Some religion-beat jobs have been killed, while others have been downsized, out-sourced, frozen or chopped up and given to reluctant general-assignment reporters.

Gentle readers, please rise for a moment of silence.

The Orlando Sentinel. The Dallas Morning News. Time. The Chicago Sun-Times. The Rocky Mountain News. U.S. News & World Report. The list goes on, especially if you include smaller newsrooms that have always struggled to support Godbeat jobs.

At least 16 major news outlets abandoned or reduced commitment to religion news as a specialty beat in recent years, according to the Religion Newswriters Association. Two of those empty desks — at the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe — were recently filled.

“In the 1990s and early 2000s, the largest papers often had multiple religion reporters. That has disappeared, for sure. That is where the biggest cut for religion has occurred,” said RNA director Debra Mason, who teaches at the University of Missouri.

“We suffer in the meantime, and one possible casualty is all our experienced, better writers. I do worry that the next generation of religion writers don’t have any mentors or internships, etc., to gain experience.”

Mason stressed that the religion beat is not being singled out. Sweeping changes in the industry, coupled with hard economic times, have been especially destructive in big-city newspapers that once had the resources to fund a variety of specialty beats — from the arts to fashion, from science to religion. Also, high profits in the 1980s and into the ’90s had inflated some newsroom staffs.

At the same time, Mason said she sees another trend. New forms of religion news and opinion can be found in a variety of settings online, including sites such as Politics Daily, The Huffington Post, Creedible.com, Read the Spirit, Immanent Frame, Religion Dispatches and the powerful Catholic weblog, Whispers in the Loggia. CNN leaders recently announced the creation of several specialty news sites, including a religion weblog. Beliefnet.com continues to evolve.

Dedicated readers have never had greater access to the work of journalists and public-relations professionals employed by major denominations and religious groups of all kind — from Baptist Press to the Episcopal News Service and everyone in between. Alternative news sources have sprung up in cyberspace, such as the Stand Firm network for Anglican conservatives, The Wild Hunt for modern pagans, Orthodox Christians for Accountability and flocks of Baptist blogs — from BaptistLife.com to SBCvoices.com — representing establishment and independent writers.

The harsh reality today, according to Rocco Palmo, the man behind Whispers in the Loggia, is that all too often readers who care about religion face tough choices. Will they place their trust in traditional news reports that are, these days, often written by journalists who have little training to prepare them for the rigors of the religion beat or the opinion-based work of experienced insiders and scholars who may have ideological axes to grind?

“There are fabulous religion reporters who are still out there grinding away in the mainstream media, but they are an endangered species for sure,” said Palmo. “I still think that basic, hard-news reporting is the gold standard and we need more of it. … But most of what you see when you go online is commentary and criticism. You don’t see that much original reporting being done. …

“If anything, people like me are just trying to step in and fill the void.”

Someone will have to do that because, year after year, religion keeps playing a vital role in shaping many of the world’s biggest stories, from the streets of Iran to voting booths in America, from scandals shaking Catholic sanctuaries to mysteries unfolding in genetics research laboratories.

It’s impossible to tell these complex stories accurately without grasping the role that faith plays in the lives of millions and millions of people around the world.

“Religion stories are the most exquisite stories to tell,” stressed Mason. “I believe that we’ll figure out how to effectively and efficiently tell stories about faith and values once this media transition is sorted out. The question is not whether or not we’ll have religion news, but whether or not there will be anyone left who knows how to cover it.”

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“She was preeminently pro-life, against abortion and there to protect and underscore the dignity of every person,” noted O’Malley, praising the founder of the Special Olympics.

When Sen. Edward Kennedy died soon after that, the cardinal strongly defended his own decision to preside at his funeral — despite the senator’s public stands against church church’s teachings on abortion and sexuality.

“We must show those who do not share our belief about life that we care about them,” O’Malley argued. “We will stop the practice of abortion by changing the law, and we will be successful in changing the law if we change people’s hearts. We will not change hearts by turning away from people in their time of need and when they are experiencing grief and loss.”

The cardinal didn’t deliver these highly personal messages from the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. Instead, he posted them on “Cardinal Sean’s Blog” at BostonCatholic.org — his own multimedia journal.

O’Malley isn’t alone. A few other bishops and priests have made the jump into cyberspace. However, there will be many more bloggers wearing Roman collars if Pope Benedict XVI has his way. In a message addressed straight to priests — bypassing the offices of many cautious bishops — the pope has urged them to start spreading and defending the faith online.

“The world of digital communication, with its almost limitless expressive capacity, makes us appreciate all the more Saint Paul’s exclamation: ‘Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel,’ ” said the pope, in a message released on Jan. 24, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of journalists.

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich ‘menu of options’ might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled,” argued Benedict, whose online presence has risen with the birth of Pope2You.net and the Vatican YouTube channel.

“Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different ‘voices’ provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

For tech-savvy Catholics, it’s stunning news that the 82-year-old Benedict used the word “blog” in the first place, noted Rocco Palmo, the Philadelphia-based scribe whose “Whispers in the Loggia” weblog is a global hot spot for Vatican news and gossip. The tone of this papal message, he added, is relentlessly positive — a striking departure from the Vatican’s many downbeat messages about media in the past.

The bottom line, noted Palmo, via email, is that “against the backdrop of the widespread American experience of mass closings of parishes, declines in attendance, etc., we’re learning that one thing that helps folks want to keep staying close is when … the church realizes that one hour on Sunday just isn’t enough, that people are looking for something to help keep them connected and inspired through the week. So I think Benedict is calling priests to see that they have a crucial role in that, and to see this not as some sort of hobby or personal indulgence, but a vitally important extension of their ministry. Anything that bears fruit to that end lifts all boats.”

Catholic leaders will, however, need to be careful when working in this chaotic, even deceptive, online world.

After all, some early reports about Benedict’s message about digital media mentioned that Vatican officials marked the occasion by opening an official Twitter feed — @vatican_va — complete with the Vatican coat of arms.

It was a fake. Catholic News Service soon established that the Vatican has not taken up tweeting — yet.

“The whole episode has prompted some Vatican media people to remark, ‘It wasn’t us — but it should have been us,’ ” noted John Thavis, the CNS bureau chief in Rome. “So don’t be surprised to see a real Vatican Twitter feed in the future.”

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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.”

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This is especially true when it comes to Anglican battles. Here is her take on the challenge facing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams after U.S. Episcopalians elected Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori as Anglicanism’s first female archbishop and then refused to retreat on homosexual issues.

Will the Anglican Communion shatter, with Third World conservatives pitted against modernists in Europe and America?

“All is not lost,” wrote Gledhill, just before the end of the American church’s 75th General Convention. “A kind of schism might result, but it will not be schism as generally known. Anglicans are great at fudging crises, especially liberal ones. … All Rowan Williams has to do is apply his formidable intellect to the question of how both sides can be kept at the same communion table, albeit at opposite ends.”

Gledhill has a right to her opinions, of course.

But she isn’t just another Anglican with a “weblog,” one of dozens of “bloggers” who flooded the Internet with news, rumors and opinions during the tumultuous events this week in Columbus, Ohio.

Gledhill is the religion correspondent for The Times of London. Thus, she writes waves of regular newspaper stories, as well as columns that mix traditional reporting with her own analysis. And now, blessed by her editors, she writes thousands of words each week at her “blog” — ranging from coverage of theological issues that may be too complex for the regular news pages to personal observations about her own parish and her own faith. She isn’t alone. The Times offers dozens of blogs by reporters covering everything from politics to fashion footwear, from movies to gay family life.

Many editors want their reporters to blog and many others do not. What happens when journalists who are supposed to write unbiased stories about hot issues start airing opinions online that tell readers what they really think? When is a reporter a reporter and when is a reporter a blogger?

This can lead to confusion. A Church Times columnist recently challenged Gledhill’s decision to refer to the Bishop of Chelmsford as an “extreme liberal,” calling it a sign of bias.

“This is a difference of opinion,” wrote Father Giles Fraser, who teaches philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford. “But Ms. Gledhill presents it as if she were seeking a degree of objectivity rather than admitting that she is a campaigner herself. … It isn’t that journalists such as Ruth Gledhill ought to keep their views under wraps. That’s why her weblog is so welcome: it is only when we know where people are coming from that we can learn to play their spin. In order to be empowered as a reader or listener, I want to know more about what journalists believe, not less.”

Actually, said Gledhill, she used the “extreme liberal” label because of the bishop’s role as a patron for Changing Attitude, an important lobby for “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender” causes in the church.

When she first started blogging, said Gledhill, it was tempting to dig deep into her personal beliefs and experiences in an attempt to reach out to readers and to offer a form of writing that was completely different from her regular reporting. But it didn’t take long to realize that “this seam was going to run out pretty quick,” she said. She has also learned to pay close attention to the feedback she receives from readers, who can respond directly to her online posts.

After nearly two decades on the religion beat, Gledhill said she welcomes a chance to put more and more news and information on the record in The Times of London, even if it is published in pixels rather than ink.

“I?m never bored by the subject of religion, it was a little restrictive just writing news all the time,” she said. “There were things I so much wanted to say and there was nowhere to say them. I feel completely re-energized by blogging and am slightly addicted to it. I believe, and hope this is a true belief, that it is making me a better reporter because it is making me more accountable, making me think more deeply about what I am reporting and is also, in a strange way, making me more involved, more compassionate.”

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He knows the laws and lingo. Along with his BetaChurch.org colleagues, Merwin believes the World Wide Web can bring people together and spread new ideas. But when it comes to analyzing the impact of the new “information technology” (natives say “IT”) on many churches, he has some doubts.

“Lots of people are jumping into online ministry because they see that everybody else is doing it,” he said, during the 2005 convention of the Gospel Communications Network, a digital coalition of 300-plus ministries.

“That isn’t a very good reason. People need to stop and ask if they have the time and the talent and the energy and the resources to get into all of this. I’ve seen churches pour thousands of dollars into IT projects and then, when they crash and burn, it turns out that nobody was sure what they wanted to do in the first place.”

If this lament sounds familiar, it should. Not that long ago, flocks of businesses and investors lost their analog shirts while riding the cyber waves that rolled across the nation. Prophets of the new order berated doubters who failed to “get it.”

Everyone yearned for the next “Big Thing,” said Mike Atkinson, president of uneekNet.com. The whole economy was going to change. Stores would be swallowed by online start-ups. Newspapers would vanish as “push” technology zapped personalized news — for free — directly to computer screens. Everyone wanted to build “portals” rich with “stickiness” and registered millions of “hits.”

Many religious groups tried to copy the trends, building online sites that resembled grain silos full of information that, when users dug deeper, turned out to be tweaked content from traditional publications. The goal was to draw people into your silo and keep them there, while making sure that the contents of your silo didn’t leak out into anybody else’s silo. Sharing spiritual customers with others would be bad for business.

It was exciting. But ministers had to learn to be careful out there.

“The key is that all of this is about me — me, me, me. It’s about finding what works for me and then giving me what I want,” said Atkinson, who is best known for his work with the Youth Specialties ministry. “That’s the reality of the thing. That’s what the Web is about. … This feeds right into a consumer culture. It forces us to make instantaneous choices, whether they are the right choices or not.”

Millions of people are surfing in cyberspace, looking for connections that will help them find answers, he said. But they are doing this in a marketplace that emphasizes the total freedom of the individual. Online commitments are as binding as the click of a mouse. People are looking for community, but on their own terms.

Atkinson doesn’t think religious leaders should panic. He hopes that they study new forms of digital communication — from Google to Craigslist, from MySpace to Wikipedia — that are built on people sharing information instead of hoarding it. It’s time for more ministries to cooperate, rather than compete, with each other.

“We also have to know that all of this can shape how people think,” he said. “It’s a buyer’s market and people want what they want. … You can end up with people online shopping around and then saying, ‘Hey, that megachurch has this or that neat program and I want it. Let’s move over there.’ And off they go.”

Eventually, this consumer mentality can soak down into the messages that ministries deliver, said Merwin.

The hot word is “postmodernism,” but for many ministries the temptation is older and more fundamental than that. The bottom line is that it’s hard not to give people want they want, to tell customers what they want to hear.

“It’s that attitude that says, ‘You have your thing and I have my thing and that’s OK because it doesn’t really matter what you believe anyway,’ ” he said. “You stay with that and you have to end up with radical individualism and isolationism. You have people leaving one hip church to go to another hip church that does some hip things better than the first one. Where does it end?”

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That made sense, the experts told Beliefnet.com CEO Steven Waldman. The economy was on fire and this new wealth caused many people to ask big questions. Times were good, yet they felt empty. They went shopping for answers.

Then the nation plunged into recession, while signs of interest in spiritual matters kept increasing. That made sense, said the experts. People were struggling and, thus, they turned to faith for comfort and insights. This trend intensified after 9/11, even if the impact didn’t last in traditional pews.

So what’s the bottom line? Faith is not a niche-market trend.

It’s true that the look and feel of “mainstream” American religion is changing, in part due to people searching on the World Wide Web. “Organized religion” may be in a recession, but the rest of the “spirituality” numbers continue to add up, up, up.

“Wall Street considers a trend that lasts 10 years to be significant. This one has lasted 10 millennia,” argues Waldman, in a research paper he calls “The Faithful Consumer & The Spiritual Marketplace.” He recently cranked out a 13th draft, trying to keep up with the latest data.

“While philosophers have studied the faithful soul and politicians have courted the faithful voter, the marketing and business communities have so far ignored The Faithful Consumer. This is a big mistake.”

In the wake of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” — with its $600-million-plus payday — there has been increased research into the size of the “Christian marketplace” for goods and entertainment. Waldman is, of course, interested in these numbers because the vast majority of Americans tell pollsters that, to one degree or another, they consider themselves Christians.

What is harder to document is the broader spiritual market. The sprawling Beliefnet.com website — with 4.5 million subscribers to its digital newsletters — is thoroughly interfaith, with cyber-homes for everyone from evangelicals to pagans, from Orthodox Jews to feminist Mormons, from smells-and-bells Catholics to progressive Muslims. I should mention that I am the editor of the GetReligion.org site that is linked to the Beliefnet.com through its “Blog Heaven” forum.

It’s relatively easy to document what is happening in bookstores, radio networks, CD sales, cable television and magazines. What is harder, said Waldman, is to factor in the economic clout of spiritual consumers in areas such as education, health care, charity and even the travel industry.

However, he has arrived at what he considers a very conservative estimate of total spending in the “spirituality sector” of the economy — $225 billion a year.

People of faith are not part of a strange trend far from the mainstream, he said. They are the mainstream. What Waldman calls the “Faithful Consumer” is the normal consumer, part of a demographic group that is larger than the sectors called “women,” “Baby Boomers,” “singles,” “teens” or any of the usual ethnic groups.

Some marketing professionals seem afraid to talk about these numbers, in part because religion is often controversial and this demographic is so hard to pin down. Are “Faithful Consumers” people who believe in God or the gods? Are they united by their broader spiritual concerns or divided by their narrow, specific dogmas? Are they prickly true believers or blowing-with-the-wind seekers?

These days, the safe answer is “all of the above.” Americans love to shop.

So far, 18 million consumers have bought “The DaVinci Code” by Dan Brown, with its head-spinning blend of historical speculation, Gnostic legend, goddess worship and anti-Vatican polemics. Another 20 million-plus have embraced the up-beat, easy-going sermonettes of evangelical superstar Rick Warren.

It’s safe to say that some people bought both. This is America.

“There are people out there who do things like that, even though that confounds all of our stereotypes,” said Waldman. “We may not be able to understand some of the spiritual choices that people make. But you know what we can say? We can say that they cared enough about matters of the soul to buy these books and read them. …

“People are out there searching and if all we did was wake up the business world to that reality, we would have accomplished something.”

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Using the lingo of his discipline, the sociologist referred to the typical wired worshippers as “religion-less Christians.” They yearn for “spirituality,” but believe they can do the faith thing on their own, without an institutional church.

Campolo also assumed they spend lots of time wielding a mouse.

So be it.

“In evangelism, you have to meet people where they are before you try to take them where they need to go,” he said. “The reality today is that lots of people spend a good part of their lives plugged into computer screens. If that’s where they are, that’s where we have to go meet them.”

This is the theory behind outreach work being done in “virtual churches” such as www.ChurchofFools.com, which is partly sponsored by the Methodist Church of Great Britain. Some sites offer basic chat rooms, while others use interactive graphics, audio and video.

But there are questions. How do people show repentance and commitment in a medium in which users can switch spiritual paths with a click of a mouse? Is online worship possible?

These questions, and more, were asked in Oxford as the Church of England created its first online congregation at www.i-church.org. It is open to anyone, regardless of “faith position,” politics, sexual orientation, geographical location or membership elsewhere.

“I remember being taken to one side, early on in the research for i-church, and being told that not only would it not work, but that no one would want to join an online church, and that any kind of Christian community that was not a sacramental community was a deficient community,” said the Rev. Richard Thomas, in the dedication sermon.

“It depends on how you define sacraments. My own definition suggests that sacraments are those things that make God, or his grace, ‘visible.’ To that end, we have at the last count around 700 applications for membership. … These people are willing to commit to Christian discipleship, and to support others on the journey. If that is not sacramental, I don’t know what is.”

Cyberspace includes millions of seekers and believers. The “Faith Online” project conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life project found that 64 percent of online Americans — representing 82 million people — have used the Internet for faith-related reasons. They read religion news, download religious music, explore strange books, forward inspirational messages, share prayer requests and find alternative sanctuaries.

Most practice a specific faith, but many do not. While 54 percent of the online faithful are “religious and spiritual,” 33 percent describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Some use the anonymity of cyberspace as a safe place to research new ways of living and worshipping.

Once in this global marketplace, these seekers are almost sure to find like-minded people who are “asking the same questions, searching for the same kind of experiences or even suffering a similar sense of pain or loss,” said Stewart Hoover of the University of Colorado, the study’s lead author. It’s natural for these people to form groups online, based on their needs and interests. The Internet is all about options.

“But for most of these people, I really don’t see this replacing what they already have in terms of their faith,” he said. “It’s more like a value-added situation. The religion they find on the Web needs to add on to what they are already experiencing somewhere else, with a real group of believers in a real community.”

And there is one more question that lurks in the background, especially for those who fund these experimental sites. How can they measure the success of a “virtual” church?

“We know that encounters are taking place that are changing lives,” said Stephen Goddard, co-creator of the Church of Fools. “Is that success? We know there have been some amazing intellectual conversations about the faith that have been going on down in the church crypt for weeks. Is that a success?

“We know that some people say that they are coming back into Christian fold because of this. They are more open to the faith, because of what we’ve done. Is that a success?”

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As he ended one recent oration, the sociologist, urban activist and evangelical gadfly fell to his knees, hands raised to heaven.

“I believe Americans must heed this call and turn away from our wicked ways,” said Campolo, who made headlines counseling President Bill Clinton. “We need to turn away from sexual promiscuity, turn away from the consumeristic materialism, turn away from our failure to pay attention to what we have done collectively to poor and weak peoples around the world. …

“Then, let our prayer be that God will hear from heaven, forgive our sins and heal our land.”

Many of the faithful said “amen,” lifted their hands or made the sign of the cross.

Then Campolo froze for a moment, as an hourglass icon hovered in the Romanesque arches of the Church of Fools, the world’s first 3D, interactive, virtual church.

This kind of thing happens when traffic jams the Internet.

The computer-generated “avatar” looked like Campolo and he was delivering a Campolo sermon entitled “Why Many People in the World Hate America.” But Campolo was not controlling his own computer image, since the site’s webmasters were not sure he could master the technology needed to preach online — line by line, gesture by gesture.

Actually, Campolo was at a clergy conference in St. Simons Island, Ga. But he stayed on the telephone with his Philadelphia office staff, which communicated with the Church of Fools in Liverpool, England, through an online instant-messaging program, while one of site’s creators controlled the “pixilated preacher.” The question-and-answer session was especially tricky.

“I wanted Tony to be animated, because that’s the way he is — live,” said Stephen Goddard. “I have known him for years and I know his gestures and style. I was sure I could get our Tony to preach like the real Tony.”

The experimental site — www.ChurchofFools.com — opened its doors on May 11, with help from the Methodist Church of Great Britain and others. The pilot project ends this weekend (Aug. and the future is uncertain. Goddard said he is confident they can keep the doors open — but not as often. The Church of England is also poised to open a digital church of some kind.

So far, volunteers have donated the time and expertise needed to create and run Church of Fools, with most of its $30,000 budget being used to purchase the bandwidth needed for interactive services. Goddard said the goal is to raise $300,000 to cover the next three years and to expand — hopefully including churches in America, China and elsewhere.

It is hard to picture what happens in a “virtual church” without images on a screen. At any one time, 35 worshippers can sign in and create characters that stand, sit or kneel. They can whisper or talk to nearby worshippers, slip into the church crypt for discussions or linger at icons in prayer. Another 1,500 can take part as silent ghosts. Campolo packed the pews.

Participants sang along as the organ played through their speakers, typing phrases from the hymns that seemed meaningful. During the July 28th service, one warden led the global flock in prayer, giving thanks for computers, satellites, bloggers, online friendships and their virtual church.

“Help us to use our networks to do good things,” she said, “to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with you, our God, and to be good neighbors online and off.”

One thing visitors cannot do is jump the virtual altar rail. Early on, an avatar called “Satan” stormed the pulpit and cursed the Anglican bishop of London. That wasn’t cricket. Wardens now have the power to smite the rowdy.

“It only took a day or two to discover that there are lots of people who could not resist the chance to scream ‘wanker!’ in a church sanctuary,” said Goddard. “Actually, all that cursing was a good sign. It told us that we didn’t have the usual holy club in the pews. This wasn’t going to be just another safe Christian crowd.”

NEXT WEEK: Is an online church a “real” church?

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The business card is deposited anonymously with the loose bills and change at the offertory. It states: “You have been visited by the Mystery Worshipper.” This means a detailed review of their church will soon be posted for all the world to see at the humor site www.Ship-of-Fools.com.

Were the pews comfortable? Was the service “stiff-upper-lip, happy-clappy, or what?” How was the preaching, on a scale of 10? Was the coffee good? Did any part of the service offer a glimpse of heaven? How about a whiff of “the other place?”

Mystery Worshippers have, during the past six years, slipped unannounced into 750 pews in England, North America and, occasionally, more exotic locales.

On the pop side of the aisle, one critic in Ohio survived a Christianized version of the racy Ricky Martin hit “Livin’ La Vida Loca” — at Easter. Video clips from “The Matrix” spiced up the service.

Meanwhile, the incense swingers at St. John Chrysostom in Manchester, England, received top marks: “The thurifer was superb and was of the standard that made even the most complex of swings and twirls look smooth and effortless. … I have to say that more perfume and less fog would be my personal taste.” Ah, but the wine was thin.

Ship of Fools has corned the market on truth-is-stranger-than-fiction ecclesiastical silliness — from “Signs and Blunders” to the “Fruitcake Zone.”

Recent offerings in the “Gadgets for God” pages — real items sold elsewhere — included boxer shorts covered with crosses, but with the fly sewn shut. Other links yielded bobble-head dolls of the Blessed Virgin Mary and flashing cell-phone crucifix covers. In one “church organists behaving badly” report, a Scottish musician was caught playing “Send in the Clowns” as the elders processed. A Brooklyn organist snuck a few bars of “Roll Out the Barrel” into the funeral of a popular pub patron.

But the long-running “Mystery Worshipper” feature is a clue that the site has a serious side, said editor Simon Jenkins. The goal is to reach out to “people on the fringes” who are either fleeing the church or just starting the process of investigating the faith. Almost everyone knows what it is like to be a stranger in a pew.

“There is no shortage of Mystery Worshippers,” Jenkins said, during a U.S. speaking tour that included a stop last week at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Charlotte, N.C.

“I think one reason so many people volunteer to do this is that everyone can identify with the whole process of visiting a new church. Church shopping is such a pain and it kind of helps to laugh. We know what people are going through.”

For many Mystery Worshippers the most challenging part of the review process is its requirement that they test the degree to which each church welcomes strangers. The instructions are clear. At the end of the service, they are asked to stand alone in the back of the church for five minutes — looking sad and lonely. The goal is to count the number of people who approach them to chat.

Nearly 50 percent of the time, the answer is “zero.”

“Clergy dread this part of our reports,” said Jenkins. “It is sad to have to see the church like that. But it can be good, too. … Like it or not, this is a chance to see what their churches really look like to those who are on the outside.”

Year after year, the “friendliness factor” is the bad news. The good news, said co-editor Steve Goddard, is that the online form’s request for “heavenly moments” in worship almost always leads to results.

This is not a matter of old churches vs. new, or big vs. small.

“I think the good news is that there are genuinely spine-tingling moments of spirituality happening in pews out there,” said Goddard. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a smells-and-bells church or a rock-the-flock church. We get reports from people who find a sense of worship in all kinds of places.

“What matters is genuine reverence and a sense that people are truly seeking the presence of God. That’s what the Mystery Worshippers are looking for.”

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But Andrew Sullivan knew where to find comfort after the Vatican’s recent reminder that gay unions are in no way “similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family.” He poured out his frustration at www.andrewsullivan.com and his online community responded.

“Times are terrible,” wrote a Catholic priest. “The church says gay people are not permitted to get married, ordained or adopt children. All prohibitions. Not one statement of moral guidance or recognition. Negation only. I don’t know what to say or think myself. …

“I take refuge in conscience (which the tradition treats with utmost respect) and in my belief that the church is larger and older and wiser than one segment, no matter how powerful and officially sanctioned its self-defined role. The church cannot be contained or proscribed as the narrow experience of what the magisterium teaches. It is all of us.”

Sullivan shared that anonymous epistle with the 400,000 or so readers who visit his “weblog” each month. There are between 1.5 and 3 million “blogs” and the former New Republic editor is known as a trailblazer in this ever-expanding “blogosphere.”

Blogs are helping shape mainstream news, as the ousted editors of the New York Times now know. But blogs are also touching untold numbers of private lives. This is especially true in the realm of religion, where public policy and private piety are mixing in new ways.

Headlines seem distant in the daily press. They are personal in the blogs. One day it’s Catholic doctrine and its impact on legislators and judges. The next day it’s the Episcopal Church and the consecration of its first openly gay bishop.

Sullivan is used to slinging ink in this marketplace. But this week he used his blog to say that events are pushing him toward a “pretty major life-decision.”

“It tears me apart to see no prospect of the Catholic Church ending its war on gay people and their dignity in my lifetime,” he wrote. “I think it’s getting worse; and the next pope from the developing world could make the current one seem humane. Leaving the sacraments would be a huge blow to the soul; but the pope just called the love I have for my boyfriend ‘evil.’ “

Sullivan posted painful letters from gay Catholics who said the Vatican had pushed them over the line. One pondered cutting off “my membership and support of the Roman Catholic Church” and moving on to “what in my upbringing would be called ‘the next best thing’: the Episcopal Church.”

But the “blogosphere” has other sanctuaries. Father Paul Mankowski of the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome called Sullivan and his acolytes “conditional” Catholics who yearn for a different church.

“They persist in their membership, but with the understanding that the Church will be a different Church in the future,” he said, in the blog at Catholic World News (www.cwnews.com). “And if the Church will reverse her teaching in future, the Church must be wrong now. And if a man believes the Church is wrong now, he can’t possibly mean the same thing I mean when he professes her to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic.”

And Catholic blogger Amy Welborn (www.amywelborn.com) wondered whether Sullivan fears surrendering the familiar rituals of daily Catholic life, even though his beliefs have changed. Yet reason suggests that there “comes a point when an individual who doesn’t believe that faith rests on objective truth comes up hard against the institution that maintains that it does, and at that point, something’s got to give.”

Then again, she said, he may stay. What’s the “marquee value” of being a gay Episcopalian?

Reached by email, Sullivan said he feels tied to Catholicism by baptism, family, the sacraments and a “lifetime of prayer and reflection.” He still goes to Mass. He asked his readers to pray for him and was stunned at the consolation that flowed through these digital ties that bind.

“I don’t think I could belong to any other Church but the one I believe to be the true one,” he said. “I respect completely other faiths and denominations; but this one is in my bones and in my soul.”

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