PEP TALK.(The Talk of the Town)

"Apocalpyse Not" was the informal title given to a conference held last week at Trinity Church that was attended by four hundred-odd religious leaders and that took as its subject the end of the world as envisioned in the Book of Revelation. "We're floundering on this issue," said Professor Mark Richardson, the senior theological adviser at Trinity Institute, at a cocktail party held after the first day's lectures. Richardson explained that Episcopalians are not much given to pondering the Apocalypse, while fundamentalist Christians do nothing but. The conference--officially titled "God's Unfinished Future: Why It Matters Now"--was intended to explore ways to address a Christian laity easily seduced by the lurid horrors of the "Left Behind" fictional series, which imagines a contemporary Rapture, and of which more than forty-three million copies have been sold. "I don't think I have the stomach for those books," Richardson said.

An appetite for smoked-salmon canapes and pinot noir was all that was required of guests at the evening's gathering, which was held at Trinity's rectory, a town house on Charlton Street that was built by John Jacob Astor in 1826 and was acquired by the church in 2004, for five and a half million dollars. It joins Trinity's considerable portfolio--the church owns six million square feet of office space between Houston and Canal Streets. Above the dining-room fireplace hangs a portrait of the house's current occupant, the Reverend Dr. Jim Cooper, by Thomas Loepp. It depicts him standing on Wall Street with the church and its environs in the background. "There are our dog and cat, and there's my buddy Mohammed, with his hot-dog cart," Cooper said.

In a lecture, "Prophecy, End-Times, and American Apocalypse: Reclaiming Hope for Our World," Barbara Rossing, a New Testament scholar ...