People who make the big bucks generally work hard, and have the resources, to preserve and cultivate their public persona lest a faux pas puts their careers in a tailspin. So Mel Gibson, no stranger to controversy, has really lost it this time with his alleged anti-Semitic outbursts after being arrested Friday on drunken driving charges. No matter what he does from here, he will have his DUI tantrum dogging him.Where was Gibsons handlers when the 50-year-old star needed them? Surely more than a few agents, P.R. people and family members — and powerful friends — have intervened for high-profile people in their ugly public moments, saved the day and showed their worth in damage control. The Australian-born actor and producer had no one to zip his lip for him the other night when his 2006 Lexus was brought to a halt. He was clocked at 87 mph in a 45 mph zone when stopped, and the sheriffs office says his blood-alcohol level was 0.12, well over California’s legal limit of 0.08 percent.

Yet what Gibson said will echo through the media and Hollywood conduit for months. The report quoted Gibson, The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. He asked the officer whether he was a Jew. Gibsons litany of anger was described as a tirade, and later, when he got sober, a remorseful Gibson said he was despicable in what he said. Look for him going off for alcoholic treatment as one way to mitigate things, but maybe he should spend some time at an Anytown USA” camp or similar program set up to break down bigotry and prejudice.

Two years ago, Gibson became the darling of Christendom who regarded his The Passion of the Christ as a true godsend to Hollywood filmmaking and just what the public needed to understand what Christ endured in the crucifixion. It seemed like a year of buzz for the producer-director as the film was readied for the screen until it was eventually released massively for CD sales. Of course, much of the talk was whether The Passion was indicting Jews of that time for Christs arrest and condemnation to death on a cross. For months, the media quoted Jewish scholars and rabbis on the film and whether they could point to anti-Semitism in the high-grossing film. Gibsons latest outburst certainly gives support to what they had suspected about him. And for Christians, who identified the film they loved with Gibson the ardent believer in the Judeo-Christian experience, things begin to ring hollow.

Gibsons own father made statements that riled Jews, including one that the Holocaust was overblown and that European Jews actually had a kind of population growth spurt during the years of Nazi rule. It’s all — maybe not all fiction — but most of it is,” he told a radio station and added that gas chambers and crematoria at camps like Auschwitz were inadequate to have produced the number of deaths attributed to them. “Do you know what it takes to get rid of a dead body? To cremate it?” he said. “It takes a liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, six million of them? They (the Germans) did not have the gas to do it. That’s why they lost the war.”

Again, wheres self-restraint here? If your son was about to release his seminal film work, already saddled with controversy, wouldnt you keep your deep-held hatreds to yourself? Maybe family members of celebrities arent as guarded as their sophisticated and managed star relatives. As for Mel Gibson, maybe arrogance just comes with his fame and celebrity. Surely, we can assume that the raging fighting in the Mideast between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon had Gibson worked up. It may have all spilled out upon his arrest. No doubt, many famous and ordinary people are voicing, with salty words, their personal thoughts about the various factions involved in that tragic conflict. Let Mel Gibsons passion be a lesson.

The Baha’i Faith is not well-known. It falls into those diffused world religions that often lack the critical mass in membership to raise their profile and actively work to tell their stories however they can. We measure that, of course, by how much they make themselves known where we are or how much they try to shape public policy.In my 22  years with the Tribune most of it writing about faiths I have been especially impressed by the Bahais, but disappointed in the inconsistency of their members to come forward with information about themselves, including their annual holidays. In spurts, there have been Bahai media representatives who engaged with us and supplied news. But not often. They are not alone.

I first became familiar with the Bahai Faith while living in Evanston, Ill., and pursuing my masters degree in journalism at Northwestern University. Just north of the city in Wilmette, along Lake Michigan where Sheridan Road makes a sharp turn, stands the Bahai House of Worship. It is one of nine or so Baha’i temples worldwide. The domed, nine-sided building is an eye-catching piece of architecture that rises 135 feet to expose its lace-like sides and many windows.

Bahais embrace universal beliefs few could quibble with. To be a Baha’i simply means to love all the world; to love humanity and try to serve it; to work for universal peace and universal brotherhood.” - Abdu’l-Baha. That would be too amorphous for those who rely and word-pack testaments and centuries of man-precipitated dogma and doctrine. Followers of the Bahai pride themselves in being so decentralized, so stripped of the tyranny and trouble that come with hierarchy and endowed leadership, that we sometimes wonder whether anyone is in control. Bahais, nonetheless, put strong emphasis on the intellect and follow human and world event with zest. The gatherings draw leading scholars dealing with heady topics that look at finding solutions to the planets problems, especially about people getting along.

Their official faith web site notes: The Baha’i Faith is the youngest of the worlds independent monotheistic religions. Founded in Iran in 1844, it now has more than 5 million adherents in 236 countries and territories. Baha’is come from nearly every national, ethnic and religious background, making the Baha’i Faith the second-most widespread religion in the world. Bahais are said to be the largest minority religion in Iran, and over time, it has faced widespread persecution. Repression has gotten worse since 1979 with establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Since then hundred of Bahais have been killed and hundreds imprisoned. Others have been deprived of education and their education. International pressure helped to stem it, but there are fears that that is increasing.

The antagonists call Bahais infidels and practice dirty religion. The web site of faithfreedom.org reports that on May 19, Iranian security officials incarcerated 54 Bahais in Shiraz, based on groundless charges, other than planning a service-community project.

United Nations officials reported finding a secret letter from the Iranian militarys h igh command to various government agencies calling for them to to identify persons who adhere to the Bahai Faith and monitor their activities. There’s a foreboding specter for a religion that is seemingly among the most peaceful on the planet.

The options presented in the title are so stark: God or The Girl. The once-shown five-part series on Arts & Entertainment cable channel is now being marketed as a DVD and can be a tool for young Catholic men to use to weigh the weighty matter of pursuing a career as a priest or rather go for marriage and family.It is billed as a real-life look at four impressive young men trying to decide whether to answer Gods call. The Christian Newswire says it faithfully portrays the reality of the issue of whether to answer a call to religious service or the churchs command to find a mate for life and multiply. God or The Girl powerfully captures the tension, terror and triumph Joe, Steve, Mike and Dan face at the most important crossroads of their lives, it notes. A Boston Herald writer observes, Watching these men wrestle with this life-changing decision should be required viewing for critics of the church as well as the faithful.

The double-DVD, featuring 225 minutes of drama, is described as a feature showing the ultimate struggle between the choice of two goods. It asks such questions as What drives a man to become a priest? How does he initiate the process, and where does it end? What would he give up by becoming a priest? What would he be giving up by not becoming one? Each of the four young men comes at it with different issues, relationships, torment and aspirations as tensions build in the final weeks before they must make their choices.

Theres Dan, 21, a fearless and passionate Catholic who lives with nine celibate young men in a house called Fort Zion but is conflicted by whether he has the starch to be a priest, not to mention an on-again, off-again relationship with a girl. Another is Mike, 24, who deeply admired his parish priest growing up and who has a deepening relationship with a young woman and feels deep pressure to decide. Steve, 25, abruptly abandoned an $80,000 consultants job to be a campus minister at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but he is fearful of how much sacrifice would be entailed in the priesthood and is tempted to return to he consultant world. Finally, the oldest, Joe, 28, who is an Ohio campus counselor with two tryouts at seminary life and steels himself to possibly go back for a third time and make it work. He recognizes he has spent 10 years vacillating, with failed love relationships and continual family pressure to be a priest.

In a review of the series in April, Washington Post writer John Maynard lauds A&E for its care and choosing higher ground with the sensitive subject. He notes that Fox or VH1 would have created different kinds of messes with it. Maynard tells how the Dan character of Fort Zion carries an 80-pound, self-made cross on his back for 20 miles to try to replicate some of the pain that Christ endured, and he leads protest rallies outside of an abortion clinic and strip club. And Maynard believes Dan would be awarded any gold metal for Extreme Catholicism for his spirit. He seems to have the least angst about deciding between religion and redheads, Maynard notes.

With the diminishing number of men going to seminary to replenish the Roman Catholic Churchs priest ranks, it appears that vocations is in crisis. A growing number of parishes have no priests and seminaries cannot keep up. I regret I missed the A&E series when it aired last April. I suspect it will be reshown. In any event, it can be ordered at www.godorthegirl.com, where more about the compelling series can be found.

Walking through the canyons of skyscrapers in the heart of Americas largest cities, we occasionally come upon a small church. It is dwarfed by the towering structures that block out the sunshine, but it reminds us that it holds firm to a patch of land that was not snatched up by Corporate America.If youve been to Wall Street, youve probably seen Trinity Church at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street. Your first thought is how did this church miss the wrecking ball and get replaced by brick and steel going 70 stories up? Maybe that neo-gothic structure would be gone without its storied 309-year history as the place where the inaugural services for President George Washington were held in 1789 or where Alexander Hamilton is buried. The Episcopal church has been a physical faith witness in the center of capitalism.

Walking in the great cities of Europe, we have also been surprised by the preponderance of churches large and small just blocks apart and surrounded by old and new development that somehow allowed the churches to stay put. Obviously, we dont know what religious edifices were, in fact, lost to progress or fell too much into decay to remain.

In city after city in America, there was usually church row, many churches concentrated downtown, representing the largest denominations. Each structure was designed by the best architects with flair and class, with stained-glass windows and eye-catching steeples and towers. Downtown Tulsa, Okla., is a good example. There the oil barons of the first part of the last century underwrote the costs for some amazing church architecture that still speaks to what could be done by that generation of church builders. Downtown Phoenix has largely lost its church row. Historic First Presbyterian Church, Tanner AME Church and Immaculate Heart Catholic Church are among the last. Most congregations of another era sold off their downtown sites to follow the outward migration of members and usually fetched a good price to erect new campuses elsewhere.

Sometimes churches stand in the way of progress. Commercial and public developments want their spots and seek to use their considerable economic, legal and influential might to gain the land, even if it takes special incentives. Americans have grown more hostile to cities teaming with private business to use eminent domain provisions to push out existing owners and users of prime spots. So I was heartened Wednesday by the Ohio Supreme Court ruling that favored houses of worship. The unanimous ruling said that cities may not use eminent domain powers to take private property if the only purpose is economic development. Judges used some fairly religious language in the City of Norwood v. Horney case. Property rights were believed to be derived fundamentally from a higher authority and a natural law and are so sacred that they could not be entrusted lightly to the ‘uncertain virtue of those who govern.

The churchs situation was part of a bigger Norwood, Ohio, issue involving the real estate empire of Jeffrey Anderson with a half-billion dollar plan who wants to remake a large part of the city. In an appeal, a church argued that houses of worship and other religious institutions are, by their very nature, non-profit and almost universally tax-exempt. Because of these fundamental characteristics, cities will always be particularly eager to replace these properties with for-profit, tax-generating businesses. They argued that when government uses eminent domain against houses of worship it inevitably treads on that religious institutions autonomy and expression. Whats more, if government can control where a religious institution may locate, the government inevitably comes to control the kind of mission a religious institution may pursue.

Among numerous examples cited were the forced sale and destruction of two churches in Atlantic City, N.J., to make the property available for the MGM Grand Casino; and two churches taken by eminent domain in New Rochelle, N.Y., to make way for a 309,000-square foot IKEA story.

I just finished reading John Deans latest book, Conservatives Without Conscience, a revealing look at the authoritarian personality and what kind of a person is an easy, blind follower of authority. It reaffirmed what I have sensed across a lifetime, from my school days, my time in the U.S. Army and across 35 years of community, church and journalism life. I was reminded of Eric Hoffers definitive work The True Believer I discovered in the 1960s about mass movements and the dangerous selflessness of followers who support despots and demagogues.Dean, one-time legal counsel to President Richard Nixon who pled guilty to obstruction of justice in the Watergate scandals, draws from several studies by scholars to show the sorts of people who are commonly drawn to causes. It centers around authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality, which can be a strong leader or unquestioning follower or both. Dean said an Arizona icon, the late Sen. Barry Goldwater, and he had originally intended to do the book together because Goldwater was growing more disturbed that classic American conservatism was being hijacked and refashioned, especially with the 1994 takeover of Congress by Contract With America Republicans He grew astonished by new conservatives reached into the realm of individual lives and a disregard for civil liberties. Goldwater died at 89 in 1998, and Dean just sat on the idea until he saw things come into focus after Sept. 11, 2001.

Distinctly absent from Goldwaters conservatism was any thought of the governments imposing is own morality, or anyone elses, on society, Dean writes. In other words, the values of todays social, or cultural, conservatism had no place in the senators philosophy. Dean spends careful time drawing from the research of Stanley Milgram, who laid out his study in 1969 in the book Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. It looks at conscience, defined as our inner inhibitory system — part nature, part nurture and necessary to the survival of our species. It prevents humans for taking actions against our own kind. What he found in tests was that people with authoritarian personalities and deeply predisposed to obedience to authority could do heinous things — ordinary people just doing their jobs by instruction, like an Adolf Eichmann managing the extermination of Jews.

Social psychologist Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba put his research into several books: Right-Wing Authoritarianism (1981), Enemies of Freedom (1988) and The Authoritarian Specter (1996). Altemeyer said that when he started out, he was not looking for political conservatives. He was seeking people who overtly submit to the established authorities in their lives, who could be of any political/economic/religious stripe. What he found was that North Americans who score high on the scale of authoritarian tests tend to favor right-wing political parties and have conservative economic philosophies and religious sentiments.

When they were asked to respond to 32 statements, they showed up high on the RWA — right-wing authoritarian — scale. RWAs highly agreed to this sampling of sentences: 1) Old-fashioned ways and old-fashioned values are the best guide for the way to live; 2) Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us, and 3) Gods laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished. Dean says data show that right-wing authoritarians make up 23 percent of Americans.

When Christian conservatives take their religious beliefs into the political arena, they also carry authoritarianism with them, Dean writes. He supports that with Altemeyers assertion that acceptance of traditional religious beliefs appear to have more to do with having a personality rich in authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression and conventionalism, than with their beliefs, per se. Dean says that the way faith and politics have been commingled in America has compromised faith. He quotes conservative Christian author and commentator Cal Thomas, … the marriage of religion and politics almost always compromises the gospel because politics is is all about compromise. Much of the book points to a litany of conservative authoritarians and what to what they have said and done: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed, Charles Colson, J. Gordon Liddy, Jack Abramoff, Newt Gingrich, Richard Nixon, Tom DeLay, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, J. Edgar Hoover, etc.

His last page draws again on Altemeyer: Probably about 20 to 25 percent of the adult American population is so right-wing authoritarian, so scared, so self-righteous, so ill-informed, and so dogmatic that nothing you can say or do will change their minds.” That group would march America into a dictatorship and probably feel that things have improved as a result.

Pity todays pastors, their desks piled high with magazines, books, reports, computer printouts and mail on countless programs that will make their ministry rock. Their bookshelves can rarely handle their stock, and often sidetables and the floor get the excess. And we arent even talking about the e-mail deluge. So much to devour, so little time.Phoenix-based Ellison Research recently polled Protestant pastors about their reading habits, as well as their radio-listening and TV and film viewing patterns, to see what influences ministers allow into their world to shape their thinking. A companion survey of lay people who attend Protestant churches showed a contrast to what pastors draw from. The surveys of 806 pastors and 1,184 adults who attend a Protestant church at least once a month sought to determine their uses of any of eight Christian media — music, movies, radio, television, web sites, fiction books, non-fiction books and magazines.

The research found the the majority of clergy use various forms of Christian media, but thats not the case of lay people. The Facts & Trends magazine, published bimonthly by LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, found that for laity, they were most likely to listen to Christian music (78 percent). Of the music they listen to, 42 percent of it was specifically Christian music. Pastors were most likely to use non-fiction Christian books (92 percent). Christian books are 76 percent of all non-fiction books they read.

Ninety-four percent of pastors listen to Christian music, 87 percent read Christian magazines, 84 percent listen to Christian radio (though they tend to split evenly between Christian and secular music) and 83 percent visit Christian web sites. Only 53 percent read Christian fiction and 76 percent go to Christian movies (although they account for 26 percent of all movies seen by them.) Few pastors are anchored to Christian only sources: 14 percent for music, 15 percent for non-fiction books, 8 percent for Christian radio 7 percent only Christian magazines and 1 percent only Christian web sites.

Lay Christians, essentially, are more likely to draw more from the secular world. By denomination, certain Baptist groups (independent Baptist, General Baptist and other Baptists) tended to consume Christian media more than Southern Baptists and significantly more than those from mainline denominations. Methodists are relatively light users of Christian books, radio, music and web sites, the reports summary said. Lutherans are comparatively infrequent consumers of Christian films, fiction, music and radio. Presbyterians are the denominational group least likely to listen to Christian radio. And it found that those laity who are church leaders are more likely to use Christian media than others.

The surveys found Southern Baptists pastors are especially heavy users of Christian radio and movies. Pentecostal and charismatic pastors rely more than others on Christian music. Lutheran clergy read less Christian fiction, listen to less Christian music and radio and watch less Christian TV than average, the report said. Presbyterians consume less Christian television and radio. Methodists are fairly average in their media use.

Ellison Research president Ron Sellers said the findings show that Christian media is big business with wide reach. Secular corporations have been backing movies with strong religious themes, buying Christian publishing companies and releasing albums from Christian artists, and these figures really show why, he said. Details of the study can be seen at www.ellisonresearch.com/releases/20060627.htm

Humanitarian George Overby died July 19 in Tempe at the age of 83. One of the towering greats of University Presbyterian Church, the retired civil engineer lent his considerable skills to many works, especially Habitat for Humanity. In March 1997, I had the honor to introduce both George and his late wife Bobbie as recipients for the citys most coveted award, the 14th Annual Don Carlos Humanitarian Award, sponsored by the Tempe Community Council and presented by then-Mayor Neil Giuliano.I had served with George in a number of roles at the church, including singing beside him in the tenor section of choir, serving with him and Bobbie on the worship committee and helping them on work projects around the campus. Church members since 1969, they got the congregation engaged in Meals on Wheels. Their passion was the homeless. In 1986, they became Habitat for Humanity volunteers, joining the Valley Habitats board of director and then going on to be founding members of its East Valley Habitat chapter. At the time of their Don Carlos honor nine years ago, they had already worked on 50 Habitat homes. In 1988, they labored on seven Habitat houses in South Africa. In 1992, they joined Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter in the Miracle of the Border Habitat effort in which 2,500 volunteers put up 107 new houses in one week in Tijuana, Mexico.

From the raw resources of the earth, the Overbys have made houses, but more importantly have made homes, I noted in that talk at the Arizona Historical Society museum where two years before I received the Don Carlos honor. In dozen of houses in the Valley tonight, the lights are on and families are at home, sheltered from the night, safe and secure because of the overwhelming Overbys. I had asked George why such dedication to Habitat. I enjoy it. I would read the paper and hear about the insurmountable problems and wondered what could I do about it? he said. Thats when we got into Habitat. He said that homelessness can be battled by building one house at a time giving a new life to one family at a time.

The Overbys took Peter Seegers words to heart, I noted, taking a little lyrical liberty. They have hammers, and they hammer in the morning, they hammer in the evening, all over this land. Bobbie and George led the effort in building Mesas fourth Habitat house and had agreed to lead the fifth and sixth house projects. You know them, just give them a house, go away and come back five months later, and youve got this house, I said to the audience, passing on the words of Steve Tyre, past president of the East Valley Habitat for Humanity. They would work four days a week on houses, and coordinated volunteers, purchased materials and contracted for specialized work like architecture and plumbing.

Bobbie told me that Habitat was something that she and George could always do together. They both wielded hammers, installed plumbing, shingled roofs, built framing, laid tile and took coffee breaks. Together they were honored as University Presbyterians Man and Woman of the Year in 1993. Our church campus has George and Bobbie Overbys imprints all over it. They selflessly performed so many jobs around the church, always in a partnership. During Holy Week, for example, the were always there at 6:30 a.m. to set up for a morning prayer service and had a light breakfast ready for afterwards.

George, a native of North Dakota was a highway engineer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, retiring in 1979. For most of that time, he oversaw the construction of bridges and roads on Indian reservations in four states, including California and Arizona. He was a World War II U.S. Navy aviator. George was never without a tape measure in his pocket. Two of the inseparable friends of the Overbys for 40 years were Barbara and Carl Smith, who have also been very active in the church, as well. The Overbys never think about themselves always doing something for somebody else, Carl had told me. He said that whenever someone came up with an idea for a project, George grinned and confidently said, Oh, we can do that.

When I was the Tribunes daily Town Crier columnist in the mid-1990s, I wrote a column just after the Overbys learned of the Don Carlos honor. George told me, I dont like to be patted on the back too much. I am very appreciative, but very humble. After all the blessings that Ive had, I dont think I should be rewarded.

We let George do it. And what a job he did each time.

Services for George Overby will be 7 p.m. Wednesday (July 26) at University Presbyterian Church, 139 E. Alameda Drive, Tempe.

Youd have to be a amoral misfit or someone badly burned in the realm of faith to dismiss religion and its infinite dimensions. It is hard to ever be bored by where it fits into civilizations and geopolitics and its grip on humans. So much is available everywhere about religion to stimulate thought and to take us far beyond our own particular theology and faith choices.In May, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public LifeForum co-sponsored a dialogue on the topic, Is There A Global Resurgence of Religion? at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The transcript (pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventsID=116) is chocked full of the insights of Ronald Inglehart, a research professor and the chairman of the World Values Survey with the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan.

Some of his assertions are the makings of whole research topics. More people today inhabit the planet with traditional religious beliefs than ever before in history and theres every indication that it will only increase, he notes. That partly explains why the many forces of change bring so much consternation to those bent on preserving the status quo and religious purity. Inglehart muses that, decades ago as a graduate student, intellectuals discounted religion for study because they foresaw it becoming irrelevant and marginal. They were proved wrong.

In America, he sees established religion declining, yet a quite different form of religiosity is emerging. Now religion seems less able to dictate to people how to live their lives. There is a general defiance in such areas as marriage-divorce, birth control or abortion, he points out. Its happening in rich countries where houses of worship continue to lose attendance, despite exceptions. Yet traditional politics have given way to what he calls values-based politics, giving a moral litmus test to political options.

Inglehart contrasts agrarian and industrial societies and how each views the forces of events. Agrarian: Life in a world dominated by nature and all are at the mercy of inscrutable forces beyond your control and the world is in the hands of a benevolent higher power. The industrial worldview says that instead of being at the mercy of the forces of nature, when it gets cold, you turn up the heat. In other words, people are responsible to use their ingenuity and science to just get things accomplished or suffer the consequences.

Theologically, he sees people turning from the old-time religion in which a priest tells you how to live your life to where there is an acknowledgement that religious issues are more relevant and value questions are more central. A central problem is how vulnerable populations have become to demagogues, as cultures clash. Thus it is easier to spur people to fight and hate others. In his research, Inglehart has determined religion means either a whole lot or very little to people. The world varies widely on how people answer the question: Is God important in your life or not? That, in turns, explains how people view authority, national pride and issues that shape society. The researcher spends a lot of time on family and fertility. Secularization and industrial advance, for example, has sharply brought birth rates down, often from five or six per woman to 1.6 in countries like Spain and Italy.

He found that in low-income societies, the young may be just as religious or more religious than the older generation, that the generational shift, if anything, is toward stronger religiosity. So it follows that societies stressing traditional religious values are gaining a bigger share of the worlds population and therefore more influence.They are poised to exert greater pressures on world events, as a result. There is no sign of a decline in religion in the world, Inglehart surmises. Believers with traditional beliefs having far more children are tipping the scale.

Inglehart concludes by saying religion, so deep-rooted and potent, is here to stay as a force. The traditionalists, with absolute and legalistic beliefs, will clash with secularists for legitimacy and dominion. Massive changes are certain, but they will be to the degree that the masses are willing to be dictated to in how to live their lives.

Across the top of the penny, it states, In God We Trust. If Arizona Congressman John Kolbe gets his way and the penny is retired, we are going to have to trust retailers and companies. They could easily price their products so that the final price will fall at $.03 or $04 or $.08 and $.09 to ensure the sale is rounded off to nearest five cents, which will be higher. Should the bill end at $.01 or $02 or $.06 or $.07, retailers lose and the customer gets the savings.The Tucson lawmaker, who will be out of office come January because he is retiring after 12 terms in Congress, has been pushing his bill to do away with pennies because they are a counting-house nuisance and they cost government more than their 1-cent value to produce. Obviously, theres many implications here, not the least of it is the room for price abuse. They say its the first time in history that the zinc-based penny with its copper coating is costing more than a penny to make, or about 1.23 cents per penny. An analysis found the cost of labor, transportation and related expenses has pushed penny manufacturing costs up by 27 percent in the past year.

Polls have found that 55 percent of Americans want to keep the penny in circulation. Findings of the June USA Today/Gallup Poll of more than 1,000 people, however, showed there is a lowering in support for its retention. A 1993 ABC poll gave it 64 percent support. USA Today reports that the U.S. Mint produced some 7.7 billion pennies in 2005 or half of all coins minted in the country. They have been selling them to the Federal Reserve for a profit of $730 million, but new production costs are taking that down to $45 million this year.

Seems like now is the perfect time for a save-the-penny movement, led by charities and non-profits who could amass a windfall. (We could insert the sarcasm that cheap folks would no longer be able to put their pennies into the collection plate anymore). Clearly what needs to be done is to convince Americans to empty their piggybanks, jugs and dresser drawers. They need to put them into rolls or take them directly to places where machines can rapidly process them for recirculation.

A better idea would be for the non-profit world to recognize the opportunity for a great windfall. Charities, including the faith community, should carry out an effective campaign to get the public to simply donate, to them, their massive supplies of socked-away pennies. The charities could tally the donations for the donors’ tax records. More importantly it would be charities duty to get the pennies back into U.S. circulation in such large quantities that the mints could, at least temporarily, close. Meanwhile, the charities would get the easy cash donations. It would behoove them to provide various incentives to get people to turn in their idle pennies. Such a turn-in could be a regular habit for people. Pennies could be regarded as the stuff for favorite charities or church cause.

It’s estimated that about $10.5 billion in pennies are idly sitting in homes mostly collecting dust. That comes out to $93.75 per household, according to one estimate.

Even if, by chance, Congress eliminates the penny, its last hurrah should be a call-up of the vast stockpiles of home pennies and that they be turned into donations for organizations of their choice. By getting them off the hands of the hoarders, many could benefit. Make pennies the automatic gift to charities.

The faith community, in all candor, is pretty inept with media. Most congregations fumble the ball. There isnt even a consistent pattern of generating news for external consumption for those outside the walls of the church or temple. If they can get essential information out to their own congregations in weekend worship bulletins or weekly/monthly newsletters, they think theyve succeeded.With most congregations now trying to showcase themselves with a website homepage, they have sought to go directly to the world to get exposure and hope that surfers will come across their attractive sites. Smart churches splatter their web addresses on everything they print or mail. Certainly websites speak volumes about the congregations. Those sites that have rich depth, extensive pages of information, photos, history, commentary, links and contact information show their energy and intentionality of reaching out and being inviting. Blessed are the congregations that have talented and dependable webmasters able to construct sites and keep the sites current and fresh and full of surprises — so people will come back.

All too often web sites are frozen in time. Started up with the best intentions by a friend of the church who knows web design, the site has rudimentary information about the church, but its stale. Nothing has been added for weeks or months. They are especially neglected during the summers, and church members must wince when they go on the sites and see how old — and useless — much of the material is. The responsibility for regularly updating a website often goes wanting. It may be left to overworked church staff to keep up or to a church volunteer, invariably strapped for time. Its all too easy to let expired events stay on sites or new monthly calendars never filled in.

Often, someone from a congregation will send me a press release about an event for the Tribune, and it will encourage readers to go to the churchs web site for more information. But I will check out the site and find nothing regarding the event for which they want publicity.

With the advent of e-mail, it has become easier for congregations to put volunteers to work writing and firing off information to the media for news briefs and calendar listings. Was a time when it all came by mail, or it was dropped off at our offices. Then faxes became the popular vehicle. Today, it is clearly e-mail, and I often find the office mailbox empty.

Some congregations have never gotten around to sending information to the newspaper to promote events. Some denominations are especially silent. They either are not interested in touting their work or events, or they dont have a clue of where to start, or they have no one on staff or as a volunteer to handle the chore. Mainline denominations are the most absent, On the other hand, the Jewish community, relatively small as it is in membership, profusely produces press releases and news. So listings and news briefs are inordinately out of balance compared to their numbers.