Evangelical Superstar Is Spreading Wings : Religion: Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic who is an advocate for the disabled, is taking on the issues of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicides.

The strikingly pretty woman in the wheelchair has enjoyed enormous popularity for years among millions of Christians as a symbol of gutsy hope and a charming advocate for the disabled.

Now, Joni, known to millions simply by her first name, is venturing beyond the mom-and-apple pie world of faith and the handicapped into the rough-and-tumble debates over euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicides.

After joining the fight last year against the ill-fated California ballot initiative, Proposition 161, which would have permitted the terminally ill to choose doctor-assisted suicide, Joni Eareckson Tada has traded gibes on sharp-tongued talk shows and was quoted in USA Today as saying that Dr. Jack Kevorkian is “a serial killer.” Kevorkian is the retired pathologist who invented a suicide machine and has been present at 16 suicides.

Not heavy stuff for public figures accustomed to controversial issues, but it’s a new image for the beguiling pinup of evangelical Christianity.

First admired in the late 1970s for her artistry with a mouth-held paint brush, which she demonstrated on NBC’s “Today Show,” she then wrote an autobiography that recounted her battle back from the 1967 accident as a teen-ager when she dove into a shallow lake and broke her neck, leaving her paralyzed below the shoulders.

That book was made into a movie, “Joni,” by evangelist Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures, with Joni (pronounced Johnny) playing herself. The film has been since dubbed in 15 languages. Writing more books--now up to 17--and answering burgeoning requests for advice led to Joni and Friends Ministry, which has grown into a $1.6 million-a-year ministry based in Agoura Hills offering financial grants and training conferences nationwide to churches willing to serve people with disabilities.

A superstar on the evangelical circuit who laces her talks with songs from her four record albums, Tada also broadcasts a brief radio program five times a week on 695 religious broadcasting outlets nationwide--considerably more facilities, for instance, than carry a five-minute commentary by a bigger born-again name, Charles Colson, the former White House aide convicted in the Watergate scandal.

She has been a guest speaker at nine of Graham’s crusades, including a huge rally in Moscow last year. “The radiance of her own Christian faith and her deep compassion has been combined with a God-given imagination,” says Graham in a written endorsement of her multimedia ministry.

“She’s one of the most inspiring persons I’ve ever known; she electrified our church,” said the Rev. Jess Moody of Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch. Eight years ago, she was the first woman to receive the Layperson of the Year Award from the National Assn. of Evangelicals.

Though introduced publicly at times as a “saint,” as she was several months ago at a packed church in Nashville, Tenn., Tada said she chafes at suggestions that she has attained a level of super-spirituality. “That’s just not the case,” she said.

Now 43, Tada is also sensitive to condescending remarks along the lines of “Isn’t it nice that that handicapped girl has something to do.” Her ministry had already made her financially self-sufficient when she married high school teacher Ken Tada in 1982.

Her high-achiever nature, as it turned out, was dealt only a temporary, though agonizing, setback when she broke her neck in 1967. “I was in every club and extra-curricular activity at high school, and I was in the National Honor Society,” said Tada, who before her accident was already a religious person. “I was a stickler for details and deadlines then, and I still am.”

Tada’s advocacy in evangelical circles for the rights of the disabled led to an appointment in 1987 by then President Reagan to the National Council on Disability. That body crafted the Americans with Disabilities Act signed into law in 1990. Churches and religious organizations were partially exempted from provisions in the act, a source of lament for Tada.

“Sometimes I am embarrassed when churches find it so difficult to accept and accommodate people who are disabled, the very people Christ went out of his way to reach,” she once wrote in a letter published by a leading evangelical magazine.

More recently, Tada broached the more contentious issues of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicides by writing a book published last fall, “When Is It Right to Die?” with a foreword by former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.

“Here our society just passed the Americans With Disabilities Act making it easier for disabled people to live and we’re on the verge of also making it easier for them to die,” she said in an interview. “No one is more adamant about rights than I am, but it gets to a point where an individual’s exercise of rights can be absolutely subversive to society. I see our society beginning to accept the dangerous premise that you might be better off dead than disabled.”

Whether debating the ongoing issue with a Hemlock Society representative or appearing on CNN’s “Crossfire” program, she has shown an ability to blend tact and assertiveness in expressing her views. Asked on “Crossfire” whether she was “imposing her religious views” on others by opposing euthanasia, Tada replied, “We all look at issues through our own moral lens, or lack of a moral lens.”

As she speaks out more frequently on controversial issues in non-church settings, however, the risk of criticism and public scrutiny may increase for Joni and Friends, or JAF Ministries as it is officially called.

For instance, at the Agoura Hills offices, located in an office building just north of the Ventura Freeway, none of the 19 current staff members other than Tada herself are disabled. Judy Butler, Tada’s longtime executive assistant, said that one of two of overseas staff members is an amputee and that until recently the domestic staff included a person with lupus, another with allergy problems and a third who had polio and died.

Asked about the low number of disabled employees, Tada said, “We have really beat the bushes to let the Christian community know of our need for people to fill out job applications. It’s tough to find people who are disabled and qualified.” She blamed the country’s educational system for graduating too many disabled people without practical job qualifications or experience.

Norma Vescovo of the Independent Living Center of Southern California in Van Nuys was not sympathetic with the hiring record of Joni and Friends.

“It’s not a matter of people with disabilities not being competent, it’s a matter of looking,” said Vescovo, who is herself disabled. “If she’s going to push the Americans With Disabilities Act in terms of companies hiring people, then she should also represent that.”

On the euthanasia issue, however, Tada is expected to have the backing of many in the disabled community.

Vescovo, for example, said that she and many of her colleagues also opposed Proposition 161 last year. The center where she has been executive director for 18 years works mostly with newly disabled people who are greatly depressed at the beginning stage of their rehabilitation. “At that point, the people don’t know what they want,” Vescovo said.

Tada has not opposed all right-to-die measures when the wishes of the dying person are carefully spelled out beforehand and, preferably, are represented through a trusted power-of-attorney arrangement. But her book on the subject also appeared to imply that assurance of Christian salvation should be a key precondition.

“You better be very convinced, very sure, before you pull your plug or someone else’s plug that you know what’s on the other side of the gravestone,” she said in an interview at her office. But, she added, it would be wrong to prolong the process of dying in order to get a confession out of a nonbeliever.

“That’s not appropriate and it’s dehumanizing,” she said. “I think the way to handle a situation like that is to enlist extra prayer support, give that individual every access to spiritual needs and trust God for the rest.”

Tada’s faith in the face of paralysis below her shoulders has given hope to many believers who adhere to conservative Christian theology, according to religious authorities, because one theological wing claims that if one has enough faith, any healing is possible.

“She is a wonderful symbol that in suffering there can be victory,” said John Court, professor of psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena.

When she was first injured, she said, she went to some faith healing meetings of the late Kathryn Kuhlman. She said she did not see anyone cured of major, obvious afflictions. “I’m angered by a lot of the faith healers I see on television,” she said.

“I think God sometimes miraculously heals, but that it’s the exception rather than the rule,” Tada said. “It’s wrong to say God never heals or that God always heals.”

Two years ago, Tada said that her health took a turn for the worse with blood pressure problems, drastic weight loss, infections and stubborn pressure sores that forced her to lie on her back for two months at one stretch. “I’ve gained back 25 pounds since then, and feel much better,” she said.

She has resumed a busy travel schedule that puts her on the road about one-quarter of the time. She has gone several times to Eastern Europe where she has helped Romanian churches, among others, deal with the needs of disabled people.

Her talks mix humor with frank details of what it means to be a quadriplegic. In Nashville, she joked about how her husband has the daily chore of getting her out of bed and dressed (“he hates doing makeup”). Before singing two songs flawlessly, she apologized that she was “no Amy Grant” because she has “no chest muscles.”

Taping one of her radio programs recently in Agoura Hills, she departed from her script to joke about her motorized wheelchair. “I just got back from one of our conferences on the Church and Disability and, boy, are my batteries charged! Well, not my real batteries,” she said.

It was the people she met who gave her a charge, she continued, especially a young man who operates his wheelchair with mouth controls: “Their smiles and stick-to-it attitude humbles me and helps me remember that, yes, I too can persevere through the toughest times by God’s grace.”