By Gretchen Keiser

Children's shrieks can be heard in the hallway of the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation in southwest Atlanta, and some friendly folks keeping an eye on them direct a visitor to the rector's office down a hall and around another corner.

Through a window, Father Kim Dreisbach can be seen, talking on the phone, and waving toward the direction of the door. It's not yet 10 a.m., but the rector is well on his way to another tightly scheduled day.

It isn't the normal business of this small, biracial parish on Cascade Road that keeps the phone lines lighted so much or Father Dreisbach scheduled with early-morning visits from photographers and reporters.

It is, rather the unexpected business unfolding in the library room behind Father Dreisbach's office, where, with the blessing and support of his parish, the rector and an ecumenical support group are focusing Atlanta's attention on an extraordinary piece of cloth believed by some to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

The Atlanta Center for the Continuing Study of the Shroud of Turin, Inc., has its temporary home here, because of the support of parishioners who have also given Father Dreisbach a six-month sabbatical leave to set up the center.

Entering the room, one is immediately confronted by signs of intense dedication to the task of spreading information about and understanding of the Shroud of Turin. On shelves a complete library is gradually being assembled of works written about the Shroud. On the tables are the works of artists' creativity: conceptions of the face of the "man of the shroud," recreations of the "cap" of thorns that he wore.

In one corner sits perhaps the most disconcerting image, a life-size three-dimensional "sculpture", which some of the 20^th century's most sophisticated technology has drawn from the image long hidden in a burial cloth of fine linen. It is one of only six in existence.

Seated across the table, Father Dreisbach enthusiastically admits his own amazement at what has unfolded in Atlanta and at the fact that it is an episcopal priest, shaped by intellectual and highly rational seminary training, and by civil rights activism in the 1960s, who is at its heart. If you were to search for the unlikeliest person "to be lifting up the Shroud in Atlanta, I would be he," Father Dreisbach admits.

The irony of his own deep involvement, which began with a highly skeptical reading several years ago of Thomas Humber's book "The Fifth Gospel," mirrors to some extent a phenomenon of the Shroud of Turin which is occurring throughout the world.

The Shroud, a 14-foot long, ivory colored linen burial cloth, has been kept in Turin's Cathedral for about the last 300 years and made available for public display only on occasion. In addition to the devout, who flocked to see the Shroud on rare occasions of public display, the burial cloth attracted the attention of serious researchers and professional skeptics who sought to label it bogus.

Yet the Shroud has been the source of a series of disconcerting revelations.

At the turn of the century, it was an amateur photographer, permitted to photograph the Shroud, who discovered in his darkroom that the Shroud is a perfect photographic negative. The image upon it, of the front and back of a crucified man, while only faintly visible to the naked eye, emerges in extraordinary detail when viewed as a negative, with the image in white against a dark background.

In this day and time, discoveries equally as startling are emerging from the work of a team of highly skilled scientists using technology developed largely for the nation's space program. The involvement of the Shroud of Turin Research Project, Inc., (STURP), as the team is known, dates back to a 1978 exposition of the Shroud at the Turin Cathedral. Allowed to conduct a series of non-damaging studies of the Shroud, the scientists have gradually published and discussed the results of their tests.

As the 3-D "sculpture" behind Father Dreisbach reveals, those sophisticated tests have shown that the Shroud's image has extraordinary properties which cannot be duplicated by ordinary photographs or other images. The more science looks at the image, the more it seems scientists are mystified by how the image came to be on the cloth.

The recent scientific discoveries, and the leap of faith that is outside the province of science, are among the concerns of the Atlanta Center. Drawing from its library of film, slides and tapes, which includes the 55-minute acclaimed film "the Silent Witness," Father Dreisbach and R. Douglas Vinson, a member of the Center's board of directors, have become traveling lecturers and resource people on the Shroud of Turin.

Their work has mushroomed recently from perhaps one or two talks a week to upwards of four before groups as varied as rotary clubs, schools and practically every church denomination.

It is work in which Father Dreisbach, who has come to believe in the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, sees a relationship between faith and the 20^th century ideology of skepticism.

While the tests proceed to focus more closely upon how the image came to be on the cloth, the most science can suggest is that this cloth was used to bury Jesus of Nazareth, Father Dreisbach said. But it can bring people to that point. "To make Him Jesus the Christ is still an act of the heart," he said.

(Those interested in the work of the Center or in lectures and films on the Shroud may contact the Center at 404-755-6654.)