Matrix, the Apocalypse

Anyone looking for the "Matrix" movies at a video store knows to seek the digital mythologies shelved under "science fiction."

That will have to do, since there isn't a space labeled "apocalyptic."

"These movies are truly that ambitious," said the Rev. Chris Seay, co-author of "The Gospel Reloaded," about faith and "The Matrix" phenomenon. "This story reads more like the Book of Revelation more than it does your normal sci-fi thriller. Everything has this other layer of meaning. ... You have to wrestle with all that symbolism and philosophy if you take these movies seriously."

That statement may sound ridiculous to most clergy, said Seay, pastor of the young Ecclesia congregation in urban Houston. But anyone who studies Hollywood knows that the Nov. 5 release of "The Matrix Revolutions" will be an event of biblical proportions to millions.

The numbers are staggering. The final movie in the trilogy will open – zero hour is 9 a.m. in New York City – on almost 20,000 movie screens in 60-plus nations. Meanwhile, Forbes estimates gross revenue for "The Matrix" and "The Matrix Reloaded" is almost $2 billion, when ticket sales are combined with videogames, music, DVDs and other merchandise.

It matters little that Andy and Larry Wachowski veered into Star Wars limbo in "Reloaded," sinking into a swamp of linguistics and logic while striving to explain the visual mysteries of "The Matrix." Few acolytes blinked when Larry Wachowski left his wife, hooked up with a dominatrix and, newspapers reported, began taking hormones to prepare for a sex-change operation.

Millions will flock to theaters anyway.

"Everything about these movies is getting bigger – bigger action scenes, bigger philosophical speeches, bigger rumors," said Greg Garrett, co-author of "The Gospel Reloaded" and an English professor at Baylor University. "Now they have to justify the buzz. ... I have faith that these guys are talented enough storytellers that they will be able to create some kind of cosmology that ties all this together."

But anyone seeking one coherent set of answers has got the wrong trilogy. The only certainty in "The Matrix" universe is that its new path to enlightenment is made out of pieces of all of the older paths, even if they contradict each other. The only absolute truth is that there is no one absolute truth, no one true faith.

Instead, these movies offer a crossroads where "all of our stories collide," write Seay and Garrett. "They not only coexist, they come together to create a story of tension, adventure and spiritual pursuit. As Buddhism, Christianity, Zen, existentialism, Gnosticism, Plato and Jacques Derrida interact with one another, we are encouraged to interact with them as well."

This shouldn't surprise anyone who has studied religious trends in recent generations, they added. "If movie theaters have become the new cathedrals, as cultural observers from Bill Moyers to George Lucas argue, then the priests of that domain are clad in black leather. And Cool Hand Luke, Obi-Wan Kenobi and E.T. assist in serving the sacrament."

Yes, "The Matrix" is this kind of metaphysical myth, said actor Laurence Fishburne, who plays a Batman meets John the Baptist hero named Morpheus. Many viewers will seek, and find, deep meaning in the ties that bind Morpheus, the heroine named Trinity and the messianic Neo.

"What kids or young people will get from this divine trinity is ... not for us to say," he said, at a Warner Bros. press conference. "If they get whatever they need, then we've done proper service not just to the filmmakers but the larger thing, which is the story itself. So there you have it."

So there you have what, precisely?

"The Matrix" movies show miracles, but no ultimate power that performs them. Characters make moral choices, but follow no commandments. They pray, but to an undefined god. They believe, but in what?

"We deal with all kinds of people today," said Seay, "who believe in a Creator, but they have no idea how to articulate that belief. Their God is energy or light or love or something. But it's real to them and they don't want to answer that question. ... 'The Matrix' movies are powerful because they offer people all kinds of things to believe in and none of them are very specific."

Presbyterian Divorce Ahead?

Two decades ago, the northern United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. merged with the southern Presbyterian Church in the U.S. to form the new Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

This church is not be confused with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the Presbyterian Church in America, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America or many others inspired by the work of a 16th Century French lawyer named John Calvin.

Presbyterians are good at creating new denominations, assemblies and agencies.

And now they need to do it again, according to Robert L. Howard, a veteran Presbyterian elder in Wichita, Kan. He believes divisions in the 2.5 million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are so deep that it's time to quit fighting over sex, salvation and the scriptures and get a divorce.

"The more I thought about our denominational family, the more it seemed to me – as a lawyer – that what we have become is a dysfunctional family corporation," he said. "What we have to do is sit down and figure out how to divide the family assets and go our separate ways."

Thus, Howard wrote a crisp proposal entitled "Gracious Separation."

It's time, he said, to create a four-year task force to oversee division of property and endowments. Seminary and college trustees would get to vote. Pension funds would be divided in proportion to the number of ministers who affiliate with two new denominations. Finally, local congregations would choose – via super-majority votes – which way to go, taking their buildings and assets with them. And so forth and so on.

According to Howard's vision, this would lead to one church "consisting of individuals and congregations committed to the exclusive Lordship of Jesus Christ, the authority of the scriptures, and the power of the Holy Spirit to actively transform sinners into saints; and the other consisting of individuals and congregations committed to a 'progressive theology' that affirms multiple ways to salvation, the shared authority of scripture and human experience, and the belief that polity can bring unity among sinners and saints who do not share a common understanding of the Gospel."

This has drawn howls of opposition from the progressive national hierarchy, as well as moderate evangelicals. The Rev. Frank Baldwin, stated clerk of the Presbytery of Philadelphia, said he is especially offended by this description of liberal Presbyterian beliefs. It is also na? to think that modern Presbyterians can be sorted into only two simple camps.

"Instead, there are many issues that divide us in various ways, and at different times people line up with those with whom they differ on other matters," said Baldwin, in an online commentary. "We really need each other to think our way through thorny issues. I weep to think of the trauma the plan would cause in all of the particular churches I know if they are forced to choose one or the other of the plan's unpalatable entities. Many members will simply make their exit and leave the rest of us fighting over the bones."

But many are already voting with their feet, said Howard. The churches that became the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have lost a million members since the mid-1960s. And Presbyterians are not the only people wrestling with life-and-death doctrinal issues. Other church lawyers will study Howard's proposal with professional interest.

The Anglican Communion has warned the U.S. Episcopal Church that schism is almost certain if bishop-elect V. Gene Robinson, a noncelibate gay priest, is consecrated on Nov. 2 in New Hampshire. In United Methodism, $1 million in budget cuts have claimed a third of the jobs at the Board of Church and Society. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is downsizing and reorganizing, including closing its Commission for Women.

These are hard times for old-line Protestant executives.

Presbyterians must remember, said Howard, that denominations come and go and it's easy for them to become "false idols." Leaders on both sides are fighting over concrete that is already cracking.

"We already have schism. We already have two churches and may have three or more," he said. "We can't become one body through polity and government, instead of through faith and doctrine. Polity has to serve theology and Christology and mission – not the other way around."

Boomer bishops on the rise

Some of the lessons Father Kevin Martin learned in seminary have faded with time, but he remembers when the future Episcopal priests were taken to see Catherine Deneuve play a Paris prostitute in the soft-porn "Belle de Jour."

The late 1960s were heady times at Yale University's Berkeley Divinity School, he said. The sexual revolution inspired people in clerical collars to do things that, today, would turn a sexual-harassment attorney into a pillar of salt.

"It was the spirit of the day," said Martin, who leads a renewal group called Vital Church Ministries near Dallas. "We were supposed to be broadening our theological horizons and getting in touch with our feelings and all that.

Hollywood meets the pews

NEW YORK – Cell phone to her ear, "Junket Bible" in hand, the studio publicist dashed into a Park Avenue hotel lobby to face another pack of journalists waiting to catch another shuttle to yet another movie.

"You're the 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' press," she said. "Right?"

Nope – wrong demographic.

This particular set of scribes represented Baptist Press, the Parents TV Council, Good News Magazine, the 700 Club, Eternal Word Television Network and 20 other religious outlets. They were ready to meet the talent behind a Christmas comedy called "Elf," and "Radio," a Good Samaritan parable wrapped in a football movie.

New York City was in pre-holiday-movie mode last week, with reporters of every stripe bouncing through tightly-scheduled events promoting six new films. There were hobbits in the Regency Hotel elevators and one angel (of the Charlie variety) in the bar. Sushi, cookie and bottled-water suppliers were busy.

In the middle of it all was Jonathan Bock, a unique Hollywood publicist who keeps underlining one big statistic for studio leaders – week after week roughly five times as many people go to church as attend movies. In the past three years, his Grace Hill Media operation has helped promote 30 mainstream movies in religious media, from small films such as "A Walk to Remember" to epics such as "The Lord of the Rings."

"We promote films with a moral message, films that encourage people to lead better lives, that explore God or hope or faith," said Bock, a Presbyterian churchgoer and former sitcom writer. "Our goal is simple: we want Hollywood to make a ton of money from religious people. And if they're doing it, then that means they're successfully tapping into those themes. ...

"We've begun to see regular occurrences of studios making subtle changes to their product so that it appeals to this sizeable audience."

While Bock offers Hollywood a chance to reach pews, his work also offers religious-market journalists access to interviews and screenings that secular journalists take for granted. At the same time, actors and executives are hearing moral and theological questions whenever they enter what "Rings" director Peter Jackson has called "the God room."

Thus, "Elf" producer Todd Komarnicki tried to explain how his film is an innocent salute to "the light inside of us that never dies." Director Jon Favreau described his decision to rein in his comedic instincts to switch from PG-13 to PG. Comedian Will Ferrell said he discovered that constantly "sticking a lot of crude jokes in there" can be a cop out.

And in the "Radio" interviews, Oscar winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., was pressed for insights into how his faith affected his portrayal of a mentally-challenged man whose friendship with a high-school football coach changes a Bible Belt town. The movie, which is based on a true story, contains few overt religious references – other than a church scene, a cross-stitch sampler of the "Serenity prayer" and the coach's office shrine for Paul "Bear" Bryant of Alabama.

"God's work is in everything I do and that is, hopefully, evident," said Gooding. "But with this movie, it's so much bigger than the conversation of religion. It's about a faith in the humanity of the people and, you see, that's about God, too." So spiritual lessons are present, he said, even "without being specific about God's will in the life of these people of Anderson, S.C."

This kind of vaguely spiritual talk tends to make movie professionals nervous. It also falls short of the doctrinal rhetoric favored by Hollywood's fiercest critics.

Meanwhile, the extremists in these two worlds – the hard-core Religious Right and Hollywood's lifestyle left – may never agree to sit down and chat with tape recorders rolling, said Greg Wright of HollywoodJesus.com.

"Still, I think what Grace Hill is doing is significant," said Wright. "When religious people actually meet Hollywood people they discover there's no reason to get all hysterical about all of the things that they're always getting so hysterical about. The Hollywood people are not the demons they thought they were going to be.

"Then the Hollywood people meet the religious press people and realize they're not the dithering fools that most Hollywood people think they are. Some even ask interesting questions they haven't heard before.

"It's a start."

Define 'Jewish,' please

The telephone rings during dinner and a dispassionate voice invites you to participate in a survey probing the sex lives of modern Americans.

Who wants to answer such intimate questions?

"Surveys like this always tilt because of the kinds of people who are willing to discuss their private affairs with a stranger," said Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition.

"It may sound strange, but that's how I feel about Jewish surveys, right now. It's almost like sex. Some of the questions we face are so personal that there is a modest crowd – including some very devout people – who are going to tell that stranger on the telephone to take a hike. The whole subject is too personal."

So pity the researchers who conducted the long-delayed National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001, which is based on interviews with 4,500 Jews. Sponsors at the United Jewish Communities – an umbrella covering 550 groups – call it the most detailed statistical portrait of American Jews ever assembled. Critics say it's so limited and flawed that its 2 percent margin of error is meaningless.

Nevertheless, the initial results are being parsed by everyone from Washington politicos to Jewish educators, from community leaders to the faithful who will gather this weekend for Yom Kippur services that close the High Holy Days.

The usual family statistics are making news. This survey found 5.2 million U.S. Jews, down from 5.5 million in a controversial 1990 study. Since 1996, 47 percent of Jews who married chose a non-Jewish partner, up from 43 percent in 1990. This is crucial, since 96 percent of children with two Jewish parents are raised as Jews, as opposed to 33 percent in homes with one Jewish parent.

Meanwhile, the Jewish population keeps getting grayer and birth rates remain low.

These numbers raise painful questions. But so does the content of the survey itself, said Lapin, a national leader among cultural conservatives. The first thing researchers had to ask was, "Are you a Jew?" This is a loaded question, rooted in personal questions about family and faith.

The survey defined a Jew as someone whose "religion is Jewish, OR, whose religion is Jewish and something else, OR, who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, OR, who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing."

The goal, said survey manager Lorraine Blass, was to cast a wide net of "communal definitions," not to reconcile divisive doctrinal issues about identity. "We don't claim our definitions are the only definitions for who is and who is not Jewish," she said.

But all definitions include some and exclude others, said research director Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz. This survey, for example, was clear to include Jewish Buddhists. But its "non-monotheistic religion" clause excluded two people who had converted from Judaism to Islam. The "whose religion is Jewish and something else" clause created another problem.

"We included people who said they were both Jewish and Catholic or Jewish and something else," he said. "But if they identified themselves as Jewish Christians or we found some evidence that they were Messianic Jews, then we excluded them from the study. We had to draw that line."

Amid the whirlwind of complications, researchers found some positive numbers, primarily among a core group of 4.3 million adults and children who are more connected to Jewish life. There are signs of new interest in Jewish education and religious ritual. Also, that rising intermarriage statistic may be stabilizing.

This is a good news, bad news situation, said Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program. While millions of marginalized Jews are becoming ever more assimilated into American culture, others appear to be making renewed efforts to practice their faith and pass it on to children.

"We do have our work cut out for us," he said. "Our grandparents prayed for a melting pot and what they got was a meltdown. ... But this is a pattern we see in Jewish history. There always seems to be a small number of Jews who rebuild the Jewish community, over and over. Someone has to actually practice the rituals and traditions of the faith. That is what lasts."