the most advanced Christian thinker of the century with a scientific background could not see the conflict in those relations is another sign of the inadequacies of our spiritual traditions, says Berry. The challenge now is to illuminate the way into the great age of the Earth community.

Berry’s conception of that community is sweeping. He is influenced by philosophers ranging from Confucius to Thoreau, Whitehead and Bergson, by poet-visionaries extending from Dante to Blake and Chief Seattle, by ecologists from Rachel Carson and Norman Myers to Anne and Paul Erlich, and by scientists from Ilya Prigogine to James Lovelock and Brian Swimme. And he is entranced with the mystery of the universe, the "impulse whereby the primordial fireball flared forth in its enormous energy, a fireball that contained in itself all that would ever emerge into being, a fireball that was the present in its primordial form, as the present is the fireball in its explicated form."

Berry points out that today, many scientists have also become enchanted with that mystery. He quotes physicist Brian Swimme: "The universe shivers with wonder in the depths of the human," and points out that this sense of an emergent universe identical with ourselves gives new meaning to the Chinese sense of forming one body with all things. Physicists, contrasting this view with an anthropocentric worldview, express it in terms of the anthropic principle -- the human is seen as a mode of being of the universe as well as a distinctive being in the universe.

Scientific inquiries have produced a certain atrophy in our responses, Berry says. Even when we recognize our family relations with all beings, we have forgotten the language needed to speak to them. "We find ourselves in an autistic situation." Berry describes a dream of the earth in which "we renew our human participation in the grand liturgy of the universe."

He suggests that the earth dreams itself into existence in the immense variety of its manifestations. This variety is established by genetic codings. Our bonding with the universe, like that of other creatures, is primarily determined through our genetic coding. But humans also need cultural coding, conducted by education, by which we insert ourselves consciously into the renewing processes of the natural world -- and in a sense invent ourselves. The enormous power accrued through our cultural coding spells danger -- and also opportunity.

In the beginning Was the dream, says Berry. The new cultural coding that we need will emerge from the revelatory vh sion that comes in the special moments we describe as "dream."

What changes in our institutions will we need if we are to get from here to there? Berry’s essays on economics, technology, bioregionalism, education and planetary socialism, many of which are incorporated in The Dream of the Earth, provide significant insights on this point. For Berry, the economics of our technological society "is dedicated to the role of moving the greatest amount of natural resources, with the greatest possible efficiency, through the consumer society, to the waste heap that is not the source of new life by way of fertilizing the fields and farms, but a waste heap that is dead-end at best and often enough a toxic source of further death. To increase the speed and volume of this activity is the basic norm of ‘progress.’ " But economics should be seen not simply as a study of marketing, gross national product, trade deficits, budgetary deficits and the like. It is also a religious issue, because both economics and religion are threatened by the disruption of the natural world. "If the water is polluted, it can neither be drunk nor used for baptism. Both in its physical reality and in its psychic symbolism, it is a source not of life, but of death." Hence the ethical imperative to go beyond questioning the industrial economy itself. As it stands today, that economy is not sustainable.

Berry’s ideas for a more functional economy are strongly influenced by those of naturalist Aldo Leopold, who outlined in his essay "A Land Ethic" principles that should guide human-earth relationships. British economist E. F. Schumacher, especially his essay praising Buddhist economics, has also influenced Berry. Schumacher’s vision of an economics devoted not to consumption but to attaining given ends with the minimum means, and his promotion of what he calls appropriate technologies (such as implements that local farmers and manufacturers can fashion and/or maintain themselves) , are fundamental, to Berry’s vision of a context for re-inhabiting the earth.

His proposal calls for local patterns of production, distribution and technologies appropriate to our habitat, appropriate lifestyles and appropriate human-earth relations. A model of this is the concept of bio-regions, which Berry defines as "identifiable geographical regions with mutually supporting life-systems that are relatively self-sustaining." Bio-regionalism is based on an ecological vision; it is more than environmentalism, which remains an anthropocentric attempt to repair humans’ surroundings. Natural communities should form a context for. every aspect of life say bio-regionalists. Their economies should be labor intensive rather than energy intensive; produce more durable goods to reduce waste; use local materials in building; consume locally grown foods; engage in organic farming; utilize organic garbage; depend on perennial polyculture, aqua-culture and permaculture; favor trains as well as human-powered machines such as bicycles; employ solar power and other on-site modes of producing energy; and in various ways operate on self-nourishing, self-healing, self-governing principles. No bioregion, of course, can be fully self-sustaining. There will be a growing need for global cooperation. But breaking nations down into appropriate bioregional communities could promote peace.

In moving toward this paradigm, we need not forego all our technological advances, says Berry. On the contrary, we shall need science and technology more than ever. However, our new technologies must harmonize with nature, which is not always benign, but is consistently creative in the larger patterns of its actions.

As for education, Berry observes that today colleges rarely offer a program for understanding the marvelous story of the universe in its numinous and psychic as well as scientific dimensions, together with our role in creating the next phases of the story. Even humanistic studies in a core curriculum fail to kindle the energies needed for a more vital human mode of being. Berry proposes his own set of six courses, created on the premise that the earth community itself is the primary educator. They range from study of the evolutionary phases of a functional cosmology to the various phases of human cultural development, the emerging ecological age, and the identification of values. These courses should provide students in professional, general and business education an appreciation for the dynamics of the planet -- an appreciation which is desperately needed today.

Berry sees hope in the outcropping of movements and modes of perception that suggest an awakening. He points to the growth of bio-regionalism, "green" political organizations, and confrontations by activist ecological groups such as Greenpeace and Earth First! He talks about shifts of consciousness revealed in New Age thinkers, countercultural writers and feminist, antipatriarchal movements. On the international level he is encouraged by shifts within the World Bank (such as the hiring of Herman Daly) toward more ecologically viable programs; the spread of vital information through organizations like the World Resources Institute and the Worldwatch Institute and through various United Nations programs; world conferences on the future of the living species; and even stirrings among national and multinational business corporations.

A number of theologians and other intellectuals have criticized Berry’s thought. Some say he exaggerates the extent to which the Bible justifies an exploitative approach toward the natural world. Others claim that college students would find’ his proposed curriculum too distant from their own experience, or that the challenges we face are more complex than rediscovering an integral relationship with the earth, and inevitably involve specific personal and political questions about our own communities. Berry does not repudiate all such criticisms. He listens, sometimes adapts, sometimes replies. But even many of his critics admire his realism, sweeping synthesis, imaginative insights and courage in confronting the narrowness of traditional theology. This prophetic writer challenges all of us. Is the human species viable, or are we careening toward self-destruction, carrying with us our fellow earthlings? Can we move from an anthropocentric to a biocentric vision? How can we help activate the intercommunion of all living and nonliving members of the earth community in the emerging ecological period?

Biologist Paul Ehrlich has declared that to look simply to technology for a solution would be a "lethal mistake," and that "scientific analysis points, curiously, toward a need for a quasi-religious transformation of contemporary cultures." But Berry goes further. It is not enough to attempt to transform contemporary culture, he says. We must move beyond the humanistic ideals that have shaped our cultural traditions and invent, or reinvent, a sustainable human culture by descending into our instinctive resources. There we shall find again the guidance and the energy for renewing the primordial community of all beings

Robert Shaw’s Ministry of Music

After a performance in a shabby industrial town in Tennessee of the Mozart Requiem, which the concert manager had requested the Robert Shaw Chorale not perform because ‘it was too highbrow," a young woman waited for the autograph seekers to depart. "I suppose," she told Shaw quietly, "there are two kinds of people who would understand the Mozart Requiem: those sufficiently skilled in musical materials and literature to appreciate its technical mastery, and those who have lately experienced a deep personal tragedy. I am no musician. Thank you very much."

Robert Lawson Shaw has spent a lifetime in music. He founded the Robert Shaw Chorale, the Collegiate Chorale, the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus. His love of music was nurtured in a California parsonage (his family was known as "the Singing Shaws") and in the church (three generations of Shaws and Lawsons were chaplains, ministers or missionaries) Once asked if it was being a minister’s son that gave him the deep religious convictions that influenced his interpretation of music, he replied, "Yes, partly. But words and ideas have always thrilled me as much as sound, and religious words have always held the most power and meaning for me."

Shaw studied comparative religion, philosophy and English literature at Pomona College with the intention of following his father into the pulpit. But in his junior year Fred Waring stopped by a glee club rehearsal at which Shaw was substituting for the absent conductor. Waring told him, "If you ever need a job, Bob, look me up." One year later, needing money for seminary studies, Shaw did. At age 22, with little prior experience, he accepted Waring’s offer to form a glee club for a new radio series, and his life took a slightly different direction.

Although many people think of Shaw primarily as a choral and orchestral conductor, he might better be considered a minister of music, for he ministers and brings a message through his music to musicians and laypeople. He has long worked to overcome the separation of art and religion, giving numerous addresses on the importance and interrelation of worship and the arts. In singing under Shaw for more than 16 years -- in New York, Cleveland, Puerto Rico and Princeton -- I came to understand how the standards he sets for church musicians and the spiritual values he brings to the concert podium produce the kind of music that so moved that young woman in Tennessee.

On the nature of worship, one of Shaw’s frequent themes, he makes three points. First, for worship to occur, there must be a sense of mystery and an admission of pain. Referring to the lines of two American folk hymns, "What wondrous love is this/which caused the Lord of bliss/to bear the dreadful curse for my soul" and "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound/that saved a wretch like me," Shaw remarks, "These words are magic to me, and their melodies, shaped and worn by Niagaras and years of tears, are as perfect as anything I know in music."

In his youth, he encountered a "shoutier boastier fare," such as "O there’s power, power, wonder working power/In the precious blood of the Lamb." In the great hymns and spirituals of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as in "There is a balm in Gilead/to make the wounded whole," and "Swing low, sweet chariot,/comin’ for to carry me home," he finds "a directness and a fervor of utterance and humility which involves man’s nobility and, to me, a spark of divinity."

How different these hymns are from what he calls the "foulsome flush" to which we are subjected on some religious broadcasts. Shaw deplores the fare emanating from what he calls "Crystal Christ-o-rama, California," maintaining that "there are not enough disposal plants in the country to handle TV Sunday morning effluence!" No mystery, no pain.

A second characteristic of worship for Shaw is that it is communal. Although in our solitude each of us has experienced "instants of worship wherein no other human being walked nor could have entered," worship is a "communion and a fellowship." Shaw cites Martin Buber: "Man finds his being and his relationship to the other . . . which some call God, only when he is confronted with and responsive to another human being -- a thou." In Shaw’s words, "The Lord, our God, is one God, but it takes two to find him."

Third, according to Shaw, worship has a "formal and ritualistic basis." Our coming together with regular frequency helps us better understand one another and our relationship to God. "This is where the arts knock on the church door," says Shaw.

Assume with me two things. First, that form in art is also a factor of value and meaning. That is to say, if one has exactly so much space to shape, as in painting or sculpture, or if he has so much time to inform, as with poetry or music, the achieved proportions of that time and space . . . are root, trunk, branch and leaf, seed, sap and substance of meaning.

Assume with me also that worship is an art . . . or at least similar to the arts in that it has a certain amount of corporate time in which to consider matters of worth, in which to propose and proportion beauty and truth.

It is no small wonder that formal worship should evoke the sensation of sight and sound as well as reason. And that sound need not always be fortissimo. The "Benedictus" of Bach’s B Minor Mass calls for only one flute, one cello and one tenor -- and three incredibly great human beings.

Worship must also be able to inspire and instruct us in a vertical, God-to-man sense as well as in a horizontal, man-to-others sense. To these ends a creative liturgy should be one of the greatest natural resources of the liberal church.

In 1960, while associate director of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Shaw was installed as minister of music -- at no salary -- at the First Unitarian (Unitarian Universalist) Church of Cleveland. In his inaugural sermon, "Music and Worship in the Liberal Church," he spoke of the responsibilities of the arts to the church, saying that only the best is good enough. Otherwise, "God is only mocked, not worshiped."

He cited four elements that are part of worshipful music. The first is the motivation of the participants. He remembered returning to his father’s church as a young man, after having been exposed to the cantatas and passions of Bach, and seeing his mother and grandmother sing the old hymn "There were 90 and 9 that safely lay in the shelter of the fold." Tears came to Shaw ‘s eyes. There was nothing wrong with the motivation used to select that hymn. At the same time, Shaw thought how much greater an experience it would have been if everyone could have studied and performed Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew. "Purity of purpose does dignify," he says, "but not all tears attest to equally deep springs of sorrow."

A second element of music for worship is craftsmanship. Music must be decently and honestly constructed. It need not be a masterpiece, but must have "at least the mortar, brick and foundation specified in the contract."

Shaw’s third criterion is that music have a historical perspective, which is "close to what we mean by ‘style.’ "In this category Shaw includes folk hymns, carols and spirituals and "the passions and cantatas of Bach, the late Haydn and early Schubert and masses and requiems by Brahms and Britten." Most music worthy of use in worship will have a heritage and will endure from generation to generation. This does not mean we only have to raise standards of musical taste to improve our Sunday morning fare, but it does mean we must provide opportunities for listeners to improve their taste by becoming acquainted with the great masters.

Shaw’s final criterion is the possibility of the music’s being the "creative miracle of revelation." "The higher consciousness of the great artist," Shaw explains, "is evidenced not only by his capacity for ordering his experience but also by having his experience." We may not have had a certain composer’s experience, but we can recognize his or her attitude and relate it to our own. "Art exists to convey that which cannot be otherwise conveyed," says Shaw.

In the conclusion of Shaw’s inaugural sermon he told the congregation that there would be no prelude, offertory or postlude in the church’s new order of worship. To Shaw, music selected for worship is far too important to be used merely to cover up a congregation’s entering and leaving. He wanted, he said, to create each Sunday morning "out of worthy things, a wholeness of beauty and truth, an integrity of sound and sight and reason, which shall be its own reason for being here." Then that hour can be a place where "the whole man, in the company and affection of his fellow man, honestly may love the Lord his God with all his heart and all his soul and all his mind."

The miracle of symphonic and choral sound can turn thousands of listeners and performers into a rare community. This can happen at any time, in any setting. In 1962 the Robert Shaw Chorale sang Bach’s B Minor Mass in the U.S.S.R. The performance was broadcast to all the iron-curtain countries. As Shaw recalls (in Joseph A. Mussulman’s book Dear People.. . Robert Shaw Indiana University Press, 19791) , "For three hours the only fare available to this ‘materialistic,’ atheistic,’ ‘eye-to-the-future’ audience was an ageless monument of Christian creed, philosophy and art.

The arts help us express and communicate ideas in a way not possible through words. The feeling and intensity expressed in a piece of music may be remembered long after the sermon is forgotten. "If any one man understood ‘Lord our God have mercy,’ Bach did; or ‘I believe in one baptism,’ Bach did; or Grant us peace,’ Bach did."

The arts are the hand of humanity reaching out to others in a world of persecution, indifference and terror. The arts can set us free, unlike our technological, image-making society, which seeks to control us. "The arts may be not the luxury of the few, but the last, best hope of humanity to inhabit with joy this planet," says Shaw, who sometimes refers to the liberal arts as the "conservative" arts because they are the things that really "conserve" us.

It is the nature of music, unlike painting and most of literature, that its final creation is not its original creation. Music needs to be sounded, to be sung. In this sense, the composer literally must leave his work to be finished by others... . Can you imagine Michelangelo asking us to come in and help him finish the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Us and our dirty little daubers?

Regarding the St. Matthew Passion he wrote to chorus members:

We are not engaged in the dramatization of the death -- and triumph -- of Jesus. But by the dignity and integrity of this great music, the spirit of which reaches out to touch that of Jesus himself, we are forced to acknowledge our participation in that death and triumph. The Passion music is not dramatic in the theatrical sense of acting a part. It is drama in the cosmic sense -- of being a part. It is not a series of masques to be put on and manipulated to the maximum "effect." It is -- if you are sufficiently mystic -- a sort of Eucharist whose physical properties issue in something quite transcending time and place.

It seems to me. therefore, treacherous and abortive to superimpose the imagined excitements of a given crowd on a given day by the devices of accelerando, ritardando and dynamic effect. By the spiritual genius of Bach the greater drama is already built into the musical structure. It is wrong to play the pit; the people must be brought to the music.

Four weeks later he wrote again, wanting to be certain his singers understood the important role the chorus played.

It is as though there were a theatre on the stage of which a play is being acted -- and that is one drama. In the hall of the theatre there is an audience, and this audience interrupts the actors on stage -- and that is the second drama. And somewhere above this theatre watching both these dramas stand you and I. And at incredible moments (think what craftsmanship this represents on Bach’s part) . . the actors on the stage are suddenly frozen, their posture or gesture transfixed, the audience in an instant is turned to stone, time holds breath, and you and I become a part of this great drama -- that of the meanings of things and events, of love and hate, of living and killing -- a drama before and beyond time, before even this particular Passion, yet known to us here and now.

To sing under Shaw in the preparation of a major work is a privilege, an act of worship, a two-and-a-half-hour sweatshop session and an uplifting creative experience. If one dares to let one’s mind wander, Shaw will confront that singer with his piercing blue eyes and a "how could you?" look. An uncompromising conductor who lifts up the highest musical standards for orchestra and chorus, Shaw, with his visceral yet sensitive conducting style, inspires his musicians to attain his goals. "People, this just has to happen!" he prods. He balances his meticulous score preparation and rehearsal demands with a boundless childlike enthusiasm and contagious joy for each new work.

Shaw’s life has been interwoven into the developments of American music for over half a century, and his influence on choral music will be felt for decades. Because of his teaching, the music life in the cities where he has worked is healthy and strong. Those who direct their own choirs come away from singing in Shaw’s choruses with renewed enthusiasm and the tools for teaching rhythm, pronunciation and tonal sonority.

Now retired as music director of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Shaw has recently been engaged in two projects. One is Emory University’s day-long seminars, "Saturdays at the Robert Shaw Institute," inaugurated in October 1988, for musicians to study, prepare and sing six familiar sacred choruses with Shaw. The other event, held this past July and likely to be offered again, was his conducting the Bordeaux Symphony Orchestra for a choral seminar in connection with the St. Céré Festival in the Dordogne River Valley in France.

Shaw has occupied the most prestigious podiums in the country while being painfully aware of the sorrow, tragedy and racial divisions in our society. "We believe," he once wrote, "that in a world of political, economic and personal disintegrations, music is not a luxury but a necessity. . . because it is the persistent focus of man’s intelligence, aspiration and good will."

A minister of music to all people, Shaw maintains that the church has a responsibility to the arts. In an October 1987 address to Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago on "Worship and the Arts," Shaw commented that in a world beset with a multitude of problems,

the arts may provide the day-by-day confirmation of Creation’s finger still at work in the lives and affairs of men . . . the church., if it wants to keep in touch with the Creator, must provide a home for all that is and all who are created, lest the church itself wither and drift into irrelevance.

Shaw’s outstanding musicianship, deeply spiritual and human qualities and sense of mission have inspired those whose lives he has touched to carry on his legacy and his ministry with love, devotion and integrity.

Digging in the Gardens of Feminist Theology

Feminist scholars are divided over strategies for defining women and women’s experience. Radicals like Monique Wittig, who see the present systems as categorically exclusive, advocate inventing new ways of speaking and even new categories of experience. Liberals, on the other hand, aim to increase women’s power and expression by working within traditional contexts, rereading, redefining and reclaiming traditions in light of women’s reality.

Working in the latter vein, feminist theologians have recently made use of the metaphor of the garden in reclaiming women’s experience. Whereas radicals might reject the garden because it has been a setting for women’s oppression, these theologians find. the figure of the garden important precisely because it points to women’s historical experience, and so allows women to speak not only about faith but about what Katie Cannon calls our "blighted" history.

The metaphor of the garden allows theologians to articulate faith through images from everyday experience. Letty Russell has described the importance of "kitchen table" theology, which begins with the faith stories of ordinary women grouped around kitchen tables or in other everyday settings. In many cultures, the garden is one such setting. Thinking of the garden in defining ourselves and our theology . can help us to incorporate women’s daily experience, and to gain strength from the countless women for whom the garden has been the only ground of creative expression.

While gardens represent women’s commitment to home and to crafts- womanship, they are also examples of the ways in which women’s sphere has been limited. The garden walls have been confining ones. In Virginia Woolf s novel To the Lighthouse, Mrs. Ramsey’s world is defined by the garden hedges; she never gets to the lighthouse beyond. The biblical garden is also problematic for women. From that garden women have inherited the blame for the Fall, Eve’s label of "temptress," and the curse, "He shall rule over you." The canonized story of the garden has reinforced a sexual politics of domination.

Thus, in reclaiming the creative, everyday nature of the garden, feminist theologians must acknowledge its muddied history. But in working with that history, they can help us utilize the power of our experience to redeem it. And by cultivating new life within the tradition we have been handed, we are able to pay respect to those women who toiled in the garden.

Japanese-Canadian poet Joy Kogawa illustrates this kind of transformation in her "Garden Poem" about a woman who both defies and transforms her garden confinement.

"Marigolds," he said

rooting her firmly

in his garden bed

"are sacrificial plants

for garden slugs."

She wiped the telling slime

from red-rimmed eyes

grew dragon leaves at dusk

turned dandelion.

And in every neat

suburban lawn

she nestled her tiny

umbrellas down.

The woman escapes this "slug" and his "bed" by using the flower image he wants her to inhabit and becoming a plague in his lawn!

Finally and equally important, the garden image underscores that we all come from very different gardens -- different social, religious and cultural contexts. Even the category "women’s experience" has no single definition. By describing our gardens -- our personal histories -- we can begin to understand our differences and the perspectival nature of our theology.

When writer Alice Walker and her mother returned to their old home in Milledgeville, Georgia, after 22 years, Walker was confronted with memories of poverty and segregation. But her mother pointed to her daffodil garden that had run wild around their rotting shack, blooming from one side of the yard to the other. Despite their poverty, Walker’s mother had always been able to translate her own vision of beauty and freedom to "whatever rocky soil she landed on." In In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Walker uses her mother’s gardens as a metaphor for all that she has inherited from her mother, including artistic skill and a vision of harmony.

The book consists of eight personal histories by women of African, Asian, Anglo-American and Latin-American descent. Each author begins with a description of her mother’s garden -- the meaning of which varies with each writer. Mercy Amba Oduyoye’s gardens stretch "at least through five generations of Methodist churchwomen from Ghana." Marta Benavides describes the luscious oranges, guavas, avocados, mangoes and mammees in her mother’s mountain village. Joann Nash Eakin defines the garden in terms of her mothers’ talent as a landscape architect. Each definition points to the literal and figurative soil that nurtured their mother’s values, and to the arena of these mothers’ most vital activity.

The "gardening task" itself is divided into three interrelated sections: "Claiming Our Mothers’ Roots," "Clearing Our Space" and "Cultivating a Global Garden." The stories in Part I, in which the authors relate stories of their mothers and grandmothers to their own theological development, show how autobiography is an integral part of theology.

For example, Pui-lan describes the influence of her mother, her mother-in-law and her "spiritual foremothers" in her struggle to develop an "inclusive theology in a Chinese context." A Christian and a member of a Buddhist family, she was in a double bind: as a Christian she had to prove to her people that she was not "the instrument of foreign aggressors," and as a Chinese woman she was concerned about Christianity’s "dualistic tendency and patriarchal bias." In this identity crisis she has turned to her mothers’ gardens, the journals, songs, poems, myths and even obituary notices of her foremothers. She has formed her own theology as she has learned from a long tradition of Chinese Christian women who struggled "not only for their own liberation, but also for justice in church and society

Some gardens are colored by destructive factors -- family violence, racism, heterosexism or classism -- which women struggle to acknowledge and understand. They may choose the difficult task of consciously rejecting these gardens, or of transforming them -- the activity of "Clearing Our Space."

Cannon cannot accept a part of her inheritance -- slavery. Yet she defines her mother’s garden as the rich folklore, legends and slave narratives that her mother told around the kerosene lantern in their home. Those ancestral narratives became "the soil where my inheritance from my mother’s garden grew." And while slavery is the poisonous weed in the gardens of her ancestors, Cannon became a student of slave narratives, "seeking the interior garden of Afro-American culture" and consciously working to inherit the strength and dignity of her slave foremothers.

Isasi-Diaz recounts the history of her mother and her grandmother who emigrated to foreign lands. "I have not inherited a garden from my mother but rather a bunch of cuttings," she writes. Having planted "a Hispanic garden in a foreign land,’ away from her native Cuba, she values what she calls the flowers of faith -- family commitment, and strength to struggle in her mother’s "bouquet" which help her combat rootlessness. But she rejects the "weeds," like her mother’s inability to understand those different from herself and her unwillingness to recognize domestic sexism. Yet Isasi-Diaz claims that even her differences stem from her mother’s bouquet. "I think the differences exist in part because what she has told me and the way she has lived have pushed me a few steps farther."

"Cultivating a Global Garden" asks "how we might find ways to share a global garden as partners, rather than as exploiters of one another." This is admittedly a "hoped-for" rather than a present reality. Here, Russell discusses her refusal to accept a privileged inheritance -- symbolically her grandmother’s rose garden -- because of the classism that supported it. She chose instead a 17-year ministry in East Harlem, where the only gardens were "dug out of several feet of garbage and debris in a vacant lot as an annual church project." In making this choice she did not deny who she was or where her roots were, but consciously chose not to perpetuate the gardens or systems of her past. It is only in taking that step that we will be prepared to move "from garden to table, where all people are welcomed to God’s feast."

Benavides, a Salvadoran Baptist minister, also understands her theology as political. Her work with refugees grew out of her mother’s belief in their responsibility to feed the poor in their mountain village. "It is important for me to garden with others," she explains. "That is what being compañieras is all about. Gardening is visioning, dreaming, and futuring for me too. It is to envision and bring about the new earth, right here and now." For the Salvadorans, God’s new earth will restore the garden of the people, which flourished before the wealthy landowners kept people from planting their corn, vegetables and beans to make room for the profit-making coffee, cotton and sugar. Benavides uses the image of her mother’s garden as the basis for her "new earth" theology. "Only when we stand together will the flowers of justice and humanity grow," she writes. "Only then will all people be truly free to make the global garden their home."

At the AAR meeting, theologian Delores Williams noted that this book is not a book about theology but rather a book about perspective. It suggests that our theology is a fruit of the garden of our experiences. The garden gives us a specific image around which to study our individual histories, beginning with the influence of our mothers.

The panelists at the session discussed theology’s perspectival nature by pondering their own gardens. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza noted that her mother had to plant vegetables instead of flowers after World War II. Because of the backbreaking labor involved; Fiorenza wanted nothing to do with her mother’s garden. She confessed to stealing fruit from a neighbor’s garden instead! As an adult, she also chose another garden than her mother’s, claiming an intellectual heritage rather than her mother’s experience. She added that in the long run, the war-torn garden would probably have been more peaceful than the religious academy.

Author Chung Hyun Kyung clarified the usefulness of the garden for articulating theological particularity, pointing out that there are many shades of suffering, and that we must be particular about those shades. The garden image helped her discover her own Korean voice while studying theology in the U.S. Here Third World women must package their stories in English, and in terms white liberal theologians will want to read. Kyung stressed that she did not want to be a Jonah, bringing liberation theology to save middle-class women -- at least not before she had a chance to explore her own gardens. The stories of both her Korean birth mother and the Korean woman who adopted her had shown her, she said, a history of classism and cultural imperialism. They also enabled her to see women as more than survivors, as agents of liberation.

Williams observed that mothers’ voices had been excluded from the book, and she wondered about the legacy mothers have attempted to give their daughters. She also contended that the figure of the garden is too gentle to capture the "ecological warfare of the soul" life’s "tufts and tragedies." Nevertheless she noted that the collected stories in the book formed a mosaic in which all the pieces sustained one another. Such a collective effort is vital for forging what Williams called a womanist, "montage" theology.

All the participants agreed that the garden metaphor gives new energy to our lives because it invites response. It encourages us to clarify why we believe what we believe. Seldom are Christians given such a tangible opportunity to trace and articulate our personal faith histories. Whereas ethics presents models for living, observed ethicist Margaret Farley, the garden image involves us in our particular life stories, with all the ambiguities involved. Nothing seems more given than our mothers, noted Farley. yet this book tells us that at some point we do choose our mothers -- our gardens are lived in, left behind, accepted or forgiven.

In the same manner, she added, we can come to terms with our particular Christian tradition. The garden metaphor gives us the necessary perspective. And while our religious tradition is often not as easy to comprehend as our individual histories, we must make the attempt in order to identify what we have in common. "Shall we ever weep over commonly perceived tragedies? Commonly loved goals? Shall we ever learn from one another’s languages?" Farley asked.

Remembering that our garden.. is only a small plot of land and that there are many such plots is necessary for a rich harvest. By listening to and supporting those who have been excluded from our gardens, we can cultivate a global garden.

The Women-Church Movement

In November 1983, approximately 1,400 women, most of them Roman Catholic, met in Chicago for a conference called "Woman Church Speaks." That gathering of women who together envisioned and to some extent modeled a church liberated from patriarchal bondage marked a turning point in the women’s movement in the United States. For the first time, women whose common heritage was one of disappointment and dissent collectively claimed to be church. They shared with one another their experience of spirituality, sexuality and survival in the church and in society, and went forth as an exodus community coming out of exile within and in some instances beyond the institutional church. In October 1987, over 3,000 women joined, the "Women-Church Convergence" in Cincinnati, under the theme, "Claiming Our Power." In the four years between conventions, many had found meaning in the wilderness as they wandered with companies of women of faith and sipped from nourishing springs. Some had grown skeptical of finding a promised land. Most seemed grateful for whatever manna they had found to meet their needs.

It is difficult to assess the impact of the women-church movement -- which appears to comprise only a small number of women -- on the larger church. While many more claim membership in women-church than convention statistics might imply, women-church is a modest initiative. It is a national network of feminist base communities and a coalition of feminist organizations that seek to support one another in living out of their own faith experience. Any women’s group with three or more members can, if it so desires, call itself women-church. Some (not all) of these groups choose to be listed as part of the national network. The women-church movement is not concerned with membership, growth, structure or institutionalized permanence, nor is it a separatist movement. Those who have found hope through association with women-church know it as an initiative of the Holy Spirit among those who are religiously marginalized and oppressed; it provides respite in a time of frustration and doubt. Ultimately, women-church desires to bring about genuinely inclusive communities of women and men in the ecclesia of Jesus Christ. Whether this is possible given the patriarchal and sexist history of our churches is uncertain. The extent of women’s inclusion in the full life of the church will determine the development and thrust of women-church.

Women-church includes more than those who appropriate its title; it embraces those of kindred spirit, those who seek freedom from structures that keep them subservient and deny them the possibility of living according to the liberating word of a liberating God, and those who claim allegiance to a global sisterhood committed to justice for the oppressed. In that sense its membership is legion and is growing every day.

The primary agenda of women-church is not women’s ordination, even though the spirit and some of the same women that birthed the Women’s Ordination Conference also provided the impetus for women-church. The conviction that brought 1,600 women to Detroit in 1975 to launch a nationwide effort to open the priesthood to Roman Catholic women eventually led them to question the hierarchical, patriarchal structure of ordained ministry itself, which seems contrary to the spirit of Jesus Christ. Indeed, a significant number of Protestant women who fought so hard to achieve ordination have left their ministries, burned out by the constant struggle to overcome secondary status, overt discrimination and the pressure to succeed.

Women-church ultimately aims to humanize structures in and outside the church. This concern for justice gives Christian feminism both a social and a religious agenda. The two agendas have often coincided throughout the feminist movement. The Women’s March down Fifth Avenue in New York in the summer of 1970 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote was reminiscent of earlier marches of feminist suffragettes. Strangely enough, no church organization was listed among the sponsors of the 1970 event -- though the first meeting of the women’s suffrage movement in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848 took place in a church, and those who launched that movement were women of the church, such as Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. These and the many feminist reformers who labored tirelessly for social and political freedoms were sustained in their difficult ministries through mutual support, which is the essence of women-church.

While women’s liberation in America has not always maintained a religious affiliation, feminist leaders who never espoused religion, as well as those who did and then left it, are considered apart of the women-church sisterhood, and their achievements are acknowledged with satisfaction and pride. As Gloria Steinem reminded participants in Cincinnati last October: "We [women] are the one group that does not have a nation. We need to make a psychic country" to which all women can belong. Women-church is doing just that, recognizing in the process that its history extends well beyond the boundaries of its own rather recent beginnings.

Church leaders have reason to fear the women’s movement. Christian feminism has never been satisfied with a religion separated from public life, nor has it ever settled for merely incremental modifications in the religious establishment. Women-church and traditional church have contrasting understandings of God, grace and world, and of their interrelationship. True partnership and mutuality between the two forms of church will take more than a canonical pronouncement or a shift in regulations. It will require the traditional church’s learning a new way of behaving. The church will have to learn how experience can be a source of grace; learn to speak less dogmatically and act less hierarchically; learn to communicate more and excommunicate less; learn to care as much about people as it does about structures and forms. In small faith-sharing circles, the Spirit of God is leading women to shape the future church of Jesus Christ.

In carving out a new tradition, women-church is laying a solid theological foundation for its claims. There has been an explosion of feminist literature in the past two dozen years that challenges age-old assumptions on every conceivable front. Feminist philosophers, sociologists, ethicists, liturgists and those who are engaged in the arts are expanding our collective understandings of God and of ourselves.

The heart of women-church, however, is what happens in personal encounters to bring texture, color and meaning to the tangled threads of women’s lives. In her autobiographical book The Journey Is Home, Nelle Morton describes the phenomenon of women’s awakening, which is the core of feminist faith. In small, intimate gatherings, women tell their stories, moving through pain, defensiveness, anger, even rage, into an awareness that it is all right to feel the way they feel, and to be who they are. The liberating force of this realization is grace.

"Women came to new speech simply because they were being heard," Morton writes. Hearing becomes an act of receiving the woman as well as her words. In women-church women do not have to be "good" or obedient or even right. They can just be the self that God loved into being. Women-church affirms woman’s reality, affirms who women are and are becoming. Women-church must emphasize this "I’m OK, you’re OK" aspect as long as derogatory structures and situations continue to oppress women.

Associated with the women-church movement are men and many women from nearly every walk of life -- a kaleidoscope of creeds, cultures, colors and classes, of extraordinary and ordinary women, our mothers, our sisters, ourselves. It includes very angry women and women of humor and hope, radical women and traditional women, even a few who are not quite sure what all the fuss is about. For some, women-church is a way to bring new energy into congregational life; for others, it offers an occasional alternative to their regular church routine; still others find it a substitute for a church commitment that has died; and some cling to it as a lifeline in turbulent times.

Women-church gives identity to sisterhood and support for women’s difficult journey. It offers a setting where the reinterpretation, reinvention and re-creation of foundational myths is possible and legitimate.

The concept of women-church does have its limitations. Truly inclusive communities cannot be for women only, nor will women apart from men succeed in achieving true social and religious emancipation. Women-church must find ways to include caring men, while recognizing the need for women, and men, to seek nurture separately from time to time.

And though the women-church spirit is inclusive, the word "church" in its name leaves out women who espouse other religious traditions; women who practice witchcraft and celebrate goddess rites; women of no particular religion and no desire to join any kind of church; and women who are connected to an inner spirit and live religiously.

At this stage, it remains unclear exactly what women-church is. Is it an ecumenical, cross-cultural, interfaith extension of the women’s movement in America that cannot be understood by those church institutions it seeks to reform? Does it represent a strategy for reforming the church? Its members hold a variety of opinions about such questions, and most are more concerned about concrete issues than about theories or theology. Many would agree with Rosemary Radford Ruether’s comment in Women-Church: "Women-church means neither leaving the church as a sectarian group, nor continuing to fit into it on its terms. It means establishing bases for a feminist critical culture and celebrational community that have some autonomy from the established institutions."

Growth is never easy, nor is it predictable. A Methodist missionary woman earlier in this century spoke words appropriate to women-church today: "Grow we must, even if we outgrow all that we love." We may outgrow forms and functions, and some cherished relationships and situations, but we will never outgrow the love of Love -- only our ways of naming that Love and the rites we use to respond to the One who is Love in us.

The Hanna-Barbera Cartoons: Compounding Bible Ignorance?

The series has already gained widespread home use through both rentals and sales (at a modest $19.95) at video stores, Christian bookshops, and discount stores like K-Mart, along with direct mail order. In fact, almost 45,000 units were "pre-sold" for The Nativity, one of the latest titles, before its release. And according to co-creator Joseph Barbera’s fan mail, many churches have purchased the videos for Sunday schools and youth meetings. Created by the producers of "Yogi Bear" and "The Flintstones," and winner of the National Religious Broadcasters’ Distinguished Service Award, Religion in Media’s Gold Angel Award, and the Film Advisory Board’s Award of Excellence, the series contains eight episodes. It includes the stories of Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, Daniel and the Lion’s Den and other "real heroes" such as Noah, Moses, Samson and David.

It may be tempting to ignore this series because it is made for children, or blindly to bless it because we, like Hanna and Barbera, recognize in our youth a growing ignorance of even the most basic Bible stories and want to do something to remedy the situation. Though some may object to the cartoon medium on the grounds that children are not used to taking it seriously, that is the least of this series’ problems. More troublesome are the cartoons’ historical inaccuracies and inappropriate embellishments; the fact that the "heroes" have largely been robbed of their multidimensional biblical personalities; the way subplots overshadow the main story; the preponderance of images (including graphic violence) , words and ideas that are ill-suited for children; and the abysmal corruption of the stories’ theological significance.

For example, in The Nativity, when the viewer ought to be expectantly awaiting Jesus’ birth, an extended non-biblical espionage sequence involving two harsh Roman guards who are sent by Herod to follow the wise men takes center stage. Repeated scenes are shown of the soldiers chasing the Wise Men on horseback, spying on the conversations of the three kings, and wickedly chuckling to themselves about how much money they will receive, from Herod. The soldiers get as much attention as Mary and Joseph. The primary purpose of their escapades apparently is to sustain children’s attention and provide a dramatic vehicle to get the three modern voyagers to Bethlehem. In the same cartoon a melon vendor with whom Moki contends in a relatively long comic sequence is likely to seem more real than the baby Jesus, who is never shown close up. Consequently, the importance of the incarnation could get lost amidst the thrills and jokes.

In Daniel and the Lion’s Den, fictional circus entertainers Enoch and Kalil, along with their ferocious lion, Terribulis, are to children and probably most adults more exciting than the praying Daniel. It is they, after all, who get the foreign trio jobs as servants at King Belshazzar’s feast, enabling us to view their capers at the riotous party and only incidentally to hear Daniel’s prophecies and have a firsthand look at the handwriting on the wall. In the story of Noah and the Ark we are repeatedly distracted from Noah by Moki’s anxieties, which prompt his building a raft, and his craving for 20th-century food, especially pancakes. At the end of the story the recovery of an injured doe Margo has cared for throughout the film is likely to be more stirring and memorable to young children than the landing of the ark. Thus, even for those with prior knowledge of the stories, Hanna-Barbera’s traveler device is confusing and intrusive.

Furthermore, since the young travelers’ presence is pivotal to the recounting of almost all of the stories, it underscores the American sense of superiority and importance. Derek, Margo and Mold are the most memorable actors in the series, partly because they appear in every story and partly because their characters are more developed. As self-centered Americans might arrogantly tend to expect, almost everyone the young archaeologists meet accepts them unconditionally despite their unusual dress, names and vocabulary. And, as is the case with characters in Samson and Delilah who help Derek build a hang glider, the adult characters at times treat the modern young visitors as though they have superior knowledge. While it is true that the teenagers do not alter the outcome of the Bible stories, they certainly interfere with their communication, and in the eyes of young viewers the explorers’ influence always seems to be possible. In essence, the stories have come under the control of the modern tellers rather than exerting their own power over modern life.

In contrast to the three Americans, the biblical characters are reduced to caricatures that represent one quality -- good or evil, right or wrong. This is clearly the case with Moses: Let My People Go. Here the pharaoh is absolutely diabolical, and Moses is the very picture of godliness. Yet, according to the Bible, Moses was afraid and reluctant to answer God’s call to lead Israel, confessing that he did not speak well in front of people. The cartoon Moses, however, is strong-willed, persevering and confident. He is a very large, distinguished, almost regal figure dressed in a red robe, alt he is described as having a "noble bearing."

Such portrayals lead to a flawed interpretation of the biblical stories. In Hanna-Barbera’s stories, as in Rambo, the strong, or at least the brave, are victorious. In Samson and Delilah, Samson is the biblical version of the Incredible Hulk, a huge, friendly giant who is nevertheless tough and, in his case, a bit arrogant. Though it is admitted that Samson has a weakness for beautiful women, this has come to be an accepted foible in our society’s macho men, so for all practical purposes Samson remains one-dimensional caricature. The biblical interpretation of Samson’s strength as a gift from God, which, although associated with the Nazarite vow, had virtually no relationship to any ethical quality of his own, is not adequately explained either. Thus, while the story of Samson found in Judges was intended to portray him as a negative religious leader and as an example not to follow, the Hanna-Barbera series presents him in an admirable light as the sole defender of the Israelites. The heroic scene where Samson goes to his death as he pulls down the columns of the temple of Dagon on a host of Philistines is the Cartoon’s lasting image, stripped here of much of its tragic irony. The cartoon Samson is a nice, brave superhero -- which raises another moral issue: Lawrence Kohlberg hypothesizes that children in the pre-conventional state of moral reasoning believe that might makes right. Hanna-Barbera’s conquering Samson may serve to perpetuate that perception.

The effort to make the cartoons entertaining, which the producers readily admit as a goal, at times obscures the deeper meanings of the stories. The concretization involved in making the stories exciting diverts the attention of children between the ages of seven and 11 who, though still in the concrete operational stage of thinking (as psychologist Jean Piaget calls it) , are beginning to be able to grasp deeper meanings. This feature may also limit their future understanding of the stories to the powerful, immediate images of the cartoon.

While some of the memorable images are simply preposterous -- like the scene in which the young trio escapes attack by surfing on an underground river or the one in which Derek travels by hang glider to warn Samson -- some of the strongest of these lasting images are very violent. Frightening scenes of horror, destruction, brute force and pure gore are generously scattered throughout the films. Indeed, the opening vignette of all the films, in which the terrorized modern trio are trapped and fall through quicksand into the time tunnel, may be quite disturbing to young children who fear separation from their parents. From that point things mostly get worse. In Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, we hear men cry out and see them fall amidst debris as the enormous walls of Jericho come tumbling down. Just as horrifying is the scene in which Samson pulls the temple of Dagon down onto a screaming horde. In Noah and the Ark, people are graphically depicted drowning as their rafts sink beneath the, water. An outstretched hand is the last thing remaining above the water until it, too, disappears. We also see pharoah’s army sinking to the bottom of the Red Sea in Moses.

The producers defend the violence on the grounds that it is part of the biblical portrayal. In fact, Bruce Johnson, Hanna-Barbera’s vice-president in charge of the series, asserts that the cartoons’ literal interpretation is the key to its success. The studio, however, has exaggerated the Bible’s descriptions of violence. For example, all the films show close-ups of the wicked characters snarling or making threatening gestures. The hissing, forked-tongue serpent in The Creation is so fearful that one wonders why Eve didn’t run instead of allowing herself to be tempted. Goliath is also far more intimidating than necessary. He is, in the words of th& Hanna-Barbera studios, a "tremendous giant who makes He-Man look like a wimp." While a literal reading of I Samuel would lead us to believe that Goliath was only about ten feet tall (six cubits and a span) , the cartoon giant is so big that David appears only about as tall as Goliath’s ankle. In Moses, the scene illustrating the plague of blood is graphically presented. Unforgettable expressions of horror and revulsion overcome the Egyptians’ faces when they draw buckets of blood from their wells and when their rivers course with streams of blood. (Even the fundamentalist Criswell Study Bible suggests that this plague probably did not literally involve blood.)

Perhaps most frightening to children, however, is the scene in Moses in which a black pall of death creeps through the air toward small Egyptian infants, one of whom we see sleeping unaware in his bed. How could such a representation help children develop a religious concept of death? Such scenes are more likely to produce recurring nightmares than theological understanding.

Hanna-Barbera has even gone so far as to add some violence of its own invention. David and Goliath, for example, opens with two unnecessary scenes: one in which Philistines burn and loot a village, and another in which a lion nearly attacks Derek, Margo and Moki. Noah and the Ark includes distressing scenes in which animals are threatened. First the creatures on the ark are jeopardized by Noah’s taunting neighbors, who attempt to sabotage the loaded ark by rolling a boulder downhill toward it and who then threaten to set fire to the boat and turn the animals into a "giant barbecue." Then one of Noah’s sons nearly kills some of the animals with a huge sword in order to feed the humans during the unexpectedly long sojourn aboard the ark.

Ironically, while using literalism to justify retaining the violence, the cartoons’ producers delicately euphemize other aspects of the stories. They describe Samson’s weapon as the jawbone of a donkey rather than that of an ass, and avoid, by strategic placement of animals and plants, exposure of the naked Adam and Eve in The Creation. Though many of us may object to our children’s use of the word "ass" and their seeing non-familial nudity, vivid images that imply that God and his heroes are fearful and vengeful are potentially more damaging to children, especially when not appropriately balanced with images of love and grace.

While Hanna-Barbera added some details, the cartoons omit others that are key to understanding the biblical narrative. Why show scenes that young children cannot comprehend, such as the debauchery in Daniel and the Lion’s Den where people are lying around on sofas drinking and spilling their food, dancing, and laughing wickedly, and then not mention that the most heinous sin of the party was the people’s using goblets pilfered from the Jerusalem temple to make wine offerings to Belshazzar’s gods? Why suggest that Samson drank wine (not mentioned in the biblical story) before Delilah robbed him of his secret -- thus making a subtle point about the risks of alcohol use -- and not mention that this would also have been a violation of the Nazarite vow?

Such omissions lead to more serious issues of interpretation. Hanna-Barbera portrays the heroes as so mighty and good that they overshadow God. A doubter among the Hebrews claims at the end of Moses: Let My People Go: "I have failed Moses and our God." His mentioning Moses before God is typical of the tenor of the whole series. Even the advertising for the series emphasizes the characters’ heroism more than God’s help. Unlike the Bible, which is intended to be God’s story in which God works out his will despite the strengths and weaknesses of his people, this series focuses on the human characters’ power.

Other examples of questionable interpretation are evident in The Creation. After Adam and Eve are cast from the garden, a flaming sword, which is shaped like a cross (an image that may shock Jews who have promoted the Old Testament cartoons) , dramatically appears to bar the pair from paradise. We are then assured by a narrator that terrible as it was, this event was only the beginning. That might be acceptable, but other interpretations are offered as well: "God showed us paradise so that we could see what we would lose if we disobeyed him." Because of Adam and Eve "we know the difference between right and wrong," and we must "work and sweat for whatever we get." These summary statements, though not necessarily inappropriate, have a real danger: they seem to imply that this is the story’s primary meaning.

The cartoon’s image of woman is also problematic. Eve conforms to the modern ideal of female beauty: she is coy, shapely with long flowing auburn hair, and perfect down to her manicured fingernails. Here Eve’s primary concern is pleasing Adam, and she is most tempted by these words from the serpent: "I’ll show you the sweetest delight in the garden as a surprise for Adam. . . . Adam will be pleased. . . . You will make him wise, a god, and you will be his goddess." When she offers the fruit to Adam, he appears totally oblivious of what he is eating. The woman is guilty, the man is innocent.

Especially after repeated showings at home, the cartoons may so affect children’s biblical understanding that the film images will predominate in their perception of the biblical stories. Many people have a similar experience when they see the movie version of a book. Even if they have read the book, the screen images cloud all others. In the same way, "The Greatest Adventure: Stories from the Bible" may overpower children’s imaginations and suppress their ability to allow the biblical text to speak to them anew as they grow older. In a sense the cartoons are like Cliff Notes: once the basic plot and characters are known in such simple form, few are likely to pursue deeper meanings. Though their producers may be well intentioned, instead of providing a generation with knowledge of the Bible, the Hanna-Barbera cartoons may be fostering the worst kind of biblical ignorance.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Afro-American Prophet

The 1892 lynching of a dear friend, Thomas Moss, launched Wells into international prominence as leader in the anti-lynching crusade. Her contribution was crucial: she spoke out at a time when few voices challenged the horror and injustice of the lynch law, and her research, writing and public speaking informed people of the facts. She was convinced that the public’s awareness of the atrocity of lynching would lead to its demise.

Wells organized Illinois’s first black woman’s club at the end of the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. One of the club’s early projects was to raise money to prosecute a police officer for killing an innocent black man on Chicago’s west side. The club helped establish the first black orchestra in Chicago, opened the first kindergarten for black children, and was a charter member of the Cook County Women’s Clubs -- thereby crossing the color line in clubs.

Following the 1908 riot in Springfield, Illinois, Wells organized the young men of her Bible class at Grace Presbyterian Church in Chicago into what would eventually become the Negro Fellowship League, which existed until 1920. The league established a Reading Room and Social Center for men and boys. In 1919, Wells led the fight against the reinstatement of Frank Davis as sheriff in Alexander County, Illinois, because he did not prevent the lynching of a black man in Cairo, Illinois. Wells investigated the facts of the case and presented them to Governor Charles Deneen, who ultimately refused to reinstate Davis despite political pressure to do so.

Wells attacked vice, housing conditions and discrimination wherever she found them. Expressing herself with strength and willfulness, she used the lecture podium and newspaper articles to reveal in an uncompromising manner the injustices and outrage of racial bigotry.

Jacquelyn Grant, in her essay "Tasks of a Prophetic Church" (Detroit II Conference Papers, Orbis, 1982) , delineates five key threads in the prophetic voice of the church. I would appropriate her categories to describe, individual black leaders. The first element if the prophetic voice is the ability to discern the will of God, to see how God is on the side of oppressed peoples. Wells certainly evidenced this capacity and commitment.

Second, in discerning the will of God, the prophetic voice also exposes the oppressive nature of society. The committed Christian must stand for justice and transformation. Again, Wells is an excellent example of this concern. She believed the only recourse for the black folk of Memphis after the lynching of Thomas Moss was a boycott and an exodus. Moss’s crime was opening a successful grocery story that took business away from a white grocer across the street. No attempt was made to punish the murderers, whose identities were known. Wells urged the blacks of Memphis to leave.

Memphis has demonstrated that neither character nor standing avails the Negro if he dares to protect himself against the white man or become his rival. We are outnumbered and without arms. There is only one thing left that we can do -- leave a town which will neither protect our lives and property. nor give us a fair trial, but takes us out and murders us in cold blood [quoted by Dorothy Sterling in Black Foremothers: Three Lives (Feminist Press. 1979) p. 791.

Entire churches left the city. Over 2,000 blacks left in two months’ time. Businesses that depended on black patronage began to fail. The superintendent of the railway company called on Wells at her newspaper, the Free Speech, to ask her to urge readers to ride the streetcars again. White homemakers complained about the shortage of domestic workers. When a white real-estate agent remarked, "You got off light. We first intended to kill every one of those 31 niggers in jail, but concluded to let all go but the leaders," he revealed the true intention behind lynching. It was not an isolated event, but part of a broad-based movement to intimidate blacks.

Wells saw lynching as whites’ tool for repressing emancipated blacks. Whites resented Afro-Americans who could compete with them economically and move ahead in the social structure. She knew blacks could be enormously influential in electoral politics. This fact did not elude white southerners who knew Afro-Americans had the potential to upset their longstanding political and economic power base.

Black men were charged with rape so frequently that most people (including, at first, Wells and other blacks such as Frederick Douglass) were inclined to believe the charges. In 1904, Harper’s Weekly carried an article on "The New Negro Crime", which claimed that middle-class blacks were a greater threat than lower-class blacks because they were more likely to pursue social equality and to have lost their awe for the women of the superior race. The predominant southern white belief was that any liaison between an Afro-American man and a white woman was involuntary on the woman’s part. Wells clearly suggested that black men were weak if not stupid to contract such alliances, but she also insisted that white women were willing participants.

Miscegenation laws, she observed, protected white women: they left. black women the victims of rape by white men while granting these men the power to terrorize black men. Wells was incensed that the same mob that lynched a Nashville black man accused of visiting a white woman had left unharmed a white man convicted of raping an eight-year-old black girl.

Wells related political terrorism, economic oppression and conventional codes of sexuality and morality in an analysis that rocked the foundations of the southern (and northern) patriarchal manipulation of race and gender. In Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All its Phases (1892) , she examined the connection between charges of rape against blacks and lynching and argued there was no historical foundation for that association: "The crime of rape was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the South were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged with being a bestial one.

Wells studied the lynching of 728 black men, women and children in the ten-year period preceding the Moss lynching. In only a third of those cases were blacks accused of rape, and in fewer of them were blacks actually guilty of the crime. Most died for crimes like incendiarism, race prejudice, quarreling with whites and making threats. Thirteen-year-old Mildrey Brown was hanged on the circumstantial evidence that she poisoned a white infant. Wells’s investigations also uncovered a large number of interracial liaisons, and she asserted that white women had taken the initiative in some of these liaisons.

Grant’s fourth point is that the prophetic voice must confront evil, and clearly Wells did not shrink from confrontation. Two months after the Moss lynching, Wells wrote in the Free Speech an article that led to her being banished from Memphis:

Eight Negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech, three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket -- the alarm about raping white women. The same program of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies. Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction. A conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women ["Lynch Law in All Its Phases," in Our Day (May 1893) , p. 338].

Finally, according to Grant the prophetic voice seeks to create a community of faith, partnership, justice and unity. This was Wells’s goal and dream. She devoted her life to attaining that dream for her people.

To her credit, she held fast to her view of the power of economics in shaping and changing social opinion in the United States. She gave new vision and provided new possibilities for black interactions with a racist culture. She also decried the stereotype of black women as mammy or slut. But she risked falling into the trap of believing that she was the only one able to discern God’s will for the liberation of the oppressed.

She often took unilateral actions which destroyed opportunities for coalition and dialogue. In her description of these events in her autobiography, her inability to grasp how her actions could hurt or anger others is evident. She reacted to other activists’ resistance to her ideas with puzzlement and even indignation. As she tried to work in the various women’s groups in Chicago, she was sometimes cut off from decision-making, to which she responded with bitterness rather than self-examination. She did not understand why her experience with groups followed this pattern.

In her autobiography, Wells details the disappointment she experienced from the ascendancy of Booker T. Washington. It seems she was not fully aware of the long shadow cast by Washington and his representatives and the effect on her organizing and agitation for social change on the behalf of Afro-Americans. Wells asked various organizations for their endorsement of her already-formulated proposals. When she did receive endorsement, her proposals were often sidetracked or derailed by the representatives Washington had among various women’s clubs and church associations, who favored a more gradualist approach.

While Wells was excellent at addressing unjust structures, she did not always remember that people are the ones who create, maintain and even tear down those structures. In being confrontational, the prophet must always keep in mind that a root meaning of confrontation is "to face together."

In short, Wells lacked the ability to combine the prophetic with the pastoral. Her passion for social change was deep and abiding, but her impatience with those who might cooperate with her prevented her from using her passion most effectively. Wells did not understand that the personal side of transformation, in which individuals are changed and renewed, requires its own set of critical and analytical skills. Yet she was a powerful agitator, who motivated others with prophetic and pastoral skills to mobilize black folk for social change. When she died of uremia poisoning on March 25, 1931, the obituary in the Chicago Defender captured her essence: "elegant, striking, and always well groomed . . . regal though somewhat intolerant and impulsive."