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Following his death, Billy Graham was honored with a special issue of Christianity Today, the flagship evangelical periodical he founded in 1956. CT recognizes that, “the forces gathered and unleashed at the Berlin, Lausanne, and Amsterdam meetings [initiated by Graham] constitute a third worldwide ecumenical movement, every bit as important as the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church. The amazing thing about the evangelical movement is that it is sustained not by a single organizational entity, but by multiple parachurch organizations, independent of each other but dreaming a common dream. Graham’s genius was his ability to inspire people, not to follow him, but to strike out on their own, following Jesus by proclaiming the gospel in their own way; and then to call them together, to inspire and equip thousands more to do the same thing. We may never see his like again.”
And, indeed, it was at the 1983 Amsterdam meetings that Ravi Zacharias first came onto the world scene. Inter-Varsity staffer Steve Schimmele was there with Inter-Varsity’s “Twenty-One Hundred” project. After Amsterdam, Ravi was inspired to launch a more active apologetics ministry. When Ravi was speaking at a Christian businessmen’s meeting in Ohio, D. D. Davis was led to give him the initial financial gift and pledge of further support that propelled RZIM into being. D. D. had also generously supported the graduate studies of his nephew, EC’s founder, who’d been on Inter-Varsity staff at Penn in 1964, but then wasn’t reappointed because he backed same-sex partnership for evangelical Christians. Early in EC’s history, Steve joined EC and has been an EC officer ever since.
Over the years, Blair has counseled BGEA associates who struggled to come to terms with their homosexuality. Some then have been actively involved in EC’s ministry.
Back in 1956, as Graham’s New York City Crusade was being planned in cooperation with the council of churches, Bob Jones, Sr. led Fundamentalist opposition, claiming that Graham was “compromising” with modernists. But it was the power of the Gospel that was preached by this wise “plundering of Egyptians”, not the weak tea of the modernist ministers. Dr. Bob also railed at the17 year-old future founder of EC for his objecting to BJU’s anti-Graham stand. Little did Dr. Bob know then, that he was shouting at the kid who’d introduced his uncle to BJU, the businessman who’d become BJU’s biggest donor.
In the early ‘80s, bestselling author Patricia Cornwell, now married to a woman, was writing Ruth Bell Graham’s authorized biography. She and the Grahams had been good friends since her childhood. She notes that Bob Jones, Jr. helped her in working on the bio. Sixty-two years after Jones, Sr.’s anti-Graham diatribes, BJU president Steve Pettit – no doubt with the approval of BJU’s Chancellor, Bob Jones III – issued a public statement on Graham’s death, expressing BJU’s sympathy to the family and recalling that, “Graham desired that men and women hear the Gospel and come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. We rejoice for all of those who accepted Christ’s free gift of salvation through his ministry.” These are illustrations of the ever-reforming transitions within historic Christianity’s work-in-progress.
At Salon, Matthew Sheffield observes: “The North Carolina-based Graham was different from his Southern peers. Even before the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, Graham agitated for racially integrated church services. He also invited black preachers, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., to speak onstage with him. Graham later bailed King out of jail when he was imprisoned for protesting segregation. ‘The ground at the foot of the cross is level, and it touches my heart when I see whites standing shoulder to shoulder with blacks at the cross’, Graham told a Mississippi congregation when an usher resisted his order to remove a rope line that separated blacks and whites during a 1952 rally”.
But The New York Times caricatured Graham and the Gospel: “Graham led his followers to seek comfort in versions of Christianity familiar to his core constituency, the white population of the Southern, formerly slave-holding region of the United States” – as if his message of Christ’s Gospel wasn’t the very same that was preached in black churches all across the South! Leftist columnists attacked what they misread as Graham’s support of Republicans but didn’t notice, e.g., Graham’s criticism of evangelical organizations for being “over-Republicanized”.
Each year, at EC’s Columbus Day Weekends in Ocean Grove, we honor special anniversaries of major Christian leaders. At our 2018 weekend, we’ll be gratefully celebrating the centennials of Billy Graham and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. We’ll recall their Christian legacies and view our historical Graham and Solzhenitsyn collections.
EC’s 2018 Presidents Day Bible Study weekend in the Pennsylvania mountains was focused in the neglected book of Lamentations. Attendees, some of whom had never bothered to read this Old Testament book, were surprised and encouraged by how very much it meant to them by the end of the weekend.
The GCN board’s separation of GCN’s faithful founder, Justin Lee, from GCN, (now operating as “Q Christian Fellowship”) has prompted sadness and disgust from longtime GCN folks. At FaithfullyLGBT.com, it’s reported that: “Many of GCN’s supporters are frustrated by what they call a lack of ‘transparency’ in the process and the statement.” Michael Craddock commented on Facebook: “This statement makes me really uncomfortable and I think GCN owes us a transparent explanation.” Said Shane Price: “The lack of transparency in this situation is an unacceptable abuse of the board’s privilege.”
When transgender board member, Paula Williams, was asked if Justin Lee was pushed out or fired, Williams replied: “I can’t say anything around his departure” due to the legal agreement of nondisclosure. But Williams did admit that the vote to separate from Lee was not a unified vote, and added: “I can say that unequivocally there was no moral failure” on Justin’s part.
After her three years on the GCN National Board of Directors, Casey Pick resigned in protest to the separation from Lee, saying: “I believed in the organization’s mission … most of all because in Justin Lee I found a tremendous leader and a true friend who has done more for LGBT Christians than anybody I’ve ever met. I am deeply saddened by this course of events.” She’s not alone in such sadness and disgust. One who, though no longer identifying as Christian, contributed financially each month because “the message of GCN was important”, will no longer make his financial contributions. Others say they’ll be channeling their giving to Justin, whom they have many reasons to trust, and to his new ministry, www.nuanceministries.com. And from another online post: “For me, I cannot imagine a GCN without Justin. My sort of humble opinion is that the ‘leadership’ of GCN has made a huge mistake”. Says Marcus Lawson: “Justin did nothing wrong. Justin was given the mantle and the anointing and the vision to lead this ministry, and for a bunch of individuals to come along and snatch the ministry out of his hand, … this does not pass the muster. To hide behind confidentiality agreements is a legal term for, ‘we will sue if any information gets out’ ” – something that the Apostle Paul rejected in the clearest terms (I Cor 6:7f).
Folks can keep up with Justin and his Nuance Ministries at nuanceministries.com.
“My mother died peacefully at home, surrounded by her family while we sang ‘Blessed Assurance’ and ‘Victory in Jesus’.” This was the news from Mike, an EC member, from back in his hometown at his mother’s passing. He’s in a committed gay relationship and says, “The folks in my parents’ Fundamentalist church “couldn’t have been more welcoming. On Thursday of that week, Jim [his partner], had his biggest event of the year for his business. He really needed to work especially on that Tuesday when we were having the viewing/wake at my parents’ church. I asked the pastor (whom I don’t know well; he is new) if there might be a room [in the church building] that Jim could use. He said, “He can use my office. I won’t be in there at all today.” My parents’ oldest friends are a preacher/professor and his wife who taught at their church-related college in the South. They are in their early 80s. The first question they asked me is, “Where’s Jim?’ The man who preached the funeral and his wife asked the same thing.”
Mike says, “It was quite a Southern Gospel funeral. We started out with, ‘I Will Meet You in the Morning, Just inside The Eastern Gate”, which my dad says was sung at my grandmother’s (my mom’s mom’s) funeral. Then in the middle of the service we sang Dottie Rambo’s “The Holy Hills of Heaven Call Me” and ended with a song by Johnny Cash, which I’d never heard, called “The Far Side Banks of Jordan.”
“One other note”, Mike writes, “after taking a number of years to accept me being gay, my parents embraced so many others. There were so many flowers. The evening of the funeral, Dad started out with a huge arrangement. I asked him where he was going. He said, “I’m taking these to Pat and Val (a lesbian couple in their 80s in their church).”
An Ozark Christian College student says he was relieved when, “I finally told someone the feelings that I had about men”. But his Fundamentalist college of some 600, in Joplin, Missouri, is part of the separatist Restoration Movement, dating from 19th-century Campbellites. Those who run the school say homosexuality is sin.
Jonah Box sought “a community of brothers” for support and help “to go against [his same-sex] temptations”. He tried the “ex-gay” plan, not well aware of its long fraud and false promises. Of course, it failed him, too. Given the OCC antigay prejudice, he hasn’t returned to school. Still, Box says of his schooling: “I started something there that I would like to finish. It’s right down the street from my house. I don’t want to have to move, and basically my credits wouldn’t transfer”. He wants to continue his education to become a minister.
Box says: “All this time it’s been me and Jesus, um and everyone is trying to take him away from me. But he’s my best friend. And he’s not going to leave me.” He’s now launched #jesuswouldnotstandforthis and is discovering that there are many gay and lesbian OCC alumni as well as allies among heterosexual alumni.
One gay former OCC student who has responded to Box is Jason Hare, 38. Though the college no longer pushes the “ex-gay” promise, Hare had been given an ultimatum to submit to this now dismantled fraud or leave. He left. He still loves reading the Bible in Greek and Hebrew, first learned at OCC. But his days at the school were painful as a gay young man and he’s sad that OCC is still making things so difficult.
Only 8 percent of Americans say that there should be less of an acceptance of gays. This new Gallup Poll also finds that 56 percent of Americans are satisfied with the level of acceptance while 23 percent say there should be more acceptance of gays.
Marvin Olasky, at the Religious Right’s World magazine, raves in his brief blurb for Tim Bayly’s public panic attack over “the sin of effeminacy”. Olasky buys into the discredited notion that Bayly, too, misreads by way of projected stereotypes, into what Paul may have had in mind by the malakoi. Bayly and Olasky confuse the malakoi with all gay men today, though the ancients used that very term for “soft” and “luxuriant raiment” (as Jesus used it), for the “softheaded” (as Epictetus used it), for the “purposeless”, the “spineless”, etc. For EC’s critique of Bayly’s book, see our Winter Review 2018.
PCA presbyteries continue to push more overtures to reinforce their conservative denomination’s opposition to marriage for same-sex couples. In the latest efforts, it’s admitted that, on this matter, “our constitution is crystal clear”, yet still more overtures are being proposed to make it even more than “crystal clear”.
But at least one PCA senior pastor has the good sense and compassion to push back against this overkill. Mike Khandjian responds to these latest overtures: “Friends, I am saddened by these overtures, having never met a PCA pastor who believes that same sex marriage is in any way acceptable for those who follow Jesus. I know of no churches in the PCA that teach that which is contrary to the scriptural mandate that marriage is only to be between a man and woman. Yet, for some reason we are consistently asked to do this. Why no overtures asserting that ‘white lies’ are lies? Or that lust is adultery? Or that gambling is thievery? If churches proclaim the gospel of Jesus, sinners will ‘feel their sin’, as Ryle put it – and in the Spirit’s power, repent. What will [these latest overtures] accomplish other than to hang a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign to a broken world we claim to desire to reach? Luke 7:36-42.”
“I’m a Christian, a patriotic American, and a free-market, shrink-the-government conservative – who also happens to be gay.” Guy Benson, millennial political pundit with Fox News, shares this in his PragerU.com video presentation. “Some unimaginative leftists like to claim that this qualifies me as a ‘self-hating’ gay person. This is so boring. That intellectual laziness only underscores my point. … Here’s the thing: I fully recognize how fortunate I am to live in a time and a country where I can be openly gay and live a normal life. And that’s in large part thanks to the hard work of gay rights activists who’ve paved the way for people like me – people who had it much harder than I do, and people who likely wouldn’t share my politics. I am genuinely grateful to them. But it’s a new era now. Why ostracize members of our community who don’t toe the left-wing political line?” Yet, as he notes his and other conservatives’ experience within LGBT contexts: “Cross the left on a hot-button issue, and you’re out.” Benson urges: “Let’s debate issues and stop trying to punish ‘wrong’ thinking. … It’s called progress.”
Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU.com, reports that, unfortunately, “For more than a year, YouTube has continued to restrict access to more and more [PragerU.com] videos, simply because they present a conservative point of view. There are currently over 40 PragerU.com videos that are restricted. Silicon Valley giants like YouTube think that they can censor the ideas they don’t agree with. They promote their Leftist ideology, and censor conservative speech”, Prager explains.
PragerU.com has announced that it’s “heading to court” to “fight – not just for PragerU, but for freedom of speech in America.” With Google and YouTube monopoly over access to Internet content, ideological censorship of intelligent conservative thought and discussion is depriving the general public of its right to hear, read and judge for itself, a healthy diversity of viewpoints.
New Jersey suspends certification of a 28-year veteran schoolteacher as punishment for expressing her religious view of homosexuality on Facebook. The suspension is for three years. The American Civil Liberties Union admits that, while not approving of her Christian faith, “her beliefs and comments are protected by the First Amendment.”
LGBTQIA+ activists at Harvard – students and faculty – shouted down a black Christian poet in what was yet another frightening example of the all-too-common Fascist squelching of free speech on college campuses. Jackie Hill-Perry was trying to present her invited testimony to an assembly of the Harvard College Faith and Action (HCFA) group. Formerly a lesbian activist, herself, she said her faith has now allowed her to refrain from acting on her attractions to women and to marry a man with whom she has a son. But the mob, wrapped in rainbow flags, yelled back in a loud litany of denunciation and accused her of “self-immolation” and prevented her from continuing her talk. Of course, trying to enforce “the party line” by mob action and violence is no substitute for reasoned debate and discussion, although those in power – whether on the Left or the Right – have always resorted to such ploys of power politics to render opposing opinions voiceless.
One Harvard professors said that she took part in this disruption because she’s in favor of “life that is both queer and religiously fulfilling”. Previously, some 200 angry protestors had signed a petition demanding that the Christian faith group’s meeting be cancelled, claiming that Hill-Perry was spreading “hate”.
Ironically, in response to these mindless protesters, The Office of Student Life put the Christian group on probation and later suspended the Christian group for asking one of its own officers, now in a lesbian relationship, to step down because the group holds that all unmarried officers should live in chastity.
A Harvard sorority dissolves into “gender-neutrality”. Kappa Kappa Gamma is now Fleur-de-Lis. The revised group’s president claims: “Our mission is to create a safe, empowering space for female-identifying individuals on campus.” Harvard Dean Rakesh Khurana, a sociologist who was instrumental in the university’s new policy that restricts members of single-sex student organizations from holding any leadership elsewhere on campus, praised the move for its celebration of what he styles, “inclusion”.
“I had to fast for 36 hours. The deliverance was going to be held at an Assembly of God Church in Little Rock, which was about one hour away by car. I can’t recall the drive – I know I was weak from the fasting.” This lesbian college student’s parents hoped that she’d be “delivered” through an “exorcism”. “I had been instructed not to wear any jewelry or elaborate clothes so that the demons wouldn’t get tangled up on me.”
She recalls: “The pastor was about two inches away from my face screaming for the demon to get out. This went on for hours but that demon wouldn’t budge. The pastor got even more forceful and at this point two assistants were trying to hold me down, yelling and praying in tongues. This went on for six long hours. My parents were waiting outside the whole time.” The pastor said that even if the demon came out, “it might still be around so there might still be some attraction, some pull.” At that she told the pastor to stop, to which he yelled back: “You have chosen to take this path to hell, don’t ever forget that!” Scared and feeling intense shame, she went outside to rejoin her parents.
She recounts: “The next ten years were a steady flow of heavy drinking, pot-smoking, anxiety, depression, and feeling spiritually and emotionally directionless. While my life included many of the standard societal ‘successes’, I felt empty.”
But, “today, I’m nearly four years sober; my life is so much more meaningful and serene. I’m single but I want to find life partnership with another queer person of faith. My mom has changed. She talks with Christian parents who are struggling to love their queer kids. She’s apologized for what they did. Things with my dad have improved. In October, they both walked together in their first pride parade and Mom told me that during a recent church event he spoke up against homophobic comments made by some congregants.” “I Survived Gay Conversion Therapy” is from The Cut, January 2018.
Nevada’s Republican Governor Brian Sandoval has signed into law a statewide ban on “ex-gay” therapy. This new law makes it illegal for medical or mental health care providers to offer therapy aimed at changing the sexual orientation of anyone under 18. The Governor observes: “Conversion therapy has been disavowed by medical experts and is considered a non-effective method of treatment that can cause harm to an adolescent. This law will help protect some of our state’s most vulnerable youth.
“I’ve really grown up a lot since then”, says Hawaii Democrat, Doug Chin, the state’s lieutenant governor, in his recent apology for having preached against homosexuality at the Oahu Church of Christ in 1995. Over the past 20 years, of course, many others, too, have changed their minds on the matter. But Chin’s political enemies reject his claim to have changed his mind, in spite of the fact that, as the attorney general, he defended Hawaii’s Marriage Equality Act in Hawaii’s Supreme Court and he defended rights of transgender people to serve in the military. Chin also opposes so-called “conversion therapy” for change of sexual orientation. He’s now running for the U.S. Congress and fellow Democrats are using his former views to defeat him.
Six Republican legislators in South Carolina are imitating their Democrat forebears who called the marriage of an interracial couple “unnatural” and kept it illegal until the US Supreme Court ruled against this racism in 1967. The six are now proposing a bill that calls marriage for same-sex couples “unnatural”. As Representatives from various districts, e.g., Greenwood, Greenville, Spartanburg and Newberry, they claim that South Carolina’s endorsement of what they’re denouncing as “parody marriage” of same-sex couples, has “excessively entangled the government with the religion of Secular Humanism”. They’re claiming, contrary to the long history of human polygamy, child brides, arranged marriages, levirate marriages – even in the Bible – that, “civilizations for millennia have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman”. Doesn’t “a” mean one? And since four of these legislators are married, or have been, and two, still in their mid-20s, are single and free to marry some day, if they wish to, some Christians are asking: “Where do they men stand in regard to treating others as they wish to be treated?”
Bermuda has reversed its legalizing of marriage for same-sex couples. Only nine months after legalizing marriage for same-sex couples, this British territory of some 60,000 people has reverted to offering only domestic partnership for same-sex couples. It’s apparently the first such reversal in any jurisdiction around the world.
After the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that Costa Rica should legalize same-sex marriage, the presidential race was turned upside down, with a Pentecostal pastor/singer who opposes such marriages, advancing in popularity from an “also ran” to winning the first round election. The largely Roman Catholic country’s presidential run-off is scheduled for April 1.
Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, so fear and horror are gripping Indonesia’s gay and lesbian identified communities as an even more menacingly antigay law now looms. Muslims blame the West for exporting the increase in more open display of homosexual identity. At antigay rallies, citing the Qur’an, protestors are burning “homosexuals” in effigy, with allusions to the ramping up of punishments.
Pew Research concludes that, “Africans in predominantly Muslim countries remain among the least accepting of homosexuality”. It is estimated that at least nine in ten Nigerians believe homosexuality should be totally rejected by society. In Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya, the percentages of hostility against homosexuals are similar.
Walt Heyer, a Christian man who regrets his having transitioned to “female”, has written two books, A Transgender’s Faith and Paper Genders, to help folks who regret their transgender decisions. Such regret is more common than the public realizes and the rate of reversal surgeries is increasing. Depression and suicide among the gender dysphoric are higher, before and after gender reassignment, than the rates of depression and suicide in the general public.
Most people today don’t realize that endocrinologists, psychiatrists, sexologists and even sexual rights advocates who pioneered what, in the early 1970s, was called “transsexual” before it was called “transgender”, came to the frank conclusion in the course of their clinical work that belief that one is trapped in the body of the wrong gender expresses deep unhappiness as well as wishful thinking, but that this problem cannot be successfully treated by cosmetic surgery or cross-sex hormone injections.
Transgender Subjectivities: A Clinician’s Guide, edited by psychiatrists Jack Drescher and Ubaldo Leli and co-published by the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Psychotherapy is a useful professional source of clinical papers for a broader understanding of the issues.
Caitlyn Jenner wins The World Values Network’s Champion of Israel and Human Rights Award. The Values Network’s Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, known as “America’s Rabbi”, hails what he calls Jenner’s “proudly defending the Jewish State as a bastion of human rights and dignity in the cesspit of human rights abuses, the Middle East.” But queer activists on the Left denounce Israel and promote the so-called BDS movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Chelsea Manning has filed to run for the U. S. Senate as a Democrat in Maryland. Now a trans-woman, Manning was in jail for some seven years of a 35-year sentence for deliberately leaking over 700,000 sensitive U. S. Government documents. President Obama commuted that felony sentence and freed Manning in one of his final acts as President. Two-term Sen. Ben Cardin (D) currently occupies the seat Manning seeks.
Dru Brenner-Beck, retired Army Judge Advocate General, says it would seem that Manning is prohibited by Defense Department regulations from running for office while technically in the “active-duty” category during the appeal of the original guilty verdict. But, he adds, prosecution in this case is a chain-of-command “discretionary decision”. Victor M. Hansen, former military lawyer, says the Army likely wants this Manning issue to fade away from the public spotlight rather than having a commander take the time to open an investigation. Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale, says it’s unlikely that the Army would take action against Manning’s run, for the simple reason that, “Services don’t like to create martyrs.”
The huge sign in front of Atlah World Missionary Church in Harlem repeatedly provokes with bilge. During President Obama’s administration, Atlah’s sign read: “Obama has released the homo demons on the black man. Look out black women. A white homo may take your man”. These days, according to the sign, President Trump is a “racist” and a “rapist” who “should be arrested”. In 2016, Atlah Church escaped ruin when a judge reversed a foreclosure ruling over the $1.02 million it owed to creditors, including for unpaid water and sewage bills. Atlah’s preacher defies all who find his big sign offensive: “Hell will freeze over before I take down that damn thing.” Oddly, he’s a graduate of nearby Union Theological Seminary, the longtime center of “progressive” theology and the “birthplace” of Black and Womanist Theology.
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is a fellowship of about 1,800 churches that was created in 1991 as a result of a controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention. In 2000, under pressure from Southern Baptist critics, the CBF adopted a hiring policy stating that the CBF would not employ people who are gay. On February 9, 2018, after an exhaustive 18-month study and conversation involving hundreds of people, the CBF’s Governing Board voted to drop that discriminatory hiring policy. However, the Board also approved on February 9 an Implementation Procedure (also called Information Plan) stating that the CBF will not employ married LGBT persons as missionaries (CBF has about 80 missionaries) or for ministry positions in the home office in Decatur, Georgia; this apparently leaves open the possibility of employing celibate single LGBT persons for these positions. In any case, although LGBT applicants will be considered as candidates for about 80% of the positions in Decatur, there is still discrimination against married LBGT persons for missionary and ministry positions.
According to a CBF scholar: “It seems that, probably, while no one is perfectly happy with these decisions, some churches that have not yet had a conversation about homosexuality will welcome this compromise position but that some churches that have had a conversation and have made a decision either to affirm or not to affirm LGBT loving relationships will be unhappy enough to withdraw from the CBF.”
The Vatican has received a 1,200-page dossier from the Naples archdiocese alleging that 34 Italian priests and 6 seminarians are actively gay. Compiled by Francesco Mangiacapra, a lawyer and “gay male escort”, it’s composed of erotic screenshots and chats from WhatsApp and Grindr, the world’s largest gay hook-up site, and other social media websites. Mangiacapra claims that his “aim is not to hurt the people mentioned, but to help them understand that their double life, however seemingly convenient, is not useful to them or to all the people for whom they should be a guide and an example to follow.” He added: “We’re talking about sins, not crimes.”
Meanwhile, Pope Francis’ Socialist slant sanctions bishops appointed by the Chinese Communist government while it continues to imprison faithful Christians, demolishes thousands of churches and removes crosses from church buildings left standing. The retired bishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Cardinal Zen, cries out to the Vatican: “You’re putting wolves before your flock, and they are going to make a massacre.”
China has announced that it’s ending its presidential term limits so that Xi Jinping can remain in power indefinitely. The New York Times notes that, immediately after this announcement, China’s “censors and propaganda machine kicked into high gear”.
AND FINALLY:
“Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” is the Met Gala for 2018. The Met Gala is the annual fundraiser for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York City. It will feature “everything from vintage papal vestments to clothing by gay, leather-loving, bodybuilding designer Thierry Mugler”. And, it has the Vatican’s endorsement. In front row attendance at the preview, in March, at Rome’s historic Palazzo Colonna: Vogue editrix Anna Wintour and Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.