That Superman debate: Moses or the Messiah?

Without a doubt, it's one of the most famous and magical incantations in American pop culture. "Look, up in the sky!"

"It's a bird!"

"It's a plane!"

The last line in this mass-media chant is, of course: "It's Superman!"

However, whenever a major product is released in the Superman canon – such as "Man of Steel," which grossed $113 million on its first weekend – many fan boys and scribes will immediately begin arguing about two other potential identities, symbolically speaking, for their favorite superhero.

Visit almost any online Superman forum and "someone is going to be saying, 'It's Jesus!' and someone else will immediately respond, 'It's Moses!' and then back and forth it'll go, 'Jesus,' 'Moses,' 'Jesus,' 'Moses' on and on," said the Rev. Gary D. Robinson, pastor of North Side Christian Church in Xenia, Ohio.

The 58-year-old Robinson freely admits he is a passionate participant in these kinds of debates, both as the author of the book "Superman on Earth: Reflections of a Fan" and the owner of a inch-plus scar on his left arm created by his attempt – at age 6 – to fly like Superman through a large glass window.

Like many theologically wired fans, he can quote the key Superman facts, chapter and verse. He thinks the parallels are fun, but shouldn't be taken too seriously.

"I see the Superman myth as a shadow thrown by the Light itself," he said, referring biblical accounts of the life of Jesus. "In it's own way, it's a crude substitute ... but there is no question that there is some kind of allegory in there."

First of all, the future Superman was born on the doomed planet Krypton into the "House of El" and, in Hebrew, "El" – from a root word that means strength and might – is one word for God. His father gave him the name Kal-El, or in Superman lore "Son of El," a kind of science-fiction parallel to names such as Dani-el or Samu-el.

Then again, his mother and father saved their baby from persecution by casting him into the river of time and space, hoping he would be a source of hope and protection for others. They used a rocket, not a wicker basket, but it's hard to miss the Moses connection. It also helps to know that writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster – both were sons of Jewish refugees from Europe – created Superman in the tense 1930s, inspired in part by anti-Semitism at home and abroad.

Experts in both camps can offer litanies of similar details. Meanwhile, "Man of Steel" director Zack Synder has packed his film with iconic images and symbolic facts. The film stresses that Clark Kent soars into his Superman role at age 33, the same tradition says Jesus began his public ministry. Told by the techno-ghost of his father, "You can save them. You can save all of them," Superman pauses in space – arms extended and legs together, as if on a cross – before racing back to fight a demonic figure who is attacking in the earth.

In one audacious scene, Superman visits his local church in Kansas while wrestling with the question of whether he should willingly surrender his own life so that humanity can be saved. Over his head is a stained-class window of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, before his crucifixion.

The question, of course, is how seriously to take this often dark and humorless video-game era salute to "The Matrix," "Avatar," "The Dark Knight" and hosts of other recent blockbusters, with a few undeniable 9/11 images in the mix as well. "Popcorn and a (World)view" columnist Drew Zahn argued: "Though I won't claim it was written by an author the caliber of C.S. Lewis, nonetheless, the metaphors and messages make 'Man of Steel' a sort of 'Chronicles of Narnia' for an 'Avengers' generation."

Robinson is convinced Superman and other pop-culture myths are fine hooks for conversations about deeper issues and truths. But, in the end, how can ordinary women and men, struggling with the pitfalls of daily life, form a healing bond with Superman?

"Superman is a poor substitute for the Gospel," he said. "Superman offers himself to save our lives. Jesus wants to save us forever, for all of eternity. ... In the end, there's only one real story and we keep trying to create new variations on it."

Southern Baptists without (many) baptisms

Visitors who enter Southern Baptist churches these days will usually see posters and pamphlets for everything from marriage enrichment retreats to tornado-relief fundraisers, from weight-loss classes to drives to find volunteers for African hospitals. But one thing is missing in the typical church lobby or fellowship hall, according to the leader of the denomination's LifeWay Christian Resources branch. It's rare to see appeals for members to join evangelism programs that strive to win local unbelievers to the Christian faith.

"Why is this? It's hard to say what happened to our commitment to evangelism. ... I'm not hearing any answers to this question that go deeper than anecdotes," said the Rev. Thom Rainer, who, before reaching what Nashville locals call the "Baptist Vatican," was founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

"It's like our people lost confidence in the old evangelistic programs that our churches had been using for years and years," said Rainer, reached by telephone this week during the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting, held this year in Houston. "That's understandable, but the problem is that they never bought into anything new and moved on."

This sea change is directly linked to a recent statistic that should be causing "sorrow and rising concern" throughout America's largest Protestant flock, he said.

Think of it as the Baptist bottom line: Local churches reported 314,959 baptisms in 2012, a sharp 5.5 percent downturn from 2011. Baptisms have declined six out of the last 10 years, falling to the SBC's lowest number since 1948.

While hotter issues – the Boy Scouts of America and homosexuality, for one – will grab most post-Houston headlines, Rainer posted a pre-convention essay online seeking candid discussion of this painful question: "Where have all the baptisms gone?"

"Baptisms are our way to best estimate the number of people we reached for Christ with the Gospel," he wrote. "When someone declares that he or she is a follower of Christ in our churches, that person is expected to follow through with baptism. ...

"Of course, baptisms are an incredibly important metric for us in the SBC. We use that metric to see how we are doing on eternal matters. Yes, the metric is fallible. ... But that does not explain why we mention it less and less."

So what has happened in recent decades?

* The decline can, in part, be explained by the fact that nearly 20 percent of the convention's churches have stopped voluntarily reporting some, or all, of their annual statistics. "We don't know if some churches have stopped sending in baptism numbers because their annual number is zero," said Rainer.

* It's impossible to ignore the fact that the fastest rising statistic in American religion – among those who attend church – is the percentage of people who attend nondenominational Protestant" congregations. In previous generations, some of these megachurches would have had Southern Baptist signs out front.

The charismatic flocks in the Assemblies of God are growing as well, noted Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research. Meanwhile, evangelism efforts remain strong in the SBC's growing number of African-American and Latino congregations. "It seems that the decline is largely in our predominately white churches," he said.

* Southern Baptists are strong in the rural Sunbelt and, while population growth in Southern States remains strong, Americans are increasingly moving to big cities and their suburbs.

* A key question Stetzer and Rainer agreed deserves study: How many SBC churches have stopped requiring baptism by immersion for those who move their memberships from churches that use different baptism rites?

* Another unanswered question: To what degree have birthrates fallen in Southern Baptist congregations? A decline would affect the number of baptisms among children and teens.

* SBC leaders would, if pressed, have trouble finding as many as 6 million of the nearly 16 million people whose names are on membership rolls in their churches. Why? Too often, churches have focused on mere "incantation evangelism" that expects people to recite a few "magic words" that prove they are Christians, said Rainer. That brand of faith is not enough.

"We have baptized too many members who seem to show no evidence of salvation," he said. The millions of missing members are "certainly not the kinds of believers who win other people to true faith in Christ."

Making a case for the common hymnal

There was a time when the faithful in the heavily Dutch corners of the Midwest would not have been able to sing along if the organist played the gospel classic, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." True, some may have recognized the hymn that Mahalia Jackson sang at the 1968 funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., since this was the civil rights leader's favorite: "Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home."

But, by 1987 this beloved African-American spiritual had been added to the Christian Reformed Church hymnal. A generation later, it has achieved the kind of stature that puts it in the core of the "In Death and Dying" pages of the church's new "Lift Up Your Hearts" hymnal.

"When you're creating a new hymnal, you know that you have to retain all those heart songs that just can't go away," said the Rev. Joyce Borger, editor of the 1,104-page volume, produced in collaboration with the Reformed Church in America. "We're talking about the hymns that you cannot imagine living without, and 'Precious Lord, Take My Hand' certainly falls into that category now. It has become one of our songs."

Research indicates the average church may have "a repertoire" of 150-plus hymns – not counting Christmas carols and seasonal songs – that worship leaders can list in the Sunday bulletin and know that most people will sing them with confidence.

The challenge facing teams that create hymnals is that "core songs" will vary radically from flock to flock, depending on where they are located, the dominant age groups in the pews and the cultural backgrounds of the worship leaders. The favorite-hymn list of a World War II generation pianist from rural Michigan will overlap some, but not much, with that of a Generation X guitarist in urban Detroit.

Also, while it's impossible to ignore classics from the Dutch Reformed tradition, Borger said "Lift Up Your Hearts" also needed to acknowledge the growing diversity found in today's churches, in North America and worldwide. In the age of increased contact between believers around the world – not to mention YouTube – it's common for suburban American teens to return from church trips to Africa or South America with notebooks full of new hymns they now cherish.

Then there is the surging popularity of pop-rock "praise choruses," which rise and fall in popularity from year to year, if not month to month. Also, the larger the modern church sanctuary, the more likely it is to feature video screens on which lyrics are constantly streamed into view. Why would digital worshippers want to tie up their hands with analog hymnals?

The pace of musical change is one reason hymnals are being now being recreated every generation, as opposed to remaining intact for a half a century or so as in the past, said historian John Witvliet, another member of the "Lift Up Your Hearts" team who leads the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Recent decades have seen a number of other factors that have caused musical earthquakes, he said, including a multimedia revolution in worship facilities, the global surge of Pentecostalism, the rise of seeker-friendly "megachurch" congregations that value relevance over tradition and increased ecumenical contacts between Catholic, evangelical and liberal Protestant churches

Thus, the 965 numbered selections in this new hymnal include 137 selections from its 1957 counterpart and 302 from a 1987 volume. However, it also includes at least 100 contemporary "praise choruses" and 50-plus hymns from around the world, with texts translated from 30 different languages. Every hymn in the book is annotated with guitar chords.

"There is no period of time in church history – ever – in which there have been this many waves of change shaping Christian worship at the same time," said Witvliet. "A generation ago, we assumed that the hymnal in the pew WAS a church's musical repertoire. No one assumes that now."

But no matter how rapid the changes, he added, hymnals are symbols that the "church needs a common body of music to help keep it united. There must be some ties that bind."

Fights among Catholics, with the IRS picking a side

There is nothing particularly unusual about conservative Catholics arguing with liberal Catholics, especially when it comes to hot-button issues such as abortion. It is unusual, however, for the IRS to jump into these pew wars.

Catholic sociologist Anne Hendershott is convinced that's what happened to her in 2010. This was during the time when IRS leaders, according to their own testimony, were inappropriately targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny, especially those with "patriot" or "tea party" in their names. Also, some religious groups – the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, for example – drew challenges after making public efforts to defend their beliefs on issues such as abortion rights and same-sex marriage.

"I don't think the IRS cares about the Catholic Church's position on life," said Hendershott, who teaches at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. Instead, the agency's leaders "care about passing Obamacare, because the health-care program gives the IRS tremendous power. ...

"Anyone who threatens that growth is an enemy to them. Anyone who tries to point out that Obamacare provisions for funding abortion are counter to Catholic teachings is a threat."

Hendershott has engaged in her share of debates about Catholic doctrine and public policy, primarily in the pages – analog or digital – of conservative publications such as Catholic World Report, InsideCatholic.com and Catholic Advocate. Then, in the fall of 2009, she wrote a Wall Street Journal piece critical of Catholic groups – both official and unofficial – that she believed were serving as "faithful helpers" for President Barack Obama's health-care plan.

"Drawing upon support within Catholic community agencies is a strategy that worked well for Mr. Obama when he was running for president," she wrote. "Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United tried to neutralize the abortion issue during the campaign by suggesting that Mr. Obama's proposals on 'social justice' issues like poverty were the way to reduce abortion rates without restricting abortion rights.

"Now personnel from these organizations are playing a role in enlisting Catholic support for health-care reform."

The following spring, an IRS agent called to say she would be audited. This didn't surprise Hendershott very much, until she heard that the government was especially interested in whatever income she had earned from non-academic work. When the requests for documentation arrived, almost all of them focused on deposits linked to her freelance articles and speaking engagements.

Hendershott immediately thought about the Wall Street Journal piece, especially since it reached a much larger audience than her many articles written for small publications targeting Catholics. The "faithful helpers" piece also linked some liberal Catholic activism to groups funded by billionaire George Soros, an atheist known for his opposition to official Catholic beliefs and causes.

During their face-to-face meeting in New Haven, Conn., the agent never asked questions about the "politics" of anyone who funded her writings, stressed Hendershott. Instead, she was repeatedly asked to name the groups or individuals who provided any stipends that had been deposited into the family's bank account.

In one twist, the agent was especially interested in knowing the source of one large deposit – for $12,000 – during the period of time being investigated. This was rather ironic, said Hendershott, since that was a refund check from the IRS itself.

The bottom line, she said, is that writers don't make much money when they are writing for small Catholic publications. Most of the documents she was ordered to provide indicated that she received no payments at all.

On one level, these kinds of disputes usually pivot on points of doctrine, with Catholic organizations – including giants such as the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and the Catholic Health Association – arguing about how best to apply Catholic social teachings in the muddy realities of public life.

Seen from the government's point of view, said Hendershott, the key is that some Catholics back the goals of the administration that is in power, while others do not. For the IRS, doctrine is secondary.

"I believe that is why I became the enemy" in this case, she said. "I cannot think of another reason that I would have been audited. So, I do believe the IRS is protecting itself by picking sides. ...

"Businesses try to get rid of the competition. The IRS just tried to silence the opposition – or the competition to their growth model."