“I talked about ministers’ problems and how, sometimes, professional counseling was what was needed,” said the witty physician, whose counseling work was built on his evangelical faith, as well as psychiatric credentials from the Mayo Clinic. “When I was through, the seminary president strode to the microphone to deliver the benediction. He said, ‘Lord, we’re glad that you have called us to be your servants and that all we really need is Jeeee-sussss. Amen.’

“There is still a whole lot of resistance out there to ministers getting help.”

McBurney shared that story in the mid-1980s, a decade after moving to Colorado with his wife, Melissa, to open a private and for years secret facility dedicated to helping ministers save their marriages and careers. I visited the Marble Retreat Center as a journalist, entering with the understanding that patients could remain anonymous and that I wouldn’t publish its exact location. It was crucial, you see, for troubled clergy to be able to tell their flocks that they were spending two weeks taking a break in Colorado — period.

The lodge, in those years, was packed with symbolic details, like the toy owl named “Sigmund.” There was always a fire burning in the stone fireplace in the 12-by-15 foot den that patients simply called “the room upstairs,” even on summer days. The flames consumed dozens of tear-soaked tissues during group-therapy sessions.

McBurney was a true pioneer, serving as a healer for men and women who — as spiritual leaders — struggled to find a haven in which they could face their own sins. The 70-year-old therapist died recently of complications from head injuries suffered in a household accident. He was semi-retired and his work continues at the lodge in the Crystal River Valley, which has worked with 3,600 patients in 36 years. Today, there are nearly 30 centers that do similar therapy for clergy, part of a national network (Caregiversforum.org) that the McBurneys helped create.

“The world has changed and we can be thankful for that,” said Dr. Steve Cappa, who now leads the center with his wife, Patti. “It’s hard for us to explain the kind of religious stigma that surrounded discussions of mental illness when Louis and Melissa began their work, especially if you were talking about trying to help troubled ministers.”

The challenges clergy face are easy to describe, yet hard to master.

* Lay leaders often judge a pastor’s success by two statistics — attendance and the annual budget. Yet powerful, rich members often make the strategic decisions. As a minister once told McBurney: “There’s nothing wrong with my church that wouldn’t be solved by a few well-placed funerals.”

* Perfectionism often leads to isolation and workaholism, with many clergy working between 80 and 90 hours a week.

* Clergy families live in glass houses, facing constant scrutiny about personal issues that other parents and children can keep private.

* Ministers may spend up to half their office hours counseling, which can be risky since most ministers are men and most active church members are women. If a woman bares her soul, and her pastor responds by sharing his own personal pain, the result can be “as destructive and decisive as reaching for a zipper,” McBurney said.

* While most clergy sincerely believe they are “called by God,” they also know they are human and, thus, wrestle with their own fears and doubts. Many ministers have dreams in which they reach their pulpits and discover they are naked.

To be perfectly frank about it, said McBurney, it shouldn’t be hard for traditional believers to understand that Satan tempts ministers in unique and powerful ways.

Yet, in the end, sin is sin and most ministers know it.

“Pastors are used to telling people about right and wrong,” he said. “Knowing what to do is not their problem. They feel a special sense of guilt because they know what God wants them to do, but they can’t do it. …

“It’s hard for ministers to confess their sins, because they’re not supposed to sin. They also struggle to believe that God will forgive them, because they have so much trouble forgiving themselves.”

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Nevertheless, as a Southern Baptist with a seminary degree he knew a biblical-authority battle when he saw one — so he caught on fast. Soon he was appalled by the viciousness of the combat between “moderates” and “conservatives” as the 2.7 million-member denomination careened toward divorce.

Things got so bad he told a Houston Chronicle colleague that if the Southern Baptist Convention “ever became embroiled in such a heinous war, I would rather quit my job than be forced to cover it,” noted Moore, in “Witness to the Truth,” his memoir about his life in the middle of some of America’s hottest religion stories.

“Regrettably, years later, I was an eyewitness to SBC behavior that made the Lutherans’ battle look like a Sunday school picnic.”

The Lutheran fight was his “learner schism” and Moore witnessed many other skirmishes in pulpits and pews before — like it or not — he was engulfed by the battle to control America’s largest non-Catholic flock. He also served as president of the Religion Newswriters Association during that time.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s return to the theological right would be near the top of any journalist’s list of the pivotal events in American religion in the late 20th Century. This Bible Belt apocalypse also affected politicians ranging from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, and anyone else who sought national office in the “culture war” era following the 1960s and, especially, Roe v. Wade.

After leaving daily journalism, Moore saw the Southern Baptist world from the other side of the notebook for 14 years, serving as an SBC media aide on policy issues and then with the convention’s giant foreign missions agency.

Moore said that in the “best of times” he saw believers in many flocks who were so “servant-hearted and so demonstrative of Godlike virtues” that the memory of their faithful acts — in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, for example — still inspires tears. But in the worst of times?

“I have seen church people … violate every one of the Ten Commandments, act boorish and selfish, be prejudiced, broadcast secular value systems and in general behave worse than the heathen people they tried to reach,” noted Moore. In fact, just “name some sin or some act the Bible eschews, and I could pair that vice up with some church leader or member I have known.”

Moore said his career affirmed basic values that he learned as a young journalist, values he saw vindicated time after time in the trenches. Wise religious leaders, he said, would dare to:

* Adopt “sunshine laws” so that as many as possible of their meetings are open to coverage by journalists from the mainstream and religious press. “When you’re dealing with money your people have put in the offering plate, you should be as open as possible,” he said. “The things that belong on the table need to stay on the table.”

* Acknowledge that “politics is a way of life and they need to make it clear to the people in the pews how the game is played,” he said. “I truly admire the people who let the covert be overt.”

* Come right out and admit what they believe, when it comes to divisive issues of theology and public life. “Say what you mean and mean what you say,” he said. “Way too many religious leaders take one position in public and say something completely different somewhere else.”

It’s easy to pinpoint the root cause of these temptations, said Moore. At some point, religious leaders become so committed to protecting the institution they lead that they are driven to hide its sins and failures. There’s a reason that clergy and politicians share a love of public relations and have, at best, mixed feelings about journalism.

“People who get caught up in this kind of group think spend so much of their time testing the waters and floating their trial balloons,” he said. “I prefer to deal with the people who are honest about what they truly believe. …

“Of course, the other side of that equation is that these authentic believers are often politically naive and that means that they don’t survive the realities of the political process.”

NEXT WEEK: Why Catholic doors kept closing.

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She could do child-care work, greet people at the door or join the women in the altar guild. However, since her journalism work required frequent travel, Duin sought more flexible commitments. Perhaps she could play harp before services? Fill an occasional teaching role, using her seminary training or material from her books?

After several frustrating years, she quit going to church.

Soon she discovered that she wasn’t alone, which caused the Washington Times religion-beat specialist to do what reporters tend to do. She started listening, reading and connecting dots. What she found was, as one researcher put it, a “spiritual brain drain” out of churches today.

“I found that a lot of people who were leaving were not necessarily new believers. They were the Baby Boomers who had been involved in all of this for 20 years,” said Duin, speaking at the recent national Religion Newswriters Association meetings in Washington, D.C. These active, committed laypeople had “been there and done that. … So you couldn’t just say to them, ‘Oh just try this. Oh just try that.’ “

Many believers, she said, are sad or mad — or both. “They say, ‘Listen … I’ve done everything. Now I’m in the middle of a mid-life crisis and I’m not getting any answers.’ These are the people who are saying, ‘I’m out of here.’ “

The result of her research is a new book, “Quitting Church,” that pours painful experience over a foundation of troubling statistics.

It’s important to stress that Duin — a longtime family friend — focused on active churchgoers, not the “backsliders, the slackers and the complainers” most church leaders think would quit.

Also, this is not another volume about the fall of the “seven sisters” of liberal Protestantism — the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptists and the Christian Church (Disciples). In recent decades, their membership totals have declined 20 percent or more — a trend shaped by falling birthrates, bitter doctrinal fights, an aging population and other factors.

Now, sobering statistics are showing up elsewhere. The Southern Baptist Convention, for example, has seen a steady decline in baptisms. While the nation’s largest non-Catholic flock claims 16 million members, Duin noted that its 2007 report indicates that about 6.1 million people regularly attend worship services.

Gallup polls keep showing church attendance hovering at roughly 40 percent of the U.S. population. However, Duin noted that two other studies from 2005 cut that number down to 18 to 20 percent.

What’s happening? Duin shows evidence of parallel and even clashing trends. Many people say they’re too busy, some are burned out and others are mourning the loss of great churches they knew in their past.

There are paradoxes in this story, too. In recent decades, thriving megachurches have dominated the landscape, offering media-friendly services and chatty sermons in gigantic sanctuaries that give seekers a cushion of anonymity. But in 2007, the influential Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago found that many older members said they are now spiritually “stalled” or “dissatisfied.”

Duin is convinced many evangelical churches are also struggling to deal with rising numbers of single adults and single-parent families. In 2005, a University of Virginia researcher found that 32 percent of married men and 38 percent of married women are churchgoers. But only 15 percent of single men and 23 percent of single women go to church.

There’s another reality that is hard to put into statistics, said Duin. Many believers have grown tired of quickie services, PowerPoint answers and pop lyrics. Many “quitters” she interviewed were yearning for intimate, down-to-earth churches where pastors and people knew their names. They’d been born again. Now they wanted to know how to face the doubts and pains of daily life. They wanted real spiritual growth.

Many candid believers, said Duin, “are perplexed and disappointed with God” and they found that when they asked tough questions, they “were not getting meaningful answers from their churches. In fact, they were encouraged not to talk about their pain. ?

“The big questions are not going away and the answers can no longer be put off.”

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middle-of-the-night telephone calls often bring bad news.

But for many pastors there is one kind of call that is uniquely

painful. There are times when the shock of death is easier to handle

than questions about eternal life.

“It happens like this,” noted the Rev. J. Gerald Harris, who became

editor of the Southern Baptist newspaper of Georgia after 40 years in

ministry. “A grieving widow would call and say with a broken heart

and with tears in her voice, ‘Pastor, my husband had a heart attack

last night and we took him to the hospital, but he was dead on

arrival. I can’t believe it has happened, but we need your help. I

know he was not a church member, but we would like for you to preach

his funeral.’ “

The pastor says “yes,” of course. Then, while talking with the

family, it often becomes apparent that the deceased was not a

believer or may even have been someone who — by word or deed —

flaunted his status as an unbeliever. Others may join the church,

then walk away for decades.

This is awkward, noted Harris, for clergy who believe salvation is

found through faith in Jesus Christ, alone. It’s one thing to step

into the pulpit and preach on the mercy of God and to speak words of

comfort to a grieving family. It’s something else for a pastor to go

a step further and do what loved ones may want him to do — openly

proclaim they will be reunited with the deceased in heaven.

Harris said he started receiving calls and emails soon after he wrote

about this subject in the Christian Index, in part because this

dilemma pivots where the minister draws a theological line, a line

that many liberal Christians no longer believe needs to be drawn at

all.

There is no question, Harris stressed, that pastors should provide

comfort and care for families in these circumstances. Obviously,

there is no need for preachers to speak words that would cause

grieving relatives pain. However, he also is convinced that it’s

wrong for pastors to deliver messages they sincerely believe are not

true — to embrace the doctrine of “universalism,” which proclaims

that all people find eternal salvation, no matter what they believe

or how they live their lives.

This is tricky doctrinal territory, as Sen. Barack Obama learned

during a June 10 meeting with clergy behind closed doors in Chicago.

While other conservative leaders asked Obama about controversial

social issues, the Rev. Franklin Graham — son of evangelist Billy

Graham — asked an openly theological question: Did the candidate

believe that “Jesus was the way to God, or merely a way.”

Later, Obama told Newsweek that — in a candid, personal answer — he

replied: “It is a precept of my Christian faith that my redemption

comes through Christ, but I am also a big believer in the Golden

Rule, which I think is an essential pillar not only of my faith but

of my values and my ideals and my experience here on Earth. I’ve said

this before, and I know this raises questions in the minds of some

evangelicals. I do not believe that my mother, who never formally

embraced Christianity as far as I know … I do not believe she went

to hell.”

In the end, Harris said, it’s all but impossible to ignore this kind

of doctrinal division. However, pastors do have options when handling

these situations, other than delivering sermons that violate their

own consciences.

In many Christian traditions, funeral rites consist of hymns and

prayers that place more attention on the words of scriptures than on

a minister’s message. But if the family insists on a sermon that

focuses on the deceased, he said, pastors can suggest that a friend

deliver this message. In some congregations, loved ones offer

eulogies during gatherings — fellowship meals, perhaps — following

funerals.

“These questions aren’t going away,” said Harris. “For many people

today it’s not enough to be tolerant of other people’s decisions and

religious beliefs. Now they want a kind of positive tolerance, they

want you to accept and praise other people’s beliefs. You have to be

willing to say what they want you to say. …

“That just isn’t possible, for a lot of us.”

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Consider this question: Is sex outside of marriage a sin?

Say “yes” and millions of believers who are sitting in pews will say “amen.” But that same affirmation of centuries of doctrine will offend just as many believers and nonbelievers, giving them an easy excuse to avoid congregations they believe are old fashioned and intolerant.

“We have to recognize that our historic positions on sexual issues are becoming incredibly distasteful to more people in this culture and especially to our media and popular culture,” said Ed Stetzer, director of the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Research team.

“The whole ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner’ thing — people are not getting that anymore. People do not believe that we mean that.”

Right now, the gay-marriage issue is making headlines. But for millions of traditional believers in Christianity, Judaism, Islam and many other faiths, this issue is linked to a question rooted in religious doctrine, not modern politics. In a spring LifeWay survey, researchers asked: “Do you believe homosexual behavior is a sin?”

The results showed a culture torn in half, with 48 percent of American adults saying that homosexual acts are sinful and 45 percent disagreeing. Considering the margin for error, this is a virtual tie.

The numbers were radically different in different pews, with only 39 percent of Roman Catholics believing that homosexual acts are sinful, as opposed to 61 percent of Protestants and 79 percent of those who identified as evangelical, “born again” or fundamentalist Christians.

A similar pattern emerged from a hot-button question in the latest results reported from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Researchers in this massive effort asked participants which of the following statements “comes closer to your own views — even if neither is exactly right. 1 — Homosexuality is a way of life that should be accepted by society, OR 2 — Homosexuality is a way of life that should be discouraged by society.”

The question was not stated in strictly political or religious terms. However, with that powerful, more official word “discouraged” in the question, 50 percent of the adults surveyed said that “homosexuality” in general, as opposed to homosexual behavior, should be accepted by society.

Once again, there were sharp differences in various religious groups, with 79 percent of American Jews, 58 percent of Catholics and 56 percent of mainline Protestants calling for acceptance of homosexuality. Meanwhile, only 39 percent of the members of historically black churches, 27 percent of Muslims and 26 percent of the evangelical Protestants affirmed the public acceptance of homosexuality.

These numbers are evidence of great change in the religious and moral views of many Americans, yet they also point toward familiar tensions between traditionalists and progressives. The Pew Forum survey, for example, again demonstrated a reality seen in recent elections. Americans who frequently attend worship services and say that religion is very important in their lives continue to take more conservative stands on hot moral issues in public life.

What about people outside the pews? That is where another set of statistics will prove especially distressing to clergy who sincerely want to defend what Stetzer called the ancient “one man, one woman, one lifetime” doctrine of marriage.

In the LifeWay survey, 32 percent of American adults said that their decision to visit or join a congregation would be “negatively affected” if it taught that homosexual behavior is sin. That number rose to 49 percent among the “unchurched,” people who rarely or never attend worship.

The issue of homosexuality does not, of course, stand alone, said Stetzer. It’s getting harder for religious leaders to maintain consistent teachings about other acts and conditions that traditional forms of religion have, for centuries, considered sin. This affects preaching on premarital sex, divorce, cohabitation and adultery.

“Ultimately, the modern church has failed to proclaim and explain a biblical ethic of sexuality,” he said. “We also need to admit that the church has failed to live out the ethic that it’s claiming to be advocating. If we are going to say that we stand for the sanctity of marriage, then we — in our churches and in our homes — are going to have to live out the sanctity of marriage.”

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“The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance,” states the online explanation of the rating system. “There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. … The PG rating, suggesting parental guidance, is thus an alert for examination of a film by parents before deciding on its viewing by their children. Obviously such a line is difficult to draw.”

Disagreements are a given. The Christian moviemakers behind a low-budget film called “Facing the Giants” were stunned when the MPAA pinned a PG rating on their gentle movie about a burned-out, depressed football coach whose life — on and off the field — takes a miraculous turn for the better.

“What the MPAA said is that the movie contained strong ‘thematic elements’ that might disturb some parents,” said Kris Fuhr, vice president for marketing at Provident Films, which is owned by Sony BMG. Provident plans to open the film next fall in 380 theaters nationwide with the help of Samuel Goldwyn Films, which has worked with indie movies like “The Squid and the Whale.”

Which “thematic elements” earned this squeaky-clean movie its PG?

“Facing the Giants” is too evangelistic.

The MPAA, noted Fuhr, tends to offer cryptic explanations for its ratings. In this case, she was told that it “decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It’s important that they used the word ‘proselytizing’ when they talked about giving this movie a PG. …

“It is kind of interesting that faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about.”

Overt Christian messages are woven throughout “Facing the Giants,” which isn’t surprising since the film was co-written and co-produced by brothers Alex and Stephen Kendrick, who are the “associate pastors of media” at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga. In addition to working with the megachurch’s cable-television channel, they created its Sherwood Pictures ministry — collecting private donations to fund a $25,000 movie called “Flywheel,” about a wayward Christian used-car salesman.

“Facing the Giants” cost $100,000 and resembles a fusion of the Book of Job and a homemade “Hoosiers,” or perhaps a small-school “Friday Night Lights” blended with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association movies that used to appear in some mainstream theaters. Sherwood Pictures used local volunteers as actors and extras, backed by a small crew of tech professionals.

The movie includes waves of answered prayers, a medical miracle, a mysterious silver-haired mystic who delivers a message from God and a bench-warmer who kicks a 51-yard field goal to win the big game when his handicapped father pulls himself out of a wheelchair and stands under the goal post to inspire his son’s faith. There’s a prayer-driven gust of wind in there, too.

But the scene that caught the MPAA’s attention may have been the chat between football coach Grant Taylor — played by Alex Kendrick — and a rich brat named Matt Prader. The coach says that he needs to stop bad-mouthing his bossy father and get right with God.

The boy replies: “You really believe in all that honoring God and following Jesus stuff? … Well, I ain’t trying to be disrespectful, but not everybody believes in that.”

The coach says: “Matt, nobody’s forcing anything on you. Following Jesus Christ is the decision that you’re going to have to make for yourself. You may not want to accept it, because it’ll change your life. You’ll never be the same.”

That kind of talk may be too blunt for some moviegoers, said Kendrick, but that’s the way real people actually talk in Christian high schools in Georgia. Sherwood Baptist isn’t going to apologize for making the kinds of movies that it wants to make.

“Look, I have those kinds of conversations about faith all the time and I’ve seen young people make decisions that change their lives,” he said. “The reason we’re making movies in the first place is that we hope they inspire people to think twice about their relationships with God.

“So we’re going to tell the stories that we believe God wants us to tell. We have nothing to hide.”

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The Rev. Joe McKeever is the missions director for a Southern Baptist regional association, which is rather like being bishop of a flock that doesn’t believe in bishops. This means that he gets asked to pray even more than the next guy with a Bible.

McKeever says yes — on one condition. Before the prayer, he insists on delivering a mini-sermon he calls, “What New Orleans and Heaven Have In Common.” McKeever, you see, leads the Baptist Association of Greater New Orleans.

“Obviously, people in heaven and in New Orleans love the saints,” he said, reached by a shaky cell-phone link in Mississippi. “Both places love a party, since heaven always has a good reason to party and New Orleans doesn’t need a reason.” And then there’s I-10, an interstate highway that will “get you to either place really quick, if you aren’t careful.”

But the 65-year-old McKeever always slips in something serious. There’s a truth about New Orleans he wants other believers to grasp, especially as many of Hurricane Katrina’s victims prepare to rebuild.

The other reason heaven and New Orleans are alike, he said, is a “simple matter of diversity. Both places are made up of people from every nation under the sun. … Whenever I hear people say they want to reach the world for Jesus Christ, I tell them to come to New Orleans — it’s already here.”

Life is a blur right now, which is understandable since McKeever’s office address is 2222 Lakeshore Drive and the shore in question belongs to Lake Pontchartrain. Before Katrina, he worked with 77 congregations and 63 missions in Orleans and Jefferson parishes and the thin arc of towns south on the Mississippi River.

Many of these churches are fine since they’re in the suburbs and exurbs around the flooded bowl that is New Orleans. But some of the sanctuaries are in bad shape or ruined. It’s easy to imagine conditions at the Dixieland Trailer Park Mission. After the storm, McKeever’s office spent hours trying to find the pastors of his 60 missions and drew a blank, since they are scattered across the nation.

McKeever said he has been overjoyed at the outpouring of support for Katrina’s victims, especially from religious groups nationwide. He is convinced that most of the help and the more than $500 million in charity donations are coming from people who acted for religious motivations. He can’t prove that, but he believes it.

More volunteers from a wide variety of churches and other faith groups are poised to rush into New Orleans once they get an all-clear signal to do so. Early this week, Southern Baptist Convention leaders reported that their volunteers had already served about 2 million meals along the ravaged Gulf Coast.

When all is said and done, McKeever believes that New Orleans will be flooded again — this time with compassion. Many of the walls that have long divided church people in the region were, quite literally, ripped down, he said.

This would be remarkable since Southerners have highly mixed feelings about the Big Easy. They consider it a strange, glorious, corrupt and soulful city, a place where demons dance right out in the open and more than a few of the saints, when they do come marching in, are drunk. As former New York Times editor Howell Raines said recently, in highest praise, New Orleans is the “one Southern place where the Bible Belt came unbuckled.”

McKeever has seen that side of the city. As a seminarian, he volunteered for street-preaching duty in the French Quarter. But he said he has decided that there is more to the Crescent City than revelry, voodoo, alcohol and temptation. There are the believers in a wide variety of pews who have found their place in its unique cultural gumbo.

“Someone told me before we moved here that to be a true Christian in New Orleans was different from the Bible Belt,” he said. “They said that sin was so black here that believers shine like diamonds against a jeweler’s black velvet. I’ve frequently thought the Christianity I’ve seen here, far from being the weak kind outsiders expect in such a city, is actually of a purer variety for this very reason.”

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But an evil leader entered the castle and things went amiss. Mighty were his deeds, though he was small in stature. Then a throng of angry Southern Baptists appeared at the gates waving Bibles. Some even began to have second thoughts about paying the mini-mogul to help them raise their children.

In time the evil one fell, although people inside the gates insisted that all was well. And so it came to pass that the kingdom remained profitable, although its image was tarnished.

That’s the Rev. Richard Land’s story, more or less, and he’s sticking to it.

The Hollywood establishment says the Southern Baptist Convention’s eight-year boycott of the Walt Disney Co. did little or no financial damage to the media superpower. Thus, the recent vote to end the boycott was of little consequence.

Disney never repented. Investors yawned. The end.

But the president of the convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has responded to this stark verdict with a question: Does Disney enjoy the same public trust it did eight years ago? He believes the answer is “no.”

“There are lots of entertainment companies and I think they’re all pretty much the same,” said Land, who has both a soft Southern drawl and a doctorate from Oxford University. “But for most of our people, Disney used to be different. Disney was supposed to be a cut above the others. We expected better from Disney.

“Today, Disney is the same as everybody else. I think that most of our families now treat Disney no differently than they do other companies out in Hollywood. The boycott helped knock Disney down a notch.”

The June 22 resolution claimed that the boycott “communicated effectively our displeasure concerning products and policies that violate moral righteousness and traditional family values.” In the future, it said, Southern Baptists must “practice continued discernment regarding all entertainment products from all sources.”

Boycott organizers concede that Disney continues to extend employee benefits to homosexual couples and holds “gay day” festivities in its theme parks. However, they say Disney has made subtle efforts to be more gracious to religious believers, such as cutting its ties to Miramax. It also helps that, in December, Disney is teaming with Walden Media to offer a movie version of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis, one of the most beloved works of Christian fiction ever written.

“We still have concerns about Disney,” stressed Land. “But Disney has done its share of listening. … Still, I don’t think there was any way that the boycott would have ended without the departure of the princeling of darkness.”

That is Land’s nickname for Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

Eisner’s dramatic exit — after a no-confidence vote by disgruntled shareholders — was a crucial moment. According to Land, the infighting that haunted the final Eisner years even inspired after-hours calls to Southern Baptist headquarters in Nashville. At Disney, executives have offered no public reaction on the end of the boycott.

“I have had enough off-the-record talks with some important people at Disney to know that they thought the boycott was biting them in some places that hurt,” said Land. “But these people inside Disney also convinced me that the cancer in the body was Eisner and that, once he was gone, we would see more signs of improvement.”

But for Southern Baptist leaders, said Land, the critical question is not whether the boycott affected Disney, but whether it affected life inside Christian homes. There is evidence — he cited sobering prime-time ratings and box-office statistics — that millions of Americans are having second thoughts about the media they consume.

The bottom line is that American families have more media options, from TiVo to Podcasting, from home theaters to interactive video games. The question, said Land, is whether they will make wise choices.

Satellites and fiber-optic cables can carry filth as well as faith.

“If Jesus is the Lord of our lives then he is supposed to be the Lord of our entertainment lives, as well. It’s easy to forget that,” said Land. “But that’s what I hope Southern Baptists took away from the boycott. That’s what this was about.”

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“That’s all he had,” said Solomon, a philosopher who leads the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture. “We went out and he bought his first pair of lace-up shoes. … That’s what Baylor was about, back then. Baylor was supposed to take Baptist kids from small-town Texas churches, knock the dust off them and hit them with the Enlightenment. You know, civilize them.”

Texas has changed. But anyone digging beneath the headlines about the Waco wars over faith and learning will find that the past has power. The old assumption was that students arrived rooted into a brand of faith that was rich and rigid. Thus, Solomon said most of his professors set out to “shake everybody up” and teach students a more complex, progressive set of beliefs than what they learned at home and church.

Baylor life was baptized in faith, symbolized by chimes that played hymns as students — like me, during the 1970s — walked to chapel.

But in the classrooms, most professors assumed that piety was a good thing, but had little to do with the wisdom in secular textbooks, said Solomon, who has stayed active in debates at his alma mater. Thus, the world’s largest Southern Baptist school was a “university with a Christian atmosphere,” but not a “Christian university” that blended ancient faith and modern learning.

This worked for decades, until reports about sex, drugs and nihilism pushed millions of parents to hunt for distinctively Christian campuses. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, enrollment in the 105 members of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities — an organization in which I teach journalism — soared 60 percent between 1990 and 2002, while numbers at public and secular private schools edged up or stayed level.

Recently, Baylor has steered toward “Christian university” status, led by its regents and an academic team headed by a brash president named Robert Sloan.

The result was Baylor 2012, a controversial plan calling for a larger endowment, a 36 percent tuition hike, more scholarships, 230 new faculty positions and a wave of construction, most noticeably a $103 million science building. Sloan’s team also began asking prospective professors — Protestants, Catholics and Jews alike — to explain how faith affected their teaching and research. This was a direct challenge to the “Christian atmosphere” tradition, with its separate zones for faith and learning.

Sloan fought for a decade, before the Jan. 21 news that he will step down to become chancellor. Baylor’s civil war had become national news, especially when combined with a tragic basketball scandal.

While Sloan made painful mistakes, Baylor 2012 provoked a public statement of support from an ecumenical coalition of Christian educators — including Solomon — from Notre Dame, Yale, Harvard, Duke, the University of Chicago and elsewhere.

“Baylor has charted a bold course,” it said. “It has strengthened the mission entrusted to it by its founders, preserving its Baptist heritage while making it intellectually relevant. … In matters of faculty hiring and curricular innovation Baylor has assumed a leadership role among the remaining Christian colleges and universities.”

News reports have often linked the Baylor controversy to decades of conflict between Southern Baptist “moderates” and “fundamentalists.” But what Sloan and the regents say they want is a “big tent Christian orthodoxy” that transcends Baptist politics, according to Robert Benne of Roanoke College.

These are fighting words to many Baylor loyalists.

“Above all, traditional Baptists disagree with Sloan’s contention that Christianity has intellectual content,” argued Benne, writing in the Christian Century. “In the view of Baylor’s new leaders, faith is more than atmospheric. There is a deposit of Christian belief that all Christians should hold to. On the basis of that belief they should engage the secular claims of the various academic disciplines.”

This attempt to wed soul and intellect encouraged, or infuriated, many educators in postmodern America, said Solomon.

“We can no longer assume that our students know much at all about the faith once delivered to the saints,” he said. “It’s a new world, even for church kids. The days of bringing boys in off the farm are gone.”

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An acidic take on a Christian high school, “Saved!” was crafted to make evangelicals punch their boycott buttons. It featured clean queen Mandy Moore as a Bible-throwing harpy from Hades. Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin played a hip cynic in a wheelchair who shared cigarettes and sex with the school’s lone Jewess. Its all-tolerant God offered a flexible moral code.

MGM promoted the film directly to believers who were sure to hate it.

“It seemed like they did everything they could to get a boycott,” said Walt Mueller, head of the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding in Elizabethtown, Pa. “They wanted a boycott. They needed a boycott. I am sure they were stunned when they didn’t get one.”

The film cost $5 million to produce and grossed only $8.8 million, after a quiet sojourn in selected theaters. The bottom line: “Saved!” was an intriguing test case for those pondering the impact of media boycotts. Looking ahead, will Southern Baptist executives balk at saying the words “Disney,” “boycott” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” in the same sentence?

The crucial word-of-mouth buzz never arrived for “Saved!”, perhaps because the conservatives the film set out to bash often turned the other cheek and declined to provide millions of dollars in free publicity.

It helped that the film took so many pot shots that it even offended some secular scribes.

Michael O’Sullivan of the Washington Post said the best adjective for “Saved!” was “condescending” and that it was as “preachy as its finger-wagging victims.” Glenn Whipp of the Los Angles Daily News said the movie’s creators wanted audiences to “know that it’s important to practice tolerance of others — unless, of course, those others are Christians.”

Still, The Los Angeles Times did its part to help the studio by seeking condemnation from the usual snarky suspects — Catholic League President William Donahue, op-ed columnist Cal Thomas, Christian Film and Television Commission czar Ted Baehr and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Apparently Pat Robertson was busy that day.

But no one uttered the b-word — boycott. “Saved!” didn’t even create a buzz at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention.

“I vaguely remember hearing of that movie, but that’s about it,” said Dwayne Hastings of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission media office. “I didn’t get a single call about it, or a single email. It simply did not make a blip on the Southern Baptist radar.”

This is interesting, since Hollywood remains a hot issue for Southern Baptists and other moral conservatives. Years after the national headlines, the 1997 Southern Baptist vote to boycott the Walt Disney Co. remains in effect. The convention cited a wave of “anti-Christian” media products, Disney policies granting benefits to partners of gay employees and “Gay Day” events at theme parks that angered many families and church groups.

There is no sign that the Southern Baptist leadership is re-thinking this stance. This summer, the Rev. Wiley Drake of First Baptist in Buena Vista, Calif., a strong Disney critic, floated a convention resolution commending the studio for producing the patriotic movie “America’s Heart and Soul.” His motion was ruled out of order.

“I want a specific action commending them for what they are doing,” said Drake.

Hastings said it’s hard to image the convention retreating and ending the boycott. It’s just as hard to imagine Disney apologizing to Southern Baptists. Nevertheless, an upcoming series of films based on the fantasy fiction of the best known Christian writer of the 20th Century would certainly raise questions. What if Mel Gibson provided the voice of Aslan, the Christ-figure lion?

“It’s possible that there could be a resolution praising Disney for doing Narnia. Of course, this assumes that they offer some kind of accurate rendering of the Christian vision and beliefs of C.S. Lewis,” said Hastings.

“But the whole point of the boycott is for people to stop and think about their choices. I’m sure that millions of Baptists went to see ‘Finding Nemo’ and they watch ESPN like everybody else. But they are thinking twice about giving Disney their money and support. People are learning to be more selective.”

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