What Wilberforce would do

It's rare to hear political leaders speak with candor when it comes to religion.

Imagine the angry newspaper headlines if a world-famous legislator dared to say: "I fear for the future of authentic faith in our country. We live in a time when the common man ... is thoroughly influenced by the current climate in which the cultural and educational elite propagates an anti-Christian message. We should take a look at what has happened in France and learn a lesson from it."

How would pundits respond if the same politico then said: "Is it any wonder ... that the spiritual condition of our country is of little concern to those who don't even educate their own children about true Christianity?"

Of course, a modern politician didn't air these blunt words on "Meet the Press." An 18th-century Member of Parliament named William Wilberforce published them in a British bestseller entitled "A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes in This Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity."

"The first time I read that book, I thought, 'It's hard to work through some of the old language, but what the man is saying could have been written yesterday,' " said the Rev. Bob Beltz, an evangelical Presbyterian who oversees special media projects for billionaire investor Philip Anschutz.

"I kept writing '1797' over and over in the page margins, with exclamation marks. His words are so relevant that it's shocking."

The question is whether modern Americans will admire Wilberforce as much as Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and others admired him in the past and, perhaps, go see his life story on a movie screen.

Modern Wilberforce disciples are doing what they can, producing new books, educational projects and political activism (www.theamazingchange.com) tied to his legacy. For example, Beltz set out to translate the heart of Wilberforce's book into modern language, a slim volume now called "Real Christianity." Proceeds will go to the Dalit Freedom Network that is active in India.

At the same time, Beltz was involved with Bristol Bay Productions to produce the new movie "Amazing Grace," released on the 200th anniversary of Wilberforce's greatest victory. It was on Feb. 23, 1807, that the slave trade was abolished throughout the British Empire after years of struggle that taxed the abolitionist's faith, will and health.

"Amazing Grace" opened on a modest 791 screens and grossed $4 million its first weekend, a $5,442-per-screen average that matched the top releases. The studio hopes to increase its promotional budget and reach more screens in upcoming weeks.

"We know that this isn't the ordinary kind of movie that makes people rush to the theater," said Beltz. "Then again, Wilberforce wasn't your ordinary kind of man."

Born in a successful merchant family, Wilberforce won a seat in the House of Commons in 1780, shortly after graduating from Cambridge University and celebrating his 21st birthday. Before long he was both a radical social reformer and a radical evangelist who – after two years of intellectual and spiritual turmoil – came to see no conflict between his twin callings in the public square.

Thus, Wilberforce on Oct. 28, 1787, wrote in his diary that, "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." In that era, pledging to reform "manners" meant supporting public efforts to promote moral virtue and oppose vice.

As if these passions were not enough, Wilberforce was also a spectacular orator, writer, singer, publisher, art lover, amateur scientist and social activist who helped build hospitals, fight cruelty to animals, reform prisons, improve schools and promote better factory working conditions.

It's crucial to realize, said Beltz, that for Wilberforce all of these causes were woven into the fabric of his life and faith. He saw no conflict between his head and his heart, between evangelism and social justice. What he opposed most of all was "nominal," culturally compromised faith laced with apathy.

"You have people who believe that if you are born in America and go to church on Sunday then that means that you are a Christian," said Beltz. "That is precisely the attitude that William Wilberforce was fighting in the England of his day. He believed that you couldn't defeat a great evil like slavery with a weak, watered-down faith. You needed the real thing."

That Episcopal status quo

When it comes to same-sex unions, the Episcopal Church has been using a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The church's General Convention has never authorized an official rite to bless homosexual relationships. Bishops have, however, been allowed to approve blessings at the local level or simply look the other way.

The national church didn't ask and local bishops didn't have to tell.

The big question is whether this tactic will work after the latest meeting of the world's Anglican primates, which ended early this week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In a blunt communiqu

Catholic South shall rise

Catholics in the urban Northeast are getting used to the headlines.

Parishioners in East Harlem have decided to conduct a vigil in a beloved old sanctuary because church leaders plan to lock the doors – forever. The Archdiocese of New York recently said it would close or merge 21 churches in order to gather more people in fewer pews to be served by a declining number of priests.

A parishioner at Our Lady Queen of Angels told the New York Times: "People have been baptized here and married here, received first communion here. ... When they close the church, we are going to stay inside."

This is one image of American Catholic life today.

However, it's only part of a bigger picture, said Steven Wagner of QEV Analytics in Washington, D.C. While parishes are closing in regions long known as Catholic strongholds, more missions are opening in regions where the Catholic flock is small – but vital.

For every Boston, there is a Knoxville, Tenn. For every Philadelphia, there is a Savannah, Ga.

"The church is closing parishes in the Northeast, but Catholics are building them in the South and the Southwest," said Wagner. "We know that a lot of that is driven by immigration and population trends. ? So if you really want to know where Catholicism is alive and where it's struggling, you can't just look at membership statistics. You have to ask other questions."

That's what Wagner and co-writer Father Rodger Hunter-Hall have tried to do in a study entitled "The State of the Catholic Church in America, Diocese by Diocese," conducted for the conservative Crisis magazine. Using statistics from the Official Catholic Directory they ranked the 176 Latin Rite dioceses in three crucial areas. Their goal was to study the role played by local bishops between 1995 and 2005.

In an attempt to gauge clergy morale, they determined if the number of active priests in a diocese was rising or falling. Five dioceses stayed the same, 29 experienced growth and 141 suffered deceases.

Then Wagner and Hunter-Hall counted the number of priests being ordained, using a scale that did not discriminate against small dioceses. On the negative end of the scale, 48 dioceses had zero ordinations in 2005 – including large Sunbelt dioceses in Dallas and Houston.

"All kinds of factors can affect morale and the number of ordinations," said Hunter-Hall, who teaches at Christendom College in Front Royal, Va. "But these statistics at least provide insights into whether a bishop is attracting new priests and whether or not he has created a climate that makes men want to serve in his diocese."

To gauge the effectiveness of evangelism efforts, they charted the number of adult converts in each diocese. Once again, Wagner and Hunter-Hall stressed that Catholicism is experiencing rapid growth in some regions due to immigration and, as always, many people enter the church through intermarriage.

However, that kind of growth "isn't the same thing as people making decisions to convert because of the faith itself," said Hunter-Hall. "If you see converts streaming into the church, that almost always tells you something about the spiritual climate in a diocese. That usually has something to do with the bishop."

Finally, the researchers combined these three factors and determined which dioceses that they thought had improved and declined the most during the past decade. The top 20 list was dominated by small dioceses – including a stunning number in the Bible Belt. The sharpest declines were in the Northeast, especially New England.

Thus, Wagner and Hunter-Hall noted: "The church is ... most healthy in that region that is traditionally the least hospitable to it, and is least healthy in that region where it has the longest history, and in which are found the greatest concentration of Catholics (as a percentage of the population) and the largest number of Catholics."

Size is not always a virtue and, it seems, the first may become the last. Small dioceses – especially in "missionary" regions – consistently attracted more converts and more new priests.

"It sounds strange, but if you're a Catholic and you want to go where the action is you need to go to places like Alexandria (La.) Tyler (Texas) and Biloxi (Miss.)," said Wagner. "Catholics all over America are facing unique challenges. It seems that some people are handling them better than others."

'Animal House' with crosses?

After years of single life in New York City, Dawn Eden knows how to study the crowd at a social event.

She knows how to let her gaze wander from man to man, while a voice in her head whispers, "That one's handsome," "That one's with someone," "That one's too old," "That one's got a wedding ring," "That one looks too interested in the man he's speaking to."

Eden heard that voice a lot during her years as a rock-music writer, back when she knew the music scene, knew the hot musicians and knew the score – in every sense of that word. Then she converted to Christianity and her beliefs about love and marriage turned upside down.

The irony, said Eden, is that many clergy seem to think it would be a good thing if singles kept playing the spot-the-hot-date game in church.

"I am not an expert in church singles groups because I am not a connoisseur of them," said Eden, author of a controversial book entitled "The Thrill of the Chaste." The title betrays her work as an award-winning tabloid headline writer, as does the book's pushy subtitle, "Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On."

While doing online research into the Christian singles scene, Eden found a New York group that was promoting an "Extreme Charity Pub Crawl." Then there was the ski-retreat invitation that told young believers to prepare for fellowship in the hot tub.

This isn't what singles need from churches at Valentine's Day or any other day, said Eden, 38, who currently works as an editor at the New York Daily News.

"My church life got so much better the minute I stopped trying to look for someone to date at Mass," she said. "I mean, it isn't a good thing if people learn to look each other over at church the same way they look each other over in a bar."

This is not the kind of woman whose work usually shows up on shelves in Christian bookstores.

Dawn Eden Goldstein was reading the Bible by the time she was in second grade, witchcraft books by fifth grade, had her bat mitzvah at 13 and wandered into agnosticism shortly thereafter. Later, her encyclopedic knowledge of '60s pop landed her a steady stream of jobs writing album liner notes and magazine profiles.

Then, in 1996, a rocker introduced her to the books of the Christian apologist and journalist G.K. Chesterton. It took time for Eden's grasp of the New Testament to trump her knowledge of the Kama Sutra, but one thing led to another and she eventually became a modest, chaste, but hip Roman Catholic.

Changing her lifestyle was hard, she writes in her book, because she "had dutifully followed the Cosmo rule, which is also the Sex and the City rule and really the Universal Single-Person Rule in our secular age: 'Sex should push the relationship.' This rule can also be expressed as, 'We'll talk about it in bed.' "

The logic of this doctrine convinces many women that men can be forced into lasting commitments "through the persuasive force of your physical affection. It forces you to follow a set of Darwinian social rules – dressing and acting a certain way to outperform other women competing for mates." In the end, said Eden, she realized that her strutting self-confidence wasn't real and that "you can't transform a pair of $14.99 Fayva slingbacks into a pair of $600 Manolo stilettos with a mere coat of paint."

If church leaders truly want to reach out to women and men who are looking for an alternative to that lifestyle, said Eden, they must realize that the last thing single adults need is a singles ministry that turns "your church basement into a sort of 'Animal House' with crosses."

What congregations should do is rally single adults around worship, prayer, books, the arts and service to others, she said. Then friendships and relationships can develop out of activities that strengthen the faith of those that choose to participate.

"You really don't have to dumb things down for us," said Eden. "There are plenty of ways for single adults to get less church if that is what they really want. Why not talk to some of your young adults and ask them what they really want. They may want more church – more faith – not less."