Bill Moyers lectures at Wake Forest University.

Moyers compared discussions at Wake Forest about how to retain the school's Baptist heritage while serving an increasingly diverse student body to interfaith conversations in his recent PBS series on Genesis.

Despite its simple format -- seven people in a circle discussing the first book of the Bible -- Moyers said the show created more media response than anything he had done on television for 25 years.

One explanation, he said, was the 10 Bible stories framing the Genesis discussions were "great stories." Another was the fact that panelists represented different backgrounds, faiths, professions, ages and genders.

America's religious discourse is no longer dominated by "male, white Protestants of a culturally conservative heritage -- people like me," Moyers said. When he first moved to New York City in 1968, Moyers said he was impressed to see people on the subway reading the Bible in Hebrew or Spanish, things he had never seen growing up in Texas. Today, he's just as likely to see someone reading the Koran.

"There are more Muslims in America than Episcopalians or Presbyterians," Moyers said. "And within a few years there may be more Muslims in America than Jews."

"Someone told me Muslims are the fastest-growing religion in America," Moyers continued. "Then someone told me Pentecostals are the fastest-growing religion in America. Then someone told me the fastest-growing Christian denomination is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormons, doubling in number every 15 years since World War II."

"We are re-creating our nation right before our eyes," Moyers said. "We are living in a new religious reality so that the most interesting story of our time, to me, as a journalist, is emerging in the intersection between the secular and the spiritual. We're searching in America for a new vision of our country that has the authority and power of a religious vision but is inclusive and not sectarian."

With its religious heritage and increasing diversity on its campus in Winston-Salem, N.C., "Wake Forest is poised for one of the most important of all missions in its long and gifted history," Moyers said.

"You're helping to write the new story of America. One nation under God? Whose God? And how can we, a pluralistic America, governed by the dictates of democracy, avoid the intolerance, the murderous fanaticism, the bitter fruits of religion that occur any time holy scripture is used as a wedge to drive people apart?"

Among American Protestants, liberals and conservatives in many cases have grown estranged, Moyers said. He cited Baptists, which are diverse enough to include people on one side like Moyers, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Richard Gephardt and Jesse Jackson and those like Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms on the other. Moyers said he finds particularly "baffling" the attitude of Baptists of "the other stripe" on the separation of church and state.

"They invoke it to protect themselves against encroachment from others but denounce it when it protects others from encroachment from them," he said. "They use it to shelter their own revenues and assets from taxation but then insist taxes be paid by others to support private sectarian instruction in pervasively religious schools.

"They loathe any government intrusion into their sphere but are laboring mightily to change federal tax laws so that churches may more easily influence government. They stand four square behind the First Amendment when they exercise their own right to criticize others -- sometimes with a vengeance and often with vitriol, as when Jerry Falwell circulates videos implicating the president of the United States in murder -- but when they in turn are challenged or criticized, they whine and complain that they are being attacked as 'people of faith.'"

Moyers said "I couldn't believe my eyes" when he saw Newt Gingrich on television telling the Christian Coalition they were victims of "Christian phobia."

"Christian phobia? When the president of the United States, the vice president of the United States, the speaker of the House of Representatives, the minority leader of the House of Representatives and the majority leader of the United States Senate are all Baptists? Come on."

"This is the crowd that acts as if the Bible belongs to them," Moyers said. "They would have us concede that they speak for God when they bring their opinions to bear on all kinds of secular issues -- from abortion to the environment to the public funding of the arts. ...

"For too many years now, the religious discourse in America has been dominated by the Religious Right, and the media have cooperated, giving fundamentalists most of the coverage when the subject of religion and society comes up."

As a result, Moyers said, "religion has become just another political-action committee." Moyers said he would prefer to see "a wide embracing coalition of people from across denominational lines -- people who care deeply about the sacred texts and also understand that others who read them differently care deeply about them as well."

Moyers said acknowledging such diversity does not require shedding of distinct traditions. He said he is more "deeply a Christian" and "more firmly a Baptist than ever."

"To see what others see, to transcend the visible spectrum of feeling, you don't have to give up your own faith," Moyers said. "You just have to dig deeper into it. Because down there below doctrine and dogma, beneath the particularity of your individual experience, is the ultimate source of life, the common water table of humanity."

The lecture was part of the 1997-98 Year of Religion in American Life at Wake Forest. Special events include a national conference on higher education sponsored by the Lilly Endowment. (ABP)