St. Raphael, a shepherd in America

NEW CANAAN, Pa. – The icon is coming to life in Father Paul Albert's imagination and in the simple pen-and-ink drawings he is sharing with his bishops.

The drawings show the strong face of an Arab bishop, with a thick salt-and-pepper beard and hair that contrast starkly with his Byzantine vestments. The dominant colors in the icon will be bright green touched with gold, the colors that Eastern Christianity uses to symbolize new life and Pentecost, the birthday of the church.

The inscription reads "St. Raphael, apostle to the scattered sheep of America" and grapevines are shown springing from the earth where his shepherd's staff strikes the America soil.

They are new-growth vines and do not contain ripe fruit – yet. And Raphael is a new saint, canonized this past weekend in a glorious siege of rites and festivities that brought 17 Orthodox bishops and at least 400 pilgrims to the remote St. Tikhon's Monastery in the lush hills of Pennsylvania, where Russian onion domes dot the horizon among the barns and silos.

"St. Raphael is such an amazing, symbolic figure," said Albert, a priest in Toledo, Ohio. "What people have to remember is that the Arab Christians who came to America were scattered all over the place and they had no shepherd. ... They were simple hillbillies from the hills of Syria and they found it hard to trust anyone in this new land. It took just the right man to reach them and St. Raphael was that man."

There are 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide and about 5 million in the United States. While this second figure is growing, mainly through evangelical and oldline Protestant conversions, the image of Orthodoxy in America remains that of a church dominated by ethnic ties to foreign lands.

Thus, it's symbolic that Raphael was canonized by the Orthodox Church in America, which has Russia roots, with the enthusiastic backing of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, with its ties to Syria. Both of these churches now worship almost exclusively in English and are opening scores of convert-friendly missions. Both hail St. Raphael as a bridge between the ethnic past and the American future.

Raphael Hawaweeny was born in 1840, while Christians were being slaughtered in the streets of Damascus. His family briefly fled to Lebanon after the martyrdom of their parish priest, St. Joseph of Damascus.

"That happened the very year that Raphael was born," noted Albert. "That's what he was born into. That was his reality."

The young Raphael became a monk, but had to leave home to receive an education equal to his abilities. First, he studied with the Greeks at the School of Theology in Halki and he later did graduate studies in Kiev, Russia. Raphael spent nearly a decade in Russia, leading the Arab parish in Moscow. But it was his fierce advocacy of the rights of Arab Christians back home in the ancient church of Antioch led to clashes with some bishops and, at one point, to his suspension from ministry as a priest.

Then he received an 1895 invitation to lead an Arab mission in yet another strange land – Brooklyn. By this point, Raphael knew Latin, classical Greek and Old Church Slavonic, while speaking Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Russian, French and English.

The missionary traveled from Montreal to Mexico City and founded 30 parishes. As his fame grew, Raphael had numerous opportunities to return home. The Antiochian synod offered him positions as a bishop in Beirut, Tripoli, Tyre, Sidon and elsewhere. But he remained with his flock, becoming a bishop in a 1904 rite in Brooklyn that made him the first Orthodox bishop consecrated in North America. He died in 1915.

For generations, images of Raphael have been hung in many American churches. Now, there will be new icons – showing St. Raphael with a halo.

"This isn't a fable," stressed Albert. "St. Raphael was a real man who lived and dwelled in history. He was a man on a mission who was used by God in a unique way – the right man in the right place at the right time. Now he is a saint we can truly call our own."

Are journalists getting religion?

WASHINGTON – The late, great religion writer George Cornell knew a big story when he saw one – especially when people kept underlining it.

It was in April 1982, that he wrote his Associated Press story about research by S. Robert Lichter and Stanley Rothman into the moral and religious views of journalists in America's top newsrooms. One statistic jumped out of the report and into pulpits nationwide. Half of these journalists, when faced with the "religious affiliation" blank, wrote "none."

Cornell dug deeper and learned that many had also underlined the word "none."

"A lot of journalists, grew up in a tradition where religion – at least the substance of religion – was out of the ballpark as far as newspapering is concerned," Cornell told me, when I was doing graduate research at the University of Illinois. "I think that idea has carried over. ... They hesitate to cover religion because they see it as a private matter and they don't want it in the newspaper. Of course, this attitude could also be due to their ignorance of religion."

That was then. According to a new 30-year study by Lichter and the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the amount of religion news in America's elite media doubled from the 1980s to the '90s. The percentage of elite journalists who claimed they had no religious affiliation has fallen from that 50 percent level in 1980 to 22 percent. In 1980, 14 percent of those surveyed said they attended religious services at least once a month. It was 30 percent in the new report.

Nevertheless, Lichter's team found that the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, ABC, NBC and CBS combined produced only 116 religion news stories a year during the '90s, or just above two a week. Also, journalists embraced certain kinds of stories, while shunning others.

"It's true that there is more religion in the news, today," said Lichter. "But what you tend to get is the religion of the journalists – which is politics."

Thus, religious groups usually made news when engaged in public policy debates or internal power struggles, especially if the clashes were about sex. Church-state conflicts produced one out of every eight stories about religion in the '90s. Journalists love to dissect the Religious Right.

Meanwhile, 93 percent of the religion news reports contained no references to theology or the spiritual content of a group or person's faith. This "spiritual dimension" appeared in only 5 percent of stories about Catholicism or Protestantism, but graced 26 percent of those about Eastern religions, such as Buddhism and Taoism and 19 percent of those about Islam.

One explanation for this is that journalists may presume readers already know the "theological rationales behind mainstream religious opinions," said Newsweek religion editor Kenneth Woodward, during a forum on the survey at the Ethics & Public Policy Center. Then again, reporters may simply be theologically ignorant or operating with a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to the role of faith in the news, he said.

In the years since the original "media elites" study, its critics have attacked the claim that major newsrooms are havens of secularism. The Freedom Forum's 1993 "Bridging the Gap" report noted that 72 percent of 266 editors surveyed nationwide said that religion is "important in their lives," while only 9 percent claimed no religious affiliation.

But Lichter remains fascinated that 70 percent of elite journalists continue to attend religious services once a year, or less, or never. Also, journalists remain paragons of progressive virtues on hot moral issues. In 1980, 90 percent were pro-abortion rights. It's 97 percent in the new report. Support for gay rights was 76 percent in 1980 and has slipped by a statistically insignificant amount, to 73 percent.

A logical way to read this, said Lichter, is to say that elite newsrooms contain just as many cultural and political liberals, but that some journalists now attend "socially and culturally liberal congregations." Newsrooms may be fertile mission fields for oldline Protestant churches.

Or perhaps, quipped Woodward, "baby boomer journalists now have adolescent kids and that will drive almost anyone to church."

Faith Popcorn's spiritual cocktails

Way back in the 1990s, Faith Popcorn had a sports car with a driver's seat that could be programmed to fit three different people, making each feel comfortable with a simple click.

This perfectly symbolized what the hip market analyst calls "Egonomics," which is what happens when Information Age consumers feel swamped and depersonalized and demand products that let them wallow in "me, myself and I."

"We Americans are the most self-analyzed and self-important people on the planet," argued Popcorn, in "Clicking," the bestseller that summarizes her work. "We know ourselves and we want to define ourselves – not to be told how to live and what to buy. We demand choices."

But at the same time, her BrainReserve company is convinced consumers want spiritual roots – a trend she calls "Anchoring." So what happens when "Egonomics" collides with "Anchoring," pews that adjust to fit the individual worshiper? You got it.

"The future will be so radically different from anything we've known before, that having a spiritual connection will become more profoundly important," claims Popcorn, answering questions on her Web site. "Spirituality and religion, however, will become much more self-defined. In essence, people will mix and pour their own religious cocktails.

"There will be a morphing of traditional religious practices and denominations. ... We'll see some people at the center of organized religions react to this by becoming more and more fundamentalist."

Popcorn has always used sweeping, almost messianic language – pushing TrendBank themes such as "Icon Toppling," "S.O.S. (Save Our Society)," with its call for "moral transformation through marketing," and her modern believers are now seeking meaning by "Clanning" in informal "Mystical Tribes" that unite around shared joys or pains.

This kind of talk comes easy for a Jewish girl who spent part of her childhood in Catholic schools in Shanghai, with a father who was a lawyer who worked for what became the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. As a young woman, the future futurist dreamed of a career New York's theaters, but ended up as an ad copywriter. One mentor couldn't pronounce her name – Faith Plotkin – and christened her Faith Popcorn. In 1974 she helped start BrainReserve and, in 1991, wrote "The Popcorn Report." The rest is the opposite of history.

In the upcoming book "EVEolution," Popcorn and co-writer Lys Marigold dissect the role women are playing in the marketplace and culture. The key is that Americans, led by female consumers, don't shop for particular brand of product just to buy it. Instead, they want to "join a brand" and make it a source of identity. This is even true in religion.

In other words, Americans are not just shopping on the Internet, at the mall or in mass media. They are defining who they are and who they are not. This is political, this is spiritual and this process becomes especially important when consumers believe their lives are not "clicking."

For Popcorn, the essence of our age is contained in that word "click," which she describes with born-again fervor. People have to let go and take little leaps of faith – including at home and work. When enough people begin to leap in the same direction, the result is a cultural trend, one solid enough to last for a decade or longer.

To the individual consumer, this feels highly personal.

"Too many of us spend our lives feeling slightly off-kilter, slightly out of step and out of synch with our expectations," notes Popcorn. "Something isn't clicking: a job, an idea, a product, a place, the sum total of what we're doing and where we're going. We fumble around trying to find the right combination to break into a new life."

Then something clicks and people find "control, focus, clarity, success." This is not a merely secular process.

"We're all at the start of a great awakening, a time of spiritual and religious revival," insists Popcorn. "What's different about this awaking is that there's very little agreement on who or what God is, what constitutes worship and what this outpouring means. ... The need to Anchor has found expression in all of the world's religions, whether they celebrate the Old and New Testament God, Buddha, Allah, Brahma, unnamed higher powers or self-discovery."

Cracking a Capitol Catch-22

On Sept. 18, 1793, President George Washington donned his Masonic apron and helped lay the U.S. Capitol's cornerstone.

Today, the plaque commemorating this event is in a small space just inside a door, near a stairway, across from an elevator in a maze of busy Rotunda hallways. It's a hard place to pause for prayer, but this is always one of the Rev. Pierre Bynum's first stops when leading Capitol Hill Prayer Alert tours.

For many evangelicals, said Bynum, it's easier to talk about Washington kneeling in prayer on a battlefield, than to discuss Washington the Mason, leading rites that some consider bizarre or occult.

"Here we see the mixture of mortar that is at the foundation of our nation," said Bynum. "It's a mix of good and evil, of truth and error. ... We have to be honest about that."

It was time to pray. The pastor asked his small flock to move closer, so others could file through the door. By the elevator, a U.S. Capitol guard watched as believers bowed their heads for two or three minutes.

"Lord, you have set before us life and death and you have commanded us to chose life," said Bynum. "Yet we confess that death has become part of what we stand for as a nation. ... Lord, restore to us a godly foundation."

This kind of strong talk makes many people nervous. And it was at this point in a Nov. 3, 1996 tour that someone heard a guard say, "That's a demonstration." Minutes later, near a statue of Samuel Adams, Bynum saw a circle of officers talking. Then one guard approached and said Bynum was leading a demonstration and would have to stop or face arrest.

That was then. But the guards were silent as the Maryland pastor helped lead an April tour that included quiet public prayers inside the Capitol.

It was his first visit after a U.S. district judge's March 31 ruling that Bynum had a constitutional right to free speech, even with his eyes closed, head bowed and hands folded. Judge Paul Friedman said police improperly applied regulations defining a demonstration as "parading, picketing, speechmaking, holding vigils, sit-ins or other expressive conduct that conveys a message supporting or opposing a point of view or has the intent, effect or propensity to attract a crowd of onlookers."

This does not describe Bynum and his group, wrote the judge. Besides, "any regulation that allows a police officer the unfettered discretion to restrict behavior merely because it 'conveys a message' or because it has a 'propensity to attract a crowd of onlookers' cannot survive a due process challenge."

To understand tensions that affect prayer in the public square, it helps to read statements the U.S. Capitol Police Board filed when seeking dismissal of this case. The problem was not that Bynum and others were praying, but that they were engaging in activities that let others know they were praying.

Prayers said with open eyes were acceptable. But any "expressive conduct," argued the board, should be "prohibited not because it is prayer, but because it is conduct that expresses a particular message. ... To conduct prayers during their tour inside the Capitol building is to engage in a demonstration of the group's views about prayer."

Thus, Capitol police argued that these visible public prayers were actually divisive demonstrations in favor of believers having the right to offer visible public prayers – which is a hot political issue. It was a Catch-22. There could be no pro-prayer prayers, or at least none visible to anti-prayer lobbyists.

Even though he won this time, Bynum expects more skirmishes. It's hard to venture inside the Capitol without overhearing lectures by opponents in the culture wars over abortion, sex outside of marriage, Darwinian philosophy and prayer in public schools. Religious freedom is messy.

"People are nervous these days, especially about any kind of conservative Christianity," said Bynum, just before his group viewed the spectacular religious art under the dome. "It's clear which way the trends are going. The bureaucrats – it doesn't matter if they're Democrats or Republicans – are convinced there's some kind of line of religious expression that people can't cross. It's tough to crack that mindset."

The Turin Shroud & the Sudarium, part II

Holy Saturday was an appropriately solemn day at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, as the faithful prayed in side chapels, said their confessions and prepared for Easter rites that were only hours away.

Down in the crypt, Kristin Kazyak paced before a life-sized color photograph of the Shroud of Turin. For hours, she answered familiar questions about the 14-foot sheet and how its lightly scorched fibers offer a negative photographic image that contains 3-D information. She discussed the brutal details of Roman executions, from roofing spikes hammered into wrists and feet to lashes tipped with spiked metal balls. She talked about the pros and cons of carbon dating.

"What we see here is not beautiful," said Kazyak, who managed this Washington, D.C., exhibit. "We can see every wound Christ suffered for us. ... It's bloody. It's shows trauma and torture. It hurts to look at it. We can see the ugliness of sin and human evil."

Finally, someone asked a new question: Isn't there another cloth similar to the shroud?

Kazyak located two photographs of bloody patterns on cloth. The first – from the shroud – showed its famous herringbone weave. But the second was of a more humble piece of linen, woven in a taffeta pattern.

This second blood pattern is from the Sudarium Christi (Face Cloth of Christ), which has been venerated at the Cathedral of Oviedo in northern Spain since the sixth or seventh century. Researchers claim they have found documentary evidence tracing it to first-century Jerusalem.

"When you take a photograph of the blood on the back of the head on the shroud and you superimpose it over a photograph of the blood on the back of the head on the Oviedo cloth, they match," explained Kazyak. "They are exactly the same size and shape."

Each cloth has matching blood and serum stains from the mouth, nose, beard and hair of someone who appears to have been beaten, crowned with thorns and killed by asphyxiation, which is consistent with crucifixion. The blood on both cloths is type AB. The length of the broken noses on both is 8 centimeters. This is hard to explain if, as carbon-14 tests indicated, the shroud was created between 1260 and 1390 A.D.

What is the Sudarium? The Gospel of John says that when Peter and John reached the tomb of Jesus, they found a shroud and "the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen clothes but rolled up in a place by itself."

This makes sense, according to a 1998 paper published by a trio of Spanish scholars. Under Hebrew law, it was the custom to cover a corpse's face when it became bloody or disfigured. This bloody, unclean cloth would be removed as the body was placed in a proper shroud, and then left in the tomb. Researchers who believe both cloths are genuine theorize that this is why the Oviedo cloth does not contain a scorched image, like the shroud.

There's more. According to work by Avinoam Danin, a Jewish botanist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Turin Shroud contains pollens from a thistle plant, the Gundelia tournefortii, which grows only in the Middle East. This would be a likely plant from which to create a cap of thorns. It blooms in the spring – near Easter – and the imprint of a flower from the plant was found near the shroud's head image.

Pollens from this species are on the Sudarium Christi, as well. It appears that both cloths contain myrrh and aloes from burial rites.

Obviously, research must continue on these mysterious pieces of linen, said Barrie Schwortz, chief photographer for the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project. The shroud will be on display between Aug. 12 and Oct. 22, but the status of new tests is unclear. Thus, new attention may be focused on the Sudarium Christi.

"If these blood patterns came from contact with the same face, then that means those Medieval carbon dates for the shroud are off by six or seven centuries and maybe more," said Schwortz. "At that point, we have a whole new set of questions we have to ask."