Truckers, snipers & prayer

There are still churches left in this land where folks gather every Wednesday night for "prayer meeting," since they're convinced God doesn't just listen on Sundays.

Central Church of the Nazarene in Fort Wright, Ky., is that kind of church. Last week, the Rev. Larry Dillon told his mid-week faithful that he felt God wanted them to spend some extra time praying about the sniper attacks near Washington, D.C.

"We prayed for the victims and their families," he said. "We prayed for the police. We also prayed that somebody out there would find the killers. ... Our people just kept praying, 'Please Lord, let this end.' "

One layman who couldn't be there was trucker Ron Lantz. Normally, he drove his 18-wheeler back and forth to Wilmington, Del., on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But he'd been called in special and had to be on the road Wednesday night and into the morning.

This is, of course, where this prayer story turns into a news story.

Christian truck drivers often like to take their breaks far from the temptations and noise of giant truck stops. The Myersville rest area near Frederick, Md., is one safe refuge where Lantz regularly pulls over and parks.

This time, it was a few minutes before 1 a.m. and, as usual, the 61-year-old Lantz was listening to the national Truckin' Bozo Radio Show. The host was urging truckers to look for a 1990 blue Chevy Caprice with New Jersey license plate NDA21Z. Lantz pulled into the rest area and there was the car. He was one of the first callers to get through and alert the police.

"I called 911," Lantz told CNN. "They told me, 'We'll be there as soon as possible. We'll be there right away.' He didn't say how long. He said, 'You stay right where you're at.' I said, 'OK.' "

Lantz and another driver blocked the rest area's entrance and the exit and, about 20 minutes later, swarms of officers arrived. After a cautious stakeout around the car, the police awoke John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo and put them under arrest.

The next day, Lantz enjoyed a few sheepish moments in the media spotlight.

That was the end of that story. But what few journalists noted was that the folksy trucker was telling them that his story had a beginning, as well as an ending. Finding that deadly sniper-mobile followed some serious prayer, he said.

A week earlier, lots of truckers were talking on their CB radios about the sniper case. Finally, Lantz and several others told everybody to pull off the road. It was time for a prayer meeting. According to Lantz, at least 50 truckers and a slew of other drivers got together – a mere 20 miles from that Myersville rest area.

Lantz is on the road again this week, far from reporters. But he told the whole story in church last Sunday, said Dillon.

"That truckers' prayer meeting is a big part of all this, the way I see it," said the preacher. "Ron said they all knew that the sniper was probably driving on the same roads that they were. So they prayed that the truckers out there would be able to help stop him, somehow. ...

"Ron's testimony is that he was just in the right place at the right time. But Ron doesn't think any of this was a coincidence and I don't think it was a coincidence, either."

It's probably hard for journalists to figure out where prayer fits into this kind of news story, said Dillon. But millions of people sincerely believe prayer makes a difference. So they keep praying. It's part of the story of their lives.

"I know people ask, 'If prayer matters, then why didn't God stop the killing earlier?' Well, God gives people choices. They can choose good or they can choose evil," said Dillon. "So we don't know why those men chose to do what they did and we don't know why God didn't stop them sooner.

"Those are tough questions. But we know that we're supposed to choose what's good and keep doing what God wants us to do. We'll have to get to heaven before we truly understand how all of this works."

Neo-traditional born-again dads

They show up for dinner, help with homework, lead the rituals of bedtime and park their butts in the bleachers when their kids are in action.

They are heavy on discipline, but also eager to praise. They have been known to spank their children, but they are also more likely to hug them. They certainly take their families to church – early and often.

They are totally off the radar screens in Hollywood and elite academia.

They are ordinary, faithful, evangelical and Catholic men and University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox has survey data showing that they appear to be more involved, more dedicated fathers than their secular counterparts, or even those who worship in more "progressive" pews.

"Conservative Protestant Churches and parachurch ministries have stressed values such as traditional gender attitudes, strict discipline, expressive parenting and parental involvement," noted Wilcox, in the Journal of Marriage and Family. "Moreover, because of their pietist tradition of worship and increasingly therapeutic approach to relationships, conservative Protestant churches have an expressive ethos that may carry over into family life."

It would be wrong, Wilcox explained, to call these fathers old-fashioned traditionalists who rule their homes with an iron hand and a stiff upper lip. Instead, Wilcox called them "neo-traditionalists" who are trying to blend discipline and doctrine with a new style of parenting that is also heavy on "affection and sensitivity."

The result is not "some kind of flashback to the 1950s," said Wilcox. "I think what we are seeing is evidence that there are lots of evangelical and Catholic fathers who are truly changing their lives to try to spend more time with their children. The evidence is that they are doing this because they believe God wants them to."

This survey will certainly be seen as a paradox, if not a threat, by other researchers, noted theologian Russell D. Moore of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.

"After all," he said, "wouldn't one expect that conservative evangelical dads would dismiss childrearing as 'women's work,' while they attend Billy Graham crusades or uproot South American rain forests, or do, well, whatever it is that evangelical men do?" But perhaps, he added, "evangelical fathers are more committed to their children, not in spite of their biblical understanding of the family, but because of it."

The national study of 1,000 fathers who live at home focused on several practical questions about daily life. Wilcox found that evangelicals were more likely to spend one-on-one time with their children and to take part in family meals and church activities. Catholic fathers had similar high scores, but tended to favor non-religious activities with their children.

Evangelical and Catholic fathers consistently scored higher than those from the denominations that researchers have long considered "mainline" and progressive. In his study, Wilcox included Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, United Methodists and Congregationalists in this "mainline" camp. Meanwhile, the evangelicals included participants from Southern Baptist, the Assembly of God, Christian Reformed, Pentecostal and other conservative churches.

Yet Wilcox understood that the "mainline" world is not monolithic, since he was raised as an Episcopalian before converting to Roman Catholicism. While the mainline denominations lean left on moral and cultural issues, they also include many individual congregations that are quite conservative.

Thus, Wilcox was able to dig into his data and test his thesis that beliefs make a difference. He discovered that about 30 percent of the "mainline" men identified themselves as conservatives on issues of biblical authority and whether the Bible was their final guide on "practical issues they face in daily life." Sure enough, he said, these conservative men were more child and family oriented than the typical fathers in the "mainline" denominations.

There was no way to avoid this theme in the data, he said.

"There is no doubt in my mind," said Wilcox, "that part of what is going on here is that these fathers have a strong belief that there is such a thing as a biblical worldview, one that stresses that God wants to play a vital, active role in their lives. They also believe God wants them to pass this belief on to their children, right there in their homes. So that's what they're trying to do."

Krispy Kreme Catholics & the Baptist Vatican

NASHVILLE – As a boy in upstate New York, Father Bob Dalton learned how to talk to Italians, Poles, Ukrainians and various other kinds of neighbors.

"My Irish mother was always saying, 'They're just not our kind of people,' " said the 68-year-old priest, hinting at her accent. "But, you know, we learned to get along. ... It helped that almost everybody was Catholic."

Before long, Dalton became a priest in the Glenmary Home Mission Society, which works across the rural South. This meant learning a whole different cultural vocabulary. It meant learning how to talk to Southern Baptists.

By the early 1980s, Dalton was representing the Church of Rome at Southern Baptist Convention's annual meetings and in the hallways of the giant "Baptist Vatican" in downtown Nashville. He has talked to Southern Baptists in state conventions and regional associations, too. He has talked to Southern Baptists at the all-important level of the local church.

And this is what he has learned.

"Catholics and Baptists have a lot in common," said Dalton, who recently returned to his SBC liaison role. "But we're still looking at each other and saying, 'They're just not our kind of people.' ... We're two massive groups of people who still don't know each other."

Recent statistics gathered by the Glenmary Research Center found 62 million U.S. Catholics and 20 million Southern Baptists – the nation's two largest flocks. These two culturally conservative giants continue to grow, but they are not growing closer together.

Official dialogues began three decades ago, with key leadership coming from "moderate" Baptists who were willing to risk being called "ecumenists." Progressive Baptists huddled with progressive Catholics, while Baptist conservatives seethed.

Then conservatives seized control of the SBC and, to the surprise of many experts, this soon led to an intense, but radically different, era of Catholic-Baptist work. Liberals howled about right-wing politics, while "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" and similar efforts found common ground on issues such as abortion, sexual abstinence and human rights.

A key 1994 document made news by affirming that Catholics and evangelicals are "brothers and sisters in Christ" and that both streams of tradition represent "authentic forms of discipleship." Before long, powerful SBC voices – especially in regions heavy in ex-Catholics – began saying that enough is enough. Southern Baptist leaders recently shut down the formal dialogue.

What happens next? The bottom line is that many Southern Baptists do not believe that years of dialogue have produced consensus on issues of salvation and biblical authority. A growing awareness of the Vatican II statement that salvation can be found through faith in non-Christian religions has only widened the gap.

One of the SBC's most outspoken scholars did not mince words on CNN's Larry King Show.

"I believe the Roman Church is a false church and teaches a false gospel," said R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Indeed, I believe the pope himself holds a false and unbiblical office."

Clearly, SBC leaders realize "that those are fighting words," said Dalton.

The irony, said the priest, is that the lives of most Roman Catholics today are not radically different from those of Southern Baptists.

The Glenmary statistics show that waves of Catholics have moved to the Sunbelt, far from the northern ethnic enclaves of the past. They live in sprawling suburbs and eat Krispy Kremes at church coffee hour like everybody else. They live next door to Southern Baptists, who long ago shed their rural roots and went suburban.

But many Catholics and Baptists have not realized how much times have changed, said Dalton. They still do not know how to talk to their neighbors.

"Maybe the formal dialogue did its thing," said Dalton. "It got us talking to the Baptist left and then we learned to talk to the Baptist right. But the next level of dialogue will not occur with our leaders sitting in conference rooms. It's going to have to happen between ordinary people over their backyard fences and down at the local Home Depot.

"We're living next door to each other. The question is whether we can learn to trust each other. Can we ever learn to see that we are one in Jesus Christ?"

MIA – Spiritual fathers for spiritual sons

Sometimes the bishop calls the priest and sometimes the priest calls the bishop.

But one way or another, bishops and priests make appointments to meet over two cups of coffee. On one level, it is a meeting between employer and employee. On another, it's supposed to be an encounter between a father and a son.

These days, the atmosphere can get tense. There are questions that must be asked and a bishop has to ask them.

"Like any good father, the bishop must ask his spiritual sons specific, concrete, detailed questions about the manner in which they are living their vocations," noted scholar George Weigel, who is best known as the author of "Witness to Hope," a 992-page biography of Pope John Paul II.

"How often do you pray? Do you have a spiritual director whom you see regularly? Are you sleeping alone? Is Internet pornography a troublesome temptation? Is your recreation appropriate for a priest? Are your friendships, with both priests and laity, morally blameworthy? Do you have problems with alcohol? Is your celibacy fulfilling or burdensome, and are you living it faithfully and peacefully?"

A good bishop isn't trying to force a confession. The bishop also needs to avoid the role of therapist or attorney. But a bishop has to ask tough questions, according to Weigel, in order to rise above the role of "ecclesiastical executive" and assume the role of "genuine spiritual fatherhood."

That sounds obvious. But there are few safe, innocent questions right now, as Weigel makes clear in his new book, "The Courage to be Catholic: Crisis, Reform and the Future of the Church."

It's hard to be a spiritual father when there are legions of lawyers and journalists camped at the chancellery doors. Ask Bishop Edward Egan, once bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., and now archbishop of New York. In an attempt to fend off liability lawyers, he once referred to his Bridgeport priests as mere "independent contractors." It's hard to imagine Cyril, Ambrose and Augustine using this kind of language.

At some point, said Weigel, bishops need to "stop whining" and risk reclaiming their role as spiritual leaders.

"The failures of episcopal leadership that turned a significant and urgent problem of clerical sex abuse into a full-blown crisis touched all three of the bishop's classic roles, that is, as men who are to teach, govern and sanctify," noted Weigel. The bottom line is that far too many bishops reacted to "the meltdown of priestly discipline ... as managers, not as apostles."

Many bishops stopped daring to ask the tough questions and embraced a "don't ask, don't tell" approach to a host of issues.

But someone has to ask a priest if he is lonely and, if so, what he is doing about it. Weigel noted that, "One of the most serious problems Catholic priests in the United States face today is loneliness, as more and more parishes become 'one-priest' parishes. Loneliness, in turn, is a breeding ground for temptation."

Someone has to ask a priest if his parish is growing or shrinking. Someone has to ask if he has preached any sermons lately on the tough parts of Catholic doctrine and how his people responded. Someone has to ask: How many in your flock have been inspired to become priests and nuns?

"To ask a young man to throw his life away for Christ requires a man asking the question to reflect on the radical quality of his own discipleship," said Weigel. "Putting hard questions to others requires a priest to first put hard questions to himself."

This means that bishops need to answer all of the same questions. This may not be what the lawyers advise, but bishops are not called to be lawyers.

"It sounds like the bishops have been operating with a different software than the Catholic software," said Weigel. "If a bishop has lawyers who tell him that he cannot act pastorally when dealing with a victim of abuse, or that he cannot address this in the church's primary language of repentance and forgiveness ... because of legal liabilities, then he needs to find new lawyers.

"He needs to find lawyers who will let him be what he needs to be – which is a Catholic bishop."

Veggies attack the funny gap

While flipping through TV channels the other night, VeggieTales writer Mike Nawrocki discovered an absolutely hilarious preacher. We're not talking about the big hair, molasses and glitz humor that makes so many televangelists laugh-to-keep-from-crying funny. No, this preacher was using humor to communicate. He knew his people and he knew how to make them laugh.

"It was very, very funny. But he was doing this in his own pulpit for his own people," said Nawrocki, who is "Larry the Cucumber" for 25 million Veggie video buyers. "I don't know if this preacher would have felt free to be that funny anywhere else. I don't know if he could have been funny outside his church."

Making ordinary people laugh is serious business to Nawrocki and his colleagues at Big Idea Productions, an independent company near Chicago built on the silly idea of vegetables acting out Bible stories. The twist in this tale is that the VeggieTales people have created a brand of humor that sells in mainstream superstores as well as in small Christian outlets. They don't just joke with the choir.

Now Larry the Cucumber, Bob the Tomato, Junior Asparagus and the virtual vegetables have jumped to the big screen, where they face the long knives of secular critics and consumers. "Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie" opens this weekend in 1,100 theaters nationwide. Once again, the Big Idea team is chasing kids 8-years-old and younger, while wooing parents with in-jokes about Monty Python, "Jaws," "Lawrence of Arabia," "The Blues Brothers" and pop culture.

Industry experts are watching to see if the VeggieTales are truly funny – not church sanctuary funny, but suburban multiplex funny.

"We all know that Christians have trouble with humor," said Nawrocki. "Part of the problem is that all humor is irreverent, in one way or another. But the biggest problem Christians have with comedy is that they're afraid of offending other Christians. So much of humor is rooted in hard truths and Christians are not fond of hard truths, especially if they're about the church itself."

Nawrocki and Phil "Bob the Tomato" Vischer have wrestled with these issues ever since they were tossed out of Bible college in the mid-1980s. Soon, they were combining their puppetry and comedy skills with computer animation and dreaming about taking on Mickey Mouse.

Meanwhile, they watched their hip friends turn into pastors and youth ministers.

"The implicit message I received growing up was that full-time ministry was the only valid Christian service," said Vischer, the founder of Big Idea. "Young Christians were to aspire to be either ministers or missionaries. ... But I wanted to make movies. And from the movies and TV shows I watched growing up and the influence they had on me, I figured God could use a filmmaker or two, regardless of what anyone else said."

The key, said Vischer, is that he was raised in a culture in which everybody went to church. Then he ventured into the harsh world of advertising and corporate media and he had to reach people who never went to church. When he created Big Idea, Vischer was determined to create humor that blended both cultures.

Vischer and Nawrocki wanted to make videos, and now movies, that were openly religious, but not aimed at pews. They did not, in other words, want to settle for making "Christian movies." As another Christian in the entertainment industry, David McFadzean of the sitcom "Home Improvement," once quipped, the typical "Christian movie" is very similar to a porno movie. " It has terrible acting. It has a tiny budget. And you know exactly how it's going to end."

That quote is funny, yet painfully true, said Vischer.

"We seem to think every artistic expression by a Christian artist, to be valid, must end with an 'altar call.' It's the equivalent of saying every valid football play must end in the end zone," he said. Thus, "many of our efforts are so philosophically aggressive that they read more like war propaganda than entertainment, effectively limiting our audience to only the most committed faithful.

"The end result is that our work and our worldview have little or no impact on the broader culture. We've effectively taken ourselves out of the game."