TV REVIEWS : Moyers’ Journal Reaches for Peace in ‘Holy War’

“The New Holy War,” the latest edition of “Bill Moyers’ Journal” (at 9 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28; 8 p.m. on KVCR-TV Channel 24), displays, in full relief, hopelessly uncompromised beliefs and stances between Christians on the right and gays and lesbians on the left.

Somehow, though, Moyers’ report concludes with a glimmer of hope, the possibility that a passionate center may emerge in the debate over Christian ethics and gay rights.

Perhaps the last place the center will hold is Colorado Springs, where the Colorado initiative known as Amendment Two--preventing gays and lesbians from claiming discrimination--began. It’s where Moyers comes to talk to all sides in a still-raging debate. He’s in his favorite role, the thoughtful liberal outsider trying to understand everyone.

More deeply though, Moyers--without stating it--comes to the heart of Christian fundamentalist country as a practicing Baptist and lifelong Christian himself. What slants his report isn’t politics, but his desire to search for a Christian middle ground in a secular nation.

He finds reasonable people all around: In the newsroom of the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph; with a devout but hardly fanatic fundamentalist like Rev. Bernie Kuiper, who articulates the fundamentalist position on homosexuality as thoroughly as possible; with Betty and Lynn, a church-going, Christian lesbian couple; and among non-fundamentalist Christians chagrined at the extremism of some of their fellow faithful.

It is with this latter group that a dialogue has begun with local gays and lesbians, and with it, the struggle to explore whether biblical doctrine, American polity, family-based values and individual rights can be commonly held. Moyers, the believer in a Democratic Christianity and a clear separation of church and state, doesn’t express a good deal of hope. But there is some, he suggests, as long as decent people can talk to one another.