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Today's big religion story is Clinton's appearance at Willow Creek Community Church. See our coverage here for links to articles in the mainstream press on the speech.

Church of St. Ann and the Holy Trinity, an Episcopal church in Brooklyn Heights, New York, had a great idea: partner with a performing arts center. It could raise money to restore the church, publicize the parish in the community, and even help get some public funding. And for a long time, it worked--until the art got too edgy. "St. Ann's was a venue for artists who would sometimes fall between the cracks, who might not be rock-and-roll club artists, and not concert hall artists, which makes them alternative, whatever," former Talking Heads lead musician David Byrne tells The New York Times. "For some artists, playing there meant they could exercise their creative freedom, do something a little out of the ordinary." Sometimes too out of the ordinary. "It has been a very, very difficult situation for many years," says the church's rector, Joade Dauer-Cardasis. "People keep forgetting that this is an Episcopal church, that this is a sacred institution, not a secular institution." So Arts at St. Ann's is no longer at St. Ann's.

Don Marxhausen, the Lutheran minister who performed Dylan Klebold's funeral after Klebold and Eric Harris went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School, is resigning as pastor of St. Philip Lutheran Church. Marxhausen said that the congregation was getting ready to vote on whether he should stay, and that even if he won the vote, "I would always be associated with pain." Congregants complained that the funeral was held in the church, and that Marxhausen didn't pay enough attention to them. Marxhausen, by the way, was one of the Littleton-area ministers who complained that the Columbine memorial service was too evangelical. "I felt like I'd been hit over the head with Jesus," he told the media.

The Columbine shootings were invoked several times in the Colorado debate over posting the national motto "In God We Trust" in schools and other public buildings. (Colorado Governor Bill Owens, for example, toldThe New York Times, "Columbine has certainly caused us to take a closer look at the relationship between values and culture and our society.") Despite the Colorado State Board of Education's best efforts, the only place the motto will be seen is on teachers' and students' coins. The Jefferson County School Board voted unanimously not to post "In God We Trust" in classrooms. "We don't want our schools engulfed in controversy," said Jon DeStefano, president of the Jefferson County school board. (Isn't it too late for that?)

"Who is taking over, and why are they not given the opportunity to do things?" a Baptist workshop leader from Ghana asks the Associated Press, complaining about the average age of 65 among plenary conference speakers at the massive international gathering. AP writer Richard Ostling also notes that women, non-Westerners, and other groups were apparently shortchanged: "Intra-Christian relations saw no breakthroughs at the gathering. Even the prospering Pentecostals and Charismatics, who are part of evangelicalism, got little platform time." The conference for preaching evangelists "was a nostalgic final bow on the world stage for those who jump-started evangelicalism after World War II," says Ostling.

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August (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44