Hanukkah's Alight with Ironies

It was a simple, if mischievous, way to open one of those holiday stories that religion reporters write year after year: "It's beginning to look a lot like Hanukkah."

The rest of my story focused on the history of Hanukkah and the modern trends that have turned this minor holiday into one of Judaism's most important dates.

The telephone began ringing with a vengeance. Some devout Jews never made it past the first sentence and thought I was siding with those who promote Hanukkah as a "Jewish Christmas." Others thought the whole article attacked anyone who wanted to hitch a ride on the train that merchants and bureaucrats call "The Holidays."

The first group of callers stressed the message and traditions of the eight-day "Festival of Lights," which begins at sundown on Thursday (Dec. 5). The latter emphasized the reality of what it has become. Today, Hanukkah is alight with irony.

"The link with Christmas has been made and there's not much that we can do about it," said Niv Bleich, president of the on-line Jewish Communications Network (www.jcn18.com). "It's the old chicken and the egg situation and it doesn't really matter which came first. The big question now is, `What are we going to do?'"

The bottom line: How many Jews want to keep a distinctively Jewish spark alive in this season, as opposed to marching to the mall with everyone else?

The holiday in question isn't even mentioned in Hebrew scriptures. Hanukkah is based on events in 165 B.C., when Jewish rebels, led by the Maccabees, defeated their Greek and Syrian oppressors. The rite of lighting menorah candles – one on the first day, increasing to eight – is based on a miracle linked with this victory. Tradition says that when it came time to purify the recaptured temple, only one container of ritually pure oil could be found for its eternal flame. This one-day supply is said to have burned for eight days.

Thus, Hanukkah teaches that Jews must defend the purity of their faith, rather than heed the siren call of the dominant culture. This is a troubling message in the age of Hanukkah bushes and children pleading for taller and taller stacks of presents.

The Jewish Communication Network offers some tongue-in-cheek "Hanukkah Carols" that capture some of these paradoxes, complete with titles such as "On the First Day of Hanukkah" and "I'm Dreaming of a Bright Menorah." The inevitable "Maccabees are Coming to Town" includes these lines: "You'd best be a Jew, or suffer your fate. It does no good to assimilate. Maccabees are coming to town. They know if you're Assyrian. They know if you dig Greeks. They see you on the temple mount, consorting with Hellenistic freaks."

From there, it's only a few clicks to the on-line Jewish Mall (www.jewishmall.com), which offers everything from traditional gifts to UFO dreidels and ceramic-baseball menorahs. The site opened on Nov. 13 and one of the first large orders was from South Korea, said Bleich.

"This isn't for the Jews in New York or Brooklyn. They have a store right around the corner," he said. "But lots of Jews don't live in places like that, anymore. They can't find what they need at their local mall."

Nevertheless, there must be more to Hanukkah than different gift options, said Yosef Abramowitz, editor of Jewish Family & Life! (www.jewishfamily.com). It's important that children go to the mall – to buy items for the poor. It's important for Jews to network with others who are striving to stay faithful. It's important that parents fight behind the scenes or co-opt modern fads to serve old causes. The times may demand Maccabean tactics.

"But let's be honest. These kinds of strategies will only appeal to a minority," he said. "Only a small percentage of Jews, and I imagine this is also true of Christians, are living lives that have much to do with the actual traditions and teachings of their faith. ... That's especially obvious this time of year."

Stay? Leave? Mainline Tensions, Pt. II

Jim Pinto was hooked on drugs and shacked up with his girlfriend when his life was changed by a soul-shaking conversion experience.

So he quit his job as a bartender, got married and went to tell his local bishop that God wanted him to become an Episcopal priest. This was 1977 and, since Pinto lived in New Jersey, that meant visiting the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong.

"I told him all about the miracles that God had done in my life," said Pinto, recalling his encounter with a bishop now known as a global trendsetter among liberal Protestants. "He looked at me and, I'll never forget it, he said: `I believed like you do when I was a little boy. But I grew up.'"

Pinto found another diocese. But he never forgot Spong's warning that he wouldn't be at home in the Episcopal Church.

A few weeks ago, Pinto and most of his interracial church near Birmingham, Ala., decided it was time to go. Christ Church is located in an impoverished neighborhood and had 30 members when Pinto arrived in 1980. Recently, its 300 members completed constructing $2 million worth of buildings to house their work with the poor. The Diocese of Alabama kept the buildings, which is business as usual when a church leaves a mainline denomination.

Pinto is known as a moral traditionalist, including high- profile work in crusades against abortion. So it wasn't a surprise that this priest left a church whose national leaders promote progressive theology and social causes such as homosexual and abortion rights. What caught many off guard was the setting for this story. It isn't news when a traditionalist exits a liberal diocese. This one jumped ship in the Bible Belt.

As described in last week's column, the "seven sisters" of old-line Protestantism face issues more complex than national clashes between left and right. Some parts of the American Baptist Churches, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church are more conservative or more progressive than others. Tensions also exist between local conservatives who clash with liberal regional leaders and between conservatives who differ on how to respond to national trends.

People in orthodox regions are affected by events in progressive regions. People camped in orthodox regions are touched by the decisions of the orthodox who feel trapped in progressive regions. This tune has countless variations.

Some stress hope, others holiness. This painful tension keeps growing as the ecclesiastical pie shrinks.

"We're trying to get people to stay and fight for the faith, rather than walking out and handing things over to the people who want to change everything," said David Stanley, a layman in Muscatine, Iowa, who has been active at all levels of United Methodist life. "We have to keep asking: Does God still have a propose for our church? If he does, then God must be planning to revive our church. We have to have faith that is still possible."

Others stress the sacred ties that bind – here and now. Week after week, Pinto found himself trying to explain why the Gospel preached in his church differs so radically from that proclaimed by progressives such as Spong. It's all one church, one communion, gathered at one altar, stressed Pinto.

Nevertheless, it's hard to make painful choices about local realities, such as paychecks and property laws, based on decisions in national bureaucracies or even ancient church councils. But, sooner or later, everyone will face choices.

At the moment, many local churches are like airplanes, said Pinto. Even if the planes work fine, and most of the pilots are trustworthy, thousands of passengers remain at risk.

"The problem is with the air-traffic controllers, with the people who run the whole Episcopal Church," he said. "They no longer seem to care when planes keep crashing into each other or flying into mountains. ... Things are out of control because the people in the planes can't trust the people in the control tower."

Stay? Go? Four Mainline Camps, Pt. I

One of the first decisions David and Jean Leu Stanley faced when they got married 48 years ago was where to go to church.

Their options were pretty clear. There was the Methodist church in which he grew up or, across the street, the Presbyterian church in which she grew up. His church got the nod and, today, they remain active in Wesley United Methodist in Muscatine, Iowa.

But much has changed since 1948. That was before some bishops began protesting church teachings on marriage, before seminaries started importing pagan rites and before the Stanleys found themselves, year after year, opposing social causes led by people who received money out of their own church's offering plates.

"Obviously, it would really hurt to leave our church," said David Stanley, who, like his wife, has been active at the local, regional and national levels of United Methodist life. "We keep thinking that if it's God's will for us to leave, then he'll make that absolutely clear. We keep asking: `Is this the sign? Is it time to go?'"

Jean Leu Stanley interjected: "But we keep getting mixed signals. We keep seeing good things happening, as well as bad."

On one level, this is old news. Since the 1960s, America's old-line Protestant denominations have lost about a third of their members. These churches, known as the "seven sisters," are the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist Church.

Nevertheless, many clergy and laity continue to embrace the creeds and traditions of these historic churches, stressed historian Thomas Reeves, in his new book, "The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity." They will not find it easy to shop for a new church.

"Millions of mainline Christians have spent all or much of their lives worshipping in the same congregation, and in many cases their ancestors also belonged," he said. "Their faith is intimately linked with a specific denomination and a particular building. ... To be cast from it could be personally devastating."

Meanwhile, it's agonizing to stay, said David Stanley. People on both sides are hurting. The truth is, he said, "United Methodists are now ... two churches within the shell of one denomination, separated by a chasm of conscience."

To outsiders, these civil wars do appear to be clashes between two groups. The "orthodox," as defined by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, believe their faith is rooted in eternal, transcendent truths. The "progressives" argue that truth evolves, shaped by personal experience and changes in society. Both sides include people who will compromise to maintain unity. Yet each compromise leads them further from historic orthodoxy.

Future events are now being shaped by another reality: that the strategic roles played by bishops and other regional leaders make it easier for some to stay, while others are pressured to leave. Conceding that progressives control most of the national high ground, such as seminaries and bureaucracies, the result is a pattern of four camps in liberal denominations. In a few orthodox regions, progressives live in camps that mirror these four.

1. Camp I: Orthodox people, in an orthodox parish, in a region with orthodox leaders.
2. Camp II: Orthodox people, in an orthodox parish, in a region led by progressives who continue to be charitable and fair.
3. Camp III: Orthodox people, in an orthodox parish, in a progressive region.
4. Camp IV: Orthodox people, in a progressive or apathetic parish in a progressive region.

People in these camps worship in different churches, even if the brand name on their local church sign is the same. The more progressive the national church establishment, the more likely orthodox people are to flee from the third and fourth camps. The more who flee, the greater the pain of those who remain.

John Paul vs. Darwinian Orthodoxy

No one will ever accuse Pope John Paul II of being a master of the media-friendly "sound bite."

Thus, his highly nuanced theological pronouncements often produce two quite different, or even contradictory, waves of information. First come the headlines and video clips, as reporters crunch complex texts into clusters of words. Then, days later, the pope's actual text circulates via fax machines and the Internet.

A case in point: John Paul's recent speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences inspired headlines such as "John Paul II Embraces Darwin" and most experts declared that the Vatican had endorsed evolution and taken a belated step into modernity.

Once again, the pope had delivered an address that defied easy editing. Also, it should be noted that one popular quotation – in which he supposedly said that "new knowledge leads us to recognize that the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis" – does not appear in many translations of his text.

Instead, he said: "Rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution. On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist and spiritualist interpretations."

John Paul went on to reject materialism and any evolutionary theory that says humanity is the product of a random, uncaring cosmos. In other words, he attacked the philosophy that forms the dividing line between today's scientific establishment and those who insist that the creation contains evidence of a Creator.

"Theories of evolution which, because of the philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that matter, are incompatible with the truth about man," he said. "They are therefore unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person."

This presents a problem, since the National Association of Biology Teachers has officially defined evolution as an "unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable, and natural process ... that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."

John Paul obviously didn't endorse "evolution" in that sense of the word, noted Phillip E. Johnson, author of the controversial book "Darwin on Trial" and a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Darwinists who read the full papal address will quickly realize that this pope is not their ally.

"To the materialists who dominate the scientific culture," said Johnson, any "theory of evolution involving a non-material spiritual element is as unscientific as outright creationism."

In addition to referring to "theories of evolution" – plural instead of singular – the pope also stressed that scientists must remain critical of their own work. They must not allow any one theory to evolve into a doctrine that cannot be challenged.

A scientific theory, according to John Paul, only "proves its validity by the measure to which it can be verified. It is constantly being tested against the facts. When it can no longer explain these facts, it shows its limits and its lack of usefulness, and it must be revised."

Writing in the New York Times, a prominent Catholic scientist applauded the pope for noting this obvious point. Right now, defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy appear anxious to avoid any evidence that the building blocks of life are too complex to have evolved randomly, said Michael J. Behe, author of ``Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.''

"The complex design of the cell has provoked me to stake out a distinctly minority view ... on the question of what caused evolution," said Behe, who teaches at Lehigh University. "I believe that Darwin's mechanism for evolution doesn't explain much of what is seen under a microscope. Cells are simply too complex to have evolved randomly; intelligence was required to produce them."

If evidence continues to emerge that supports Behe's heretical theory, then the pope would argue that Darwin's disciples will need to revise their dogmas.