Preparing for Prayer Book 2006

Clergy quickly learn this law: Most worshippers want to sit in familiar pew, open a familiar book and hear the familiar words of a familiar service.

Words such as: "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Or this: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. ..."

Empires and churches have been torn asunder by minute changes in these kinds of texts, because changing people's prayers changes their faith. The faithful get up in arms when asked to change what they say while on their knees.

So Marge Christie wasn't surprised to find anger in the evaluation forms collected after the Episcopal Diocese of Newark began testing a bold new Mass. Even members of one of Christendom's trendiest flocks have linguistic lines they find hard to cross. Nevertheless, seeds planted in places such as Newark have a way of bearing fruit nationwide.

"Our desire goal was to cause people to stop and think about the words they use in worship and THAT we certainly accomplished," said Christie, co-chair on the Task Force on Prayer Book Revision. "I hate this particular phrase, but we pushed the envelope."

The most obvious changes centered on references to God as "Father" or "Lord," words that many consider rooted in patriarchal power structures. This led to changes in texts that even Easter worshippers can say with their eyes closed. Thus, the new Lord's Prayer left the title the same, but began with: "O God in heaven, Mother and Father of us all, hallowed be your name."

Participants rejected this language by a ratio of 4-to-1 or more, said Christie. Thus, the second draft offered a safer substitute: "O God in heaven, holy is your name." The "Affirmation of Faith" – which replaced the Nicene Creed – used similar imagery: "We believe in God, Source of all life, of sun and moon, of water and earth, of male and female. ..."

The bottom line: drafters of the new rite edited and revised centuries of Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican tradition, said the academic dean of the most evangelical Episcopal seminary.

"They can say they've left in a form of the Trinity, but it's somebody else's Trinity. It's a depersonalized Trinity that has nothing to do with Christianity's Father, Son and Holy Spirit," said Father Stephen Noll of the Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa. "You can't just choose some other words and plug them in. ... You end up with something that has some of the form of Christian liturgy, but its substance is actually Unitarian or some sort of Christianized pantheism."

Another fundamental change was the weakening or omitting of references to repentance and the doctrine that Jesus was crucified to atone for mankind's sins. Too much of the language in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer had assumed the "pattern of asking or begging for God's forgiveness," said Father Wade Renn, the other task force co-chair, in a diocesan newspaper interview.

Future prayer books, he said, may need to include CD-ROM discs containing alternative rites reflecting many styles of worship and theological viewpoints. There is, noted Renn, a "feminist vernacular, traditional vernacular, gay and lesbian vernacular, Anglo-Catholic vernacular, low-church vernacular and so on."

The Newark rites have, for now, been shelved and a report sent to national liturgists who are considering requests for a 2006 prayer book. Some insiders believe this would be premature and say that next July's General Convention should merely sanction more trial rites – a kind of theological "local option" resolution.

"Maybe it can't be 2006. Maybe it has to be 2012," said Christie. "But these kinds of changes are coming and they need to be made at the national level. ... The key is that we have to get to work on this right now. No one thinks this will be easy."

There's More to Religious Liberty than Worship

While making her early rounds, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has let everyone know that she's concerned about religious persecution.

As the State Department released its 1996 human rights reports, she noted that "religious persecution and intolerance" are "plagues that from ancient times have fomented war and deep-seated resentment. In too many countries – from Sudan to Vietnam to Iran – this form of repression persists. In a few, including China, it has increased. Whatever your culture, whatever your creed, the right to worship is basic."

During last week's first meeting of her religious freedom advisory committee, Albright added: "The right to profess and practice one's religion is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ... The principle is the same whether our specific focus is on the harassment of Christians, the persecution of Jews, the denial of rights to the Baha'is or the Buddhists, or violence against Islam."

So far, so good. But it will be harder to speak out in Beijing than inside the Beltway and many diplomats balk when it comes time to link sacred rites with corporate rights. Also, there is more to religious liberty than worship. People also have the right to proclaim their faith, to proselytize, to be politically active and to obey a pope. This is especially true in lands such as China, where believers are forced to "profess" their faith by registering with Communist authorities and "practice" their faith by bending the knee in government-sanctioned sanctuaries.

Meanwhile, the Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad faces its own challenges. Many Capitol Hill conservatives are furious because the 20-member panel includes only two evangelical Christians, along with leaders and academics from Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Judaism, liberal Protestantism, Islam, the Baha'is and other traditions. Also, the White House instructed the panel to address broad issues such as "toleration" and "reconciliation," even though it was formed in response to highly specific cases of persecution of evangelicals and Catholics. Above all, ask the critics, can the state department be trusted to investigate its own policies?

Debates about the panel's membership highlight another fact about "religious freedom" – these words are hard to define. Often, it's hard to say where efforts to defend a nation's cultural heritage stop and "religious persecution" begins. One faith's concept of evangelism will almost certainly be heresy to shepherds whose sheep are being evangelized.

After its first meeting, the advisory committee released a statement that alluded to this tension: "The significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind. Nevertheless, it is the duty of states, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect religious freedom."

Meanwhile, clashes continue in the Balkans. Reports from China indicate that Washington, D.C., politicos may soon be discussing Chinese martyrs, as well as Chinese entrepreneurs, arms merchants, software pirates and spies. Still, events in other parts of the world have received little ink. In the Sudan, the government has burned Christian villages, kidnapped children as slaves and tortured worshipers and clergy. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that nine Coptic Christians died when Muslim extremists sprayed a church youth group with machine guns. In Kuwait, Reuters reported that a prominent convert to Christianity named Robert Hussein has reverted to Islam, after receiving what many saw as a death sentence. In Pakistan, a thousand Christian families fled when rioters looted homes and burned churches.

It would be wrong to blame this bloody litany on Islam or any other specific religion, stressed a conservative Jewish activist. Persecution has more to do with renegades, militants and dictators than with doctrine.

"We patronize Islam when we say, `Oh, we know who those people are. We know what they are like. They are into killing and murdering, into persecution.' They are not – the thugs are," said Michael Horowitz, of the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. "In that battle for the soul of Islam, vulnerable Christians are the battleground. Protecting them protects all in those parts of the world struggling to define whether they stay in the dark ages ... or enter the 21st century."

Adultery: Grace or Gossip?

The distressed parishioner had a sad, even pathetic, story to tell, one the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy had heard before.

The man confessed that he was an adulterer, but that wasn't the worst part of his predicament. His boss had heard about the affair and fired him, starting a chain reaction that struck his wife and two children.

Both the husband and his wife wanted to try save the marriage, said Gaddy, in a case study in his new book, "Adultery & Grace: The Ultimate Scandal." But with the husband's sudden unemployment, she was forced into the job market. Along with the crushing blow of his infidelity, this stress weakened her already fragile health. The children's educational plans were in jeopardy. Now, the husband needed to know if his pastor could help with their most pressing concerns – money for marriage counseling and groceries.

Friends pleaded with the employer on behalf of the wife and children. Gaddy remembers the response: "They're not my problem. He should have thought of what he was doing to his family before he started screwing around."

The boss wanted to punish the adulterer, but crushed a family. Worst of all, said Gaddy, this approach often serves as a death sentence for weakened marriages, creating more broken homes. Truth is, many people relate to adulterers and their families with a mean-spiritedness that is just as sinful as acts of adultery.

Most Americans have a "love-hate relationship with adultery and adulterers," said the Baptist writer and ethicist, who currently leads Northminster Church in Monroe, La. "People flock to movies to drool over stories of heroes and heroines caught in adulterous relations. Scores of readers go through stacks of romance novels detailing extramarital erotica. Tell these same individuals about two people they know ... in an adulterous relationship, however, and watch out for a severe response of righteous indignation mixed with moral outrage."

A similar tension exists in churches. Most religious people act as if adultery is the worst of all possible sins, a scarlet- letter offense that's impossible to forget or forgive. Yet clergy rarely, if ever, use the pulpit to offer advice on how people can avoid adultery or recover from this sin. Few churches dare to offer programs that help save broken marriages.

Yes, a few liberal churches have even made news by saying that sex outside of marriage is not always sinful. But it may be even more newsworthy that so many conservative churches have become timid or silent. The result is a worse-case scenario. Instead of guidance, churches offer gossip; instead of proclaiming the need for repentance, forgiveness and restoration, most church leaders, by their silence, promote secrecy, vindictiveness and divorce.

The silence may be linked to darker truths about church life in this era of high divorce rates in pulpits and pews. Gaddy noted that numerous studies indicate "religious people who regularly worship in a church or synagogue are as prone to marital infidelity as the rest of the population. Their views on sexuality reveal a conservatism not shared by society at large, but their behavior differs little from the social norm."

The first step to healing is for religious leaders to talk openly about the multigenerational havoc that adultery causes in the lives of husbands, wives and children, said Gaddy. After breaking the silence, clergy can discuss practical ways that the church can people recover from adultery.

In one encounter with a woman caught in adultery, noted Gaddy, Jesus delivered a delicately balanced message. He did not condemn her, but his final words were clear: "Go, and sin no more." The church must deliver a similar message, and then its deeds must match its words. The goal is to save souls and then save marriages.

"Either you believe in grace and redemption or you don't," said Gaddy. "I believe that adultery has become, for the modern church, the ultimate test of this reality. ... I am convinced the church can denounce sin, while also being aggressive about telling people about forgiveness and grace."

The Architect of American Catholicism

As Cardinal Joseph Bernardin entered the Loyola University Cancer Center he found his path blocked by a mass of news crews.

The Chicago cardinal faced surgery for pancreatic cancer and this crisis came on the heels of another media storm, when he was accused of sexual abuse. Thus, America's best-known Catholic prelate paused for yet another impromptu press conference.

"One of the first questions asked was, `Cardinal, which did you find more difficult or more traumatic - the false accusation or the diagnosis of cancer?' I immediately said, `The false accusation,'" recalled Bernardin, describing the 1995 scene in a posthumously published memoir. "They asked me to explain, so I told them that the accusation had been the result of evil. It was an attack on my integrity. .But cancer is an illness. It doesn't involve moral evil."

Bernardin completed "The Gift of Peace" only two weeks before his death on Nov. 14. It begins with former seminarian Steven Cook's accusation of sexual abuse. However, Bernardin said he quickly realized that Cook - who has since died of AIDS - wasn't to blame, because "certain critics of mine" used him as a pawn. In this story, the forces of "moral evil" are represented by Catholic traditionalists out to "get" a progressive cardinal.

While Bernardin did not name names, he included enough details to point reporters toward Father Charles Fiore of Lodi, Wis. The outspoken Dominican priest has publicly acknowledged he was the target of the cardinal's accusations, while denying that his one conversation with Cook had anything to do with bringing charges against Bernardin.

"Only two people know what Steven Cook and I discussed on Nov. 10, 1993: Steven Cook and I. Cook is dead," said Fiore, in The Wanderer, a conservative Catholic newspaper. The bottom line: Bernardin didn't like people openly raising questions about his theological beliefs and private life, said Fiore.

Ironically, "The Gift of Peace" offers little evidence of peace among American Catholics. While some hail Bernardin as a great peacemaker; others insist that he chanted, "Peace, peace; when there is no peace." Conservatives say he built his career on media events in which those who defend centuries of doctrine were pressured to dialogue, and then compromise, with dissidents who reject the Catholic faith.

"Bernardin was the favorite prelate of those who despise the idea of prelacy. He was the hero of those who view the entire Catholic ecclesiastical system as sinister," said conservative historian James Hitchcock of St. Louis University. "In fact, the more people liked Cardinal Bernardin, and praised his role as a great reconciler, the more likely they were to be critical of traditional Catholic doctrine, the authority of Rome and, especially, the current pope."

In 1968, Bernardin became the first general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic bishops and later was elected its president. In this era, he built a powerful bureaucracy that traditionalists said resembled the National Council of Churches or a left- wing think tank. Then Bernardin guided the writing of "The Challenge of Peace," a national pastoral letter that challenged the morality of nuclear weapons and put him on the cover of Time. Shortly after becoming Chicago's cardinal, he delivered his 1983 "seamless garment" sermon linking abortion with other social issues, such as the death penalty, nuclear war and welfare.

Conservatives were outraged, saying that this offered politicians a theological smoke screen, at the strategic moment when the pro-life movement had its best chance to affect national policies. This wound never healed.

"The real issue between Fiore and the cardinal was abortion," said Father Andrew Greeley, a controversial writer and sociologist. "Sex abuse was simply something to skewer him on." In general, conservatives "thought he was not hard line enough on abortion. It was not enough to oppose abortion. You had to do it their way."

Meanwhile, many progressives say that Bernardin was, at times, too cautious in pushing for change or perhaps too loyal to Rome. This obscures the fact that he changed the very structure of Catholic life in this country, said Hitchcock.

"The key is whether we are Roman Catholics or, as the press now likes to say, 'American Catholics,'" he said. "Well, Cardinal Bernardin was not the symbolic leader of this so-called American Catholic church. He was its architect."