Sunday, March 1, 1998

Jots and tittles from the world of religion

By Tom Schaefer / Knight Ridder Newspapers

Promise Keepers, the all-male evangelical organization, announced last week that it can no longer pay its employees and will be laying off all 345 of them.

No one is making any promise to those laid off that they'll be rehired, should finances stabilize.

So is this the end of the movement?

Probably not, though it may not have the same energy as it did when tens of thousands of men filled football stadiums, praising God and praying for better personal relationships.

Most likely what is happening is that the organization, founded in 1990 by former University of Colorado head football coach Bill McCartney, is undergoing a period of transition not unlike the transition a person undergoes after the initial fire of conversion.

You've seen such people. They excitedly talk about their new faith and eagerly seek fellow converts. Then the long, plodding path of life stretches out before them (sounds like the Lenten season to me) and some of that early enthusiasm wanes.

In a similar manner, there was a rush of excitement as thousands of men filled football stadiums and promised to be better fathers, husbands and church supporters.

Now, in many cases, the bloom is off the rose. There are jobs to endure, family budgets to jigger and rejigger and everyday irritations to contend with. Keeping the Promise Keeper fires burning ain't so easy.

Even so, don't count out the movement. After all, most of the members made some serious promises that they would hate like hell to break.

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"It is a striking oddity of our modern circumstance that the subject of morality and ethics is assumed to be a matter of public significance, while the subject of God is thought to be an esoteric matter of interest to theologians and 'people who go in for that sort of thing.'

"It was not always so, and it is very much worth asking how we arrived at this present circumstance and what might be done about it."

Ñfrom First Things article "When Everything Is Permitted," by Wolfhart Pannenberg.

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Each year the National Council of Churches publishes a directory with the latest data on church membership and finances. (It's also a handy guide for names and addresses of various religious organizations nationwide.)

The "1998 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches" (Abingdon Press) has some interesting bits of information, including:

ITEM: More than one-third of all theological students in U.S. and Canadian schools, enrolled in the fall of 1996, were women. In 1972, when enrollment was first tabulated by gender, only 10 percent were women.

ITEM: Three of the 32 largest denominations Roman Catholic Church, Southern Baptist Convention and United Methodist Church account for more than 50 percent of their total memberships. And those 32 account for 95 percent of all church membership in America.

ITEM: Four of the 10 largest U.S. denominations have predominantly African American membership. The four are the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc. (8.2 million members); Church of God in Christ (5.5 million); National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. (3.5 million); and African Methodist Episcopal Church (3.5 million).

Those are the facts, Ma'am. I'll let you make of them what you want.

For your own copy of the hot-off-the-press edition, check with a local bookstore.

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Think you know the gist of a Bible story? Check out these off-the-tops-of-their-heads responses from some students, printed in the National Review:

1. The first book of the Bible is Guinessis, in which Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.

2. Noah's wife was called Joan of Ark.

3. Lot's wife was a pillar of salt by day and a ball of fire by night.

4. Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the apostles.

5. Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol.

6. David fought with the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in biblical times.

7. Solomon had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

8. The epistles were the wives of the apostles.

9. One of the opossums was St. Matthew.

10. A Christian should have only one wife. This is called monotony.

Last call for Sunday school teachers.

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(Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita (Kan.) Eagle. Write to him at the Wichita Eagle, P.O. Box 820, Wichita, KS 67201, or send e-mail to tschaefer(at)wichitaeagle.com )

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(c) 1998, The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.).

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