Alchemy comes to Canterbury

In the halls of Anglican power, the leader of the tiny Church of Wales is respected for his skill at blending theology and poetry into sermons that are both impressive and mysterious.

Archbishop Rowan Williams has been called brilliant, charming, "turbulent," mystical, humble, brave and witty – a true ecclesiastical chameleon. His own website trumpets his "radical views" on sexuality and church-state relations in England.

The 52-year-old Welshman speaks seven languages, has taught at Oxford and Cambridge universities, but has never led a local parish. He has praised "The Simpsons" and blasted the Walt Disney Co. He is a pacifist pro-lifer who has attacked America's war or terrorism. He will soon be inducted into the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards, donning a white robe and headdress while other druids chant prayers at sunrise to the ancient god and goddess of their land.

Oh yes, and Prime Minister Tony Blair has chosen Williams as the 104th archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the world's 70 million Anglicans. He follows Archbishop George Carey, a soft-spoken evangelical.

"Recent months and recent weeks have been a very strange time," Williams said, when his long-rumored appointment became official. "It's a curious experience to have your future discussed, your personality, childhood influences and facial hair solemnly examined in the media and opinions you didn't know you held expounded on your behalf."

Williams has lived a charmed life, performing feats of verbal alchemy before legions of clergy and academics. Now his every word will be studied under a microscope as he leads a global communion that is bitterly divided – primarily between First World liberals and Third World conservatives – on issues of sex and biblical authority.

For example, consider an essay entitled "The Body's Grace." In it, Williams questioned traditional definitions of "sexual fidelity," sharply criticizing conservatives who would attempt to "legalize" such a term. Sexual bonds can lead to spiritual transformation, even in relationships outside of marriage.

"The realities of our experience in looking for such possibilities suggest pretty clearly that an absolute declaration that every sexual partnership must conform to the pattern of commitment or else have the nature of sin and nothing else is unreal and silly," he wrote. While many worry about the impact of this viewpoint on Christian morality, "more damage is done ... by the insistence on a fantasy version of heterosexual marriage as the solitary ideal."

Another passage would certainly provoke strong debate at any ecumenical gathering, especially with its sharp attack on traditional Catholic teachings on natural law.

"In a church which accepts the legitimacy of contraception," wrote Williams, "the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous texts, or on a problematic and non-scriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures."

Thus, Williams voted against a 1998 resolution at the global Lambeth Conference stating that sex outside of marriage is "incompatible with scripture" and urging a ban on same-sex unions and the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals. The vote was 526 bishops in favor, with 70 opposed and 45 abstentions.

Williams defends same-sex relationships and has ordained a non-celibate gay. This is awkward since there are 45,000 Anglicans in Wales and, by way of contrast, 15 million in Nigeria.

The moral innovations Williams advocates are "not going to resonate with millions of Anglicans in Africa and Asia," said Canon Bill Atwood of the Ekklesia Society, a global network of Anglican conservatives. "It's fascinating to me that people can so easily dismiss what the church has believed throughout the ages. It's pretty arrogant."

Meanwhile, Anglicans on the other side of this doctrinal divide are celebrating and facing the future with new optimism.

"For the first time lesbian and gay Anglicans can feel that they have a real friend at Lambeth. No longer will we need to feel shut out of the heart of the church," said the Rev. Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

"The new archbishop's intellect is outstanding. He will apply intellectual rigor to the deliberations of the church. There will be no woolly thinking in a church led by Rowan Williams. Homophobia will be challenged and intolerance rooted out."

Yes, there is a Mitford

Just north of Columbia, S.C., there is an unincorporated community called Mitford.

As far as author Jan Karon knows, this is the only place in North America that bears the name of the mythical North Carolina mountain town she has made so famous with her novels.

The real Mitford has a Baptist church and a barbecue joint and that's about it.

"Now what more do you need, I mean, if you really stop and think about it?", asked Karon, before letting loose with a Southern hoot and a cackle.

Yes indeed, all that the Mitford lady needs to tell most of her tales is a busy church, a gossipy diner and the people who frequent one or the other or both. She has taken these humble ingredients, slipped them into the structures of the British "village novel" and created a franchise that keeps taking small-town virtues into the uppity territory of the New York Times bestseller lists.

"Who would want to read books with no cussing', no murder, no mayhem and no sex? ... How can something so innocuous as these Mitford books sell 10 million copies?", asked Karon, speaking at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., just before the release of "In This Mountain," the seventh Mitford novel.

"This is what I think. I think there was a wide vein of readers out there who were just waiting for someone to write a book about them, about their dreams and their lives and their values. ... With Mitford, we look at the ordinary lives and see something extraordinary and dramatic and full of feeling and worthy to be observed."

The books revolve around Father Timothy Kavanagh, a shockingly orthodox Episcopal priest who is so behind the times that he even converts people to Christianity. Late in life, the shy bachelor marries Cynthia Coppersmith, a witty blond divorcee who moves to Mitford to create her award-winning books for children. The surroundings yield legions of colorful characters.

Karon began writing books in the early 1990s in the picturesque town of Blowing Rock, N.C., and other pieces of Mitford can be found in her life. When she was six she wanted to be a preacher. When she was 10 she wanted to be an author. Today she is an author who crafts the words spoken by one of America's most beloved preachers.

But the witty blond didn't start writing until mid-life, when she abandoned her career as an advertising executive and escaped to the mountains. The pain of a divorce and the sweetness of a newborn faith figure into her story as well.

Thus, her fiercely loyal readers keep asking: Is she Cynthia?

No, says Karon, Cynthia has better legs.

But the questions keep coming. Is Barnabas, the priest's scripture-friendly dog, going to die? Now that the Appalachian urchins Dooley Barlowe and Lace Turner have grown up, will they get married? What will Dooley do with the fortune the late Miss Sadie secretly left him? Where does Uncle Billy get his corny jokes? And what is livermush, anyway?

Then there is the ultimate question. In the new novel, Father Tim crashes into his own mortality and even survives a near-death experience. Karon has promised that the next Mitford book, "Light From Heaven," will end the series. Readers now ask: Is Father Tim going to die?

"No, he's not going to die," she said. "This is about his LIFE."

The books are relentlessly cheerful, even though Karon weaves in dark threads. There is schizophrenia and depression, greed and grinding poverty, child abuse and alcoholism, disease and death. But most of all there is faith, even though her books fly out of secular bookstores.

Karon said it would be impossible to edit out her beliefs. It would be like trying to filter a shot of brandy back out of a cup of coffee. Once they're mixed, they're mixed.

"Even if I never mentioned the name of Jesus Christ, I can't hide from you who I am," she said. "In truth, the work that has no faith is for me not a whole work. It may be an amusing or credible or clever work, but not a whole work. Faith is a critical and urgent and necessary component of human wholeness."

Degrading the Catholic bishops

Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings rarely cover religious rites, but they would certainly show up if Rome decided to use Pope Benedict XIV's "Degradatio ab ordine pontificali."

This 1862 rite for the "Degradation of a bishop" is not for the liturgically faint of heart. In it, a bishop who had committed disgraceful acts was stripped of the symbols of his office – mitre, crosier and ring. The prelate leading the rite would say: "Rightly do we pull off thy ring, the sign of fidelity, since thou has made bold to rape God's own bride, the Church."

Try to imagine that on Nightline.

When reclaiming the book of the Gospels, the prelate would exclaim: "Give us back the Gospel! Since thou has spurned the grace of God and made thyself unworthy of the office of preaching, we rightly deprive you of this office."

Finally, someone would take a knife or "a shard of glass" and lightly scrape the thumbs, fingers and forehead of the disgraced bishop, or someone standing in for him. The goal was to remove to "the extent of our powers" the anointing of his holy office.

"It's like playing a film of an ordination rite, only backwards," noted a conservative Jesuit scholar who, in an act of ecclesiastical self-preservation, always uses a nom de plume. He published his translation of this obscure text in Catholic World Report's anonymous "Diogenes" column.

"To use our modern jargon, this rite would have been a 'teaching moment.' The point would have been to act out what it means to be a bishop and what it means for a bishop to fall."

No one would dare use such a rite today. These days, bishops slip away quietly. Some hold press conferences, which offer a more modern approach to shame.

So far, a dozen Catholic bishops – in America and around the world – have resigned during the current wave of sexual-abuse scandals. Bishops have resigned for health reasons, legal reasons, psychological reasons and, sometimes, to move to a less public form of ministry. What is missing is any sense that these resignations have spiritual significance.

What Catholics need right now is a strong dose of liturgical catharsis, according to this Jesuit "Diogenes."

"There are souls at stake. There are spiritual consequences to what is going on," the priest said. "What many faithful Catholics have been saying is that too many bishops have failed to keep the promises that they made to God and to his church. It's not a just matter of making bad management decisions. It's a matter of defending the faith."

The bishops are the key. During their Dallas media blitz they approved a "zero tolerance" policy for priests and deacons guilty of sexual abuse of minors. This was a crucial step, since about 2 percent of U.S. priests have been accused of sexual misconduct. But a stunning Dallas Morning News investigation has shown that 60 percent or more of U.S. bishops have been accused of failing to stop sexual abuse or covering up past crimes. On this, the new "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People" is silent.

The bishops also avoided debate to clarify how this charter will affect the overwhelming number of cases – some say it's as high as 96 percent – that involve the homosexual abuse of adolescent males. An attempt to discuss the impact of doctrinal dissent in seminaries was greeted with silence. Both of these explosive issues had been emphasized in an April document signed by U.S. cardinals after they met with Pope John Paul II.

The bishops approved a "zero tolerance" policy that will have an immediate impact on their priests. The question is whether a "zero tolerance" policy will be created for bishops.

This appears unlikely. If there are going to be any rites for the "Degradation of a bishop," they will almost certainly have to be held in secular courts.

"Would it be a 'zero tolerance' offense if a bishop lied to a judge or a grand jury? Yes, I think it would be," said Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. "Yes, I think we could see some bishops in jail."

The Church – going, going, gone?

For two millennia, if you knew a church's name then you knew something about the people inside its doors.

Church names stood for timeless saints and traditions – from the Church of the Nativity to the Church of the Resurrection. A potluck supper at St. Patrick's would be different than one at Santi Giovanni e Paolo or Our Lady of Guadalupe.

In some flocks, a name might tell a church's location or hint at its origins. The Southern Baptist Convention's directory includes almost every name under the sun – from Enigma Baptist to Black Jack Baptist, from Hanging Dog Baptist to First Baptist of Disney (Okla.).

But out with the old and in with the focus groups. Who needs an old church?

"First the vogue was for local churches to drop their denominational affiliation from their name," noted scholar Gene Edward Veith, in the evangelical magazine World. "Then came the fad of dropping the word church. The Community Assembly of God Church became first 'Community Church' and then 'The Community Family Worship Center.'

"Now, words that so much as connote religious activities are considered too negative for the unchurched, so we have congregations that go by names such as 'The Center for Family Love.' "

But the sign outside is just the beginning. Inside these doors, many church leaders are morphing into chatty spiritual guides. Hymns are out and so are sermons, litanies and scripture readings. Thousands of churches are rigging up video screens and adding drama and humor.

"Some churches are doing everything they can to eliminate anything that might make them seem like churches," said Veith.

This trend has been growing in recent decades, affecting flocks on left and right. Some people defend the church of the ages. Others yearn for the church of the future.

Now broadcaster Harold Camping has turned up the heat by saying it's time for Christians to realize that all modern churches – liberal, conservative and everything in between – have gone apostate. Key Bible prophecies say so. The radio preacher once drew media attention by preaching that the world would end in 1994.

Camping is using his global network to tell believers that the era of the "corporate external church" is over. It's time to form "fellowships" – with no pastors – that exist to support mass-media evangelism.

"No longer are you to be under the spiritual rulership of the church," he said, in a manifesto posted at www.FamilyRadio.com. "This message should be clear. We must remove ourself from the church. ... The church has ceased to be an institution or divine organism to serve God as His appointed representative on earth."

This concept might appeal to millions of consumers. Sunday morning? Sleep in. No more boring rituals and sermons. No frustrating committee meetings. No guilt-inducing programs to help the poor.

The big problem is that Camping doesn't sound all that radical these days.

"American churches," said Veith, "have been complicit in this new and heretical anti-church movement. Many have become so indifferent to theology that their version of Christianity consists of little more than, to use the words of country singer Tom T. Hall, 'me and Jesus.' If Christianity is about the private, inner, undefined relationship between an individual and Jesus, there is little need for God's word, the sacraments, doctrine, pastors or the church."

Veith is a very traditional Lutheran, but his critique also rang true with the most influential voice in mainline Lutheranism.

"The leading actors in the Fade Away Church Movement certainly must have read marketing guides," noted historian Martin Marty, in The Christian Century. "Those guides must have told them that the Fade Away Church is what many want."

Yet there is a sad reason that many people yearn for a perfect church, a non-offensive church or a mass-media church, he added. Many do not want to sit in real pews with real people, "those tangible, offensive, smelly things called human beings, those 'really real' children of God who refuse to act like 'virtually real' people."

But if someone does create a non-church church, Marty concluded, "there will be just one thing wrong with it: It will have nothing to do with the Christian faith. And, therefore, it is likely to sell well."

The pledge of conformity

Instead of creating a mere educational program, the Baptist minister set out to write something historic – a patriotic rite for use across the United States.

This ritual included a proclamation from the president, the singing of "national songs" and prayer or Bible readings. But the pivotal moment would come after veterans raised the Stars and Stripes, when the assembled students recited their new pledge of allegiance.

As written by the Rev. Francis Bellamy, it said: "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

The pledge was used for the first time on or around Oct. 12, 1892. The rest is a long story, a story that from the beginning has included tensions between church and state and between public and parochial schools.

"You know, it never would have occurred to Francis Bellamy to put 'under God' in the pledge, at least according to what he had to say at the time," said John W. Baer of Annapolis, Md., author of "The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial History, 1892-1992."

"I imagine that that he was thinking like a Mason and he was thinking like a Northern Baptist. Francis Bellamy had a thoroughly modern mind and he knew what he was trying to do. ... You're talking about creating a mandated form of patriotism to be used with millions of children in classrooms everywhere. So he chose every word for a reason."

As part of a prominent Baptist family, Bellamy had nothing against God.

Still, he wrote his pledge shortly after resigning at Bethany Baptist in Boston. It seems that several wealthy businessmen did not appreciate their pastor's many sermons on topics such as "Jesus the Socialist" and "The Socialism of the Primitive Church." But his fiery social activism did appeal to Daniel Ford, publisher of a prominent magazine entitled The Youth's Companion.

Thus, Bellamy leaped from a local pulpit to national journalism. Within weeks, he was helping the National Education Association plan a massive celebration of public schools, backed by publicity in The Youth's Companion.

"Our fathers in their wisdom knew that the foundations of liberty, fraternity, and equality must be universal education," wrote Bellamy, in a speech that was supposed to be read as part of the rites surrounding the pledge of allegiance.

"The free school, therefore, was conceived as the cornerstone of the Republic. Washington and Jefferson recognized that the education of citizens is not the prerogative of church or of other private interest; that while religious training belongs to the church, and while technical and higher culture may be given by private institutions – the training of citizens in the common knowledge and the common duties of citizenship belongs irrevocably to the State."

This was, of course, a jab at the parochial schools being built by Roman Catholics, in part due to a rising tide of immigration from Eastern Europe. This was not the American way, said Bellamy. He even argued that God opposed parochial schools.

"We uplift the system of free and universal education," he said, "as the master force which, under God, has been informing each of our generations with the peculiar truths of Americanism." Thus, American children should attend the same schools, recite the same pledge and unite "under the sacred flag."

The pledge caught on in Protestant-friendly public schools, with the American Legion urging that its use be mandatory. Soon, noted Baer, "my flag" was changed to "the flag of the United States of America" because officials feared immigrants might think the pledge referred to the flags of their homelands. During World War II, students stopped extending their right arms in salute and began placing their hands over their hearts. Finally, the Knights of Columbus led a campaign to add "under God," in part so that public and religious schools could use the pledge.

That worked for a few decades.

"The public loves the pledge. That's the bottom line," said Baer. "But this is a form of conformity. Anyone who doesn't want to conform to this one prescribed version of patriotism is going to question it. ... The pledge has offended different kinds of people at different times. But it has always offended somebody."