ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 29, 1996 TAG: 9612310061
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DEBORAH KOVACH CALDWELL KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
People are talking about the Book of Genesis.
About topics like deception, murder, authority, obedience and faithfulness. About how they view God. About how they read the Bible. And, at bottom, about the human condition.
All across the country, Bill Moyers' 10-week public television series ``Genesis: A Living Conversation'' has spawned weekly discussion groups. The series ends this month.
Across the country, there are several thousand groups, according to Ann Mauze, director of outreach for WNET-TV in New York, the station that sponsored the series.
Discussion group organizers say people of different races and faiths are part of the conversations because Christians, Jews and Muslims all embrace the Book of Genesis.
``There's a sense of awakening,'' said Gail Rola, director of the Imani Institute in Carrollton, Texas, outside Dallas, which is organizing three of the groups. ``The whole interfaith movement is something people are realizing is our future.''
Rola, whose 2-month-old organization promotes spiritual development through courses and workshops, said her Genesis conversation circle, which meets Tuesday nights, is discussing that future.
``All of us are talking about how the experience of the sacred is richer when it's shared by people of different faiths,'' she said. ``To take a topic like this, which inspired three world religions, is just very rich spiritually.''
The Genesis conversations are the hot-and-happening element of a wider phenomenon called the salon movement, started nearly six years ago by the Utne Reader, a Minneapolis-based magazine that bills itself as the digest of the alternative press.
In spring 1991, the magazine ran a cover story describing the history of salons and inviting people to get involved in neighborhood conversation groups. Flooded with requests to get the circles started, Utne Reader started a department devoted just to salons.
Last year, the magazine added an on-line salon called Cafe Utne, which has become the busiest web conferencing system on the Internet, according to new-media manager Griff Wigley.
He wasn't surprised by the success of the Genesis groups, which were inspired by the model of Utne Reader.
``There are just so few places in our busy lives where we can talk in-depth about an issue beyond our personal problems,'' Wigley said. ``There are plenty of 12-step groups and personal health groups, but there are still not many places where we take the time and have the structure that you can talk.''
When Moyers' production group launched the Genesis series, it also produced a companion discussion book published by Doubleday and a Web page with detailed directions for starting and joining a group. The Web page includes a list of 37 religious organizations sponsoring the Genesis conversations.
One of them is the Alliance of Baptists, a 10-year-old group that formed in protest to the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Alliance members have been passing out fliers, sending e-mail and fielding calls from curious people.
Associate director Jeanette Holt said Genesis discussions are appealing because they unite and challenge people from different backgrounds.
``I would hope that it would enhance the conversation, not just about these biblical stories we hold in common across Christian, Jewish and Muslim lines, but that it would move us to a different level beyond joint worship,'' said Holt.
At her church, congregants meet to chat about the series on Wednesday nights.
``There is probably as much diversity in the average gathering of Baptists - from the rather infantile acceptance of the children's version of these stories all the way to challenging the biblical narratives,'' she said.
But not everyone is happy about the series, or the discussion groups.
William Merrell, the Southern Baptist Convention's vice president for convention relations, said he has received numerous calls from Southern Baptists who don't like the series.
The convention declined to endorse the project, although Moyers is an ordained Southern Baptist minister. Merrell said the convention doesn't have a formal position on the series, but he said its biggest criticism of the project is that Genesis is presented as though it doesn't have a clear, particular message.
``The Book of Genesis and indeed all of the Bible is the word of God and is to be taken seriously,'' he said. ``We do not believe that Genesis represents man's groping after truth. Rather, we believe that Genesis represents a part of the revelation of God himself to man.''
But other organizations that also believe in the Bible's ultimate authority did endorse the project - particularly because of the study groups.
Shirley Jacobs, executive director of Neighborhood Bible Studies of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., said her 36-year-old organization's goal was simply to get people together to study Scripture.
``We just have found this is a way for people to study in a nonthreatening way,'' she said. ``With the PBS series, it's what people think or feel about it. But we want to take people back to the Scripture and say, `This is what God says.'
``I look at it as a seed planted.''
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