Soulforce preaches to the Navy

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – All the Rev. Mel White, Jacob Reitan and the rest of their Soulforce team wanted to do was talk to people. That was the good news. The bad news was that they wanted to talk about God, politics and homosexuality, although not necessarily in that order. It also didn't help that the people they wanted to talk to were midshipmen on the U.S. Naval Academy campus – on a football-weekend Friday, no less.

"Free speech is free speech," said White, who, before going public as a gay activist, was a ghostwriter for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other evangelical leaders. White is one of the founders of Soulforce, which is based in Lynchburg, Va.

"If people don't want to talk, all they have to do is say so and walk away."

Soulforce activists drifted around the academy campus in small clusters last weekend, their bright pastel t-shirts standing out among the blue uniforms and gray Chesapeake Bay mists. They attracted packs of journalists.

The 40 or so protestors – mostly college students from nearby – offered this greeting: "We're here to talk about the military's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy. What do you think about that?"

Most midshipmen declined to talk. Capt. Helen Dunn, deputy superintendent at the academy, had issued this memo: "Members of this group may attempt to gain access to the Yard and approach you for discussions. We ask that you carry out your normal routine, ... stay clear of our security personnel and the protestors, and to politely refer questions from media or the demonstrators to the Public Affairs Office."

These are tense days at America's military academies, which are emerging as bitter battlefields in church-state wars.

At the Air Force Academy, the hot issue is salvation. Evangelicals have been accused of going overboard as they interact with non-Christians and non-believers. Evangelical chaplains have even been attacked for delivering evangelistic messages in voluntary chapel services and other optional events. A circle of conservative lawmakers recently wrote to President Bush urging him to issue an executive order guaranteeing the free-speech rights of chaplains.

Right now, the hot issue at the Naval Academy is sexuality. Activists are trying to break what they believe is a faith-based chokehold on military policies affecting the careers and relationships of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and trans-gendered persons.

At the Air Force Academy, it's hard to speak up in favor of conservative religious doctrines.

At the Naval Academy, it's hard to speak up in opposition to them.

In both cases, believers – on left and right – are trying to proclaim what they believe is true. They are trying to change hearts and minds through the power of words and public witness. The problem, of course, is that one person's free speech is another's evangelism, public protest or, heaven forbid, even proselytizing.

At some point, said White, government officials must realize that people have a right to dialogue and debate. People have the right to talk and the right not to listen.

"It's like all the people who want to censor television. You keep trying to tell people like that, 'Don't censor us. Just change the channel,' " he said, while greeting visitors outside the academy bookstore. "That's what this is all about, too. We just want to talk to people and let them know what we think. What's so scary about that?"

At first, Naval Academy officials threatened to have the demonstrators arrested if they came on campus. Then both sides agreed to a shaky compromise that allowed the activists the same rights as other visitors, other than the right to talk with midshipmen. Most members of the Soulforce team went right ahead and talked, said Reitan, leader of the group's "Equality Ride" program.

In the months ahead, Soulforce teams will be traveling to a dozen or more other campuses – including the other military academies and an array of conservative religious colleges and universities from coast to coast.

"Hopefully, people at the campuses we stop at in the future will be willing to set up forums and create other kinds of settings in which we can discuss these issues in a more adult, academic manner," said Reitan. "But we have decided that we're not going to let our free speech to be edited during any of our future stops."

Faith, doubt and Nickel Creek

NASHVILLE – The crowd was dancing as soon as the bluegrass trio Nickel Creek went on stage, with hot-shot mandolinist Chris Thile careening around like a possessed marionette.

The opening number "When in Rome" was an edgy tale about lost souls trapped in a cold world where the doctors can't heal, people burn books for heat and no one answers distress signals. By the time Thile reached the apocalyptic last verse, he was raising questions about life, death and life after death.

"Where can a dead man go? The question with an answer only dead men know," he sang, briefly frozen in a stark white spotlight. "But I'm going to bet they never really feel at home, if they spent a lifetime learning how to live in Rome."

The crowd rocked on. There were tattooed youngsters in the aisles, dancing next to hip home-schooling parents with their children. There were bluegrass purists offering whoops of praise, sitting near some NASCAR fans wearing Birkenstock scandals.

The Nickel Creek crew – guitarist Sean Watkins and his sister Sara on fiddle, along with Thile – are hard to label and so are their fans. One reason for that is the band's Grammy Award-winning fusion of bluegrass roots with rock attitude. Nickel Creek often veers from Bill Monroe traditionalism to MTV Nirvana without blinking, with stops in John Coltrane and Beach Boy territory along the way.

But there was another reason the crowd in War Memorial Auditorium was unusually diverse. Nickel Creek offers a unique mix of old faith and modern doubts.

The trio has been together 16 years, beginning as children in devout Christian homes in San Diego. Early on, they recorded a gospel-bluegrass album called "Here to There" before heading into the mainstream with the help of superstar Alison Krauss.

It's crucial that bluegrass is one form of music in which artists are allowed to sing about Sunday morning as well as Saturday night. Thus, the members of Nickel Creek have been candid about their beliefs, while staying light years away from the prison called "Contemporary Christian Music."

Faith isn't an artistic curse if it stays honest, said Sean Watkins, who has written most of the trio's songs that wrestle with religious issues. It's interesting that old hymns are often more candid and searching than today's gospel pop songs.

"I'm so sick of sugar-coated songs from the Christian perspective," he said, in his online journal. "One of the most comforting and inspiring lines to me is from the last chorus of 'Come Thou Fount' where it says, 'Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.' Not many un-watered-down songs make it through the filter of the Christian music industry mafia these days."

But honesty is a two-edged sword.

That's why Thile – at the ripe old age of 24 – was standing in a harsh spotlight singing songs about death, despair and divorce. One of his new songs is called "Doubting Thomas" and includes these poignant lines: "Can I be used to help others find truth, when I'm scared I'll find proof that it's a lie? ... I'm a doubting Thomas. I'll take your promise, though I know nothing's safe. Oh me of little faith."

Thile said he hopes to live his life as if death is not the end, struggling to "keep one foot in this world while sticking one foot out of it, just to get ready." At the same time, it's hard to avoid the kind of burned-out, shopping-mall confusion that leads so many young people to feel alone and disconnected, even while they crave relationships that will last.

Thus, this Nickel Creek concert closed with the trio sharing one microphone, gently singing this lullaby: "Why should the fire die? My mom and dad kept theirs alive."

"We are tempted to distance ourselves from the things that are truly powerful and beautiful in life," said Thile. "Faith is certainly one of those things. Faith is huge, and so are friendships and our family relationships. ...

"Anything that is truly worthwhile is both powerful and dangerous at the same time. Anything that is truly beautiful and lovely can also turn twisted and ugly. But we can't hide from all of that. That's what is real."

C.S. Lewis for children

As a World War I veteran, Oxford don C.S. Lewis was accustomed to nightmares about bloody trenches, bayonets, poison gas and the bite of shrapnel in his chest.

But the dreams that began in the late 1940s were different. Some were frightening and some were beautiful and, as he described them to family and friends, they involved lions, especially a giant lion that had a regal, yet wild personality.

Soon, Lewis began weaving these images into a story that also included a strange dream that he had at age 16. In it, he saw a faun holding an umbrella and some packages, standing in a snowy wood near a lamppost.

"He told people, 'I'd like to make a story out of that image because it has been in my head all of my life,' " said Douglas Gresham, the author's stepson. As Lewis would say, the great lion "Aslan simply leapt into the story and dragged all the rest of the Narnian Chronicles along with him. I believe that all of this was a gift from God, of course."

These dreams became "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the cornerstone of a seven-book fantasy franchise that has sold 90 million copies over 55 years, establishing itself as one of the most beloved works of Christian fiction of all time. Walden Media and Walt Disney Studios have turned the novel into a $150-million movie that, after its Dec. 9 release, will introduce "The Chronicles of Narnia" to millions of new children and their parents.

"Many people ask, 'Why are they coming back?' The answer is that these books never went away," said Gresham, who has served as co-producer and the spiritual conscience of the movie project.

Gresham enters this story because his mother, poet Joy Gresham of upstate New York, began corresponding with Lewis in 1950 about literary and religious matters and they struck up a long-distance friendship. This relationship grew, over time, into a marriage complicated by her battle with cancer, a poignant romance described in a play and two movies entitled "Shadowlands."

The lives of Lewis and his friends, such as J.R.R. Tolkien and others in the Oxford circle called "The Inklings," have been parsed and probed in countless books and memoirs. Gresham and his brother David witnessed many of these events and now, as an adult, Douglas has written his own biography of the stepfather he knew as "Jack," the nickname that Lewis adopted early in his life.

Unlike other Lewis biographies, "Jack's Life" does not try to dig inside his psyche or offer a detailed map of his career as a scholar or apologist for traditional faith. Gresham said he simply wanted to tell the story – using images and language that would be accessible to children – of the "finest man and best Christian I have ever known."

Thus, this biography begins: "If you are about eight years old, then you are the same age I was when I first met the man who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia. If you are eighteen, then you are the age I was when he died."

Like Gresham, Lewis suffered the trauma of losing his mother when he was very young. Gresham notes that, when Lewis' father died years later, Jack and his older brother Warren returned to Belfast to clean out the family home. They put all of their toys and other childhood memorabilia into a trunk and buried it in the garden.

Nevertheless, Gresham stressed that Lewis never "lost the intimate memory" if what it was like to be a child. While the scholar claimed that he was not good with children, his stories, letters and experiences late in life suggest otherwise.

"In my experience, he was excellent with children," said Gresham. "He didn't talk down to us. He may have brought himself down to out level, but he never talked down to us from above. Jack was always conscious of the fact that children are people. They may be small and unformed, mentally and emotionally as yet, but they are people with all of the same trials, tribulations, frights and foibles as other people."

Gresham paused, remembering. "In a sense, the child in him lived with him the rest of his life. For anyone who is writing for children, that is an important thing."

Seminaries, celibacy and doctrine

When it comes to nightlife in Washington, D.C., Dupont Circle is one of the places where people go to be seen.

So Amy Welborn wasn't surprised to see familiar faces while visiting the hot spots with a friend in the late 1970s. It was easy to spot the Catholic University seminarians – with their girlfriends – even though the future priests were not wearing clerical garb.

"It was the spirit of the times," said Welborn, now a popular Catholic writer and online apologist. "Dating was pretty normal for seminarians and some seminaries did little to discourage it. Some actually encouraged dating because that was supposed to help seminarians get in touch with their sexuality. ...

"People thought celibacy would take care of itself and, of course, some people thought the whole celibacy thing would disappear at some point in the future."

Times change. One thing is certain as teams of Catholic examiners begin a wave of confidential "Apostolic Visitations" at the 229 U.S. seminaries. While rumors swirl about a Vatican crackdown on homosexuality, the insiders who examine seminary life will follow 12 pages of guidelines that repeated focus on preparing priests for life without sex.

The celibacy issue is hot, according to the "Instrumentum Laboris."

While the document – as posted on the World Wide Web – contains one or two clear references to homosexuality, there are a dozen or more direct or indirect references to mandatory celibacy and its role in the training, or "formation," of priests.