Pat Summerall's new life

As the final seconds tick off the game clock, players stream off the sidelines until the two waves of team jerseys meet at midfield.

Football fans watch this colorful scene Sunday after Sunday on television. Many combatants trudge together to the locker rooms, while others rush to embrace former teammates. Soon, a circle forms as players from both teams kneel in prayer.

"That's when we pull back to that wide shot of the stadium and cut away as quick as we can to the studio in New York," noted Pat Summerall, who recently called his last Super Bowl with John Madden, his professional partner of 21 years. "For years, I've been trying to tell people up in the booth that something interesting was going on down there and we ought to show it. ...

"Those players praying together on the field stand for something. This is one of the uncovered stories in sports today."

Summerall knows what is happening in that circle because he has lived it.

It would have been unthinkable, said the 71-year-old broadcaster, for his old New York Giants teammates to exchange friendly greetings with their opponents before the game and they sure wouldn't have been seen praying with them afterwards. There were unwritten rules about that sort of thing 40 or 50 years ago in the National Football League.

Today, there are prayer groups inside and outside locker rooms. More players are openly talking about their faith and they don't care who listens. This has caused tension in some teams, while creating unique bonds of unity in others. Meanwhile, there are – as always – scores of professional athletes who abuse alcohol and drugs and whose private lives are, at best, confused.

Summerall has seen it all. He almost drowned in alcohol before drying out in 1992 at the Betty Ford Center. Then, at age 66, he found new life in the waters of baptism. Now, as he enters a new stage of his media career, Summerall is trying to figure out how to tell both sides of this story.

"You don't stay in the business he has been in as long as he's been in it without being able to grow and change and learn. That's just part of being somebody like Pat Summerall," said the Rev. Claude Thomas of the First Baptist Church of Euless, outside Dallas. "But as his pastor, I think it will be fascinating to see how his growth as a professional is going to fit in with the continuing growth in his faith. ...

"I know one thing: God has a purpose for Pat's life and his talents."

In the weeks since Super Bowl XXXVI, Summerall said he has spent most of his time responding to the hundreds of letters and telephone calls that followed his graceful swan song with Madden and Fox Sports. It's too soon to start talking about contacts with other networks, but it isn't too soon to start thinking about options.

It would be easy to spend months doing nothing but public speaking, said Summerall. But even this part of his life is changing. In the past, groups asked him to come tell a few funny stories, share a few touching memories and serve up some insider sound-bites about sports and television. Now, Summerall is being asked to focus on something totally different – the very personal story of his battle with alcohol. That will mean talking about his faith.

"I know that I have a story to tell," he said. "What I'm discovering is that quite a few people actually want to hear about the baptism part, too. I can't be silent about that."

Summerall said it helps that he no longer feels helpless and alone. Wherever he travels, he has been able to find athletes and coaches who are on the same path. Sometimes they even have to meet in football stadiums. It's getting easier to spot them.

"It's like an alcoholic looking for a drink. If he wants it bad enough, he can find it – no matter what," he said. "I'm like that when it comes to finding prayer services and Bible studies. No matter where I am working, I know that they're out there and I can find them."

A Hollywood movie to remember

No one was surprised when "A Walk to Remember" opened on Jan. 25th and drew flocks of teen-aged girls to the suburban super-cinemas that circle America's biggest cities.

This was, after all, a multi-hanky "chick flick" staring pop diva Mandy Moore. After a week, it was the No. 3 movie and had pulled in $12.2 million, which raised some Hollywood eyebrows because it only cost about $10 million to make.

Then the plot thickened. In weeks two and three, ticket sales hit $23.3 and then $30.3 million. "A Walk to Remember" was doing OK in major cities, but soaring in smaller cities and towns across the heartland. Was the quiet little romance about a chaste preacher's daughter and a brooding troublemaker reaching a new demographic?

"We don't want to go out to theater lobbies and ask people, 'Are you a born-again Christian? Are you going to recommend this movie to people at your church?' But it seems clear this movie is attracting people who normally don't dash out to movie theaters," said veteran producer Denise Di Novi. "We must be getting good word-of-mouth support from people who are saying, 'This is not a typical Hollywood teen movie. You can trust this one.' "

"A Walk to Remember" began with a novel by Nicholas Sparks, an active Catholic. The movie tells the story of Jamie Sullivan, the devout but spunky daughter of a small-town Baptist pastor, and Landon Carter, a handsome jerk in need of redemption. Jamie carries a Bible, helps poor children, dresses modestly, obeys her widower father and does not compromise when taken on a stargazing date that involves one blanket.

Landon tells her father: "Jamie has faith in me. She makes me want to be different – better."

The screenplay is not as overtly religious as the book. Nevertheless, reluctant Warner Bros. executives pressed Di Novi for hard evidence that an audience existed for such a clean, pro-faith story. The studio eventually sponsored promotional materials for Christian viewers, including 10,000 youth-pastor packets containing a Bible study about issues in the movie.

Now, Di Novi is predicting the film will hit $50 million in theaters, with a bright future in video. This has obvious implications for other films, if there are quality scripts available with a similar blend of morality and storytelling.

"It was hard getting this movie made. I don't mind saying there was spiritual warfare involved," said Di Novi, who is best known for making films such as "Heathers," "Edward Scissorhands" and "Message in a Bottle," based on another Sparks novel.

"This isn't a blockbuster. But it is a bona fide hit movie. People should sit up and pay attention. I think we have shown that there is an audience for a teen movie that isn't just about sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. You don't have to be prurient."

Christian critics have not been silent or unanimous in their praise. Some powerful voices have insisted that "A Walk to Remember" is too vague. The film does not include one very dangerous word – "Jesus" – and the rebel never articulates his faith. Di Novi said the movie was screened in advance for secular and religious audiences and she had no intention of running either crowd out of theaters.

The bottom line is that this is not a "Christian movie" that preaches at viewers. Instead, she said her goal was to produce something more daring – a Hollywood movie that revolves around a Christian character that is compassionate and attractive, as opposed to being a phony, angry, hypocritical, judgmental zealot.

At the same time, the movie makes a subtle comment about modern churches and the young people in their pews. It shows the rebellious Landon sitting in church and, later, a confrontation with the preacher makes it clear the kid was paying some attention week after week.

"Lots of kids go to church, but you never see that reflected in TV and at the movies," said Di Novi. "And there are all kinds of kids at church – good kids and mixed-up kids. The book says Landon had already been baptized. Sometimes the faith gets through to kids like that and sometimes it doesn't."

Latter-day Saints and that C-word

Science fiction novelist Orson Scott Card is tired of hearing outsiders whispering about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – especially the dreaded C-word.

The word in question is not "Christian." It's "cult."

"I daresay that the Mormon church is less cult-like than many of the religions that delight in calling us one," argued Card. "Indeed, calling Mormonism a cult is usually an attempt to get people to behave like robots, blindly obeying the command that they reject Mormonism without any independent thought. Kettles, as they say, calling the pot black."

Debates about Mormonism and public life always heat up when Utah is in the spotlight and the XIX Winter Olympics certainly qualify as that. Journalists have focused on the church's vow not to proselytize visitors and, of course, whether Mormon morality could stick a cork in the hot party scene that surrounds the games. News is news.

While avoiding deadly overkill, LDS leaders cranked up public-relations efforts to portray their faith as part of mainline Christianity. This strategy is sure to catch the attention of other faiths that send missionaries to the games, such as the 1,000 Southern Baptist volunteers in Utah for Global Outreach 2002.

Tensions are inevitable. Thus, Card launched a preemptive strike in a Beliefnet.com column entitled "Hey, Who Are You Calling a Cult?" It's ludicrous, he said, to smear Mormons with the same word that defined the Jim Jones flock in Guyana and the "sneaker-wearing folks who killed themselves to join aliens ... behind a comet."

It's true, he said, that Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was a charismatic leader with fiercely loyal followers. But this is true of almost all new religious movements. Card defied anyone to argue that modern Mormons are "automatons" who yank converts out of their homes and brainwash them.

"If Mormonism were a cult, I would know it, and I would not be in it," he said.

Meanwhile, the Southern Baptist Convention's web site on "Cults, Sects and New Religious Movements" includes page after page of materials dissecting LDS beliefs and practices. It uses this definition: "A cult ... is a group of people polarized around someone's interpretation of the Bible and is characterized by major deviations from orthodox Christianity relative to the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, particularly the fact that God became man in Jesus Christ."

Hardly anyone still calls the Latter-day Saints a "cult" in terms of a "psychological or sociological definition" of that term, stressed the Rev. Tal Davis, of the SBC's North American Mission Board. But traditional Christians must insist that they can use a "theological definition" of the word "cult."

"This may not be the best word and we admit that," said Davis. "We're using it in a technical way, trying to make it clear that we're describing a faith that is – according to its own teachings – far outside the borders of traditional Christianity. ...

"We're not trying to be mean-spirited. We want to be very precise. We take doctrine very seriously and we know that the Mormons do, too."

The doctrinal conflicts are many and sincere, stressed scholar Jan Shipps, a United Methodist who is author of "Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons." Traditional Christians and the Latter-day Saints are not just arguing about issues of interpretation. These disputes are about pivotal additions to the earlier stream of faith.

The clashes start at the very beginning, with the nature of God. Christians worship one God, yet known as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Saints have a radically different approach, said Shipps, believing God and Jesus to be separate beings – each with a literal body and parts. They say Jesus was sired by God, with a divine Mother in Heaven.

"The Trinity, the Trinity, the Trinity, there is no way around the Trinity," said Shipps. "But you know, it would also help if Christians – if they are going to use the word 'cult' – would admit that Christianity changed the very nature of the Jewish God. Christianity then grew up to become a new religious tradition.

"Mormonism is a new religious tradition that has grown out of Christianity. It is an entity unto itself. It is what it is."

W Bush, classic Methodist?

CRAWFORD, Texas – Don Elrod was spending another hard day on another production line when one of his buddies threw up his hands and keeled over, killed by a heart attack.

As a farm hand turned teacher turned carpenter turned asphalt expert, Elrod didn't know the proper theological lingo to describe what happened in his own heart that day. But this layman knew that something changed. Before long, he became a Methodist preacher.

"At some point in life everybody faces a bad situation, some kind of really big mountain, and there's no way around it," he said. "That's when we have to decide whether we're going to turn to God or not. ... It may be getting sick, or losing your job, or it may be the bottle. But it's gonna happen."

It's like that night on Aldersgate Street, when John Wesley – racked by doubt and despair – took a leap of faith and felt his heart was "strangely warmed." That experience on May 24, 1738, led to the Methodist movement that spread piety, evangelism and social reform throughout England and the world.

Find a flock of true Methodists and you'll find people who believe changed hearts can change the world. That's what Elrod was thinking after he stepped into his pulpit at First United Methodist in Crawford and faced a flock that included his neighbor, President George W. Bush.

Elrod thinks he knows a Methodist when he sees one.

So he wasn't surprised when he heard Bush had been named Layman of the Year by Good News, a network of United Methodist evangelicals based in Wilmore, Ky. While this honor will raise eyebrows in United Methodist sanctuaries in the Rust Belt and the West, it will draw respectful "amens" in heartland towns like Crawford, the capital of Bush country in Central Texas.

To find Elrod's church, you drive past Covered Wagon Trail, past Cattle Drive Road, over the railroad tracks, through the blinking traffic light, past the town's now famous restaurant/gas station and turn left at the First Baptist Church sign that says "Let's Roll." The Methodists are on the next corner.

In these parts, said Elrod, people even think it's fitting that Bush says God helped him win his showdown with alcohol. After all, there was a time when Methodists were known for asking rowdy people to repent of the sins of the flesh.

"I think President Bush knows what that's all about," said Elrod. "He got to the point with his drinking where it was life or death and, you know, the Lord isn't going to wait forever on you to make up your mind."

Good News magazine cited several reasons for the award, including Bush's defense of all religious believers, including "peace-loving Muslims and Arab-Americans," after Sept. 11. Most of all, the editorial said he "understands the great chasm between right and wrong and has been unflinching in calling evildoers by their proper name. He has relentlessly used this historic nightmare as an ethical tutorial for generations raised on a steady diet of moral relativism."

Some of the president's terrorism speeches have even veered into language that sounds like Wesley's sermons condemning slavery and child-labor abuses, said Good News editor Steve Beard. There is a dash of Methodist fire in Bush phrases such as: "Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war. And we know that God is not neutral between them."

Meanwhile, the United Methodist hierarchy has consistently advocated diplomacy over Bush's military strategy. It's Board of Church and Society condemned terrorism, but opposed any "use of indiscriminate military force." Bishop C. Joseph Sprague said he doubted the Afghanistan campaign could accurately be called a "just war."

"Bishops have to say things like that," said Elrod. "Now your common man reads the Bible and he sees that even Jesus felt righteous anger when he went in there and cleaned out the temple. You can take it and take it and take it, but there comes a time when you have to stand up to the bully. Sometimes you have to act.

"I think old Joe Blow and his wife Jane out here understand that. They know what President Bush is talking about."