For golfers this is the smell of “eternal hope” that they can start over, according to the stressed-out young pro whose story drives the novel “Golf’s Sacred Journey: Seven Days in Utopia,” by sports psychologist David Cook.

“Each time a golfer steps to the first tee surrounded by this tantalizing fragrance he stands at even par,” muses Luke Chisholm. “We all own par on the first tee. Hope is eternal. It’s on the 18th green that one has to face the music.”

Death, of course, is the ultimate 18th green.

Which is why Chisholm ends up — now in a mainstream movie — kneeling at an empty grave in Utopia, Texas, trying to decide what epitaph he wants on his blank tombstone. Viewers who know anything about cinematic tales of redemption will not be surprised to learn that Robert Duvall plays the wise Southern sage who, with seven days of wisdom, helps save this young man’s soul and his golf game.

It’s the kind of scene that would have occurred in “The Legend of Bagger Vance” — if the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association had made that golfing parable.

The bottom line is that the independently produced “Seven Days in Utopia” represents another stage in the development of a faith-friendly branch of the movie industry. The film even features the talents of two Academy Award winners, with Duvall and actress Melissa Leo.

In the pivotal graveside scene, Chisholm tries to say thank you to the elderly Johnny Crawford, a golf pro who escaped into ranching. Duvall’s character simply points skyward.

“Don’t thank me,” says Duvall’s character, on a Sunday morning that just happens to be Easter. “Thank him, because God is in all of us. Inside each of us, if you listen, there’s a still, small voice of truth leading us, talking to us, and telling you that you can see God’s face, feel his presence, trust his love.”

The novel’s version of this scene is even more blunt, complete with a multi-page sermon on the fateful biblical encounter between Jesus, a proud fisherman named Peter and a large school of fish that had evaded the future apostle’s nets all day. Chisholm ends up confessing his sins, including that golf had been his god, and being born again.

It’s hard to be that blunt in mainstream theaters. The movie also added some new action scenes, a father-son feud and a hint of a love interest for Chisholm — a lovely horse whisperer whose story may drive the sequel.

“We wanted a big net in the movie,” said Cook. “We wanted this to be safe for everybody to go see without being hit on the head with something really explicit.”

It’s safe, but The Hollywood Reporter noted that the movie still managed to steer its audience toward an altar call — in cyberspace. The team behind “Seven Days in Utopia” must, noted the lukewarm review, be “given full credit for coming up with something new in movies: To learn what happens at the end, you’ve got to go online. After carefully building up to a climactic scene in which the underdog hero must sink a long putt to win a sudden-death playoff, the camera looks away, narration intones to the effect that the protagonist now has a higher calling so it doesn’t matter much in the big picture whether he won or not and, if you actually want to know who came out on top, you must go to www.didhemaketheputt.com.”

That twist may sound corny to film critics, but it’s not, insisted Cook, who now lives in Utopia, a real town in the Texas Hill County.

During his professional career, including his time as president of the National Sports Psychology Academy, Cook said it was rare to meet an athlete who wouldn’t own up to spiritual struggles in life. Most struggle with fear.

“What I have found is that whatever helps you conquer fear only makes you stronger,” he said. “If sports is your god, it’s easy to be afraid when everything is on the line. But if you have faith, you can say, ‘The sun’s coming up tomorrow and God loves me. Why should I fear whether this little white ball goes in the hole or not? Why be afraid?’ “

“You ask a guy where he’s from and what he does and then he asks you the same thing. Many people just want to talk,” explained Father John David Finley, a missionary priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

The man in the next seat recently asked the priest a question he has heard many times: “What is Orthodox Christianity, anyway?”

Ironically, Finley was — at that moment — writing some comments about a contest in which participants prepared a 30-second “elevator speech” response to strangers who asked that very question. The contest was organized by the archdiocesan Department of Missions and Evangelism, Finley’s home base.

This particular man was a convert to Buddhism, although he was raised in a home that was Christian, to one degree or another. He was interested in how different churches interpret scripture and how Eastern Christians pray.

“He wanted to talk about icons,” said Finley. “He thought they were beautiful, but he also knew there was more to icons than wood and paint. He said, ‘They’re not just pictures, right? There’s more to icons than art, right?’ … What you hear in questions like that is a search for beauty and mystery and spiritual power.”

The term “elevator speech” comes from the business world and describes a punchy presentation of what a company does and “what it’s all about,” said Howard Lange, administrator of the missions and evangelism office. The idea of a national contest emerged from discussions in his parish, St. Athanasius Orthodox Church, near Santa Barbara, Calif.

“The idea is to convey the essence of your organization to someone in two or three sentences, in the short time that you’re on an elevator or maybe in a grocery store checkout line,” he said.

This is a hard task for all religious leaders in the increasingly diverse arena of 21st century American life. However, this challenge is especially hard for Eastern Orthodox leaders in a land shaped by Protestant history and culture, as well as the rising influence of Catholics from around the world.

Americans know, or think they know, what people believe in Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist or Episcopal pews. But for many, the first word that comes to mind when they hear “Orthodoxy” is “baklava.”

When Protestants talk about church, they usually jump into discussions of their preacher’s pulpit skills, their children’s programs, the excellence of their classical, gospel or rock musicians and other selling points. The Orthodox (I know this from experience, as a convert) need to back up a millennium or two and cover basics. Then there are the complicated — literally byzantine — histories of the churches in Palestine, Greece, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine and, yes, even in lands such as North America.

The goal of the “elevator speech” contest, said Lange, was to focus on broad strokes, using language outsiders could understand — while not oversimplifying to the point of inaccuracy. The winning entry, selected through an online ballot, stated:

“Orthodox Christianity is the authentic and original Christian Faith founded by Jesus Christ,” wrote Valerie Ann Zrake of New York City. “As an Orthodox Christian you can experience heaven on earth through the Divine Liturgy which is mystical, spiritual and beautiful, with it’s incense, icons, and sacred music. You can transcend time and space while you meditate upon the words and teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s the most pure form of Christianity — nothing artificial added. It’s the real deal.”

Even in this simple statement, it was hard to avoid nuanced language. “Divine Liturgy,” for example, is the Eastern rite name for what, in the West, would be called the Mass. That reference would stump many seekers.

The bottom line, said Lange, is that there is no one ideal “elevator speech” to introduce faiths that are as ancient and complex as Orthodoxy. What works with a next-door neighbor who is already a churchgoer would not work with a skeptical graduate student who walks in the door ready to argue.

“You have to be able to relate to the person who is standing in front of you,” he said. “If this contest got Orthodox people to start thinking about that, then it did some good. It’s a start.”

When Orthodox believers venerate icons of the “Saints of North America,” many of the images are of missionaries. One is St. Herman of Alaska, a pioneer monk, and another is St. Innocent, an early missionary bishop. Then there is St. Tikhon of Moscow, who envisioned one united Orthodox body in America, a church without ethnic divisions. He later became Russia’s patriarch, but died a martyr in the Bolshevik era.

“Before the 1920s, there was only one jurisdiction in North America — that of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, as we know, was open to … the widest variety of ethnic communities,” said Archbishop Justinian of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, during last week’s Episcopal Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Hierarchs in North and Central America.

“Much has changed since that time. The tumultuous events of the 20th Century forced many citizens of traditionally Orthodox countries to leave their native homes and seek refuge in other countries, which led to the rise of large ethnic Orthodox communities beyond the boundaries of corresponding local churches.”

But the key to conditions today, he stressed, is the fact that an “increasing number of our faithful belong to the Orthodox Church not as the result of their ethnic background, but of a conscious choice in favor of Orthodoxy’s truth.”

There’s the rub, the source of one of the tensions that pulled the bishops behind tightly closed doors in New York City. Even in the public speech texts, it was clear they were wrestling with this question: Is America best described as a mission field in which Orthodoxy is growing or as a strange land in which immigrants have found shelter during a painful diaspora era?

How the hierarchs answer that question will help shape the future, especially if there is to be a way to unite Greeks, Russians, Arabs, Ukrainians, Serbs, Romanians and other Orthodox believers into one American church, with one hierarchy — as required by Orthodox tradition.

If America is truly a mission field, that would favor the Russian roots of the Orthodox Church in America, which now worships in English. Its claim to be an autocephalous, or independent, national church is based on a declaration to that effect by leaders of the giant Russian Orthodox Church. Meanwhile, a “diaspora” framework favors leadership claims by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul, the symbolic, “first among equals” of the Orthodox patriarchs.

Last week’s assembly was led by Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and was one of 12 meetings in regions containing multiple Orthodox bodies. However, Demetrios declined Bartholomew’s request to exclude Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America. Jonah was seated as a bishop — but not as the OCA primate. He is a convert to the faith.

At this point, said Demetrios, it’s impossible to end the overlapping jurisdictions, which means that bishops from ethnically defined flocks control their own parishes in the same locations. America is both a mission field and part of a diaspora phenomenon caused by immigration, he said. So the new Episcopal Assembly is in control — for now.

“The vital presence of our churches … world bears witness to the ongoing work of pastoral care of our flocks who have moved around the globe,” he said. “It also bears witness to the continuous preaching of the Gospel that has brought an abundance of converts to the faith. Neither of these realities stands in opposition to the other. They are merely the facts of our existence.”

But it’s time to see the big picture, stressed Metropolitan Philip of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, another flock affected by thousands of converts. If anyone is living in diaspora, he claimed, it’s the tiny Orthodox flocks in Jerusalem, Constantinople and other besieged Old World cities.

Meanwhile, the Orthodox in America, he said, are “no longer little children to have rules imposed on us from 5,000 miles away. Orthodoxy in America has its own ethos. We have our own theological institutions and we have our own theologians, authors, publications and magazines. … We have been here for a long, long time and we are very grateful to the Almighty God that in our theology and worship, we do express the fullness of the Holy Orthodox faith.”

The controversial pamphlets contained comments such as, “Throughout history individuals have tried many ways to gain or earn eternal life, but every attempt has been unsuccessful.” There were Bible verses, such as, “Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us. Titus 3:5a.”

What happened next has reopened a painful debate about so-called “no go zones,” areas that may as well be off limits to British citizens who do not heed Islamic laws.

According to a statement by the Rev. Arthur Cunningham, the “police community support officer” told him “you’re not allowed to preach … here. This is a Muslim area. He said, ‘You know, you guys are committing a hate crime here with what you’re doing. I’m going to have to call you in and take you in.’ Then he took his radio and he said something like, ‘There’s a hate crime in progress here. I need assistance.’ “

This occurred three months ago, but legal actions by Cunningham and the Rev. Joseph Abraham have created a wave of new coverage. Both men carry American passports, although Abraham was born a Muslim in Egypt and then converted to Christianity.

While declining to discuss details, West Midlands Police officials have released statements saying their investigation found that the officer acted “with the best of intentions” and that “the PCSO has been offered guidance about what constitutes a hate crime and advice on communication style.”

Another statement: “We would like to assure all communities that there are not any ‘no go’ areas in the West Midlands Police area and we will defend the rights of the individual to freedom of expression and religious faiths.”

The “no go zone” debate began in earnest when Anglican Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali of Rochester, who was raised in Pakistan in a family with Christian and Muslim roots, expressed fears that England is splintering into segregated communities of citizens living “parallel lives.”

“It is critically important to all that the freedom to discuss freely and perhaps to have our views changed, whether in politics, religion or science, be encouraged and not diminished,” wrote Nazir-Ali, in a newspaper essay that led to death threats against him.

Christianity and Islam are both evangelistic faiths, which creates sparks when their traditional, growing forms collide. However, Christian evangelism is banned in many Muslim lands and some Christian converts have faced death sentences as apostates.

In the Alum Rock case, the missionaries freely admit they were seeking converts. Abraham and Cunningham insist that they were told they would be physically attacked if they dared to return.

“The actions and words used by the officers were intimidating and were calculated to warn and-or frighten our clients and to have the effect of deterring our clients from lawfully expressing their opinions and manifesting their beliefs and to have a chilling effect on the exercise by them of their right to manifest their beliefs,” according to a document prepared for police by activists at the Christian Institute. “Our clients were left with the understanding that they could not express their religious beliefs in Alum Rock Road without committing a hate crime.”

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has reported that the officer involved in this incident is active in the local branch of the National Association of Muslim Police. The West Midlands police force also made recent headlines when it accused a BBC Dispatches program — entitled “Undercover Mosques” — of distorting Muslim statements about terrorism.

All of this has led to heightened tensions about how to balance Muslim concerns with British laws.

“Freedom is not, of course, absolute. It is only possible in the context of the Common Good, where the freedom of each has to be exercised with respect for the freedom of all,” according to a new essay by Nazir-Ali, in Standpoint magazine.

“Freedom of belief, of expression, and the freedom to change one’s belief are, however, vitally important for a free society, and the onus must be on those who wish to restrict these in any way to show why this is necessary. Nor can we say that such freedoms apply in some parts of the country and of the world and not in others.”

That isn’t how the Internet Evangelism Day team sees things. It notes that “over 1 billion people use the Web,” the “Internet is changing the world” and “God is using the Web to transform lives.”

“The Internet has become a 21st century Roman road, marketplace, theater, backyard fence and office drinks machine,” proclaims the site’s webmasters. “Web evangelism gives believers opportunities to reach people with the Gospel right where they are, just as Jesus and Paul did.”

Tech guru George Gilder knows where the Web evangelists are coming from and offers a hearty “Amen.” He remains convinced that cyberspace is territory that religious leaders have to explore and, hopefully, master.

“The Internet is very good for building communities and, obviously, churches are communities. It allows a particularly charismatic, or brilliant, church leader to reach potential followers not only in his community or in his immediate locality, but all across the country and the world,” said Gilder, the author the trailblazing books “Microcosm” and “Telecosm.”

“This is the power of the Net,” he said. “It can free people from this sort of entrapment in a narrow locality and allow them to find support for their particular faith, wherever it may arise.”

But there’s a fly in the digital ointment. There’s a reason that Gilder’s online “Telecosm Forum” is for subscribers only — he needs to focus his time on serious questions raised by committed readers who are truly interested in the issues he wants to research. Gilder invests his time and energy in this one online flock.

That’s the bottom line: A decade or two down the digital information highway, people who are serious about the Web are learning to invest their time more wisely.

That includes religious leaders, who are as buried in digital junk as everyone else. Many ministers who once were anxious to think outside the local-church box have been stunned at the time commitment this kind of “online ministry” requires.

The good news is that ambitious religious leaders can do 24/7, online, multi-media, interactive ministry at the local, national and even global levels. And the bad news? Users will expect them to build and maintain these 24/7, online, multi-media, interactive ministries at the local, national and even global levels.

This is a mixed blessing for ministers who are already struggling to keep up with the fast-paced realities of life in the flesh-and-blood, analog world. Websites, blogs and email can become curses, as well as blessings.

The Net is, for better and for worse, a tool for interactive communications, stressed Gilder, who is an active churchman. Anything that amplifies speech has the potential to help evangelism and other crucial ministries in most churches, which are communities of believers that need to interact with the world around them in order to survive or thrive.

However, religious leaders need to ask serious questions about the size and shape of the online ministries they attempt, he said. Should forums about sensitive or controversial issues be open to all comers? If a congregation offers an interactive website for people who are asking religious and personal questions, is there anyone with the time and skills to maintain it? Will posting a minister’s online address produce contacts with people who truly need help? Who will screen all those emails?

There’s one more tricky issue that must be addressed. Many believers are highly skilled when it comes to talking to and arguing with other members of their own flocks, using a kind of “preaching to the choir” lingo that is mere gibberish to outsiders. The religious corners of the Web are packed with websites of this kind, which do much to promote insider debates, but little to reach people outside church doors.

“It’s crucial to break out of this kind of parochial language,” said Gilder. “If you are going to try to talk to people in the secular world, you have to have people who actually have the ability to do that kind of work online. …

“It’s quite exciting to actually go out into the wider world. But you have to have something to say and you have to know what you are doing.”

Graham began addressing a wide range of social issues, including nuclear arms control. He focused less attention to America and said that the church’s future was in the Third World. Some long-time supporters began to grumble — literally — about his hair.

“People were worried that Billy was letting his hair get too long. We were getting telephone calls about it,” said one insider at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, years later.

Eventually, Graham’s wife heard about the mini-crisis and responded in her own way. Ruth Bell Graham quietly suggested that Billy should consider growing a mustache.

“That was,” the insider said, “her way of saying, ‘Leave my husband’s hair alone. For that matter, leave my husband alone.’ “

Anyone who has studied the career of the world’s most famous evangelist knows that Ruth Graham was much more than his wife or even his “soul mate,” the label many commentators adopted after her death on June 14, at the age of 87.

Historians will always ask how Graham evolved from a narrow Southern fundamentalist into the evangelical who preached to the world. Here’s one obvious answer: “He married Ruth Bell.” She was nothing less than the X-factor, the source of that sense of otherness that, when blended with her husband’s essential humanity and North Carolina sense of grace, added a note of mystery to his career. His instinct was to try to get along with everyone. Her instinct was to resist the people who wanted to own him, body and soul.

Graham kept saying, in that “ah, shucks” way of his, that Ruth was smarter than he was. Still, it was hard to determine her precise role.

The basic facts were amazing enough. She was the daughter of missionaries in China and as a girl yearned to be a martyr. She never planned to marry, yet raised five children in their unique North Carolina home (she hired mountain men to combine several abandoned log cabins) that she defended like a lioness.

On one memorable occasion, she kicked her husband under the table when President Lyndon Baines Johnson tried to lure him into political talk. When asked if she had ever considered divorce, Ruth passed along this wisecrack to Barbara Bush: “Divorce? No. Murder? Yes.”

It is no surprise that Ruth declined a thousand interview requests for every one she granted. When I left full-time reporting to start teaching, I included this item in my farewell Rocky Mountain News column: “Allowed to interview one living religious figure, I would choose Ruth Bell Graham, the media-shy Presbyterian poet who also happens to be married to the world’s best-known Southern Baptist preacher.”

I hoped to interview her in 1987, when I spent a day with Graham before a Denver crusade. But the timing was ironic. He was at home, while his wife was away — visiting a clinic due to her already fragile health. Graham offered a tour, but admitted that he was not the best guide.

“My wife runs all of this, to tell you the truth,” said Graham, mystified by a leather-bound copy of “History of the Reformation in Scotland” on a den table. Ruth, he stressed, was the theologian in the family, the one who could dig into Greek texts.

“She’s way over my head when it comes to the books. … She knows everything about everything in this house. She’s collected and read a lot of wonderful things and they’re all here somewhere,” said Graham, before settling into one of their twin rocking chairs on the back porch, facing the mountains.

“I just wish she were here.”

There were, of course, far more days when Ruth missed her globetrotting husband. She poured her emotions into poetry, offering glimpses into a private life behind the very public ministry. Here is one of her poems.

When

in the morning

I make our bed,

pulling his sheets

and covers tight,

I know the tears

I shouldn’t shed

will fall unbidden

as the rain:

and I would kneel,

praying again

words I mean

but cannot feel,

“Lord,

not my will

but Thine

be done.”

The doubts dissolving

one by one.

For I realize,

as I pray,

that’s why it happened

and this way.

And what about Father’s Day? That can be a touchy subject for pastors in an era in which men who religiously avoid church outnumber active churchmen roughly three to one. Worship just doesn’t work for millions of ordinary guys.

“What churches are doing isn’t getting the job done. Mom is having to take the kids to church because Dad doesn’t want to go,” said Marc Carrier, co-author, with his Cynthia, of “The Values-Driven Family.”

“That leaves Mom in charge of the spiritual upbringing of the children, which means faith is a Mom thing and not a Dad thing. … So why is little Johnny — who is 25 and has his first child on the way, whether he’s married or not — never in church? The odds are that his father was never in church.”

Church attendance among men had already fallen to 43 percent in 1992, according to the Barna Group, which specializes in researching trends among Evangelicals. Then that number crashed to 28 percent in 1996, the year before the Promise Keepers movement held its “Stand in the Gap” rally that drew a million or more men to the National Mall — one of the largest gatherings of any kind in American history.

No one involved in national men’s ministries believes that those stats have improved. That’s one reason why a nondenominational coalition wants to hold a “Stand in the Gap 2007” rally on Oct. 6, hoping to gather 250,000 men at the Washington Monument and on the Ellipse, just south of the White House.

The American numbers are sobering, noted Carrier, but they are nowhere near as stunning as another set of statistics in an essay entitled “The Demographic Characteristics of the Linguistic and Religious Groups in Switzerland,” published in 2000 in a volume covering trends in several European nations. The numbers that trouble traditionalists came from a 1994 survey in which the Swiss government tried to determine how religious practices are carried down from generation to generation.

Apparently, if a father and mother were both faithful churchgoers, 33 percent of their children followed their example, with another 41 percent attending on an irregular basis and only a quarter shunning church altogether.

But what happened if the father had little or no faith? If the father was semi-active and the mother was a faithful worshipper, only 3 percent of their children became active church members and 59 percent were irregular in their worship attendance — with the rest lost to the church altogether.

If the father never went to church, while the mother was faithful, only 2 percent of the children became regular churchgoers and 37 percent were semi-active. Thus, more than 60 percent were lost.

This trend continued in other survey results, noted Carrier. The bottom line was clear. If a father didn’t go to church, only one child in 50 became a faithful churchgoer — no matter how strong the mother’s faith.

“These numbers are old and they are from Switzerland, but they’re the only numbers that anyone has,” said Carrier. “Someone needs to find a way to do similar research in America to see if the same thing is happening here. This is shocking stuff.”

At the height of the Promise Keepers movement, researchers did study one related trend in churches that began emphasizing ministry to men, said the Rev. Rick Kingham, president of the National Coalition of Men’s Ministries, a network of 110 regional and national groups.

Surveys found that if a father made a decision to become a Christian, the rest of the family followed his example 93 percent of the time. If a mother made a similar decision, the rest of the family embraced the faith 17 percent of the time, he said.

“It seems that when a man takes that kind of spiritual stand it usually affects everyone else in the whole constellation around him, including his family and even other men that he knows,” said Kingham, who is helping organize Stand in the Gap 2007.

No one wants to minimize the importance of faithful mothers, he said, but it’s clear that “fathers play a unique and special role in helping their children develop a living faith — especially their sons. … There’s no way to deny that.”

“Young man,” said the priest, “I do not approve of your style of evangelism.”

“I’m sure that what I’m doing isn’t perfect,” replied Graham. “But I like the evangelism that I’m doing better than the evangelism that you’re not doing.”

Robert E. Webber knew that collision of styles inside out.

The theologian spent most of his career working with people on both sides of the cultural divide captured in that familiar anecdote about the world’s most famous evangelist. It helped that Webber — who died April 27, after an eight-month struggle with cancer — had lived and worshipped in both camps.

As a graduate of the proudly fundamentalist Bob Jones University, Webber knew all about the style of evangelism that many believers can condense into a single blunt question: “If you died tonight, do you know where you would spend eternity?” Yet, as a convert to the Episcopal Church, he also knew how to talk to those who are offended by any discussion of evangelism or, as unsophisticated folks call it, “saving souls.”

“The problem with evangelism is that churches either do it or they don’t,” Webber told me, before a Denver speaking engagement in the mid-1980s. This was about the time that he began to emerge as an influence on progressive evangelicals, in large part because of his strategic years teaching at Wheaton College, home of the Billy Graham Center.

“I think every church that is alive has within it people who are gifted at evangelism,” he added. “If a church doesn’t have these people, then there are some tough questions that have to be asked. … You may be dealing with a dead church.”

Media tributes to Webber this past week have focused on his trailblazing work encouraging evangelicals — through his writings, both popular and academic — to begin weaving strands of ancient rites and prayers into the fabric of contemporary Protestant worship. An ecumenical document rooted in his work, entitled “A Call to An Ancient Evangelical Future” (aefcall.org), challenged its readers to “strengthen their witness through a recovery of the faith articulated by the consensus of the ancient Church and its guardians in the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation and the Evangelical awakenings.”

Webber’s convictions can also be seen in the titles of his books, such as “Worship Is a Verb,” “Ancient-Future Faith,” “Worship Old and New” and the once-scandalous ” Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail.” In 1998, he founded the Institute for Worship Studies (now known as the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies), a high-tech global graduate school based at Grace Episcopal Church of Orange Park, Fla.

This liturgical approach was a hard sell, especially in the age of media-driven megachurches offering services tuned to fit the fast-paced lifestyles of suburbia.

“The truth is that we Americans are a-historical,” wrote Webber, in “The New Worship Awakening,” a book rereleased several times during the past dozen years. “Most of us know very little about history and probably care even less. What we are interested in is the now, the moment, the existential experience. Unfortunately, most churches in this country have the same mentality.”

However, there was a flip side to his tough message targeting evangelicals.

Webber was convinced that far too many liturgical Christians — Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and the Orthodox — have abandoned the task of evangelizing nonbelievers and those estranged from the faith. In their rush to reject what Webber called a “Lone Ranger,” “hit-and-run” style of evangelism, the leaders of these flocks have veered into apathy and silence.

There is also a chance that many of them no longer want to discuss sin, evil, repentance, grace, death and, horror of horrors, heaven and hell. These eternal concerns are not going to fade away, said Webber.

“What lies behind the views of people who see these doctrines as negative, as subjects to be avoided, is probably an embarrassment about the historic Christian faith,” he explained. “Until a church is ready to reckon with historic Christianity, it is not going to be interested in evangelism. … So I am probably not even talking to what you could call the average, mainline, liberal church.”

That PG rating isn’t what has ticked off talk radio, Christian bloggers and some Capitol Hill conservatives. They want to know if the Motion Picture Association of America thinks the “P” in PG stands for ” proselytizing” and the “G” for “Gospel.”

The bottom line: Salvation can be as offensive as sex and swearing.

“We’re seeing something new with this movie,” said Kris Fuhr, vice president for marketing at Provident Films, which is owned by Sony BMG. “People who work in this business have always thought that the MPAA based its ratings on actions, on what people actually did in a movie. If you did certain things or said certain words, then you got a certain rating.

“Now it seems like the board is rating a movie on the basis of the ideas that are in it and whether it thinks those ideas are going to offend people.”

“Facing the Giants” tells the story of a depressed high-school coach named Grant Taylor whose life takes a miraculous turn for the better. It includes explicit scenes of prayer and Bible reading, along with several strategic acts of God on and off the football field. The producers have not challenged the PG rating.

The movie was created by Alex and Stephen Kendrick, two brothers who are “media pastors” at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. Working with a $100,000 budget, they used volunteers as actors, extras and technicians, assisted by a few professionals behind the cameras. Provident plans to open the film in about 400 theaters nationwide this fall, with the help of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

Headlines about the PG rating for “Facing the Giants” created a buzz that quickly reached Washington, D.C.

“This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous to children that exposure to gratuitous sex and mindless violence,” said Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the third-ranking House Republican. He suggested that Congress might want to look into this issue, along with reports that “ratings creep” is increasing the amount of sex and violence in movies.

This drew a quick letter from MPAA chairman Glickman, a veteran Democrat who served in Congress and on President Bill Clinton’s cabinet.

“Any strong or mature discussion of any subject material results in at least a PG rating,” he said. “This movie had a mature discussion about pregnancy, for example. It also had other mature discussions that some parents might want to be aware of before taking their kids to this movie.

“Roy, I assure you that religion was not the reason this movie got a PG rating.”

This raised another question: What about those “other mature discussions” in the movie? What were they about?

The MPAA board works in total secrecy and, other than its leader, members are anonymous. However, chairwoman Joan Graves granted a rare interview to discuss the “Facing the Giants” case — after receiving thousands of calls and emails.

“If we see someone on the screen practicing their faith and indicating that they have a faith, that’s not something we PG,” she told the Los Angeles Times.

This was an interesting choice of words, since hardly anyone had claimed that the movie was rated PG simply because it contained religious characters and expressions of faith. The key issue was whether its evangelistic content was offensive. Instead of merely showing faith, “Facing the Giants” dared to include scenes that made a case for conversion to Christianity.

Thus, another MPAA official noted that — in addition to discussions of pregnancy and infertility — the movie included some proselytizing. “Parents might want to know” when a movie openly advocates one religion over other religions, John Feehery, the board’s executive vice president of external affairs, told The Hill newspaper.

So it is acceptable for movie characters to practice a religious faith, as long as they don’t try to convert others.

Proselytism is a bad idea.

“I guess it’s OK,” said Fuhr, “if the MPAA warns people about some of the ideas that they will run into at the movies. … The problem is that there are all kinds of ideas in movies that tend to offend different kinds of people. Will the board be consistent?”

Eric Metaxas thinks that anyone who truly wants to understand the righteous and jealous God of the Bible should try meditating on a different image. Metaxas is thinking about Motown, rather than Vatican City.

“I admit that the Bible does not specifically mention Aretha Franklin,” said Metaxas, a humor writer and speaker best known for his work with the Manhattan-based “Socrates in the City” lecture series. “But when it comes to thinking about God, most people’s minds are full of all those familiar images and they just get stuck. … So why not Aretha? She’s big, she’s bold and you’re going to have to listen to what she’s saying.”

And everybody knows what the Queen of Soul is going to say: “What you want, baby I got it. What you need, do you know I got it? All I’m askin’ is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit). ? R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me.”

Hold on to that image for a minute, because there is a method to his madness and it’s at the heart of his quirky book “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (but were afraid to ask).” Metaxas is a friend of mine and the best way I can explain where he’s coming from is to say that he’s a former editor of The Record at Yale University, America’s oldest college humor magazine, and he’s written for thinkers as diverse as Chuck Colson of Watergate fame and Bob the Tomato of VeggieTales.

The key is that Metaxas (www.ericmetaxas.com) thinks humor is serious stuff and that most religious leaders haven’t grasped this basic fact about modern life. He is convinced that Americans are not going to listen if theologians and clergy keep offering dense doctrinal arguments when making a case for a traditional faith. Instead of talking about how many angels can dance on a copy of the Summa Theologiae, modern missionaries and apologists need to consider the strategies they would use to talk to Comedy Central fans over a few beers and a bowl of mixed nuts.

Which brings us back to Aretha Franklin.

Many modern seekers, said Metaxas, are curious about God and they wish they could find some answers to their tough spiritual questions. But, at the same time, they have trouble accepting the traditional Christian belief that God is God and that there is only one way to find salvation. These claims sound petty and intolerant.

“Here’s a comparison that might make sense,” argues Metaxas, in a book chapter entitled “How Can Anyone Take the Bible Seriously?”

“If a guy is married and he tries to persuade his wife that he needs to have a few other women on the side, his wife will likely say, ‘Sorry, Romeo, but that’s not going to fly. If you want to be married to me, you have to forego those other women. Period.’ It’s just like that with God. He doesn’t force us to pick him, but he does force us to choose between him and the others. We can’t have both.”

In other words, God demands R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Metaxas has other skewed takes on big issues. He thinks that using sex for self-gratification makes as much sense as using Rembrandt paintings to line birdcages. He’s interested in life’s big questions, questions like how the universe — including all those Chevy Camaros in Queens and Staten Island — exploded out of something smaller than the period at the end of a sentence.

Is this theology? No, it isn’t the way that intellectuals talk in cathedral pulpits and faculty clubs, said Metaxas. But it is the way that ordinary people talk on Friday nights while hanging out with their friends.

“At some point Christians are going to have to use humor and parody because that’s the language of the culture,” he said. “That’s what people consider sharp and entertaining and real. ? You can keep serving up tea-and-crumpets moralism and logical arguments and it’s not going to matter because people aren’t going to listen.

“You may as well be speaking Ukrainian. That isn’t going to work, unless you happen to be speaking to Ukrainians.”