Top 10 1996 Religion News Stories

Black churches were burning and many pundits, politicos and preachers agreed that Southern racists – perhaps even radical Christian conservatives – were waging a campaign of "domestic terrorism."

"It an epidemic. It's a pattern that's very clear," said JoAnn Watson of the Center for Democratic Renewal, in an Associated Press report. At the peak of the media storm, President Clinton joined the chorus, praising the National Council of Churches and like- minded groups that were gearing up to fight the armies of the past. Meanwhile, conservative religious groups received a chilly response when they offered to help rebuild black churches.

Before long, researchers dug deeper and found that church fires were sadly commonplace and the numbers didn't seem to be rising rapidly. Also, racism rarely was the motive, even in arson cases. Most of the vandals were rebellious teens or, in a few cases, headline-hungry copycats and they hit white churches as often, or more often, than black churches.

And so the arguments began. Everyone seemed to agree this story was important, but few could agree on why. Was the national response to these church fires evidence of entrenched racism or of the power of stereotypes? Either way, members of the Religion Newswriters Association of America have selected the 1996 church fires as the year's top religion story.

The second-ranked story was the death of Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin and his remarkable burst of work in his final days. In addition to his last efforts to defend the sanctity of life, he also began yet another attempt to bridge the divide between traditional and progressive Catholics in the United States. The nation's religion news specialists also selected Bernardin as the religion newsmaker of the year.

In the past, the ballot in this end-of-the-year poll has included as many as 50 events and trends. This year's list was only 14 items long and, as a result, many major events and trends were omitted – including a burst of media interest in book of Genesis and clashes between various religious and political groups over same-sex marriages. I cast my top vote for another story that did not even appear on the ballot – a stark series of congressional hearings focusing on religious persecution around the world.

The other eight events in the RNA's 1996 list were:

(3) Religious ministries for men continue to grow nationwide – led by the Promise Keepers movement, with its growing emphasis on racial reconciliation.

(4) The Religious Right, especially the Christian Coalition, plays a major role in national and primary elections. Also, progressive evangelicals and other religious groups on the political left begin new efforts to form their own grassroots networks, such as the Interfaith Alliance.

(5) Speculation increases about the future of three "aging icons" of modern Christianity – Pope John Paul II, Mother Teresa and evangelist Billy Graham. Each faced health crises during the year, while continuing to serve as effective public leaders.

(6) Benjamin Netanyahu is elected prime minister of Israel, with the strong support of the ultra-Orthodox and other voters who told pollsters that they feared their nation was losing its Jewish identity. This highlighted growing tensions between the Orthodox and more secular Jews in Israel and around the world.

(7) Courts strengthen the movement to legalize physician- assisted suicide, creating more clashes between religious groups.

(8) An Episcopal Church court rules that the denomination has no "core doctrine" on marriage and sex. Thus, the panel of bishops dismisses charges against retired Bishop Walter C. Righter, who had ordained a noncelibate gay man.

(9) The Southern Baptist Convention votes to consider boycotting the Walt Disney Co., inspiring the Assemblies of God and several other conservative groups to protest the policies and products one of the world's most powerful media companies.

(10) Pope John Paul II says that the theory of evolution is more than a hypothesis. The pope also says he believes it would be more accurate to discuss "theories of evolution" and he criticizes those who deny that God played an active role in creation.

Tis the Season for Movies

Ebenezer Scrooge repents, George Bailey is born again and Kevin McCallister says his prayers, pounds two burglars and helps heal a neighbor's tortured soul.

It's Christmas at the movies.

Elsewhere in the mall that is America, the Starship Enterprise saves humanity, again, Cruella De Vil chases the latest incarnation of 101 Dalmatians and this year's workaholic Dad – Arnold Schwarzenegger as a muscular sequel to Tim Allen – searches for his inner child.

This, too, is Christmas at the movies.

It's that magic season when Americans have time and money to splurge at the multiplex. Still, it's hard to ignore that it's Christmas, which many still associate with faith and family. The result: movies that define "Christmas spirit" as family-friendly fun, with a dash of lowest-common-denominator spirituality. Throw in some snow, twinkling lights, a hint of the supernatural and at least one reference to Christmas and the package is complete.

"I think Hollywood concedes that it's good if, at the end of a Christmas movie, people are left with some kind of vague, warm glow," said Michael Medved, film critic for the New York Post. "People are supposed to hug at the end of Christmas movies, as opposed to collapsing from sheer exhaustion, like at the end of summer movies."

While it's easy to name some movies that are, in fact, about Christmas, there is remarkably little religious content in the films released during this season, said film critic and historian Leonard Maltin of Entertainment Tonight.

"I think of the words `big,' `expensive' and `family,' in about that order," he said. "The closest you get to religion in most Christmas movies is a reaffirmation of the Golden Rule. You know, love your neighbor, have a little faith, good will towards men and all of that. ... It's not going to get deeper than that, because we're talking about the mass market."

Yet almost every year, someone will go one step further – beyond "holiday" or "Christmas" movie status – and try to say something about the meaning of the season.

This year's entry is "The Preacher's Wife," a remake of a 1947 classic "The Bishop's Wife." The film's stars have made a concerted effort to signal that this isn't your typical Hollywood take on spirituality.

Courtney Vance, who plays the preacher, was baptized shortly before filming began. Superstar Denzel Washington, who plays the dapper angel, Dudley, told reporters he did his scriptural homework beforehand. "Yes, I believe in God and the Bible," said Washington, the son of a Pentecostal pastor. "I believe we all have angel potentiality as well. There's all kinds of angels that are talked about in the Bible." And singer Whitney Houston, who plays his wife, told Aspire magazine that the movie's gospel music had an impact. "I truly believe the Holy Spirit came down and took over because I saw people on the set affected – people you never dreamed would be touched – crying and sobbing," she said.

Nevertheless, director Penny Marshall clearly avoided offensive doctrinal specifics. "This isn't a film about Jesus. It's about the importance of family and community. It has a fable quality. It's very magical," she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Traditional Christians who see this film, and Hollywood's other vaguely spiritual offerings, can react in one of two ways, said Phil Boatwright, Jr., editor of the Movie Reporter newsletter. They can be offended, noting that legions of movie characters spout the name of Jesus in curses, while folks in "The Preacher's Wife" can't even seem to speak the J-word in church. Or, viewers can be thankful that some movie makers now acknowledge that there's more to life than sex, money, cars and guns.

"It isn't Hollywood's job to preach. What Hollywood can do is get us to think, maybe even think about spiritual issues," said Boatwright. "Still, Christmas is supposed to be somebody's birthday. ... If you're going to make movies about Christmas, you can either deal with that reality or you can leave that out, which makes it pretty obvious that you don't want to deal with it."

Yes, Christmas is 12 Days Long

No doubt about it, 25 minus 12 does equal 13.

Christmas is Dec. 25th. Lovers of carols and party games also know this season has 12 days, packed with pears, gold rings, birds and various kinds of gentry, musicians and domestic workers.

Do the math. It's easy to see why many leaders of newspapers, television networks, shopping malls and other cultural fortresses annually deliver some kind of "Twelve Days Of Christmas" blitz beginning on Dec. 13.

But there's a problem. There really are 12 days of Christmas and, for centuries, church calendars in the East and West have agreed that they begin on Christmas and end on Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.

"Somebody needs to teach Bryant Gumbel and all the other Powers That Be some church history. They keep getting it wrong," said Father Patrick Henry Reardon, a philosophy professor and priest at St. Anthony's Orthodox Church in Butler, Pa. "If saying that upsets people, so be it. Orthodoxy has been in the business of upsetting people for centuries. ... But there isn't a bit of doubt that the 12 days of Christmas come after Dec. 25."

Journalism's bible – the Associated Press Stylebook – is agnostic on this matter. It merely notes that Christmas is a federal holiday observed on Dec. 25 or on "Friday if Dec. 25 falls on a Saturday, on Monday if it falls on a Sunday." There are no entries for the penitential season of Advent, the four weeks preceding Christmas, or Epiphany.

The latter feast – the name means "manifestation" – probably began in the second century. In the East, this initially included references to the birth of Jesus, along with other signs of the incarnation. Meanwhile, the Western church in Rome developed its own Nativity feast and timed it, for various reasons, to co-opt the date used for pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice or the feast of Sol Invictus, the "Unconquered Sun."

A sermon by St. John Chrysostom in 386 A.D. notes that the East had recently begun celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 and, about the same time, the West adopted Epiphany. This liturgical exchange created a 12-day celebration, a sacred and secular festival after the quiet season of Advent, or "Winter Lent." However, note that Advent does include one festive date – the Dec. 6 feast honoring St. Nicholas of Myra.

Different cultures celebrated in different ways, but the basic season – Advent, Christmas and Epiphany – remained intact. The Protestant Reformation complicated matters and, in the New World of America, the Puritans actually banned Christmas celebrations. Later, waves of immigrants arrived with their religious traditions, especially Italian Catholics and German Lutherans. But this did little to change the civic and commercial nature of the American season. Another pivotal event was the 1822 publication of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," written by a Clement Clarke Moore, a powerful New York Episcopalian.

"Actually, the Dutch already had brought us a secularized St. Nicholas and everything that went along with him," said Evelyn Vitz of New York University, author of "A Continual Feast," a cookbook and theological commentary on the Christian calendar. "But you throw in this amazing mythology created by Moore's poem – this kind of jolly, pagan elf up on the roof – and ... you end up with an entire season that has been commercialized and stripped of its larger Christian context."

The big question: What can parents and churches do? Meditations on centuries of Christian tradition can easily be drowned out by the clamor of popular culture. Americans clearly prefer the rites of Madison Avenue to those of Rome or Jerusalem.

"We live in this culture. Our children live in this culture. We can fight, I guess," said Vitz. "We can go so far that we make everybody in our families so miserable that they want to quit being Christians. But it is clear that we can't accept business as usual. We need to recapture a sense of time and a sense of the sacred. We can start by insisting that the church's calendar really matters."

Bakker's Other Conspiracy

It's impossible to tell Jim Bakker's story without mentioning his conspiracy theories.

The former PTL leader has always felt that people were conspiring against him – especially journalists, politicians and judges. After the 1987 collapse of his empire, he said he had been betrayed by other televangelists.

Naturally, Bakker adds variations on these themes in his tell- all memoir, "I Was Wrong." But one of its most intriguing details is evidence of yet another conspiracy that he doesn't want to discuss. Note this angry passage in Bakker's remarks as he resigned as PTL's president.

"I sorrowfully acknowledge that seven years ago ... I was wickedly manipulated by treacherous former friends and colleagues who victimized me with the aid of a female confederate," he said. "They conspired to betray me into a sexual encounter at a time of great stress in my marital life. ... I was set up as part of a scheme to co-opt me and obtain some advantage for themselves over me in connection with their hope for position in the ministry."

In other words, the first domino at PTL was a scheme that preceded Bakker's 1980 sexual liaison with Jessica Hahn, a conspiracy within his inner circle that preceded "Pearlygate." Yet Bakker has nothing new to say about these "friends and colleagues" and their scheme. In particular, he downplays the role of the bisexual evangelist John Wesley Fletcher, who arranged the tryst with Hahn, and he hardly mentions James and David Taggart, the brothers who many claim controlled Bakker in his final PTL years.

In his book, Bakker confesses many sins. He repents of his "health and wealth" theology, saying he sinfully twisted scripture. He offers 647 pages of near-stream-of-consciousness details about lessons he learned during his trial, divorce and prison years. But he continues to avoid some questions.

"For most Pentecostal and charismatic people, the most serious questions about Jim Bakker were all those allegations of moral misconduct. ... People haven't forgotten that," said historian Vinson Synan of Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. "There does appear to have been a kind of subterranean, homosexual world inside PTL that has never been fully described. That's where so many questions remain."

Many of the questions center on Fletcher. In addition to his ties to Hahn, it was Fletcher who made anonymous calls in 1983 spreading dirt about Bakker. One of those calls went to me, when I was working as a religion writer in Charlotte, N.C., and I later shared my information with reporter Charles E. Shepard, author of "Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry." Years later, Shepard confirmed that Fletcher was my mystery caller.

Fletcher mentioned Hahn by name in 1983 and also said David Taggart was Bakker's lover. Fletcher was bitter and said Bakker had failed to keep promises and had forsaken him during tough times. But Fletcher did not, during those calls, say what he later said during the "Pearlygate" media storm – that he, too, had been sexually involved with Bakker.

"I never knew a more corrupt person in my life, period, than Jim Bakker," Fletcher told me. "Now I see him for what he is."

Today, those at the Massapequa (N.Y.) Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, where Fletcher preached in the early '90s, refuse to answer questions – merely saying that he recently passed away. Tabloid reports said he suffered from AIDS.

The key: Did Fletcher try to manipulate Bakker to gain power at PTL, starting a chain reaction? Or did Bakker betray Fletcher?

"I Was Wrong" neither asks nor answers this question. On the homosexuality issue, Bakker does include a chapter saying that, as a teen, he was molested – for several years – by a young man he knew at church. This left Bakker confused about his own sexual identity and he said that while in prison he sought, and received, assurances from a counselor that he isn't gay.

And so the story continues, with Bakker attempting a comeback as a humbled counselor for those who face pain in their own lives. Yet he clearly knows that his return is threatened more by the ghosts of his complicated sexual past than by the legal demons that sent him to prison.