Beauty and the Priest

Katherine Landsberg's great-grandfather died in a Stalinist purge.

Her grandparents were born in Russia and she grew up among Russian ?gris in the United States. She is a faithful member of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a proud, ultra-traditionalist body that has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and his family as martyrs.

This helps explain why Landsberg went to Chicago's massive Water Tower Place mall last weekend on a personal mission, distributing educational leaflets as moviegoers flocked to see the first showings of 20th Century Fox's holiday-market offering "Anastasia." She is yet another example of a trend: true believers frustrated by entertainment industry invasions of holy ground.

"I just couldn't help myself," said Landsberg, a professional writer with an Internet firm. "I know Hollywood does whatever it wants to do with portrayals of historical figures, especially religious figures. ...But I don't think it's appropriate to make a silly movie about a martyr. Anastasia was a real person. This girl was brutally murdered. Leave her alone."

Landsberg's leaflet featured a photograph of the young grand duchess and the story of her life and execution, with the rest of her family, by Bolsheviks in 1918. Later, a series of impostors claimed to be Anastasia or some other royal sibling who miraculously survived.

"Now, 79 years after the execution of the Romanovs ... there has emerged a new impostor – one who, without remorse, will finally succeed in capitalizing on this tragedy," wrote Landsberg. "Please share this true story with your children in order to help prevent the distortion of history."

Mall security guards eventually asked her to leave, so she headed out to a suburban mall. This weekend, she plans to print up 200 more leaflets and do it again. Most people accepted her work without comment. Others bluntly asked why she was making such a fuss about a movie.

Landsberg's answer is simple: whether its makers intended to or not, "Anastasia" has painted a cartoon face on an icon. Everywhere she looks, on posters, billboards and television, she sees flirty images of a teenybopper princess who, in reality, did not live happily ever after.

Out in Hollywood, a 20th Century Fox spokesperson said the studio has no plans to release an official statement in response to "the handful of complaints" it has received. The movie's official World Wide Web page - in a niche between those for "Alien Resurrection" and "Home Alone 3" - doesn't mention any of the heroine's ties to Orthodox Christianity.

The movie itself is yet another comic confection pitting a perky heroine against a symbol of supernatural evil. In this case, the film could have been called "Beauty and the Priest."

The villain, Father Gregory Rasputin, is a holy man who is portrayed as having sold his soul to place a curse on the Romanovs. Anastasia accidentally escapes the revolutionaries and, after various chase scenes and musical extravaganzas, finds romance in Paris. In a pivotal scene, she looks to the sky and asks for "a sign" to lead her to "home," "love" and "family." Yet there are no positive religious figures to oppose Rasputin and God is never mentioned.

The producers of "Anastasia" say the film includes 350,000 animation drawings, in 1,350 scenes and was built on years of research. Yet no one seems to have discovered the religious themes in the real story.

"I bear them no grudge, because I really don't think they had a clue," said Bob Atchison of Austin, Texas, who leads a research and restoration project on the Romanov family's palace outside of St. Petersburg. He also operates an Internet site (http://www.pallasweb.com/anastasia) dedicated to the grand duchess, through which he has received many letters from people who are upset about the film.

"It really doesn't look like the people at Fox knew what they were dealing with," said Atchison. "Perhaps they didn't even know that she has been canonized as a martyr. ...But the truth is the truth and the facts are out there. Perhaps the lesson here is that it pays to do your homework when you start messing around with people's faith."

Airing out the Promise Keepers hotel

Lyndi McCartney knows that legions of feminists rank her husband as public enemy No. 1, while scores of Christian conservatives consider the Promise Keepers leader a prophet.

But after 35 years of marriage, she thinks of Bill McCartney as a big hotel - with lots of rooms that needed to be unlocked and aired out.

"Bill has had to let God into those rooms one at a time," she said. "Just my luck, but my room was at the end of a long hall. Eventually Bill did let God into the room of our marriage. ... God still has some work to do, but it's been a blessing to get that door open."

The hotel had a room for his alcoholism and another for his coach's temper. There was one for his hot-and-cold approach to parenting their four children and another for his take-no-prisoners religious life, first as a hard-driving Catholic and later as an evangelical activist. One huge room was lined with trophy cases full of football obsessions, from his youth as an over-achieving linebacker to his workaholic life atop the college-football polls.

In the early 1990s, the hotel gained an impressive chapel. But the biggest irony in the story of Mr. and Mrs. Promise Keepers is that it was adding this last room that almost doomed their marriage. Lyndi McCartney realized that her husband was just as hooked on ministry as he was on coaching.

"As PK grew, every ounce of Bill's time was spent on this additional love in his life," she said, in one of her commentaries in "Sold Out," a spiritual autobiography by Bill McCartney and journalist David Halbrook. "Instead of his time being consumed during football season, it was consumed all year long - in the name of an organization that promotes being a godly husband and father. ... I grew to resent PK as just another thief that stole my husband away from me."

She hid in the empty nest of their home outside Boulder, Colo., fighting depression and bulimia with the aid of stacks of self-help books. She saw her only daughter deliver a second child out of wedlock – both fathered by football players. Lyndi McCartney lost 80 pounds and thought about suicide. About this time the coach confessed that, shortly before his 1974 "born again" conversion, he had committed adultery.

Bill McCartney's wife hit bottom and he finally heard the crash.

In the new book, he notes that he had once vowed to "forsake all others" and honor his wife. But, "the truth is, until the day I resigned as head football coach at the University of Colorado in November 1994, I usually forsook Lyndi in favor of all others. I can tell you their names: success, competition, career, FOOTBALL." This was insane, and sinful, idolatry.

Today, Lyndi McCartney is quietly riding the roller coaster of her husband's work as leader of a controversial social movement, while urging him to walk his talk. She said she enjoys taking him to beaches and watching him attempt to unwind. She often times dinner conversations and they recently set a record – three hours. She also is sharing what she has learned.

"Back when I was just the coach's wife – quote, unquote – I thought that I had a unique perspective," she said. "I thought that the way coaching dominates a man's life was totally unique. ...But I have met so many women whose experiences are like mine." This is especially true of the wives of workaholic ministers. In recent years, she said, she has learned about "this added little guilt thing" that unites them. It's hard to complain about your husband's boss when the boss is supposed to be God. It can be just as hard, or harder, for ministers to repent and keep their promises to their wives and children.

"You wouldn't believe what these guys say," she said, describing a meeting with one prominent pastor. "He came right out and said it: 'I have to do God's work. My family will just have to wait and try to understand.' ... That's just the same sinful human stuff, isn't it?"

Growing pains in American Orthodoxy

Throughout his 16-city U.S. tour, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople has faced a good news, bad news situation.

The good news is that Orthodox Christianity is growing in America. Then again, the bad news is that Orthodox Christianity is growing in America. This creates tensions. As the Old World's symbolic leader, Bartholomew has offered many glowing words of praise, and some sharp criticisms, of the New World's feisty flock.

"Orthodox Christians, who live in a country where full religious freedom reigns and where adherents of various religions live side by side, ... constantly see various ways of living and are in danger of being beguiled by certain of them, without examining if their way of life is consonant with the Orthodox Faith," he said, at Holy Cross Seminary. "Already, many of the old and new Orthodox ... are stressing different, existing deviations from correct Orthodox lives."

Many Americans use "worldly criteria" to judge church leaders, said Bartholomew, who is considered the "first among equals" among Orthodox patriarchs. Other converts are, due to ignorance, hanging on to Roman Catholic and Protestant teachings or arbitrarily altering liturgies. This can be observed in the way some Americans sing their chants or in the style of icons they venerate. Some fail to grasp Orthodox architecture or yearn to sit down too much during worship.

Bartholomew couldn't have chosen a more symbolic place to deliver this sobering sermon on Oct. 30. The Brookline, Mass., seminary has been at the heart of a bitter dispute in the church.

Last winter, a Palestinian seminarian punched a Greek priest after refusing repeated sexual advances during a dormitory party. The faculty disciplinary committee investigated and urged expulsion for the Greek. Instead, Archbishop Spyridon of America deposed the school president and fired three faculty members on the disciplinary panel. Many screamed "cover-up" and Greek-American newspapers have carried reports about a powerful clique of homosexual priests and monks close to the hierarchy.

"This storm isn't about American rebels rejecting the authority of their bishops," said Dean Popps of McLean, Va., a leader in a network of angry laity. "This is about corruption and immorality and incompetence."

Greek politics also have affected attempts to build unity among America's dozen other Orthodox jurisdictions, each with its own foreign ties. In 1994, an unprecedented conference of American bishops called for the birth of a true American Orthodox church. But Bartholomew crushed the effort. On Oct. 25, a ranking prelate linked to that effort publicly told Bartholomew that it's time for Orthodoxy to stop being a "tribal," "ghetto" faith in this mission field.

"While we profess our conviction that the Orthodox Church is catholic and apostolic, we live in a way which gives priority to cultural and ethnic loyalties," said Metropolitan Theodosius of the body known as the Orthodox Church in America, which has its roots in Russian Orthodoxy. "While we know very well that we are united in the Orthodox Faith ... we present ourselves as divided and even competitive communities. Thus, what we profess and affirm as our faith is contradicted by how we live and act as a church."

In reply, Bartholomew said these words placed a "heavy burden" on him.

There are other signs of division. Reports continue that Bartholomew will carve the Greek archdiocese here into several districts, each with a bishop directly beholden to him. The divided U.S. flock would lose clout and stay under Istanbul's control. Meanwhile, the future of the unified Orthodox Christian Mission Center is unclear and conflicts continue about Spyridon's role in the Standing Conference of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in America.

At some point, the mother church must stop dominating its child, said Harry Coin, a Boston-area layman who runs an Internet site – www.voithia.org – about the controversies. "Voithia" is Greek for "help."

"No one wants to make some big change in our tradition, like having female priests. And this isn't about doctrine. No one is debating who Christ is," he said. "But we do need bishops and archbishops who understand that an American church is growing and can accept that. ... We also need trustworthy men who will be solid moral examples for all the people who are coming into our churches."

An anonymous voice in China

Alex Buchan has a source inside the Communist Party in China.

The Hong Kong-based reporter calls him a "high-ranking official" active in Chinese efforts to monitor and control religion. This source is a secret Christian. Buchan won't say whether a recent meeting took place in Hong Kong or during the journalist's latest trip into China. However, the contents of this anonymous interview will cause discomfort on both sides of America's fierce debates on religious persecution.

Americans must realize that Chinese officials deny that "discrimination" equals "persecution," said the source. Chinese Christians automatically lose many educational and economic rights. They can practice their faith only in settings controlled by the Communist Party, which also judges whether they are "heretics." That's discrimination.

Persecution is when believers are "thrown in jail, beaten, harassed, physically abused in some direct fashion," he said. "Now I may be too far up the tree to know what's going on at the roots, but I would be very surprised if there were more than a couple of hundred people incarcerated for their Christian faith. ... It is wrong to say there is no persecution, but it is minimal when you consider the Christian community may number more than 50 million."

So is the glass half empty or half full? Those calling for sanctions will say it's appalling that hundreds are in jail for openly practicing their faith. Those seeking increased ties with China will say this statement is another sign of progress.

This assumes that anyone reads the interview. If Buchan worked for the New York Times or CNN, it would have been discussed by politicians and pundits during Chinese President Jiang Zemin's recent U.S. media blitz. After all, news reports often cite mysterious "high-ranking officials." However, Buchan doesn't work in a prestigious newsroom. The veteran British reporter works for Compass Direct, a Christian news service covering religious-liberty issues.

If the New York Times printed this interview, it would be news. But Compass Direct carried it, so it's merely data on the Internet. Many will doubt that Buchan's source is real. So, if the cell door slams on a priest in China, and CNN doesn't report it, does it make a sound?

In a totalitarian society, noted Buchan, it's easy to quote those who make the laws, such as Communist leaders, and those who obey the laws, such as state-sanctioned clergy. The problem is reaching those, such as his source, who oppose the laws.

"To dissent openly in China is a huge undertaking, often involving exile and the disgrace of one's family," said Buchan. Many Chinese believers "want to tell the truth, but they want to stay too. So its truth without attribution. Take it or leave it. They didn't make the rules."

Compass Direct has been breaking stories that occasionally filter into other media. One example: the arrest of Protestant house church leader Xu Yongze for "heresy" and his eventual sentencing to 10 years in a labor camp.

According to Buchan's source in China, these kinds of repressive acts have increased in recent years, but the overall trend has been towards freedom. "There is much more religious freedom today than 20 years ago and all indicators suggest that there will be much more freedom in 20 years. ... China is committed to capitalism, which will continue to open the country up to Western ways, and the Maoist ideology – the motor of past persecution – is worn-out."

This is essentially the viewpoint of the White House and others who say that economic change will produce improved human rights, not vice versa. But the anonymous official also stressed that China continues to fear, and misunderstand, the power of religious faith.

"Buddhism especially is booming in the provinces," said the source. "It's the fastest growing religion by far. But Christianity is also growing, especially among educated young people. ... To a generation that genuinely thought religion had been virtually exterminated, its resurgence is puzzling. 'Where did religion go, if it wasn't destroyed?', said one of the Party leaders to me recently. I answered: 'It went where it always is – the heart.'"