Virtually anyone linked to God and cyberspace gets the same letter several times a year as it’s copied and forwarded, and copied and forwarded, from one e-mail list to another — World Wide Web without end, amen. It contains a “true story” about an atheistic philosopher at the University of Southern California, a courageous student, a piece of chalk and a miracle. The letter ends by challenging the reader to pass it on, rather than hitting the delete key. Clearly,... Read more

The two men spoke on the same topic, on the same day and at luncheons early in the same gathering — the 211th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). But Harvard University minister Peter Gomes and ex-gay counselor Joe Dallas found radically different messages when they opened their Bibles. Right now, said Gomes, the forces of biblical literalism are waging a campaign of “textual harassment” against those who want to welcome gays and lesbians into the ministry and bless... Read more

Early in his first pastorate, the Rev. Clyde McDowell was hit with one crisis after another and none of them seem to have been covered in his seminary textbooks. The son of a church member got caught up in a bad drug deal. Then a girl ran away from home. Then a boy was tossed out of school for threatening someone with a hunting knife. Then there was a guilty wife and an angry husband and a messy sexual affair.... Read more

It’s tricky for anyone to sign a document in Belgrade these days with the word “peace” in the title. But back on April 19th, while air-raid sirens screamed overhead, an interfaith quartet of shepherds released a gripping statement to their Yugoslavian flocks and to the world. “Even as evil cannot be overcome by evil, so peace and harmony cannot be attained by war,” said the seven-paragraph “Appeal for Peace,” released from the Serbian Orthodox Patriarchate. “To be a peacemaker is... Read more

The Rev. Calvin Miller is one Southern Baptist preacher – a seminary professor, no less – who openly admits that he communed with the Star Wars faithful on the opening day of “The Phantom Menace.” He pretty much got what he expected – high tech fantasy and lowest-common-denominator mysticism, stone-faced knights and wisecracking sidekicks ready for toy-store shelves. George Lucas keeps offering a pinch of Freud, a shot of Oedipus and a baptism into Buddhism. Miller grimaced, but wasn’t shocked,... Read more

Every epic story needs a central character and he has to come from somewhere. So the key moment in the cosmos of mythmaker George Lucas is when Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn asks Shmi Skywalker to identify the father of her mysterious young son, Anakin, who will someday become the evil Darth Vader. “There is no father,” she replies, in Terry Brooks’ novel “Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace,” which is based on the screenplay by Lucas. “I carried him,... Read more

It’s been seven years since Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison faced the fact that some of his fellow bishops worship a different god than he does. The symbolic moment came during an Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in Kanuga, N.C., as members met in small groups to discuss graceful ways to settle their differences on the Bible, worship and sex. The question for the day was: “Why are we dysfunctional?” “I said the answer was simple – apostasy,” said Allison, a... Read more

On a clear day, an adventurer atop Mount Brandon can gaze into the Atlantic and see the rocky Three Sisters, the Skellig islands and other enticing glimmers on the horizon. The Irish saint for whom the mountain is named did more than look. According to the Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St. Brendan), the 6th century abbot set out in a leather-and-wood boat, with 17 other monks, to find the Promised Land in the West. “Brothers, do not... Read more

GREENVILLE, Ill. – After 35 years of work in television and sports, Bob Briner is a pro at spotting doors of opportunity in the numbers churned out by media-research firms. So he wasn’t surprised that the new Internet-based Digital Entertainment Network is poised to cybercast a show called “Redemption High.” This post-MTV drama will, according to USA Today, center on “several Christian teens, a group almost completely ignored by broadcast television. … The teens grapple with problems by asking themselves... Read more

The Greek word “martyria” – which meant “witness” – appears throughout the books and letters that became the New Testament. Believers witnessed both in word and deed. Then came persecution. By the time the drama of the early church reached the Book of Revelation of St. John, with its image of the Whore of Babylon “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,” the word “martyr” had changed forever. “I’m not even... Read more