c. 1998 Religion News Service

WARREN, Mich. _ Marlene Badgero with the resonant voice and bright-orange outfit is single-handedly working the Church of Today office early one recent evening. There are several desks, and she moves quickly among them, answering phones and fielding questions from those who wander in.

Many of the calls are easy, requiring just a two-word answer:”Marianne Williamson.” Those are people calling to ask who is leading the 7:30 p.m. lesson tonight at the Church of Today, a name signaling just how imminently useable the spiritual message here is. The Hereafter may be the focus of the Baptist church around the corner or the Presbyterian church up the street; the Here-and-Now is what’s happening at the Church of Today.

Later, several hundred people will settle into the upholstered seats to hear the church’s spiritual leader _ a former nightclub singer who says she spent her 20s”doing men and drugs,”but now a best-selling author and inspirational speaker. Since March, Williamson has headed this church just off the freeway named for labor legend Walter Reuther, in the Detroit suburb of Warren.

Attendance has almost doubled since Williamson’s arrival, says Badgero, 53, who was selling Mary Kay cosmetics when she came here 15 years ago to hear a motivational speaker and never left.”There’s been a phenomenal response,”she said.

One may wonder about Williamson’s move from tony California to working-class America, but the church here is very much a forum for the current incarnation of Williamson’s message. Gone are the days of officiating at a Liz Taylor marriage, as she did when the actress married Larry Fortensky in 1991. Today she is more likely to be presiding at Rites of Puberty for the children of blue-collar workers.

Williamson’s focus here is on children and families, whom society”systematically fails to support,”she said. A single mother herself, Williamson’s efforts are directed at shoring up that social breach. On this night she announces a new parent prayer group.”What attracts me to work in a church like this is that in a spiritual community we have the opportunity to live the principles that we think should guide the world,”she said in an interview.”This is one piece of the garden where we can stand for what we believe.” This particular”garden”is impressive, seating 1,600 in a mauve-colored sanctuary highlighted by an altar straight out of a TV special and massive white pillars that emit light from above. The church spends $70,000 a month _ and sometimes struggles to pay the bill _ to put its Sunday message on TV. At the center is the church’s symbol, a circle with steps leading upward, representing the 12-step self-help programs that are central to the church’s mission.

And, although it’s a Christian church, there is no cross.”Our church doesn’t focus much on suffering,”said 56-year-old Noel Kott, who came to the church”hurting”following a divorce. A member for 12 years, Kott calls himself”a recovering fundamentalist.””This church tells me I’m a worthwhile person and not a dirty sinner,”he said.”And I can do better when I’m dealing with things if my self-esteem is high.” With 4,000 members, the Church of Today is among the largest of the Association of Unity Churches, a movement based on “practical Christianity,”which offers a few basic doctrines emphasizing that God is present within everyone, and that through prayer and mediation each person can find God and truth.

Williamson, 46, is Jewish and not ordained in the church _ she in fact has no academic or therapeutic credentials _ but has been a regular on the Church of Today’s lecture schedule.

With a gift for extemporaneous speaking and an I’m-just-like-you approach, she attracted a national audience in the 1980s as the leading interpreter of “A Course in Miracles.” The three-volume guide to spiritual enlightenment was written by Helen Schucman, a psychologist at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, who said a higher being dictated the text to her.

As Williamson’s celebrity grew, so did her organization.

She started Centers for Living on both coasts, providing spiritual support for people dying of AIDS and other illnesses. But there were problems. People working with her complained that she was a control freak, a self-promoter with a hot temper. Williamson became known as “the bitch for God.”

She no longer directs the centers, and in recent years has reduced her lecture schedule and focused on writing books. She and her 8-year-old daughter were living in Santa Barbara, Calif., when word came that the Church of Today was looking for a new leader.”I had a feeling in my heart that I was supposed to (take the job),” Williamson said, tucking her legs up under her and smoothing her slim black skirt as she sits on the couch in her office.

The church offers nearly twice as many self-help and support groups since she started. But some, such as the racial reconciliation group, focus specifically on the larger community. It’s a theme developed in her most recent book, “The Healing of America.”

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Williamson said “spiritual-seeking without service can become self-indulgent.” So the church is working on two levels: the personal and the social/political.

The disgust and alienation that characterizes much public opinion about government is not in retreat here.”I think politics in America is a loud and pathetic, almost tragic, reflection of disassociation from true spiritual principles,” Williamson said. But she uses that lament as an urgent call to action, not resignation, arguing the nation is at a critical juncture in history.”The government consciousness is just not high enough to lead the country at this time _ but the people’s is,” she said in a recent lecture. Convinced prayer can change events, Williamson invited the congregation to affirm, “I choose peace.”

Williamson irritably dismisses criticism that her approach is simplistic.”The deepest religious experience is not complicated,”she insisted.”That’s not to say that it’s easy.” There’s no denying a sense among people here that they are on to something.”We focus on spirituality rather than religion,”said Carole Mullins, 54, a 10-year member who was raised Presbyterian.”Religion is for people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for those of us who have been there.” Like many people here, she was hooked by the life”tools”the church provided. She says she was able to transform a troubled relationship with a co-worker just by saying”bless you”every time the person got nasty. Eventually, the co-worker’s attitude started changing.

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In addition to support groups, Williamson is integrating more religious rites, saying the church needs”to get more ceremonial.”So along with the Rite of Puberty, to acknowledge coming adulthood, there is also the Rite of the Crone, to honor older people.”I think people expect more from religion than traditional institutions are giving them,”said Stuart Wright, a professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and spokesman for Society for the Scientific Study of Religions.”It’s fair to say that people are disenchanted with traditional institutional structures and are searching for something that meets their needs where they are and doesn’t put duties on them.” That was part of the reason Sue Phelps drove two hours from the small town of Mason to hear Williamson’s lesson on families. Traditional churches, she said, are “too complicated.”

Phelps said her Baptist upbringing had her questioning what she had done wrong when she found out she was sterile and when it was later discovered that her adopted son, now 13, was schizophrenic.”I have learned that we have the power to start new every second _ that it’s never, ever too late to change anything,” Phelps said.

Although a faithful viewer of the church’s TV show, she had never been to the church, so she made it a point to shake Williamson’s hand after the lesson.”I have so much faith from listening to her that I know things are going to work out,”Phelps said.

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