Home-schoolers: The Anti-Woodstock Generation

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Why not produce, thought conservative activist Paul Weyrich, a library of educational videotapes to help home-school parents? Perhaps even a cable-television channel that offered quality classroom materials mixed with a little wholesome entertainment?

"It made sense to me," said Weyrich, a veteran media entrepreneur and one of the founding fathers of the Religious Right. "But the idea didn't get very far. I've been asking home-schoolers about this for several years and a lot of them keep telling me, 'We don't have cable. We don't even have a TV.' Many of them are unplugged – literally. "

These are not business-as-usual families, cookie-cut into the sizes and shapes on display in shopping malls, mail-order catalogues and, especially, prime-time television. They have unique priorities when they budget their time and money. They have radically different family values that often defy simple political labels.

In a strange way, home-schoolers are creating a new counter-culture outside the American mainstream. It's the Anti-Woodstock Generation.

No one has showered more praise on this crowd than Weyrich. He is ecstatic that 1.5 million or so children are now being educated at home, a number that will only rise in the wake of school-day disasters such as the bloodshed in Littleton, Colo. Even mainstream politicians are starting to pay attention, as symbolized by the GOP presidential hopefuls who paraded through last week's Home School Legal Defense Association convention in Washington, D.C.

"You have shamed the regular school system with what you have achieved," said billionaire Steve Forbes.

In Texas, Gov. George W. Bush said reverently, "we view home-schooling as something to be respected and something to be protected. Respected for the energy and the commitment of loving mothers and loving fathers. Protected from the interference of government."

But Weyrich went much further, in a speech sandwiched between the flash-bulb festivals that greeted the heavyweights. If there is hope for this culture, Weyrich told the faithful, "it's because of what you people are doing. Now what we need to do is replicate what you're doing in a whole number of other areas of American life."

Last February, Weyrich made precisely the same point in a controversial letter in which he said moral conservatives have won some political victories, but have done little to cleanse the "ever-wider sewer" of American popular culture.

"Politics has failed because of the collapse of the culture. What Americans would have found absolutely intolerable only a few years ago, a majority now not only tolerates but celebrates," he said. "Americans have adopted, in large measure, the MTV culture that we so valiantly opposed just a few years ago, and it has permeated the thinking of all but those who have separated themselves from the contemporary culture."

The Weyrich letter made waves for obvious reasons. Here was the man who coined the phrase 'moral majority' saying that the moral majority was gone. The founder of the Heritage Foundation was saying that America's cultural heritage was in ruins. The president of the Free Congress Foundation was saying that the GOP-driven Congress had sold out, on moral issues.

Meanwhile, home-school families were getting the job done, he said. They stopped spinning their wheels in existing educational systems and did something positive. Weyrich believes that the same thing needs to happen in entertainment, journalism, politics, higher education and even in many American religious groups.

But there's one problem. Remember all those unplugged TVs? It will be hard for home-schooled children to have any cultural impact, said Weyrich, if they've been systematically taught to reject all of their culture – the good as well as the bad. This hit home when he tried to find talented Christian humorists to take part in an alternative television project.

"If we totally drop out, we aren't going to produce any alternative voices in American life," said Weyrich. "We won't have any humor or music or movies or literature or anything else that Americans will be able to turn to, when the culture hits bottom. We really can't afford to become the new Amish. That would be a disaster for us and, I believe, for America."

Travels with the battling baroness

ATLANTA – As so often happens during her risky flights into Southern Sudan, Baroness Caroline Cox returned to England with a photograph that spoke volumes - even if she could not remember precisely when and where she took it.

It shows a naked, starving boy holding a tall cross, during an illegal rendezvous with older tribesmen. There are many demolished villages, since raiders serving the Khartoum regime keep trying to crush resistance in Christian and animist tribes. Cox and her Christian Solidarity Worldwide relief teams visit as many as they can.

The baroness turned and there he was. Click. This unforgettable acolyte had joined the remarkable collection of images this relentless human-rights activist uses as she circles the globe making her calm, yet fierce, appeals on behalf of persecuted people.

"In the cruel calculus of man's inhumanity to man, Sudan must rank amongst the greatest tragedies in the world today, with 1.3 million people killed and more than 5 million displaced by civil war," she said, speaking last week at The Gathering, a network of Christian philanthropists.

The room was silent for a moment. Cox already had shown her audience death, destruction, famine and slave markets.

"Look at this young boy, holding his cross," she said. "This is what our brothers and sisters in the persecuted church are doing - they are holding up the cross for all of us, out on the frontiers of faith."

Cox was named to the House of Lords in 1982, a bizarre twist in her career as a nurse, sociologist and gadfly in British academia. Today, she is a deputy speaker and, between trips into various corners of hell, the grandmother that many call the "battling baroness" pleads her case to politicians, bureaucrats, clergy, intellectuals, corporate executives and anyone else who crosses her path.

Her message is always the same. Look at these faces. Imagine what it would be like to experience what these believers have experienced. Pray for them. Help them. Learn from them. Do not forget them.

Click. Here is a starving mother and child in the Nuba Mountains. They could get food and medicine, simply by registering with government authorities - as Muslims. "It is one thing to choose martyrdom for yourself," said Cox. "It's another thing to choose it for your children. ... What an ultimate decision."

Click. Here is an exiled Catholic bishop during an illegal visit with his Sudanese flock. It meets under a tamarind tree, which he called a "beautiful cathedral, not built by human hands."

Click. Now she is in Burma, where military units called the Sa Sa Sa have terrorized the Karen and Karenni peoples, who are Christians, Buddhists and animists. Many victims were torched, while others had stakes driven through their ears. After worshipping in a jungle hut, Cox noticed that the church bell was a Burmese bombshell, cut in half.

Click. Now she is in Nagorno Karabakh, just north of Iran, which reporters describe as a cross between Switzerland and Vietnam. The capital city of Stepanakert was being pounded by 400 Azeri missiles a day, during one of Cox's many visits with the besieged Armenians. None of the missiles hit the solar panels that powered their emergency operating room. Her teams do not believe in miracles, said Cox. "We rely on them."

Click. Her last slide shows the ancient Orthodox Church of St. John the Baptist, framed in helicopter blades that form a giant cross. This reminds her of farmer she met near the ruins of a village called Getashen, after a wave of ethnic cleansing by troops from Azerbaijan. This Armenian fled into the mountains, where he found shelter under a blooming apricot tree. Then he looked up and saw a 5-year-old girl caught in its branches, sliced in half. He vowed revenge.

Two years later, the farmer wept bitterly as he told relief workers that he never could bring himself to keep his vow and take revenge on an Azeri child. The missionaries tried to comfort him, saying he had done the right thing and shown the true meaning of dignity.

The baroness said that she would never forget his response: "Dignity is a crown of thorns."

Mysterious echoes of gunshots

It's hard to read any of the sermons that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached about death and heaven without hearing echoes of gunshots.

"The minute you conquer the fear of death, at that moment you are free," he said, in 1963. "I submit to you that if a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."

Decades later, these words still inspire faith and courage, said social activist Johann Christoph Arnold, who marched with King in the Civil Rights Movement. That's why the patriarch of the nine Bruderhof communes in the U.S., England and Australia included this quotation in his most recent book, "Seeking Peace."

This was the book that Cassie Bernall and other teen-agers at West Bowles Community Church were supposed to have discussed on the evening of April 20th. After that tragic day at Columbine High School, Bernall's parents showed Arnold her copy of "Seeking Peace," with its handwritten notes for the study session that was never held.

Cassie had boldly underlined King's thoughts on death. Did she hear echoes of gunshots?

"Why did those words speak to her at such a young age? It is such a great mystery," said Arnold. "But I do know this. She had found something she was willing to live for, and even to die for, and that made all the difference in her life."

Here is what Cassie wrote, in a 1998 note her parents discovered after her death: "I try to stand up for my faith at school. ^?I will die for my God. I will die for my faith. It's the least I can do for Christ dying for me."

Cassie Bernall was one of the Columbine students who was asked, at gunpoint, "Do you believe in God?" Her story has been spread by news reports and chains of Internet sites hailing her as a martyr, in the true sense of that ancient title in Christendom.

Now, her mother has written her own tribute, entitled "She Said Yes." Because of the ties between Cassie, her church and Arnold's writings, Misty Bernall's 140-page memoir has been published by the Plough Publishing House, which is linked to the tiny Bruderhof movement, with its commitment to pacifism, simple living and the sanctity of life.

In the wake of Littleton, many Americans - politicians, preachers and pundits - keep arguing about the "larger issues" that supposedly led to the bloodshed, notes Misty Bernall. She is convinced parents must focus on more personal issues closer to home.

"Why, when parents and lawmakers are calling for gun control and an end to TV violence, are our young crying out for relationships?", she asks. "Why, when we offer them psychologists and counselors and experts on conflict resolution, are they going to youth groups and looking for friends? Why, when everyone else is apportioning blame and constructing new defenses, are they talking about a change of the heart?"

Nevertheless, "She Said Yes" makes it clear that Cassie's parents repeatedly had to say "no," as they pulled her away from peers involved in the occult. Her mother reprints passages from letters in which Cassie and a friend pondered suicide and murder. The Bernalls taped telephone calls, searched their daughter's room, took evidence to the police and, finally, moved to another neighborhood. Cassie raged against it all, until her life was changed during a church youth retreat.

Brad and Misty Bernall refused to give up, noted Arnold, and made radical changes in their own lives, as well as in the life of their daughter. All of this took time, energy and sacrifice. Cassie's new life was rooted in weekly patterns of fellowship, prayer, reading and service projects with her family and new friends. They ate pizza and went skiing, but also helped leukemia patients and built homes for the poor. Cassie traded vampires and "death rock" for poetry and photography.

"Cassie would never have said 'yes' in that final moment, unless she had said 'yes' so many other times before that," said Arnold. "She had to say 'yes' to many wonderful experiences in her new life, before she had the strength to say the ultimate 'yes' when that moment came. We must not forget that."

Generation J

As the child of a devoutly secular Jewish home, the last place Lisa Schiffman expected to be on Rosh Hashanah was sitting in worship with her parents and her self-avowed "lapsed Unitarian" husband.

It was a highly unorthodox service. The leaders of Aquarian Minyan - a "Jewish renewal" flock near the University of California at Berkeley - spread pillows on the floor and asked worshippers to bring drums. While the Hebrew prayers remained safely foreign, Schiffman noted that an awkward word - "God" - appeared frequently in the English parts of the rite.

"I can't pray to God," she wrote afterwards. "I'm not sure I believe in God - so I substitute the words 'our highest selves.' That'll work for now."

That was in 1996, before her diary evolved into "Generation J," a book that traces her wanderings through Judaism, alternative Judaism, New Age mysticism, Buddhism and all points in between. This year, the young poet and Internet professional initially decided not to attend a Rosh Hashanah service. Then she was surprised to realize she might regret not joining other Jews to hear the ram's horn blast that opens the High Holy Days. The season begins at sundown Friday (Sept. 10) and ends with Yom Kippur on Sept. 20.

"I'm getting comfortable thinking in terms of God being a kind of divine presence in our lives," said Schiffman. "'God has become a wide, wide word for me. That word means many things to me, now."

This is what life is like for non-practicing Jews born after the Holocaust, she said. They are marrying non-Jews in record numbers. They are turning to other religions in record numbers. They attend classes about Judaism, but can't seem to join a congregation. Many Jews are even having doubts about the skepticism taught by their parents.

Schiffman calls this phenomenon "Generation J." This is the "generation of Jews who grew up with television, with Barbie, with rhinoplasty as a way of life. Millions of Jews – the unaffiliated, secular, atheist, indifferent, or simply confused – are lost. We can't say whether our Jewishness is a religion, a race, or a tribal remnant." Her conclusion is stark: "We can neither claim nor escape our Judaism."

As Schiffman tells her story, the God of Abraham and Sarah does play a poignant role - captured in the voices of a diverse collection of Jews who describe their lives of faith, prayer, ritual, tradition and law. A woman who guides Schiffman through a ritual bath of cleansing - the mikvah - put it this way: "There is a God. There is a creator who created the world. He gave us instructions." An Orthodox jazz musician tells the writer: "The way to know God is to fulfill his will, and God's will for a Jew is to go to the Torah and follow the mitzvot. That's our path."

Schiffman's response is blunt: "I needed another way to God."

But she eventually takes a small leap of faith – nailing to the doorpost a mezuzah given to her by her husband. This is the small, ornate container that tells visitors they are entering a Jewish home. Inside is a parchment scroll and, by tradition, its first lines proclaim: "Listen, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength."

This was a highly symbolic step, said Schiffman. But it's also symbolic that, a few pages later, she finds herself sitting in a tattoo shop having her upper torso painted with a long, snaking vine in preparation for her naked role as the maiden of honor – sort of – in a friend's pagan wedding. Schiffman tells the artist to have the temporary tattoo end with a large Star of David on her back.

"I know that I'm not Orthodox," said Schiffman. "I'm not kosher and I still haven't joined a synagogue. I don't even know what the 613 mitzvot are that we are supposed to keep. I know that I have come a long way, but I still don't know where I am. But I am a Jew."

Light a candle for Y2K

Researchers who study America's "civil religion" usually end up studying sound bites by pious politicians, the on-camera prayers of victorious athletes and other displays of lowest-common-denominator faith.

Now, the American Banking Association has added a strange text to the public canon, circulating a Y2K sermon that it hopes will calm nerves in pulpits and pews.

"We want to go into the new millennium with hope, eagerness and faith in this new century of promise," says the speech, which was prepared by the association's public relations staff. "We don't want to be crouched in our basements with candles, matches and guns. There are, after all, two ways to cross the Red Sea. With Moses, who with God's help, led the children of Israel into a bright, hopeful future. Or with Pharaoh, who, in trying to preserve the old, hurled his chariots, his officers and his army into the sea."

The five-page text was posted in a members-only Internet site, with the suggestion that bankers give it to their local clergy. The goal was to create a "template" offering words and images preachers can use to address the computer bug that will crash programs that register only the last two digits of a year, meaning that 2000 could be interpreted as 1900.

"No one ever expected people to take this into the pulpit," said George Cleland, a spokesman for the bankers association. "We simply wanted to advance public discussions of this issue and we think it's important for the church to take part."

The main theme is that prophets of doom who say the computer glitch will crash power, water, financial and communications systems are updated versions of listeners who panicked during the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio drama about invading Martians. Bleak millennial scenarios have been especially popular among Internet-savvy religious conservatives.

"What's so ironic is that, while it's the right wing that tends to be worried about Y2K, the whole style of this sermon seems to be aimed at the left," said Quentin J. Schultze of Calvin College, author of "Internet for Christians."

The text includes several references to God, but uses only one biblical metaphor and never mentions Jesus. Above all, said Schultze, the sermon embraces the "great defining myth" of American culture, which is that progress is inevitable because technology always makes life better. The bottom line: Trust in God, but have faith that the computer wizards who run things can take care of business.

"If you wanted to talk to the people who are buried in their evangelical bunkers, then this is not the sermon that's going to do it," said Schultze. "This thing reads like something a government official would send out to clergy who work for a state church."

According to "Thinking about Y2K: Moses, Orson Welles and Bill Gates," the millennial bug will cause some hassles, but nothing worse than a bad storm. Nevertheless, the sermon ends with a sobering litany - a catch-all legal disclaimer - that will raise questions for Y2K optimists.

"So in preparing for Jan. 1, 2000, do what you can. Trust God. Trust those you love. Be informed. And take a few practical steps. Save copies of your financial records. Keep a few days' worth of cash on you. Have a little extra food and water around the house if that makes you feel better. Keep an adequate supply of medicines and over-the-counter drugs on hand. If it's a prescription medicine that you're required to take, put aside enough for a few weeks. Make sure there are fresh batteries in your flashlights. Keep some candles on hand. If you have a fireplace, put some dry wood aside."

Say what? Round up a few weeks worth of extra drugs?

"No one really knows what Y2K will bring. There are just too many variables. I think it's going to be more than a bump in the road, but less than a protracted crisis," said philosopher Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary, author of "The Soul in Cyberspace."

"But this business-sponsored sermon seems so double-minded. It says to trust God, but above all trust your bank. It says the electrical companies are going to be fine, but get some extra candles. Which is it?"