A MAN FOR ALL FAITHS: WHAT THIS POPE CAN TEACH PROTESTANTS.

Byline: Rob Asghar 

MY friend Andrew described a funeral of a friend's relative at a conservative Protestant church. Much fire and brimstone, a good deal of lecturing about hell. And the dead man was actually one of the good guys. Just imagine how bad it could have been if he'd voted for Kerry.

``They were more interested in using the funeral service to talk about how right they were than in simply sharing about the life and impact of this man,'' said Andrew, himself a reasonably devout man and an elder at a Presbyterian church. ``It's no wonder so many people are turned off by religion when it's used to opportunistically manipulate and coerce others.''

Another man had died that day, and by contrast he - Pope John Paul II - was treated tenderly. Andrew and I were both fascinated that the pope received such respect and admiration from even the secular media. Why did these journalists, so often condemned by religious conservatives for being ``anti-religious,'' warm up to John Paul?

It was not about ratings. There are at least twice as many Protestants within the American viewing public as Catholics.

Billy Graham's passing will draw the attention of journalists, but not the genuine respect that they afforded to the passing of Mother Teresa or the pope, despite their opposition to many of the pope's moral stances.

Our secular American culture is pooped out by bullhorn preachers or candy mints with religious messages. It is irritated by those who claim to have a monopoly on all wisdom and every last drop of truth. It is allergic to manipulative agendas that seek to sweet-talk it or frighten it into church membership. But this secular culture is still fascinated by the images of men and women who live lives marked by simple faith, pure intention and bold sacrifice.

As a ``recovering evangelical,'' exhausted by my efforts to reshape the world in my own image, I smell irony. Protestantism, which includes its American evangelical offshoot, was a mutiny against the structure of the Roman Catholic Church; yet most of Christendom's seminal figures in the modern era have been Catholics: a John Paul, Mother Teresa, Thomas Merton or Henri Nouwen. (Evangelical exemplar Richard Mouw recently conceded as much in his new book, ``Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport.'') Such Catholics are venerated because they were known more for a passionate spiritual quest and less for a demand that everyone think like they did.

This veneration, this influence, matters to an evangelical. He takes seriously the notion that his life should be an effective window into Jesus' work within his soul, lest others dismiss both him and Jesus and instead travel a path to ruin.

Yet Protestant evangelicals who in earlier generations denounced ``papists'' today rush to embrace the legacy of John Paul - because the respect he gained for Christendom exceeds what they, the supposed beneficiaries of superior doctrines, have been able to squeeze out.

In an age in which so many people imagine divine voices that conveniently confirm their own party-line politics, John Paul came across as different, the puppet of no earthly partisan power.

He seemed different in other ways, too. Even if you couldn't swallow his views on birth-control pills or homosexuality or divorce, you knew he walked his talk more than so many American Christians who get divorced at roughly the same rate as everyone else and who practice quasi-premarital sex while condemning mainstream culture for going further. (Fun fact: a recent Yale/Columbia study found that teens who take abstinence pledges still manage to get sexually transmitted diseases at the same rate as their peers.)

If John Paul opposed abortion because he viewed life as precious, he opposed the death penalty for the same reason. He opposed tyranny, like President George W. Bush, but also opposed Bush's pre-emptive wars. He campaigned against anti-Semitism, but also cared about the agony of Palestinian Muslims.

More than most religious figures, he seemed to stand for all people. The mainstream media intuitively recognized this.

Despite Protestant evangelicals' sincere desire to help others know how cherished they are by God, they are too often more interested in being right than in being helpful. More interested in finding something wrong with the other side than in being in respectful dialogue in which both sides learn something.

John Paul showed us a more excellent way; and Protestant evangelicals, who once mocked papists, have much to learn from his example.