c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) These days, there seems to be a patron saint for nearly everything. St. Jude is the patron of lost causes, St. Anthony finds lost articles, but it’s St. Paul who seems to be Christians’ chief consoler after massive loss of life.

The Bible’s Psalms express the anguish, the Book of Job frames the question of evil, but Paul provides the solace after national tragedies, according to leading Christians and theologians.

“We turn to Job for the questions, we turn to Paul for the answers,” said the Rev. Richard Cizik, the Washington director for the National Association of Evangelicals.

In the days after the April 16 Virginia Tech mass murder, numerous Christian leaders used Paul for explications of evil, counsel for persevering through grief, and messages of hope.

Part of the reason, some scholars say, is that Paul himself lived in troubled times. As one of Christianity’s first theologians, he provided answers to basic questions of faith, including the role of suffering and perseverance.

Paul is the best adviser for Christians undergoing adversity, some Christians say, because he experienced his own afflictions and wrote many of his letters to communities in deep distress.

After the Virginia Tech tragedy, Greek Orthodox Archbishop Demetrios, for example, quoted one of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians about “the God of all comfort.” The Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and Gerald Kieschnick of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod both quoted from the Paul’s letter to the Romans that “… neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons … will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”’

Paul’s words were prominent after other national tragedies.

At a National Cathedral service three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, evangelist Billy Graham turned to Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, in which Paul writes of the “mystery of iniquity.” At the same ceremony, the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Houston United Methodist minister and spiritual adviser to President Bush, read a passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.

Graham and President Bill Clinton quoted Paul after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that left 168 dead. “As St. Paul admonished us,” Clinton said at memorial service in Oklahoma City, “let us `not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”’ Bush echoed those words in a 2001 ceremony dedicating a memorial there and again at Virginia Tech.

Bush also quoted Paul in his 2002 National Day of Prayer proclamation, saying, “I encourage Americans to remember the words of St. Paul: `Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”’

Paul, before his conversion on the Road to Damascus, once persecuted early followers of Jesus. So what is his appeal at times of distress?

Elizabeth Johnson, a professor of New Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., called Paul a “practical theologian, not just an ivory tower thinker.”

“It’s very obvious that he is relating to real human beings in the congregations in the midst of lives. He’s addressing concrete experience. So are the Gospels, but it’s not as easy to see that. People can read the Gospels as if they’re disembodied. With Paul, its very obvious that he’s addressing human experience.”

In fact, many of Paul’s letters address communities divided over nascent practice and theology and in constant danger of persecution.

“Since they were undergoing troubles, (Paul’s letters) are appropriate for troubled times,” said Catholic intellectual and writer Gary Wills.

It might surprise some, however, to see Paul cast in the role of consoler. For many years, he was seen as a theological hardliner who was thought to condone anti-Semitism and misogyny.

Thomas Jefferson called Paul “the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.” German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said he had “a genius for hatred,” and playwright George Bernard Shaw said “it would have been better for the world if Paul had never been born.”

But a careful reading of Paul’s authentic letters _ there are only seven, not the 13 attributed to him in the Bible _ can rescue Paul’s reputation, Wills argues in his recent book, “What Paul Meant.”

“For years I winced at the presentation of Paul as anti-Semitic and misogynistic,” Wills said. “Given the chance to fight it, I took it.”

Some of Paul’s prominence at times of tragedy may be simply because his writings comprise a large chunk of the New Testament, said Jeffrey Weima, a professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“Paul gets a fair amount of attention because there are so many letters. He may have the greatest voice, percentage-wise” in the New Testament, Weima said.

Meanwhile, Cizik said Paul’s message resonates today because he was a “hopeful theologian.”

“Paul gives us the Christian response to death: There is life thereafter,” Cizik said, “`and the life that really matters only comes through death.”

KRE/LF END BURKE

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