What's so special about Jesus?

Every summer, lots of religious people sit in lots of national conventions and hear lots of leaders with impressive titles deliver lots of long speeches about complicated theological issues.

After a few weeks, people forget 99 percent of what's said during this siege.

But people are still talking about the Rev. Dirk Ficca's "Uncommon Ground" sermon at the Presbyterian Peacemaking Conference in Orange, Calif. It has sparked something unusual – a hot mainline Protestant story that isn't about sex.

The sound bite was a stunner: "What's the big deal about Jesus?"

Why do so many Christians, asked Ficca, think they need to convert people in other religions to Christianity? Don't they believe their God is powerful enough to work however He sees fit, even through other faiths? Don't they believe in the "sovereignty of God"?

"God's ability to work in our life is not determined by being a Christian," said Ficca, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister who directs the Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago. "OK ... if God is at work in our lives whether we're Christian or not, what's the big deal about Jesus?"

Ficca has seen traditional Christian missionary work and he rejects it, outright. Members of other faiths, he said, testify "that when Christians approach them with the sole purpose of converting them to Christianity, it feels like ... a kind of ethnic cleansing. What (missionaries) are saying is: Your religious identity is not acceptable and my job is to eliminate it from the face of the earth."

Presbyterian evangelicals are crying, "foul" – early and often.

The result has been a clash between traditionalists and leaders of the denomination's progressive establishment. Much of the heat is in cyberspace, but there have been flare-ups in public meetings. Many documents linked to the July 29 sermon can be found through the "Jesus Debate" link at the WWW.PresbyWeb.com news site.

Conservatives are quoting centuries of doctrine and catechisms, such as the Scots Confession, which proclaims: "... For there is neither life nor salvation without Christ Jesus; so shall none have part therein but those whom the Father has given unto his Son Jesus Christ, and those who in time come to him, avow his doctrine, and believe in him." And, of course, they are quoting the Gospel of John: "Jesus answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.' "

Ficca reads those passages differently. He dedicated much of his address to undermining what he called the "instrumental view" of Jesus and salvation.

It teaches that "Jesus is the sole and only instrument of God's salvation – through one person at a certain point in history, who lived and died in a certain way, only through this person does God's salvation come into the world," he said. "Here the Gospel is about Jesus; Jesus, himself, is the Good News. ^?And if Jesus is the sole instrument of God – if it is only through Jesus that salvation comes – then the only way for the world to be saved is for everyone to become a Christian."

In place of this view, Ficca advocated a "revelatory view." It teaches that the "Good News is not the good news so much about Jesus, but the good news of Jesus: The Good News that Jesus preached. What this view says is that Jesus reveals how God has been at work in all times in all places throughout history in all people to bring about salvation."

Thus, Christians no longer have to engage in "proselytizing ... for the purpose of converting people to Christianity." God offers believers many religious paths to reach one eternal destination, said Ficca.

Presbyterian evangelicals are urging their denomination to publicly reject this approach – doctrinally and financially – as soon as possible.

"Apart from God's unique act of self-identification with fallen humanity in Jesus ... the Christian faith simply has nothing else to say about 'salvation,' " said the leaders of the powerful Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas. "There is no 'Good News' apart from what God has done for us in the life, death and resurrection of Christ."

This is not a religion story

This was the 12th time that Linda Gibbons had violated the 18-meter "bubble zone" that surrounds Canadian abortion clinics, so all the players in the scene knew their roles.

The tiny grandmother sat down and silently began to pray as Toronto police moved in. Sue Careless and two other journalists maneuvered to record the arrest. Careless concentrated on Gibbons, framing her in the camera's viewfinder between a church steeple and the clinic door. She heard an officer reading the familiar pre-arrest litany.

Then a policeman said, "You have to leave." Careless explained that she was a journalist and kept clicking. The last photo she took, before the handcuffs went on, showed the police starting to drag Gibbons across the street. The police confiscated her film.

"In the police van, I kept saying, 'I'm a journalist. ... I had a right to be there,' " said Careless. "One of the officers finally asked me, 'What's your name?' I said, 'Why don't you read it off my press card?' ... So that's what he did."

The police arrested one demonstrator and three freelance journalists.

"The math just didn't add up," said Careless.

But her legal bills quickly started to add up. Careless endured 13 court appearances before the Crown withdrew the charges. Oct. 15 marked the one-year anniversary of the arrests and her lawyer is still working to retrieve her mug shots and fingerprints from police files.

Careless has credentials from the Periodical Writers Association of Canada and the Canadian Association of Journalists and, in the past decade, has written 300-plus articles for 22 secular and religious publications. She is best known for her Canadian Church Press work and, when arrested, was on assignment for The Interim – a national pro-life newspaper.

"It seemed like nobody, at least in the secular press, wanted to cover this," said Careless. "People said it was just a religion story or it was an abortion story. I kept saying, 'No! This is about freedom of the press. ... I had a press card and they arrested me. That's a story.' "

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects journalists, whether they work in powerful newsrooms or for smaller organizations. The same is true under U.S. law. But police on both sides of the border seem to be cracking down, said Paul McMaster, the First Amendment ombudsman for the Freedom Forum in Arlington, Va.

"A journalist is a journalist," he said. "It's not the government's job to credential some journalists and not others. ... Clearly, the whole point was to intimidate Sue Careless and the other journalists who were out there covering a controversial event."

Sadly, he added, this is probably a "win-win situation for the police. After all, who cares what happens to reporters?"

Careless noted that many other journalists – even some who defend abortion rights – cared enough to contribute to her legal defense fund. After all, there is nothing unusual about journalists getting caught in the tense territory between police and demonstrators. And the number of "alternative journalists" is rising, since the World Wide Web is allowing many secular and religious advocacy groups to create their own niche-news operations.

If a pro-life journalist could get arrested at an abortion-clinic protest, then a Mennonite journalist might be arrested outside a nuclear-weapons plant. A Wiccan website reporter might get handcuffed because she saw police break up a sit-in that was stopping loggers from entering a sacred forest. A Southern Baptist journalist might face arrest for photographing gay and lesbian protestors that disrupted a convention of evangelical sex therapists.

"It does not matter which media outlet sends the reporter, or what the personal sympathies are of the photographer, or what the politics are of the demonstration," argued Careless, in an essay for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. "As long as the journalist is working as a professional journalist, and not an activist, the police should not interfere with the news-gathering process.

"I and other freelance journalists must not be so intimidated by these arrests that we will retreat to only the safe subjects or flower shows. We must continue to gather news in the danger zones of public opinion."

Prophets and politicos in the public square

In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Johnson sent his right-hand man to visit Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

It was a high-stakes trip, because Hamer and her flock were challenging the state's all-white slate of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Johnson feared an ugly floor fight and hoped that Hubert Humphrey could convince Hamer to back down.

The future vice president opened the negotiations by asking what she wanted.

"The beginning of a New Kingdom, right here on earth," replied Hamer.

Anyone looking for the line between political rhetoric and Christian prophecy can find it right there, argues Yale Law professor Stephen Carter, in "God's Name in Vain," his latest book on modern tensions between church and state.

The stunned Humphrey pleaded with Hamer. Couldn't she see that her stance would hurt the Democrats? "Fannie Lou Hamer, who had survived beating and torture in a Mississippi jail for insisting on her constitutional rights, was unimpressed," noted Carter. "Hamer sought justice. Humphrey sought political victory (with justice as a possible, but not certain, side effect)." Hamer concluded: "I'm gonna pray to Jesus for you."

American politicians always get nervous when passionate religious voices start preaching in the public square, noted Carter, in a recent the Ethics and Public Policy Center forum called "Does God Belong on the Stump?" But there's no reason for religious people to be singled out for condemnation by the powers that be in media, academia and politics, said Carter.

Some folks get especially nervous when mainstream political candidates start spouting "God talk" during national campaigns. This time around, the designated preachers are Gov. George W. Bush and Sen. Joseph Lieberman. This controversy flares up, like clockwork, every four years. And, every four years, the experts are shocked – shocked – to discover that faith plays a major role in American life and, thus, in politics.

But if politicians are going to talk about their faith, it's crucial for someone to push them to probe deeper, past sound bites about compassion, values and spirituality.

"I think the candidate who is going to talk about his own faith owes us more than just saying, 'Isn't it neat that I'm a religious guy?' That candidate owes us at least some discussion of how that religiosity affects his decision-making, his reasoning, his thinking about public issues. It is only in that way that we can judge its relevancy," said Carter.

This is crucial, because if religious faith is real, "if it has bite," then that tradition will affect how a person lives his or her life, he said. A faith that does not affect actions and decisions is meaningless. This means there will be times, unless a politician "is a member of a extraordinarily convenient religion," when tensions exist between his beliefs and the policies he must accept or advocate.

Yet candid discussions of these tensions are politically risky – entering the minefield between politics and prophecy.

The British writer C.S. Lewis once noted that it would be unwise to attempt to form a "Christian political party," noted Carter. If it were truly Christian, it would preach the whole package of the Christian faith and, thus, would be too demanding to succeed at the ballot box. But if it were truly a political party, added Lewis, it would be driven to make the kinds of compromises that were necessary to win elections. Thus, it would not be truly Christian.

It's spiritually dangerous for prophets to try to function as politicians. Carter noted that the lofty and idealistic vision of the Civil Rights Movement faded when the black church all but married the Democratic Party. Today, it's clear that the Religious Right has watered down its prophetic moral messages in an attempt to please the Republican hierarchy.

"The world of politics tends to be the world of the short run, the compromise that lets you win in the here and now," said Carter, after the forum. "Prophets rarely win in the short run. But, thank God, prophets are rarely the kind of people who focus on the short run. They tend to care about the long run – eternity."

The confessions of Harry Stein

Life was simpler back when journalist Harry Stein knew his place.

If asked to define "politically correct," he could quickly answer: "A term used by the right to smear decent people working hard for social change." The religious right? "A bunch of crazed zealots out to impose their repressive, intolerant theocratic values on the rest of us."

That was the old Harry Stein, a hipper-than-thou child of the 1960s and '70s. Everyone he knew believed the world's problems could be solved with liberal doses of compassion, tax dollars and sex, although not always in that order.

Then Stein got married, became a father and discovered that his wife wanted to stay home with the baby. Soon, strange words started coming out of his mouth. Today, the new Stein defines "politically correct" as a "term properly describing a 'progressive' worldview of litmus tests for right thinking." The religious right is "a bunch of crazed zealots who pretty much kept to themselves until 'progressive' zealots started imposing THEIR values on them and theirs via popular culture and the schools."

Life grew more complex. Friends and family didn't know what to think, especially when Stein came out of the closet with a riotous memoir called "How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace)." And to tell the truth, Stein isn't always sure what he thinks, these days.

Take the God question. Please. Stein is a conservative and a Jew, but that doesn't mean he is a conservative Jew. He's worried that Americans are befuddled on moral issues, but he isn't sure what he thinks about "sin," "repentance" and "atonement." He didn't know what he would be doing during the High Holy Days, which end with Yom Kippur on Monday.

"It would be incorrect to say that I am religious," said Stein, after a recent speech to the Independent Women's Forum. "After all, I grew up as an agnostic and my parents were Communists. But I am more spiritual now than I used to be, it's safe to say. ... And to the extent that I was totally skeptical before, I'm not anymore."

Stein said he realized that his moral and cultural views were changing while he was writing an ethics column for Esquire magazine, creating a witty persona that his editor once dubbed "Shecky Spinoza." By it's very nature, this assignment forced him to ask probing questions and to seek ethical standards that have stood the test of time.

In his book, Stein concedes: "Subtly, though even I was unaware of it at the time, a theme began to run through those pieces: that some of the moral precepts people like me had so casually jettisoned in the sixties as woefully antique – like, oh, the more demanding of the Ten Commandments – have served humanity pretty well, after all."

Before he knew it, the questions raised by his day job and the lessons he was learning as a father pulled him into a stream of hot social issues – such as debates about day care and the so-called "Mommy Wars." Then his wife dropped out of "Women Against Right-Wing Scum," a support group for New York media professionals. Then stunned colleagues started calling them "a traditional family."

Then, at a dinner party, Stein said he believed it's bad for children to grow up without fathers. A friend went nuclear, exclaiming: "Jesus Christ, when did you become a fascist?!" There was no turning back after that.

Stein also began to ask what happens when a culture loses its ability to teach that some acts are always evil, no matter what the cultural context or the circumstances. But if there are eternal rights and wrongs, where do such standards come from?

"I do believe that each of us has an innate sense of what is right and wrong," he said. "But there has to be more to this than feelings. This must be predicated on traditional moral truths. ... I think we all know, deep in our hearts and our souls, that it is these bedrock truths are what make it possible for us to have happy and productive lives. To deny that is insane."