By Gretchen Keiser

From the first moment that he became involved with the study of the Shroud of Turin, Father Kim Dreisbach was taking unexpected steps.

An Episcopal priest who was so skeptical about the Shroud of Turin that he read a book on it expecting to debunk it in minutes, he slowly became a believer.

An Atlantan who thought that there ought to be a center for study of the Shroud of Turin in some other U.S. city headed by a Catholic priest, Father Dreisbach has found himself slowly becoming the head of a center for the study of the Shroud in Atlanta.

At the end of May he takes a major step in that direction, leaving the Episcopal parish of the Incarnation in southwest Atlanta, where he has been rector for 12 years, in order to become the full-time director of the Atlanta Center for the Continuing Study of the Shroud of Turin.

“It is obvious where my heart is,” Father Dreisbach said recently in the small office inside the Shroud of Turin exhibit at the Omni Mall in Atlanta. On the walls are many paintings attempting to depict the face of the “man of the Shroud” and other materials tied to the exhibit and the scientific study of the Shroud.

The decision to dissolve the bond with the parish which nurtured the initial growth of the Center did not come easily, he said, but out of the continuing recognition that the direction was not his own, but one which appeared to be unfolding before him. “You begin to see that things are happening that are not a result of your own doing.” After his own thought and prayer, Father Dreisbach said he sought the discernment first of David Collins, who was the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip, and then of Bishop Judson Child. Then, shortly after Easter this year he went to his parish vestry to ask that he be able to answer the call of the board of the Atlanta Center to serve as director. May 31 will be his last day in the parish.

In a way, that move is “walking on water,” he said. But the growth of the Shroud exhibit has been the same way. Out of the enthusiasm of a small ecumenical group in Atlanta, a major scientific and photographic study of the Shroud came to the city on November 1, 1982 for a stay in donated quarters at the Peachtree Center. “We stayed until April 3, 1983,” Father Dreisbach recalled, “at which time we were given one week to vacate. On Wednesday we did not have a place to go. On Saturday, we moved here.”

The trip to the Omni which was again expected to be temporary, has so far provided a safe shelter for the exhibit. Reopened in July 1983, the exhibit has grown and survived the changes in the mall. Thousands of people have toured the exhibit and enough money was raised to purchase it and keep it permanently in Atlanta.

Perhaps more significantly, Father Dreisbach’s files and memory are filled with the impressions of people whose lives have been changed by this contact with the Passion of Jesus Christ. One of the most dramatic is that of a former inmate of the Attica prison in New York who came through several years ago. After touring it, he contacted Father Dreisbach and became a helper at the exhibit. Now, the priest said, he married, with a young child and considering entering the seminary.

Such stories are Father Dreisbach’s delight, warming him to the task of presenting the Shroud of Turin as “the greatest teaching device about the Passion” of Christ. On its linen cloth, one can see the marks of a scourged, crucified man, crowned with thorns, and ponder not only the suffering and the death, but also the peaceful, extraordinary face of the man of the shroud. Such reflections have drawn all age groups, all denominations and many skeptics and unbelievers to the shroud exhibit, with no sign that the numbers are decreasing.

“It is the sheer magnificence of the humanity of Christ,” Father Dreisbach said.

“’Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’ - the mystery of that.”

For his own part, he observed, “It has been quite a journey. Once something like this happens to you, you want everyone to know: go tell it on the mountain.”

His departure from the parish to the Omni is in response to that call.