Star Culture Wars

While tweaking the original Star Wars movie for re-release, director George Lucas decided that he needed to clarify the status of pilot Han Solo's soul.

In the old version, Solo shot first in his cantina showdown with a bounty hunter. But in the new one, Lucas addressed this moral dilemma with a slick edit that showed Greedo firing first. Thus, Solo was not a murderer, but a mere scoundrel on the way to redemption.

"Lucas wanted to make sure that people knew that Han didn't shoot someone in cold blood," said broadcaster Dick Staub. "That would raise serious questions about his character, because we all know that murder if absolutely wrong."

The Star Wars films do, at times, have a strong sense of good and evil.

Yet in the climactic scene of the new "Revenge of the Sith," the evil Darth Vader warns his former master: "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Obi-Wan Kenobi replies, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes."

Say what? If that is true, how did Lucas decide it was wrong for Solo to gun down a bounty hunter? Isn't that a moral absolute? If so, why are absolutes absolutely wrong in the saga's latest film? Good questions, according to Staub.

While we're at it, the Jedi knights keep saying they must resist the "dark side" of the mysterious, deistic Force. But they also yearn for a "chosen one" who will "bring balance" to the Force, a balance between good and evil.

"There is this amazing internal inconsistency in Lucas that shows how much conflict there is between the Eastern religious beliefs that he wants to embrace and all those Judeo-Christian beliefs that he grew up with," said Staub, author of a book for young people entitled "Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters."

"I mean, you're supposed balance the light and the dark? How does that work?"

The key is that Lucas – who calls himself a "Buddhist Methodist" – believes all kinds of things, even when the beliefs clash. This approach allows the digital visionary to take chunks of the world's major religions and swirl them in the blender of his imagination. Thus, the Force contains elements of Judaism, Christianity, Animism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and even Islam.

None of this is surprising. Lucas merely echoes the beliefs of many artists in his generation and those who have followed. But the czar of Star Wars also has helped shape the imaginations of millions of spiritual consumers. His fun, non-judgmental faith was a big hit at the mall.

It is impossible, said Staub, to calculate the cultural impact of this franchise since the 1977 release of the first film – episode IV, "A New Hope." The films have influenced almost all moviegoers, but especially Americans 40 and under.

"I don't think there is anything coherent that you could call the Gospel According to Star Wars," stressed Staub. "But I do think there are things we can learn from Star Wars. ... I think what we have here is a teachable moment, a point at which millions of people are talking about what it means to choose the dark side or the light side.

"Who wants to dark side to win? Most Americans want to see good triumph over evil, but they have no solid reasons for why they do. They have no idea what any of this has to do with their lives."

Staub is especially concerned about young Star Wars fans. He believes that many yearn for some kind of mystical religious experience, taught by masters who hand down ancient traditions and parables that lead to truths that have stood the test of time, age after age. These young people "want to find their Yoda, but they don't think real Yodas exist anymore," especially not in the world of organized religion, he said.

In the end, it's easier to go to the movies.

Meanwhile, many traditional religious leaders bemoan the fact that they cannot reach the young. So they try to modernize the faith instead of digging back to ancient mysteries and disciplines, said Staub.

"So many churches are choosing to go shallow, when many young people want to go deep," he said. "There are people who just want to be entertained. But there are others who want to be Jedis, for real."

Brother Manning, on the road

The preacher's blue jeans are faded and artistically patched to symbolize the ragamuffin theme in his ministry.

The speaking voice is gentle, until the occasional verbal storm shakes the room.

The demons are familiar. Cigarettes, alcoholism and a lifelong struggle with guilt can give a 70-something orator an edge. Once a Franciscan priest, now a divorced Catholic layman, Brennan Manning is the only superstar on the evangelical speaking circuit who goes to daily Mass and to confession as often as he can.

The angels are familiar, too. Manning always begins with the same gentle joke: "In the words of Francis of Assisi when he met Brother Dominic on the road to Umbria – 'Hi.' " What follows are flights of intellect, hints of poetry and blunt appeals to the emotions that lead to a common theme.

"God loves you just as you are," said Manning, during a swing through South Florida this past semester. "Not the way that you should be, because no one in this building is the way that they should be."

At the Last Judgment, he said, here are the questions that Jesus will ask every sinner: "Do you believe that I love you? That I waited for you day after day? That I longed to hear your voice?"

Year after year, the New Orleans-based Manning speaks in conferences and retreat centers nationwide. He has strong ties to Christians in the music industry, via his 1990 bestseller, "The Ragamuffin Gospel" and a dozen other books. An author's work is going to spread when he draws the attention of Michael Card, Michael W. Smith, Bono of U2 and others.

This message of divine love triumphing over shame, fear and guilt also strikes a chord in a setting that some might find surprising – modern college campuses. While Christian colleges strive to offer a different environment, many of the issues are the same, said Manning, who as a priest once served as a campus minister.

"Based on my pastoral experience, I think there is serious guilt among college students today," he said. "It may not be guilt about some of the things that older adults think they should feel guilty about, but there is guilt all the same.

"It's guilt that is totally based on friendships and relationships. Most of it is about their peers. ... Many students feel as if they have given their hearts away and then they have been abandoned. Now they feel that they cannot even trust God."

Students may feel tremendous guilt about their parents, often for what to outsiders will seem like paradoxical reasons, he said.

It's natural for the young to feel resentment or hostility toward parents who have neglected them, especially workaholic, distant fathers. Often, they have been given large amounts of their parents' money, but not time and attention. Then there are families that have been splintered by divorce, abuse and various forms of chemical dependency.

These students feel anger, said Manning, but they also feel guilt about their anger.

Then there are the students whose parents have been highly involved in their lives and have sacrificed time and money to help them succeed. This creates a different kind of pressure and, thus, guilt.

"What if," he asked, "you knew that your parents had taken out a second mortgage on their home just so you can go to college? What if you knew that they were really making sacrifices for you, yet you also knew deep down inside that you are a bit of a slacker and a partygoer? Then you would feel guilty because of your own lack of gratitude, your own lack of love."

Over and over, Manning tells his listeners that they must accept that God loves them – no matter what. As a result, his many critics insist that he is preaching "cheap grace," a kind of Christianity Lite that shortchanges hard teachings on sin and repentance.

Manning insists that his critics are missing the point.

"You see, you do not have to change to earn God's love and compassion," he said, near the end of one sermon at Palm Beach Atlantic University, in West Palm Beach. "This love always precedes the repentance of sins. Repentance is about you. It is about allowing yourself to be loved by God. The love comes first."

The New York Times sees red

When it comes to capturing the worldview of New Yorkers, it's hard to top Saul Steinberg's famous cartoon entitled "A View of the World from Fifth Avenue."

It appeared – where else? – on the cover of The New Yorker. The city is in the foreground and, beyond the Hudson River, there is a void dotted with mesas, mountains and hints that Chicago, Texas, Nebraska, Los Angeles and the Pacific Ocean exist.

There are no steeples anywhere.

This would have been the perfect cover for a new study by the New York Times hierarchy entitled "Preserving Our Readers' Trust." The in-house panel decreed that the newspaper must do a better job covering "unorthodox views," "contrarian opinions" and the lives of those "more radical and more conservative" than journalists inside the Mecca of American journalism.

"We should," it said, "increase our coverage of religion in America and focus on new ways to give it greater attention. ... We should take pains to create a climate in which staff members feel free to propose or criticize coverage from vantage points that lie outside the perceived newsroom consensus (liberal/conservative, religious/secular, urban/suburban/rural, elitist/white collar/blue collar)."

It might help, noted the report, if Times editors sought out some "talented journalists who happen to have military experience, who know rural America first hand, who are at home in different faiths."

This is precisely what the newspaper's "public editor" was describing last year in his column with the infamous headline: "Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" Daniel Okrent's very first sentence was his answer: "Of course it is."

Many people criticize the Times for many things, he said, but the "flammable stuff" almost always seems to be linked to faith, family and morality and the most ticked-off people are on the cultural right.

"If you're examining the paper's coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn't wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you're traveling in a strange and forbidding world," wrote Okrent.

The editorial page is thick with "liberal theology" and many think the news is tainted, too, he said. The coverage of gay marriage "approaches cheerleading."

In a recent "On the Media" interview with WNYC, Okrent gracefully tried to retreat a step or two, acknowledging that he gave the "paper's enemies" ammunition they could yank out of context. The Times isn't really liberal, he said, it's merely liberal on "certain issues, social issues. ... It is a product of its place and of its people, and I think it's really important for the paper to recognize that and recognize how it is perceived."

In other words, the New York Times is only liberal on issues such as sex, salvation, abortion, Hollywood, euthanasia, gay rights, public education, cloning and loads of other issues linked to faith and public life.

That's all. But that's enough.

Life does look different from the vantage point of Ninth Avenue, and also from Times Square. The self-study panel noted, for example, the urgent need for the newspaper to be careful when it pins "loaded terms" on believers. For example, there are those "fundamentalists" who would rather be known as "Christian conservatives."

One such religious believer is John McCandlish Phillips, who is known these days as a preacher on Manhattan's upper West Side. But long ago, he was the rare superstar Times reporter with a worn-out Bible next to his newsroom typewriter. Now he is tired of hearing top Times columnists – stuck in a "values voters" funk after the 2004 election – saying that America has become an oppressive "theocracy" caught up in a "jihad."

The self-study is a remarkable step forward, especially with its blunt talk about religion and the need for accurate, balanced reporting, said Phillips.

"People at the Times are sensitive, as they should be, to this criticism because they know it is accurate. ... This document seems to be a call back to the standards that made the Times the foremost engine of news gathering and presentation in the history of the world."

Anglicans meet Rome's Big Ben

Father Peter Toon is a strict traditionalist in all things liturgical, which is fitting since he leads the Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer.

Thus, the Anglican priest has little sympathy for those who want to wiggle out of translating the Latin word "Credo" – the root for "creed" – as "we believe" instead of the more personal and definitive "I believe."

"Of course 'Credo' means 'I believe.' ... And it's the same thing in the Greek Orthodox liturgy, because 'Pisteuo' can only mean 'I believe,' " he said.

These liturgical wars have been going on for decades and the combatants are always seeking allies at other altars. This is how Toon began corresponding with the leader of the Vatican's influential Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany – now Pope Benedict XVI.

The cardinal agreed that it wasn't heresy to translate "Credo" as "we believe." But Ratzinger also said that this error would eventually need to be corrected in the Roman Missal, said Toon. They had a friendly series of exchanges.

Now that Ratzinger is pope, contacts of this sort have gained symbolic weight. Toon and others in the balkanized Anglican Communion have good reason to wonder if this articulate, outspoken Catholic intellectual may soon play a role in their tense debates about sex, worship and doctrine.

Progressive Episcopalians certainly remember a stunning letter that Ratzinger sent soon after the 2003 election of the openly gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Writing to a Texas conference held by the conservative American Anglican Council, he wrote: "The significance of your meeting is sensed far beyond Plano, and even in this City from which Saint Augustine of Canterbury was sent to confirm and strengthen the preaching of Christ's Gospel in England. ... In the Church of Christ there is a unity in truth and a communion of grace which transcend the borders of any nation."

The address on the envelope was even more symbolic than the text, with its familiar John Paul emphasis on truth as a source of unity, not division. What mattered most was that Ratzinger sent the letter directly to the Episcopal traditionalists, bypassing the office of U.S. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold in New York City.

Symbolic gestures of this kind are taken seriously in marble sanctuaries. If there is anything that Anglican prelates understand it is the subtle politics of protocol.

Thus, it was significant that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams attended the inaugural mass for Benedict XVI, becoming only the second occupant of the throne in Canterbury to witness such a rite since the Reformation. Afterwards, the former Oxford don greeted the pope in German and presented him with a pectoral cross.

Ah, yes, but journalists and photographers paid close attention to the precise details of this rite of reception.

"Symbolism is everything," opined David Virtue, a conservative Anglican whose Internet reports circle the globe. "When the new pope met with the patriarchs from the Orthodox churches there were public embraces and kisses, but when Benedict XVI met Williams there was only a handshake. ... Williams edged forward perhaps hoping for a papal embrace but it was not forthcoming."

Then the London Times reported that, behind the scenes, Vatican authorities had been corresponding with the Traditional Anglican Communion inside the Church of England, discussing the possible formation of an Anglican-rite body in communion with Rome. This network claims the loyalty of more than 400,000 Anglicans around the world and perhaps 500 parishes.

Who was the key Vatican official behind these talks? According to Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, it was Cardinal Ratzinger.

It is easy to make too much of these contacts, said Toon. After all, Benedict XVI supports traditional Anglicans in the Third World and elsewhere on many issues, but he disagrees with some of their compromises – such as a softened stance against divorce.

"The new pope will continue to be a gracious friend," said Toon. "But I think he will be much too busy – for some time – handling events in his own church to have more than a few words to say about all of these little Anglican groups and their affairs."