Chris Satullo: Controlling violence, not guns, is the word for rural Pa.

It's not easy to get the Pennsylvania General Assembly to pass measures to deter gun violence. Urban lawmakers may introduce such bills to curry favor with folks back home, but they don't have a prayer of passing.

So maybe it's time for some real prayer.

That, at least, is the logic of Heeding God's Call: A Gathering for Peace, an interfaith dialogue that hopes to attract about 700 people from congregations around the state to Center City during King Day weekend. The effort will urge Pennsylvania gun shops to adopt the helpful code of conduct just endorsed by Wal-Mart, America's leading gun merchant.

Rallying churches in Philadelphia to oppose gun violence is one thing. Getting believers out in the pro-gun turf of Pennsylvania's "T," the swath between and above the Philly and Pittsburgh regions, to risk a fresh conversation is another, harder thing.

Bryan Miller has been trying to spread the word in places such as Lancaster and Berks Counties. Miller, head of Ceasefire New Jersey and former head of its Pennsylvania counterpart, sees promise that quiet talk with clergy may succeed where more common tactics of advocacy - marches, jawboning, speeches - have fallen short.

"Advocacy is like climbing a ladder," he likes to say. "If you try to skip a few rungs, you're likely to fall. The first rungs are grass-roots outreach and dialogue."

So Miller, a Haddonfield resident who doesn't drive, has been hitching rides with volunteers out to the T, to talk with clergy groups about guns and religion. The words "bitter" or "cling" never pass his lips.

Neither does the phrase "gun control."

"I tell them that all we're about is preventing gun violence," Miller, a former businessman with an undying love for the Baltimore Orioles and wavy, graying hair that he admits is "probably longer than it should be to do the work I do."

"I tell them we're not about hunting rifles. We're not about keeping law-abiding people from having handguns. We're about keeping handguns out of the hands of people whom we all agree should not have them. I tell them I'm driven to do what I do by my faith, my belief in God. And I tell them I'm very secure in my sense of where Jesus would be on this."

Then, Miller says, he tells them "my story."

His story goes back to Thanksgiving week 1994. Miller was getting ready to trek down to Maryland for a family reunion over turkey and stuffing when the phone rang: his sister Lisa, crying.

Their brother, Mike - the kid who had clung to his big brother's arm as they walked into new schools in new towns, the FBI agent who had survived a stint working gun cases in Washington's tough Anacostia section, who had a new, supposedly safe desk job - Special Agent Michael John Miller had been killed at that desk (along with another agent and a D.C. police officer), by a dumb psychopath wielding a MAC-10 machine pistol. The idiot had been looking to kill someone else but went in the wrong door.

By 1996, Bryan Miller had quit his business career and was leading the organization he would help rename Ceasefire New Jersey.

"People try to imbue me with some kind of nobility because my brother died," Miller says. "I'm not noble to be doing this. The noble people are those who work as hard as I do on this without having the reason that I do."

Taking a pragmatic, low-volume, but intensely dogged approach, Miller has had some successes in New Jersey, including a childproof gun law.

Pennsylvania was a harder lift. I've known Bryan a long time; to be candid, we're friends. As he struggled to gain traction in Harrisburg, I saw his moderate style take on a harder, frustrated edge.

"It's just a tough, tough state," he says. This new project, talking about Bible verses more than bullet calibers, seems to have energized him.

The Rev. James Todd, a United Methodist Church leader in Lancaster County, took part recently in a session with Miller, who's a Presbyterian. "Bryan was received by those around the table as being very authentic," Todd said. "We were impressed with his common-sense approach.

Still, Todd said, don't expect those pastors to crank up fiery sermons on gun violence any time soon: "That would be counterproductive at this point. Now's the time for dialogue and quiet advocacy."

The first rungs of Miller's ladder, in other words.

Or, to put it in a way a pastor might praise, it's time to plant a mustard seed.

There's still time to sign up for the Big Canvas Confab, final event of the regional dialogue on arts and culture sponsored by the Great Expectations project. Join arts leaders, state lawmakers, county commissioners and city councilmen for the rally at the Valley Forge Radisson Hotel next Saturday at 1 p.m. Call 215-854-5956 to register.