Saturday, December 27, 1997

Year marked by events of sweeping proportions

By MICHAEL J. PAQUETTE / Religion News Service

In the world of faith, the past year was marked by events of sweeping religious and spiritual proportions, as masses of humanity gathered around the globe to publicly act out rituals of collective yearning and grief to a degree rarely, if ever, seen before.

From the hundreds of thousands of Christian men who gathered in Washington to the spontaneous, global grief over the twinned deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, Americans and others appeared gripped in an inchoate spiritual revival that transcended traditions and institutions.

"Once again we have discovered that America is a very religious nation, but one less and less tied to historic labels," said David Neff, executive editor of Christianity Today magazine. "People looked to public rituals to help them understand the big questions, which is religion in its purest form."

Witness:

-- In Washington, an estimated half-million Christian men assembled in October on the National Mall to pray and sing praises for more than six hours during the Promise Keeper's "Stand in the Gap" rally -- possibly the largest religious event in U.S. history.

-- In London, and in countless cities worldwide, mourners gathered throughout September in public displays of grief over the untimely death of Princess Diana. Millions more watched her funeral broadcasted live from Westminster Abbey.

-- In Calcutta, after hundreds of thousands queued up for days to view her lifeless body, Mother Teresa, the tiny Roman Catholic nun who ministered to the world's poor and dying, was laid to rest a week after Diana in a televised state funeral previously reserved for India's most revered and powerful.

-- In Paris, nearly 1 million pilgrims belied the skeptics by gathering under a hot August sun to witness Pope John Paul II celebrate outdoor Mass during World Youth Days.

"There's a growing interest -- almost a revival -- in our culture in the religious instinct," said James M. Wall, editor of The Christian Century magazine. "All of these events illustrate a spiritual hunger and yearning that's not always well understood by the popular media."

However, huge displays of religious expression were not the only significant religion stories of 1997. There was also controversy and tragedy.

-- The Rev. Henry Lyons, president of the National Baptist Convention, USA, the nation's largest predominately black denomination, came under fire for possible marital infidelity and misuse of church funds after his wife set fire to a luxury home he co-owned with a female church official. After a tumultuous national meeting in September, Lyons retained his beleaguered presidency as state and federal officials continue to investigate his finances.

-- Alabama Judge Roy S. Moore became embroiled in a yet-unresolved legal battle to keep a replica of the Ten Commandments on his courtroom wall. The brouhaha developed into a national debate that pitted church-state separationists against religious conservatives and Gov. Fob James, who declared he would call out the National Guard to stop federal authorities from removing the plaque.

-- In March, 39 members of Heaven's Gate, a quasi-religious group that mixed elements of apocalyptic Christianity with UFOs and the Hale-Bopp comet, committed suicide in California after posting their beliefs on the Internet and leaving videos of themselves explaining their actions.

-- In Israel, liberal Reform and Conservative Jewish groups delayed until early next year their push to attain legal status in the Jewish state after months of angry confrontation with government-appointed Orthodox leaders, who have the final word on Jewish religious issues there. In the United States, some Reform and Conservative leaders publicly urged halting financial support to Israeli causes until Orthodoxy's hegemony in the Jewish state is broken.

Also grabbing headlines in 1997 was the continuing effort toward the seemingly impossible task of achieving unity among Christians of various stripes.

At national meetings throughout the summer, delegate decision-makers of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Reformed Church in America and the United Church of Christ extended a hand of reconciliation to one another by adopting "A Formula of Agreement," a pact establishing "full communion" between the churches.

However, the ELCA rejected by a slim margin the "Concordat of Agreement," a similar unity proposal with the Episcopal Church, which had earlier been approved by the Episcopalians.

Overseas, the quest for unity among European Christians remained elusive as the growing schism between Eastern and Western churches became even more pronounced when in June delegates to the Second European Ecumenical Assembly adopted a formal message that said, in part, "Our divisions and enmities still provoke conflict and are a serious obstacle to making visible the gift of reconciliation."

Emblematic of the East-West rift was the decision by the Georgian Orthodox Church to pull out of the World Council of Churches in June. That same month, the Russian Orthodox Church put to rest speculation that its leader, Patriarch Alexii, would meet with Pope John Paul II in Vienna.

Within Roman Catholicism, the quest for unity also had its highs and lows. Leaders of the Common Ground project gathered in March for their first formal meeting, in which 40 lay leaders, scholars and church officials from the moderate left and moderate right discussed such divisive issues as the role of women and the meaning of human sexuality.

On the ecumenical front, Catholic bishops from the Americas ended their monthlong synod at the Vatican by recognizing that they first need to speak with one Catholic voice before they can find commonality with other Christians.

But perhaps the most divisive issue in all of Christiandom in 1997 -- and beyond -- has been the increased focus on homosexuality:

-- The nation's Roman Catholic bishops extended to parents and families of homosexuals an "outstretched hand" of support in an October pastoral statement that also reaffirmed church teaching that homosexual activity is a sin.

-- Episcopal bishops kept alive the issue of blessing same-sex unions in July when they approved a directive for the church's liturgical experts to continue a theological study of such blessings and to come up with recommendations for the next General Convention in 2000.

-- This spring, the presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted the so-called "fidelity and chastity" amendment for the ordained. Largely viewed by critics as a measure to bar homosexuals from the ministry, the General Assembly later adopted a softer proposal that substituted "integrity" for "chastity," and sent the matter back to the presbyteries.

-- And the nation's oldest continuous Mennonite congregation, located in Philadelphia, was expelled from its conference for accepting homosexuals.

The year brought a mixed bag for religionists concerning public policy. The U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down the 4-year-old Religious Freedom Restoration Act, much to the chagrin of religious groups on both the right and the left.

But religious conservatives in Congress and elsewhere managed to keep alive the yet-unpassed Religious Freedom Amendment that would put the name of God in the Constitution and limit government's ability to interfere with school prayer and other religious expression.

In Russia, President Boris Yeltsin and the parliament haggled over a proposal that denies full legal status to all faiths other than the nation's "traditional" religions of Russian Orthodoxy, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism.

In the end, Yeltsin signed a measure that included a vague reference to Christianity as a protected faith. And in Germany, the Church of Scientology continued to face an ongoing government crack down on the church.