"WILLIS - The Rev. Bruce Evan Murch waves his hands and paces, recounting the early days of his struggle against abortion.

For a few moments, he's far from the Floyd County woods and the two-bedroom trailer he shares with his wife and nine children.

It was 1989, and America's abortion debate was exploding. Murch and about 200 other abortion opponents invaded a clinic in West Hartford, Conn. They barricaded the doors and made police destroy the building to remove them.

'They brought in the Jaws of Life and tore the walls down,' Murch says.

Murch says police handcuffed him, then stood on his wrists until they went numb. Then he was picked up, and his hands were bent forward until his palms touched his forearms, he said. He was thrown into a police van so hard that he cracked another protester's rib. As he lay there, he realized he was battling not just abortion, but an entire society, he says.

Murch stops talking. The 43-year-old removes his metal-rimmed glasses and puts his head down on the table. The light shows his scalp beneath close-cropped gray hair.

'Man, this stuff is hard to go back over,' he says.

On the national level, the wave of radical abortion protests crested years ago. But it may be building in Southwest Virginia, where Murch and other abortion opponents established a Y2K refuge near the rural crossroads of Willis, then stayed to build homes.

Called Rivendell, the new community is a base for Murch and for Joseph Foreman, a founder of Operation Rescue, one of the best-known anti-abortion groups.

Both men were defendants last year in an abortion violence case that brought multimillion-dollar judgments against them. Abortion-rights groups call Murch and Foreman extremists, and Dallas Blanchard, a sociologist who writes about abortion opponents, describes them as 'among the most dangerous' activists.

Starting last summer, Murch began what he calls a return to full-time activism. He escalated demonstrations at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Roanoke, and said he soon will picket clinic workers' homes.

'What they're espousing is hate,' said David Nova, chief executive officer and president of Planned Parenthood of the Blue Ridge. 'And my concern is hate is one step away from violence.'

Rivendell after Y2K

A 430-acre former dairy farm, Rivendell draws its name from an edge-of-the-wilderness elfish stronghold in J.R.R. Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings.' A driveway sign reads 'Drive Cautiously! Children and Gnomes at Play.'

In the ridge-top meadows, Murch and Foreman come across as a couple of city folks new to rural life.

Murch, a native of Connecticut, enthuses about his family's plans to hunt deer and can vegetables, about the space his children will have once he finishes joining two trailers together.

Foreman, a slim 45-year-old with dark brown hair, eyes and mustache, talks about the organic beef he wants to raise, and struggles to set up fence posts for a strip-grazing experiment with a neighbor's cow.

But some people see a dark side to Rivendell, and talk about groups of men with guns in the woods. On a Web site run by Rivendell founder Ken Griffith, articles on theology and home birth share space with an essay urging Christians to arm themselves against future government persecution.

Nationally, researchers have reported links between some abortion opponents and the anti-government Patriot militia movements.

'Most of these folks had a much broader world view. It was not just limited to abortion,' explained Frederick Clarkson, author of 'Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.'

Murch and Foreman said they share some ideas associated with militias, such as strong support for the Second Amendment and a belief that government is dangerously out of step with biblical law. But Murch scoffed at the idea of a military-style organization in Rivendell.

'We're just folks who moved out to the country to get away from that. We're not up here setting up fortifications and waiting for the government,' Murch said. 'I'll guarantee you the farmhouses around here have more guns than our people would think of owning.'

Present and former Rivendell residents said the community's Y2K preparations, such as stockpiling food and discussing security, probably gave rise to rumors.

And some Rivendell residents met twice weekly for months for an event they called warrior training.

'Basically it was taking the young guys and doing basically discipline stuff, learning to use compasses and stuff,' Murch said. On one occasion, the training group took along rifles to sight in their scopes for hunting.

'I said, gee, all it's going to take is one person driving by and seeing this and it's 'There goes the Rivendell militia!'' Foreman said.

Fears of violence

Foreman and Murch, both arrested dozens of times at protests, were at the center of abortion opponents' 1990s split over the use of force. When Operation Rescue denounced abortion shootings, Foreman and Murch were among those who did not. Both supported what became known as the defensive action or justifiable homicide position, an argument that killing abortion clinic workers was justified because it would save unborn lives.

'That's the bind that the pro-life movement is in,' Foreman said. 'We're trying to argue politely for human life.'

After years of activism, Foreman said he now hopes to devote himself to changing society in a more basic way, by educating the next generation.

'Violence gets in the way. You don't want a society that changes through violence. The outcome is almost always worse for everybody,' he said.

But in the Bible-based society Foreman hopes to create, he added, 'I truly want David Nova to be concerned about what his neighbor thinks. ... I want the abortionist to fear not me, but his neighbors, his wife, his children, the media - whoever shines a light on what he's doing.'

Murch makes stronger statements. 'I haven't advocated it,' he said of clinic violence. 'But I have refused to condemn it. And I have made an argument that those shootings were justified under U.S. law and under Scripture.'

Critics contend Murch's and Foreman's statements encourage more violent acts.

'I think those kinds of threats help instill a climate of violence and fear and intimidation,' said Elizabeth Cavendish, vice president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League.

Courtroom battles

Creating a climate of violence was the key issue in last year's Planned Parenthood vs. American Coalition of Life Activists lawsuit. A jury in Portland, Ore., returned a $107 million verdict against Foreman, Murch and a dozen other defendants, concluding their civil disobedience crossed into intimidation. It was the largest award to result from an abortion case.

At issue were 'Wanted' posters issued by 12 individuals and two organizations, including the ACLA, a coalition Foreman helped form and for which Murch served as Northeast regional director. The posters listed the names and addresses of abortion doctors and offered rewards for information leading to their arrest or the revocation of medical licenses.

Also crucial to the case were 'The Nuremberg Files,' an archive of addresses and other information about clinic workers, judges and abortion-rights advocates that defendants helped assemble. The information was posted on the World Wide Web and presented at news conferences where defendants said it would be used at trials when abortion was made illegal.

Planned Parenthood argued that though the posters and files did not advocate violence directly, they still constituted threats, that they were, in effect, hit lists.

The verdict is being appealed.

Murch and Foreman's share of the judgment is about $5.5 million each. Neither has owned anything of value in years, leaving most possessions in their wives' names. Their families subsist mostly on donations, they said.

In May, Foreman took steps to set aside his debt, filing for bankruptcy in federal court in Roanoke. In his petition, he said he owed $7.1 million, nearly all to clinics and abortion-rights groups who sued him.

Foreman's case is pending. But Maria Vullo, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the Portland lawsuit, noted that other defendants tried to file for bankruptcy and were rejected.

Foreman said the bankruptcy case will be pivotal. If his debts are cleared, he will start farming and teaching in Rivendell, he said.

If his petition is denied, Foreman promised to step up his abortion activism.

'If you're going to screw my life up, I'm going to do my best to make you uncomfortable,' Foreman said.

A higher education

The son of missionaries, Foreman spent his childhood in Korea and New Jersey, then attended high school in North Carolina. His ideal career, Foreman said, would be as a police hostage negotiator.

To hear Foreman tell it, his two decades of activism have been an attempt to find a sort of middle ground, albeit one solidly based in biblical morality.

'I'm always too liberal for the conservatives and too conservative for the liberals,' Foreman said.

In Rivendell, where he brought about 25 people from a church where he was a pastor in California, Foreman sees hope for changing society.

Most of the 20 or so families at Rivendell are conservative Christians, he said, and most attend Covenant Church, a Reformed Presbyterian congregation where Foreman is one of three leading elders. The church emphasizes its ties to the early American Puritans and before that, to John Calvin.

Covenant Church emphasizes raising large, close-knit families, and encourages traditional breadwinner/homemaker roles for its men and women. Another of the church's elders is Phil Lancaster, publisher of Patriarch magazine.

The church advocates a courtship system for young people, basically a ban on unsupervised dating, plus an agreement that suitors will marry if the woman and her father say yes.

Probably the biggest emphasis at Rivendell is on home schooling, and it is here that Foreman finds hope for the future.

'You're going to have a crowd of kids coming out of home schooling who are already culturally different,' Foreman said. 'The two quickest ways to raise independent children - don't let 'em watch TV and don't let 'em go to public school.'

His own eight children, he says with pride, 'have only a vague idea of who Beavis and Butt-head are.'

Murch teaches a biology class to Rivendell children, peppering biblical examples through the curriculum. He uses an 1828 edition of Webster's dictionary to sort out definitions because 'that's before the language got polluted.'

A trailer next to the Foreman family's double-wide manufactured home serves as a combination classroom and library, with rows of folding chairs sharing space with bookcases laden with volumes of religious history, philosophy and social commentary.

The next step is to prepare home-schooled children for higher education, Foreman said. Some Rivendell residents do not believe in sending their children to college, believing it will overturn their faith. But Foreman sees no better way to gain the knowledge needed to influence society.

The crucial point is to equip children with an analytical mind-set they can gain from the university experience without being overwhelmed. 'Being better than your professor,' Foreman calls it.

Foreman's first attempts to create such a program are visible in a logic class he teaches. On a recent Friday, a dozen children and adults gather for a discussion of logic terms.

'We've all mocked President Clinton for saying it depends on what the meaning of 'is' is,' Foreman lectures, holding the class's textbook. 'But we'll see later on in the book, the man says that 'is' doesn't always mean the same thing.'

Street preaching

As they are most Tuesday mornings, Murch's giant, graphic abortion pictures were out in front of the Roanoke Planned Parenthood clinic Oct. 10. About 25 people made the hour drive from Rivendell, lining both sides of Peters Creek Road.

Murch concedes the depictions of mutilated fetuses are gruesome. That's the point.

'It forces a woman to see the reality of what she's about to do with all the pro-choice rhetoric stripped away,' he said. 'And it forces the community to see what the reality is.'

Several times, brakes screech as drivers narrowly avoid collisions, and supportive honks mix with rude gestures. An empty school bus swerves into the next lane as its driver shouts and waves both hands above the steering wheel.

Foreman is at this demonstration, but stays across the street from the clinic, quietly holding a sign. Murch, who calls himself a street preacher, takes a more confrontational stance.

'When somebody swerves and throws on the brakes and gets out and in my face, I love it,' he says.

At the mouth of the clinic driveway, 15-year-old Daniel Hubbard says he joined the demonstrations about two months ago, soon after his family moved from San Diego to Rivendell. Dark-haired and clean-cut, Hubbard said he tries to offer words of comfort to the women who enter the clinic, perhaps to seek abortions. He has harsher words for people he thinks work there.

'I try to condemn 'em, trouble their hearts,' Hubbard says. 'You say, 'You're going to hell,' something that kinds of whips them.'

Clinic president Nova said the number of demonstrators and the intensity of their message skyrocketed after Murch arrived. Without being specific, he said new security measures have been taken. At the clinic's request, new 'No parking' signs have gone up along the deceleration lane Nova said demonstrators blocked. Police have written a handful of tickets for standing in the road or other traffic-related offenses.

Roanoke police spokeswoman Shelly Alley said the protests have not involved anything she would call violence. But on Dec. 4 the Roanoke City Police Academy will offer a violence-prevention seminar to officers and clinic workers.

On this morning, a police officer approaches Murch to say a school bus driver had complained about the gory signs, saying it upset children she carried. Murch replies that the last bus to pass was empty.

Besides, Murch says, 'I have my own children out here. They have not suffered any ill effects.'

The officer leaves.

Days before the demonstration, Murch had described how his son Evan sometimes asks to see miniature versions of the protest pictures before going to bed. The boy stares, then weeps, Murch said.

'He's 6 years old,' Murch said with awe. 'But he gets it'" (Mike Gangloff, The Roanoke Times , October 22, 2000).