I have always rather liked the gruff robustness of the first rubric for baptism found in a late fourth-century church order which directs that the bishop enter the vestibule of the baptistry and say to the catechumens without commentary or apology only four words: “Take off your clothes.” There is no evidence that the assistants fainted or the catechumens asked what he meant. Catechesis and much prayer and fasting had led them to understand that the language of their passage this night in Christ from death to life would be the language of the bathhouse and the tomb – not that of the forum and the drawing room.

So they stripped and stood there, probably, faint from fasting , shivering from the cold of early Easter morning and with awe at what was about to be consummated; years of having their motives and lives scrutinized; years of hearing the word of God read and expounded at worship; years of being dismissed with prayer before the Faithful went on to celebrate the eucharist; years of having the doors to the assembly hall closed to them; years of seeing the tomb-like baptistry building only from without; years of hearing the old folks of the community tell hair-raising tales of what being a Christian had cost their own grandparents when the emperors were still pagan; years of running into a reticent and reverent vagueness concerning what was actually done by the Faithful at the breaking of bread and in that closed baptistry . . . . tonight all this was about to end as they stood here naked on a cold floor in the gloom of this eerie room.

Abruptly the bishop demands that they face westward, toward where the sun dies swallowed up in darkness, and denounce the King of shadows and death and things that go bump in the night. Each one of them comes forward to do this loudly under the hooded gaze of the bishop (who is tired from presiding all night at the Vigil continuing next door in the church), as deacons shield the nudity of the male catechumens from the women, and as deaconesses screen the women in the same manner. This is when each of them finally lets go of the world and of life as they have known it: the umbilical cord is cut, but they have not yet begun to breathe.

Then they must each turn eastwards toward where the sun surges up bathed in a light which just now can be seen stealing into the alabaster window of the room. They must voice their acceptance of the King of light and life who has trampled down death by his own death. As each one finishes this, he or she is fallen upon by a deacon or a deaconess who vigorously rubs olive oil into his or her body, as the bishop perhaps dozes off briefly, leaning on his cane. (He is like an old surgeon waiting for the operation to begin.)

When all the catechumens have been thoroughly oiled, they and the bishop are suddenly startled by the crash of the baptistry doors being thrown open. Brilliant golden light spills out into the shadowy vestibule, and following the bishop (who has now regained his composure) the catechumens and the assistant presbyters, deacons, deaconesses and sponsors move into the most glorious room most of them have ever seen. It is a high, arbor-like pavillion of green, gold, purple and white mosaic from marble floor to domes ceiling sparkling like jewels in the light of innumerable oil lamps that fill the room with heady warmth. The windows are beginning to blaze with the light of Easter dawn. The walls curl with vines and tendrils that thrust up from the floor, and at their tops apostles gaze down robed in snow-white togas, holding crowns. They stand around a golden chair draped with purple upon which rests only an open book. And above all these, in the highest point of the ballooning dome, a naked Jesus (very much in the flesh) stands up to his waist in the Jordan as an unkempt John pours water on him and God’s disembodied hand points the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ head in the form of a white bird.

Suddenly the catechumens realize that they have unconsciously formed themselves into a mirror-image of this lofty icon on the floor directly beneath it. They are standing around a pool let into the middle of the floor, into which gushes water pouring noisily from the mouth of a stone lion crouching atop a pillar at poolside. The bishop stands beside this, his presbyters on each side: a deacon has entered the pool, and the other assistants are trying to maintain a modicum of decorum among the catechumens who forget their nakedness as they crowd close to see. The room is warm, humid and it glows. It is a golden paradise in a bathhouse in a mausoleum: an oasis, Eden restored: the navel of the world, where death and life meet, copulate and become undistinguishable from each other. Jonah peers out from a niche, Noah from another, Moses from a third, the paralytic carrying his stretcher from a fourth. The windows begin to sweat.

The bishop rumbles a massive prayer – something about the Spirit and the waters of life and death – and then pokes the water a few times with his cane. The catechumens recall Moses doing something like that to a rock from which water flowed, and they are mightily impressed. Then a young male catechumen of about ten, the son of pious parents, is led down into the pool by the deacon. The water is warm (it has been heated in a furnace), and the oil on his body spreads out on the surface in iridescent swirls. The deacon positions the child near the cascade from the lion’s mouth. The bishop leans over on his cane and, in a voice that sounds like something out of the Apocalypse, says: “Euphemius! Do you believe in God the Father, who created all of heaven and earth?” After a nudge from the deacon beside him, the boy murmurs that he does. And just in time, for the deacons, who has been doing this for fifty years and is the boy’s grandfather, wraps him in his arms, lifts him backwards into the rushing waters and forces him under the surface. The old deacon smiles through his beard at the wide brown eyes that look up at him in shock and fear from beneath the water (the boy has purposely not been told what to expect). Then he raises him up coughing and sputtering. The bishop waits until he can speak again, and leaning over a second time, tapping the boy on the shoulder with his cane, says: “Euphemius! Do you believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, who was conceived of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, and was crucified, died and was buried? Who rose on the third day and ascended into heaven, from whence he will come to judge the living and the dead?” This time the boy replies like a shot, “I do,” and then he holds his nose . . . . “Euphemius! Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the master and giving of life, who proceeds from the Father, who is to be honored and glorified equally with the Father and the Son, who spoke by the Prophets? And in one holy, catholic and apostolic church which is the communion of God’s holy ones? And in the life that is coming?” “I do.”

When he comes up the third time, his vast grandfather gathers him in his arms and carries him up the steps leading out of the pool. There another deacon roughly dries Euphemius with a warm towel, and a senior presbyter, who is almost ninety and is regarded by all as a “confessor” because he was imprisoned for the faith as a young man, tremulously pours perfumed oil from a glass pitcher over the boy’s damp head until it soaks his hair and runs down over his upper body. The fragrance of this enormously expensive oil fills the room as the old man mutters: “God’s servant, Euphemius is anointed in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Euphemius is then wrapped in a new linen tunic; the fragrant chrism seeps into it, and he is given a burning terracotta oil lamp and told to go stand by the door and keep quit. Meanwhile, the other baptism have continued.

When all have been done in this same manner (an old deaconess, a widow, replaced Euphemius’s grandfather when it came the women’s time), the clergy strike up the Easter hymn, “Christ is risen from the dead, he has crushed death by his death and bestowed life on those who lay in the tomb.” To this constantly repeated melody interspersed with the psalm verse, “Let God arise and smite his enemies,” the whole baptismal party – tired, damp, thrilled and oily – walk out into the blaze of Easter morning and go next door to the church led by the bishop. There he bangs on the closed doors with his cane; they are flung open, the endless vigil is halted and the baptismal party enters as all take up the hymn, “Christ is risen . . . .” which is all but drowned out by the ovations that greet Christ truly risen in his newly-born ones. As they enter, the fragrance of the chrism fills the church: it is the Easter-smell, God’s grace olfactorally incarnate. The pious struggle to get near the newly baptized to touch their chrismed hair and rub its fragrance on their own faces. All is chaos until the baptismal party manages to reach the towering ambo that stands in the middle of the pewless hall. The bishop ascends its lower front steps, turns to face the white-clad neophytes grouped at the bottom with their burning lamps and the boisterous Faithful now held back by a phalanx of well-built acolytes and doorkeepers. Euphemius’s mother has fainted and been carried outside for air.

The bishop opens his arms to the neophytes and once again all burst into “Christ is risen,” Christos anest . . . . He then affirms and seals their baptism after prayer, for all the Faithful to see, with an authoritative gesture of paternity – laying his hand on each head, signing each oily forehead once again in the form of a cross, while booming out: “The servant of God is sealed with the Holy Spirit.” To which all reply in a thunderous “Amen,” and for the first time the former catechumens receive and give the kiss of peace. Everyone is in tears.

While this continues, bread and wine are laid out on the holy table; the bishop then prays at great length over them after things quiet down, and the neophytes lead all to communion with Euphemius out in front. While his grandfather holds his lamp, Euphemius dines on the precious Body whose true and undoubted member he has become; drinks the precious Blood of him in whom he himself has now died; and just this once drinks from another special cup – one containing milk and honey mixed as a gustatory icon of the promised land into which he and his colleagues have finally entered out of the desert through Jordan’s waters. Then his mother (now recovered and somewhat pale, still insisting she had only stumbled) took him home and put him, fragrantly, to bed.

Euphemius had come a long way. He had passed from death into a life he lives still.

Tony is the national coordinator of Emergent Village and has been part of evolution of the “new kind of Christian” conversation for more than a decade. In person, he’s an engaging, passionate, self-proclaimed provocateur – and The New Christians conveys his unique voice. Its super readable and maps out vast expanses of this new frontier, including cultural context, theological markers, and case studies of real-life characters and locales.

I personally found the book quite resonant. There were paragraphs that echoed sentiments I’d written about in seminary and undergraduate religion classes (e.g. Weber and the commodification of religion, the notion that we all interpret the Bible). There were parts that recalled conversations I’ve had and sections that described places I’ve visited (e.g. Church of the Apostles in Seattle, Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis).

If I wanted a family member or friend to understand why I’m part of this movement, I would recommend this book as a roadmap. For those I’ve never met, I commend it too.

Finally, on Tony’s travels through this new frontier, it seems he brought along a sieve and sifted gold nuggets out of flowing streams and muddy riverbanks. He calls these little nuggets his “dispatches” and all twenty are precious. Here are my fave five:

Dispatch 1: Emergents find little importance in the discrete differences between the various flavors of Christianity. Instead, they practice a generous orthodoxy that appreciates the contributions of all Christian movements.

Dispatch 12: Emergents embrace the whole Bible, the glory and the pathos.

Dispatch 16: Emergents believe that church should function more like an open-source network and less like a hierarchy or bureaucracy.

Dispatch 17: Emergents start new churches to save their own faith, not necessarily as an outreach strategy.

Dispatch 20: Emergents believe that church should be just as beautiful and messy as life.

At one point in his travels, he visited the newly opened Creation Museum. I’m including his reflections:

I told my friend Ivan – a good Catholic – that I was considering visiting a creationist museum and he let out a loud groan. “Those people give Christianity a bad name.”

I understand what he’s saying. It’s the way many Jews feel when we see a billboard announcing Rabbi Menachem Schneerson as the Messiah. Or the way many gay men feel when they see a Rip Taylor tossing a handful of confetti. It’s kind of embarrassing. Like Ivan, I’ve always taken evolution to be a cold, hard truth. As indisputable as the fact that the sun is hot or that Charles Darwin married his first cousin (the latter of which I learned in the encyclopedia and can’t get out of my head).

But creationism is Biblical literalism at its purist, so I need to check it out. I researched various creationist hotspots – both Jewish and Christian – and found a handful of possibilities. But nothing came close to Answers in Genesis. This is the $25 million, soon-to-open Kentucky-based museum – the Louvre for those who believe God made Adam less than 6000 years go from dust – started by an Australian evangelical named Ken Ham.

AiG is still under contstruction, which is fine by me. There’s something appropriate about seeing the creation of a creationist museum. So I flew down to Cincinnati, a few miles from the site.

A half hour later, I pull up to the museum – a low building with thick yellow columns perched on a gentle Kentucky hill. In the parking lot, I spot a bumper sticker of a Jesus fish gobbling up a Darwin fish.

I’m greeted by the publicist Mark Looy, a gray-haired man with a gentle, schoolteacher voice who guides me to a door that lets us into the lobby. It is, in a word, awesome.

The place is still deep in construction. Hard hats everywhere, the smell of sawdust, the whine of drills. But even in its unfished state, you can tell this is going to send the media into a Michael-Jackson-rial-like frenzy.

The first thing I see is a life-sized diorama of an Edenic scene. There’s a waterfall, a stream, and weeping-willow trees. An animatronic caramel-skinned cavegirl giggles and cocks her head to look straight at me, which is odd and impressive and disturbing all at once. She’s playing awfully close to a fierce-looking, razor-toothed dinosaur. Don’t worry, Mark tells me. In the beginning, humans and dinosaurs lived together in harmony. The scary incisors are for coconuts and fruit, just like pandas’ teeth.

When AiG opens, they expect thousands of visitors. And they’ll probably get them – polls say that as many as 50% of Americans believe in creationism. Not intelligent design. We’re talking strict, the-earth-is-less-than 10,000 years old creationism. (The creationists I met scoffed at Intelligent Design, which says the world was designed by a superior being, but not necessarily in seven literal days. The creationists think of it as some sort of nebulous theological mumbo jumbo).

Mark introduces me to Ken, the founder of AiG. Ken is wiry and energetic 56-year-old with a red Van Dykish beard. He quizzes me about my last book, the one about reading the encyclopedia, and I end up telling him about my ill-fated appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. I was stumped by the question “What is an erythrocyte?”

“It’s a red blood cell,” says Ken.

He’s right. I’m thrown off-guard. A creationist who trumps me in science knowledge – that’s unexpected and unsettling.

Ken was born to religious parents in Queensland, Australia, and still has a thick Aussie accent despite his 20 years in America. We start walking through the rooms. “The guy who designed the museum also designed the Jaws exhibit at the Universal theme park,” Ken says. And it shows. The place is professional. We stroll past more than a dozen robotic dinosaurs. A statue of Eve with her flowing hair placed conveniently over her pert breasts. A partly-built ark. A room with a circular slope like the Guggenheim, a subtle reminder of man’s fall from Paradise. A theater with sprinklers to simulate the flood. A huge crocodile (a prop from the movie Crocodile Dundee). The future home of a talking Virgin Mary robot. A medieval castle-themed bookstore. Medieval? Because the dragons of medieval times were actually still-living dinosaurs.

As we step among the animatronic Roman Centurian and the currently-headless giraffe, I ask Ken the questions he’s been asked 1000 times.

If Adam and Eve gave birth to two boys Cain and Abel, how did Cain and Abel have kids?

“That’s an easy one. Adam and Eve didn’t just have Cain and Abel. It says in Genesis 5:4 that Adam had ‘other sons and daughters.’”

When it says ‘day,’ does that mean a literal 24-hour day?

“Yes. You’ve got to back to the original word in Hebrew, which is ‘yom.’ It’s the same word that’s used for a 24-hour day. If you don’t take that to mean ‘day,’ it’s a slippery slope.”

What about scientific dating that says the world is millions of years old?

“Ninety percent of age-dating methods are faulty.”

Which version to you use?

“Usually the King James. But you have to be careful with translations.”

Ken explains that, for instance, many versions say “the rabbit chews its cut” (Leviticus 11:6). “The skeptics say the rabbit doesn’t chew its cut. But you look at the original language, it says ‘the rabbit re-eats its food.’ And look at what a rabbit does. It excretes rabbit pellets and then eats the pellets. The Bible is correct.”

We walk into a room with a brick wall covered with menacing-looking graffiti. This room is devoted to modern ills, among them drugs and racism. “There is only one race, the human race,” says Ken.

The creationists are surprisingly liberal on race matters. Racial intermarriage is considered just fine. In fact, they think Darwin’s theory can lead to racism because minorities are sometimes seen as evolutionary lowers forms of homo sapiens. They are also progressive on Darfur. On other topics – including abortion and gay marriage – they are down-the-line conservatives.

We pass a dinosaur with a saddle on it. This display was mocked by my own magazine – Esquire – which called it a dressage dinosaur because of the English saddle. Ken downplays it. “It’s just a novelty. Just something for the kids.” He ushers me through. “This way, AJ.” (Thats one thing I notice: They say “AJ” here a lot. It seems common among certain types of religious people to say your name all the time. It makes me think of God’s first words to Moses, which were “Moses! Moses!”, but it’s probably unrelated).

Speaking of dinosaurs, if they really were on the ark, how did Noah squeeze them all in?

“He put them in when they were younger and smaller. The equivalent of teenagers.”

I later bought a paperback at the AiG bookstore called Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, which spends 300 pages outlining the brilliant engineering that made the boat possible. There are chapters on the ventilation system, on-board exercise for the animals and the myth of explosive manure gases.

The book is beautifully argued – and I don’t believe a syllable of it. Which I know is counter to my quest. I had told Mark I was coming in with an open mind, but while down here, I realize my mind won’t open that far. I can understand being open to the existence of God and the beauty of rituals and the benefits of prayer. but the existence of a juvenile brontosaurus on the ark? And an earth that’s barely older than Paul Newman? I have to go with 99 percent of scientists on this one.

Of course, the creationists cite plenty of scientific evidence of their own. Or more precisely, they interpret the same evidence as being proof of creation. Mark told me about a T-Rex bone in Montana that broke open and had blood vessels. No way that could be millions of years old.

The article Esquire ran was called “Greetings from Idiot America” and it was very funny. But I have to disagree with the headline. The AiG folks aren’t idiots. And despite a British news show that scored its segment with Deliverance-style banjo music, they aren’t hillbillies. Everyone I met had a full set of well-orthodontured teeth and blinked at regular intervals. I can’t prove it, but I’d wager there’s no difference in the average IQ of creationists and evolutionists.

The thing is, their faith in the literal Bible is so strong, they will squeeze and distort all data to fit the Genesis account. In fact, you have to be quite sharp to be a leading creationist. The mental gymnastics can be astonishing.

Consider AiG’s resident astrophysicist, Jason Lisle. Mark introduced me to him proudly. “A real, live PhD who believes in creationism. Here he is, in 3-D.”

Jason has meticulously parted hair, looks a bit like Paul Rubens, and is sweet in an unforced way. He tells me it wasn’t easy being a creationist PhD student. He had to stay closeted about his beliefs and write for the AiG magazine under a pseudonym.

Now here’s the interesting part: like mainstream scientists, he thinks the universe is billions of light years big. But if it’s that big, and only 6000 years old, the light rays from distant stars wouldn’t have time to travel to earth. Shouldn’t the night sky be black?

“That’s a tough one,” he says. “But it’s not a killer.” There are several possibilities.

1. The speed of light may not have always been 186,000 miles per second. Perhaps it was faster when the universe began.

2. The time zone analogy. “You can leave Kentucky and arrive at Ohio at 4pm. In the same way, there may be something to continuous time zones in space.”

3. Something called gravitational time dilation. I didn’t quite understand it, but it had to do with our galaxy having a special place in the universe.

After Jason the astrophysicist, I’m brought across the hall to meet another creationist named Carl Kerby. Carl is a big guy – turns out his dad was a pro wrestler. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt and gives off a casual, feet-on-the-desk vibe. His specialty: He is creationist museum’s resident expert on pop culture. Carl monitors movies and TV shows for subtle, or not so-subtle, pro-evolution content so that he can alert fellow creationists to the danger.

On his lift: Finding Nemo (namely, the line “Give it up old man, you can’t fight evolution, I was built for speed.”). And Gilligan’s Island (they use the word ‘prehistoric’ twice in one episode; “There’s no such thing as prehistoric,” Carl says). Other violators include Bugs Bunny, Lilo & Stitch, Bob the Builder and The Incredible Mr. Limpet.

“It used to be my favorite move,” he says of Limpet. “And then I played it for my family, and 13 minutes in, there was a nerdy science guy who pulls down a chart and starts talking about how fish were our ancestors. I had to stop the movie and talk to my family and explain.”

Of course, when it comes to secular entertainment, creationism’s enemy number one is Inherit the Wind, about the famous Scopes Monkey trial. It debuted as a play in 1955, and was later turned into a Spencer Tracy movie. And Carl – along with all his colleagues – insists that it’s wildly unfair to Christians.

When I got hom, I rented the movie and compared it to the actual court transcripts. And I have to say… the movie is wildly unfair to Christians. Or at least to this strain of Christianity.

William Jennings Bryan – a deeply religious three-time Democratic presidential nominee who was the prosecuting attorney for the anti-evolution folks – was turned into a total buffoon named Matthew Harrison Brady, played by Frederic March. Brady is a pot-bellied glutton. In one scene, he’s gorging on fried chicken out of a basket… in the courtroom.

The film recreates the famous showdown over the Bible between Bryan and the brilliant Chicago Lawyer Clarence Darrow. It’s a good scene. But if you read the court transcript, it was actually a more interesting and subtle confrontation.

For instance, here’s the dialogue from the movie:

Darrow: Do you believe every word of the Bible is true?

Bryan: Yes. Every word is literally true.

And here’s the corresponding real exchange:

Darrow: Do you claim that everything in the Bible should be literally interpreted?

Bryan: I believe everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there. Some of the Bible is given illustratively; for instance, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” I would not insist that man was actually salt, or that he had flesh of salt, but it is used in the sense of salt as saving God’s people.”

Like creationists today, he admits there is some figurative language in the Bible, even if most of it should be taken as literally true.

And he had wit: “I believe [the Bible] was inspired by the Almighty, and He may have used language that could be understood at that time, instead of using language that could not be understood until Darrow was born. [laughter and applause].”

Not bad, you know?

As I said, I still believe in evolution. There’s nothing that will change that, even if they found Noah’s Year-At-a-Glance calendar on a pristinely preserved ark. And yes, I know there’s artistic license and all that. But it does seem odd to me that this movie – which is supposed to be a champion for the truth – distorted the truth so much. Why do that? Especially when you have reality on your side.

I spend my last half hour at AiG in the book shop. I flip through dinosaur books for kids, a Far Side-like cartoon book about the Fallen World, biology books, and theology books. I spend several minutes skimming an astronomy book called Dismantling the Big Bang, whcih aims to expose the philosophical weaknesses of said theory.

It makes me think of AiG’s resident astronomer Jason. Before I left, he wanted to make clear that he’s not a geocentrist – he doesn’t believe the earth is the center of the universe. “Does ayone anymore?” I asked. He said, yes, there’s a group called Biblical astronomers – they believe the earth is stationary because the Bible says the earth “shall never be moved.” (Psalm 93:1). Jason considers them an embarassment.

That was something I hadn’t expected: Moderate creationists who view other creationists as too extreme. But it will turn out to be one of this year’s big lessons: Moderation is a relative term.

I found one fascinating account in “The Prostitute-Preacher: Patterns of Polemic against Medieval Waldensian Women Preachers” by Beverly Maybe Keinzle. She recounts a story of two women who were reprimanded by their local bishop for preaching in the French city of Clermont. According to Geoffroy of Auxerre, by preaching, these women were acting with such impropriety that they could only be likened to prostitutes. After explaining at length why women should be silent and be satisfied to ask questions of their husbands in private, he busts out this gem:

Who has brought Jezebel back to life, a young woman after 1,000 years, so that she may run through the streets and squares like a prostitute preacher?

Now the Jezebel to whom he’s referring is not the villain of Shakespearean proportions from 1 Kings; this Jezebel was an early church leader in Thyatira – a prophetess, in fact. The author of the book of Revelation has a pretty big bone to pick with her, although it’s not clear whether that’s because she’s “calling herself a prophet,” because she’s “teaching,” or because she is “beguiling servants to practice fornication.” Whatever the case, when I compare the depiction of Thyatira against the modern-day churches which have so misappropriated the book of Revelation, I think I’d rather be in Thyatira.

Geoffroy ends his tirade by suggesting that these women should become more like the silent Mary, mother of Jesus, “who bore many things in her heart but uttered few with her lips.” Blech. Nothing against St Mary but personally, I’d love to see the sex worker community adopt Jezebel as an icon the same way that black feminists have adopted Hagar.