Culture wars in the App Store, part II

At first glance, the original rules written to govern the Apple App Store seem to be simple, logical and easy to enforce. After all, who wants one of the world's most powerful corporations to circulate digital forms of hate? Consider, for example, the guidelines governing "personal attacks" and "objectionable content."

The former rejects, "Any app that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harms way." This does not apply to humorists and satirists, of course. The "objectionable content" rule forbids, "Apps that are primarily designed to upset or disgust users."

The section on "religion, culture, and ethnicity" offers another variation on this theme, stating: "Apps containing references or commentary about a religious, cultural or ethnic group that are defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected."

The problem, of course, is that apps that gladden the hearts of gay mainline Protestants, Reform Jews and other doctrinal liberals will be deeply offensive to Southern Baptists, Orthodox Jews and other conservatives -- and vice versa. And one person's evangelism app may, by its very existence, be seen by those in other faiths as a tool for spiritual violence.

The bottom line: It's hard to produce products built on religious doctrine without offending someone. So do Apple leaders ban all of them or listen only to the religious voices they find the most sympathetic?

In recent years, media leaders have "increasingly bought into the idea of minimizing content that they view as potentially offensive," said Quentin Schultze of Calvin College, a media scholar who has been studying online religion for two decades.

"The larger and more influential the media outlets, the more likely they are to want to take the edges off, because they have the most to lose. ... It's the unique, unusual minority points of view that will keep getting clipped off, of course."

Back in the early 1990s, when Web browsers and email were foreign terms to ordinary Americans, Schultze began exploring the implications of online discourse and publishing for religious believers and their institutions. Soon this led to his trailblazing "The Internet for Christians" website -- a weblog-style project years before that term was coined -- and then a 1995 book with the same title.

The key, Schultze said during those heady days, was that the lower costs and accessibility of World Wide Web publishing would create a "somewhat level playing floor" allowing small, innovative ministries to compete, or cooperate, with larger religious institutions. During times of turmoil, for example, a dissident religious group's online publication could publish information and viewpoints that would be ignored in a major denomination's traditional ink-on-paper newspaper or by secular newspapers.

"Clearly, the Net is becoming a place for religious discourse that is being ignored in public media and isn't being allowed in the sanitized world of official church publications," he told me, in an "On Religion" column interview in 1996.

Decades later, it's hard to imagine what the marketplace of religious ideas and debates with be like without the legions of alternative voices and viewpoints found in the global religious blogosphere and in social media.

The problem, said Schultze, is that if powerful digital corporations -- think Apple, Google and Facebook -- insist on pushing religious voices out of the mainstream public square, the online result will almost certainly be even more strident rhetoric and propaganda on the fringes of public life.

"The wild, wild west of the Internet is still out there, but all too often what's being said out there is very narrow and self-fulfilling. That's where you have websites that just keep telling small groups of people want they want to hear, over and over, with little or no contact with other groups and other points of view," he said.

"But when the leaders of Apple endorse something, or reject something else, they are primarily worried about how that action will affect the reputation of their corporation, not whether their decision promotes a healthy diversity in our public discourse."

In tense atmosphere, he added, religion is a uniquely dangerous subject.

"The passion and the commitment that religious believers bring with them into public discourse is precisely what makes this subject seem so flammable and threatening and dangerous to people in places like Apple."

Baptists rethinking the use of catechisms (plural)?

This joke may be the most famous in all of Baptist humor. While crossing a high bridge, a traveler encounters a distressed man who is poised to jump. The first man asks the second if he is religious and a Christian. The suicidal man answers, "yes," to both. Catholic or Protestant? The jumper says, "Protestant." And, as it turns out, both men are Baptists.

"Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?" The second man, in a classic version of this joke found at the "Ship of Fools" website, replies: "Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed Baptist Church of God?" Second man: "Reformed Baptist Church of God."

"Me too. Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?" Second man: "Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915."

So the first Baptist pushes the second to his death, shouting: "Die, heretic scum!"

The amazing thing is that they didn't even get to fight about biblical inerrancy, the first chapter of Genesis or the precise details of the Second Coming of Christ.

For centuries, Baptists have had their share of arguments about doctrine and church life and they cherish their approach to the "priesthood of all believers" and the authority of every local congregation.

As the old saying goes, put two Baptists on an island and you will soon have the First Baptist Church of the Deserted Island and the Second Baptist Church of the Deserted Island.

Thus, it's interesting that some educators, on the Baptist left and right, now believe that it's time for modern Baptists to use an ancient tool -- the catechism -- in their struggles against rising levels of biblical and doctrinal illiteracy. Catechisms are short documents written in a simple, question-and-answer format to help children and new believers learn the basics of the faith.

"This used to be Sunday school for Baptists and the way that they taught and handed down doctrines from generation to generation," said Thomas Nettles, who teaches historical theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. Catechisms "showed you what you believed, in common with other Christians, but they also told you what you believed, as a Baptist, that was different from other Christians."

For many Baptists today, proposing a Baptist catechism may sound as strange as talking about a Baptist creed or even a Baptist pope. The key, explained Nettles, is that while Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and others can rally around a common catechism that expresses their tradition's authoritative stance on doctrine, Baptists through history have freely chosen different catechisms at the local, congregational level.

For example, while early versions of the Sunday School Board -- back in1863 and 1891 -- published catechisms for Southern Baptists, some churches used them while others did not. The final doctrinal authority remained in local pews and pulpits. Some congregational leaders even wrote their own catechisms.

Tradition says there can be one Catholic catechism. By definition, Baptists have always needed multiple catechisms.

"Still, the reality was that there was more of a sense of shared faith and practice back then, compared with Baptist life today, which has been shaped by decades of conflict and arguments," said Nettles. "We can't go back to where we were. ... Right now, I don't think Baptists could even agree on what it would mean for us to try to hold doctrines in common. Too many things have happened to push us apart."

Ironically, he said, some of the modern forces behind the creation of many Baptist niche groups -- the Internet, parachurch ministry conferences and megachurches with superstar pastors -- are now inspiring people to rally around documents that resemble catechisms. For example, some Baptists have begun to rebel against a kind of doctrinal "libertarianism" that denies the need for doctrinal specifics, period.

"You go online and this is what you see," said Nettles. "People are speaking out and then other people will rally around that persuasive voice. Before you know it, a network has formed around a set of common beliefs and people start sharing what they know and what they believe.

"Then they start writing things down. Pretty soon they're sharing books and educational materials. They even end up with things that look a lot like catechisms."

C.S. Lewis: Still too popular after 50 years

Even though it has been 50 years since his death, the faithful at Headington Parish Church in Oxford, England, are constantly reminded of the loyal, but rather quiet, parishioner who always occupied the same short pew hidden by a sanctuary pillar. Going to church was never easy for C.S. Lewis, even before he became one of the world's most famous Christian writers, noted the Rev. Angela Tilby, in a recent service in memory of the Oxford don's death on Nov. 22, 1963 -- the same day as the death of British author, Aldous Huxley, and, of course, President John F. Kennedy.

Lewis considered church organ music far too grand and thought the words of most popular hymns were "a literary disgrace," said Tilby. Illogical sermons irritated him no end and he was highly critical of liberal trends in theology and biblical scholarship. As a former atheist, Lewis believed that far too many people in the modern world were slipping into an "easy," "fashionable" agnosticism.

In particular, Lewis was "aware of the way belief in an afterlife had come to be ridiculed by critics of Christianity as 'pie in the sky when you die' -- an imaginary compensation for those who had a raw deal in this life," she said, in a service broadcast on BBC Radio. "Lewis' response was to argue that hope for a better world could never deliver unless it was grounded in something more than the here and now."

Lewis lived to see his popular fiction -- especially "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" -- become bestsellers in England, America and around the world. Meanwhile, most of his Oxford University colleagues rolled their eyes at what they considered the merely popular Christian apologetics of his BBC commentaries and books such as "Miracles," "The Problem of Pain" and "Mere Christianity."

The bottom line: Lewis was considered a dinosaur from an earlier age and far too popular to be taken seriously. Half a century later, that verdict remains popular among many academics and liberal religious leaders.

Yet half a century after his death, to the day, a small stone marker in honor of Lewis was added in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, in the south transept near a variety of memorials for Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, John Milton, John Keats and many others.

Meanwhile, the entire Lewis canon is as popular as ever, with so many books in print, with so many publishers, that researchers struggle to total the numbers. More than 100 million copies of the seven Narnia books have sold worldwide, in 40 languages. HarperOne's C.S. Lewis Signature Classics series -- the non-Narnia Lewis works -- was created in 2001 and sales are nearing 10 million volumes. An estimated 18 million copies of "Mere Christianity" have sold in the United States alone since its publication in 1952.

Memorial stones are fitting, but it's significant that Lewis is best known for his books, said the Rev. Alister Edgar McGrath of King's College in London, who will soon return to Oxford to teach science and religion. He is the author of the recent "C. S. Lewis -- A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet."

"In the 1930s, Lewis declared that a writer is not a spectacle, who says, 'Look at me!' Rather, a writer is more like a set of spectacles, who says, 'Look through me.' ... The Christian faith, Lewis discovered, gave him a lens that brought things into focus," said McGrath, in the text for his sermon during the Headington Parish service.

This focus -- in his writing, in the classroom and in life -- included an unashamed belief in the reality of heaven and eternal life. Yet Lewis argued that focusing on heaven was the best way for believers to be truly serious about the actions and decisions that make up everyday life.

The ultimate goal for Lewis, said McGrath, was to "raise our horizon and elevate our expectations, and then to behave on earth in the light of this greater reality. ... The true believer is not someone who disengages with this world in order to focus on heaven, but the one who tries to make this world more like heaven.

"Lewis is surely right when he declared that the 'Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next.'"

Guess the winner: Woodstock vs. religious liberty

Blame it on Woodstock.

Cultural changes unleashed by the sexual revolution are affecting how millions of Americans understand religious liberty, according to University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, speaking at a recent Newseum symposium marking the 20th anniversary of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It doesn't help that disputes about the free exercise of religion have increasingly turned into bitter partisan battles pitting Republicans against the majority of mainstream Democrats.

What is happening? It helps to remember that churches were on the winning side of the American Revolution, he stressed, and that fact has shaped America ever since.

"What if we had a new revolution in our time? The sexual revolution that began in earnest in the '60s carries on with the current front about same-sex marriage" and contraception, said Laycock.

Religious groups have consistently "been on the losing side of this revolution. … In each of the remaining sexual issues -- abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception, sterilization, emergency contraception -- every one of those issues has this fundamental structure: What one side views as a grave evil, the other side views as a fundamental human right. ... And for tens of millions of Americans, what religious liberty now does is empower their enemies."

Only 20 years ago, it was possible for left and right to find common ground on key religious liberty issues. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed unanimously in the House and by a 97-3 vote in the Senate, backed by a coalition that ranged from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Christian Legal Society.

Only five years later, another similar effort failed.

"We had gone from 97-3 to partisan gridlock ... and disagreement over religious liberty has only gotten worse since that time," Laycock told the Newseum audience. He was speaking the day after addressing the U.S. Supreme Court on yet another tense case about public prayer.

The key change, he said, is that there has been a violent legal and political clash between gay rights and the rights of religious conscientious objectors. At this point, it may be too late to find a compromise that would protect citizens on both sides of this constitutional firefight.

One crucial problem, he explained, is that conservative religious leaders have been "so focused on entirely defeating" same-sex marriage bills that they have paid little attention to religious-liberty exemptions "until they have been totally defeated and then, of course, it is too late. They have no leverage. They have nothing to bargain with."

Meanwhile, as the gay-rights cause has gained momentum, its leaders have grown increasingly bold. More than a few liberals, said Laycock, not only want to seize sexual freedoms, but to force religious objectors to affirm their choices and even to pay for them. Some on the left, he said, are now "making arguments calculated to destroy religious liberty."

Consider, Laycock said, language used by state Sen. Pat Steadman of Denver, as he fought for a civil unions bill in the Colorado Senate last February. What should liberals say to those who claim that their religious liberties are being violated?

"I'll tell you what I'd say -- get thee to a nunnery," he said, in debate recorded on the Senate floor. "Go live a monastic life, away from modern society, away from the people you can't see as equals to yourself. Away from the stream of commerce where you might have to serve them, or employ them, or rent banquet halls to them. Go someplace and be as judgmental as you like. Go inside your church, establish separate water fountains, if you want."

This was provocative language, but this gay leader was using arguments now common in American politics, said Laycock. "No living in peace and equality and diversity for him. If you are a religious dissenter you have to conform or withdraw. For many people this hostility to religious liberty is a growing and intuitive reaction."

It's too soon to predict the death of religious liberty in America, as it has been known and defended for generations, he said. But the current trends are sobering.

"Maybe compromise will prevail yet," he concluded. "Maybe the judges will do their jobs and protect the liberty of both sides. But the tendency of both sides to insist on a total win -- liberty for them and not liberty for the other side -- is a very bad thing for religious liberty."

Classic Billy Graham, at 95 years of age

The Rev. Billy Graham has been worried about the state of America's soul for a long, long time. So it wasn't surprising that -- when preaching what could be his final sermon -- the 95-year-old evangelist looked straight into the camera and talked about sin and tears, repentance and salvation. And the cross.

"Our country's in great need of a spiritual awakening. There have been times when I've wept as I've gone from city to city and I've seen how far people have wandered from God," said Graham, in a message recorded in his North Carolina mountain home.

"I want to tell people about the meaning of the cross. Not the cross that hangs on the wall or around someone's neck, but the real cross of Christ. It's scarred and bloodstained. His was a rugged cross. I know that many will react to this message, but it is the truth. And with all my heart, I want to leave you with the truth."

Simply called "The Cross," the 30-minute documentary premiered on Fox News, as well as in churches nationwide. It included footage of Graham with leaders ranging from the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to Pope John Paul II, from Johnny Carson to Johnny Cash. Graham has met with every U.S. president since Harry Truman and the video included John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

The video also was shown at a recent 95th birthday party for Graham in Asheville, N.C., that drew many prominent, and in some cases decidedly non-evangelical, conservatives -- including Donald Trump, Greta Van Susteren and Rupert Murdoch. In his introduction, the Rev. Franklin Graham told viewers that his father's message could "change your life and change the direction of this nation."

It would be hard, however, for critics to find any national politics in this message from the elderly Graham, said sociologist William Martin, author of "A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story."

In particular, there were no echoes of the 2012 advertisements in which the elder Graham was quoted as saying: "As I approach my 94th birthday, I realize this election could be my last. ... I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman."

Instead, this video offered "classic Billy," said Martin, reached by telephone.

"Anyone who has been paying attention knows that at the heart of his preaching there has always been a message that this country is in pretty bad shape. That isn't something he started saying just the other day," he said. "I doubt there was anything new at all in this video and, from my point of view, that's a good thing."

Nevertheless, Graham repeatedly told viewers that he knew some of his words would be offensive.

"We deserve the cross. We deserve hell. We deserve judgment and all that that means," he said. "I know that there are many people who dispute that. People don't want to hear that they are sinners. To many people it's an offense. The cross is offensive because it directly confronts to evil that dominates so much of this world. ...

"One reason that the cross is an offense to people is because it demands. It doesn't suggest, it demands -- a new lifestyle in ALL of us."

Throughout the video, the voice of the frail preacher was mixed with the soaring cadences of the evangelist in the prime of life, his words rushing toward the moment when he urged seekers to come forward and make professions of faith.

But this time, the sermon ended with the elderly Graham quietly speaking words he has said in thousands of sermons, to millions of listeners, around the world: "There is no other way of salvation except through the cross of Christ. Jesus said, 'I am the way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh to the Father except by me.' "

Yes, the words were familiar, said Martin, but it was hard not be affected by the sobering images of the white-haired evangelical patriarch working so hard to share this message one more time.

"That's Billy Graham and this is what he has believed his whole life," said the sociologist. "It's like he was saying, 'This is the old, old story and I'm going to tell it to you one more time.' "

'Backsliders' and the 'unchurched' equal the 'Nones'?

Old-school preachers used to call them "backsliders," those folks who were raised in the pews but then fled. Sociologists and church-growth professionals eventually pinned more bookish labels on these people, calling them the "unchurched" or describing them as "spiritual, but not religious."

Pollsters at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and similar think tanks are now using a more neutral term to describe a key trend in various religious traditions, talking about a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans who are "religiously unaffiliated."

That's certainly an awkward, non-snappy label that's hard to use in headlines. It's so much easier to call them the "Nones."

Anyone who cares about the role of religion in public life had to pay attention to last year's "Nones of the Rise" study by the Pew researchers, especially the jarring fact that 20 percent of U.S. adults -- including 32 percent under the age of 30 -- embrace that "religiously unaffiliated" label. The question some experts are asking now is whether Americans have simply changed how they describe their beliefs, rather than making radical changes at the level of faith and practice.

While there has certainly been a rise in the number of "religiously unaffiliated" people, when researchers "dig down inside the numbers they will find that there hasn't been that much change in the practice of religion in America," said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief at Gallup, in a recent telephone interview.

"What's happening is that people who weren't practicing their faith and have never really practiced a faith are now, for some reason, much more likely to be honest about that fact," he said. "People used to say that didn't go to church, but they would still call themselves 'Baptists,' or 'Catholics' or whatever. ...

"It's that lukewarm, vague sense of religious identity that is fading. We're seeing a lot more truth in the reporting, right now."

It's especially important to note that young people who were raised in intensely religious, traditional homes are much more likely to continue practicing their faith, or to become active in a similar faith, according to a new Focus on the Family report (.pdf), built on the Pew Research Center numbers and the most recent General Social Survey from the National Science Foundation.

In the Millennial Generation -- young people born in the 1980s and '90s -- only 11 percent of those who now call themselves "religiously unaffiliated" said they were raised in a home in which a faith tradition was enthusiastically lived and taught.

The Focus on the Family study noted: "This is not a crisis of faith, per se, but of parenting. ... Young adults cannot keep what they were never given."

So what has changed? Experts at the Gallup Poll have been asking similar questions about religious identity and practice for decades, noted Newport, and it's clear that in the past it was much harder for Americans to face a pollster and muster up the courage to openly reject religion -- period.

"I found the survey in the '50s where it was zero percent 'none.' How's that? I mean literally, it rounded down to zero," said Newport, drawing laughter during a recent Pew Forum event. "So it's amazing that back when the Gallup interviewer came a-calling -- and it was in person in the '50s -- literally it looks like almost every single respondent chose a religious identification other than 'none.' "

Now, it's becoming clear that -- perhaps following the cultural earthquakes of the 1960s -- many Americans have stopped pretending they are linked to faith traditions that they have no interest in practicing. These "unreligious" Americans, Newport told the Pew gathering, are not really changing how they live their lives, they "are just changing the way that they label themselves."

Meanwhile, it may be time for researchers to pay renewed attention to what is happening among the Americans on the other end of the spectrum -- those who remain committed to faith-centered ways of life, said Newport, in the telephone interview.

"It's possible that if you really claim a religion today, then it's much more likely that your religious identity is pure, that you're making sacrifices to practice your faith because it really means something to you," he said. "Maybe it's significant that so many people are willing to stand up and say that they still believe."

A growing hole in the middle of American Jewry

There is a Yiddish saying about the mysteries of faith, family and fellowship that, loosely translated, proclaims: "You cannot make Shabbat by yourself." "The point is that you need the presence of other Jews around you to live out the dictates of your Jewish beliefs," said sociologist Steven M. Cohen, of the Jewish Institute of Religion at Hebrew Union College.

Shabbat creates that circle of support. Beginning minutes before sundown on Friday, it involves a day of rest, prayer, ritual feasting and ties that bind. Some of these traditions are defined by faith while others are rooted in ethnicity and culture. But the whole ancient package assumes that Shabbat brings Jews together.

So what does it mean when the first major study of American Jews in more than a decade shows that -- even among Jews who call themselves religious -- only 33 percent believe being part of a Jewish community is "essential to being Jewish"? Only 23 percent of these "Jews by religion" considered it essential to follow Jewish laws.

The results in this Pew Research Center study were, of course, even more sobering among the rising number of Jews -- one in five -- who said they had "no religion at all."

"In theory, Jews who answer 'none' when asked about their religion can still be part of the wider Jewish community. There's nothing new about that," said Cohen, in a telephone interview.

In practice, however, this "none" trend is viewed as negative by many Americans who consider the practice of Judaism to be a crucial part of Jewish identity, he said. Thus, the rising number of Jewish "nones" has many of the same serious implications as the much-discussed national rise in the number of the religiously unaffiliated among people in general.

This national survey of Jews, by the Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, is the first conducted by an institution outside the Jewish community. Jewish surveys in recent decades have consistently caused controversy because of fierce debates about how to define who is, and who is not, Jewish.

Among its headline-grabbing findings, this survey noted:

* The percentage of adults who are "Jews by religion" has declined by about half since the 1950s. While 93 percent of G.I. Generation Jews call themselves religious Jews, only 68 percent of young "Millennial" Jews make that claim.

* Only 15 percent of those surveyed said being Jewish is "mainly a matter of religion," as opposed to 62 percent who said Jewish identity is primarily about ancestry and culture. Two-thirds said it isn't necessary for Jews to believe in God.

*Among "Jews of no religion," 79 percent have a non-Jewish spouse, compared to 36 percent of religious Jews. This is crucial, since 96 percent of Jews married to Jews raise their children in the faith, while only 20 percent of intermarried Jews do so. And Orthodox Jews continue to have much higher birthrates than other Jews.

In addition to raising demographic questions about the future, the growing divide between secular and religious Jews can cause sparks in daily life, said Naomi Zeveloff, of the Jewish Daily Forward. In a recent article she noted that when Chabad-Lubavitch activists go "bageling" -- approaching New Yorkers to ask if they are Jewish -- they have an unusual way of verifying that they are on target.

One "surefire way" to know someone is Jewish, she wrote, is that "they react to your question with anger," like one subway rider who replied, "I'm not religious" when approached by Jews in typically Orthodox garb.

"If you are a secular Jew, anything goes," said Zeveloff, in a telephone interview. "Many secular Jews assume that religious Jews, especially the Orthodox, don't think they are Jewish enough and that their Judaism is somehow invalid or inferior."

Jewish community leaders, said Cohen, must face a growing hole in the middle of American Jewry as "nones" surge on one side, and the Orthodox hold firm on the other. However, they can take comfort in the fact that Jews have "invented new ways to be Jewish" through the ages.

"You can be Jewish by being religious, but you can also say that you are a Jew because your politics are liberal," he said. "We have Zionists. We have secular Zionists and we have religious Zionists, we have left-wing Zionists and we have right-wing Zionists. ... Judaism has always been a kind of cottage industry."

Lessons learned by professional church spies

The first thing Chuck Lawless noticed when he entered the church foyer was that the welcome center was empty, which made it pretty hard for a newcomer to feel welcomed on a routine Sunday morning. After several minutes of hanging around trying to look conspicuous, a staff member at this particular Pennsylvania congregation approached him and asked if he needed help. Lawless asked a perfectly normal newcomer question: Was there a small-group Bible study of some kind that he could visit?

Unaware that Lawless was trained church spy who was there conducting research, the staffer gave a surprisingly candid answer: "Do you want to visit a friendly one?"

By all means, said Lawless. He was then taken to a large empty room, where he deliberately sat next to the door. This meant that every person who entered the class -- approximately 60 in all -- had to walk past him.

"It was a wonderful class, with a real sense of community," said Lawless, who is an evangelism professor and the graduate dean at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. "People shared what was happening in their lives and some people shed tears as others prayed for them. It was really nice. ...

"Not a single person spoke to me or asked what I was doing there. And this was their friendly class."

Later, while preparing his confidential report, Lawless asked one of the church's leaders why the class members were so unfriendly. The blunt answer: "That's just our culture around here."

Actually, consultants who do church "spy" work know that outsiders rarely receive warm, friendly welcomes when they visit most American congregations, said Lawless, who does most of his work on these issues through the Society for Church Consulting in Louisville, Ken.

Apathy is the norm in many congregations and their leaders -- ordained or among the laity -- tend to fall into other predictable traps as well, which he included in a recent online essay entitled, "Eight Confessions of Church Spies." But everything starts with whether or not church people are friendly and welcoming.

"We tell our church spies that we want them to be alert -- from their arrival in the parking lot until they walk out the door -- to just how many people intentionally seek to interact with them in a friendly manner," said Lawless, in a telephone interview. "We tell them to count everything except for that moment in the service when the pastor tells everyone to turn around a greet visitors. If the pastor tells people to do something, then it doesn't count."

Other consistent problems include church websites that are boring, broken or full of out-of-date information, as well as church facilities that include few if any signs to help visitors find their way around.

Lawless noted that many churches seem to have no strategic vision for how to help newcomers, other than one or two people at the front door with "greeter" badges pinned to their chests. Some churches don't have clearly marked guest parking. Many are poorly equipped to promise parents that their children will be safe and secure.

Way too many boring, abstract, Bible-deficient sermons? Check.

Music ministries that show a lack of effort or, just as bad, feature worship-team leaders who are hamming it up like they're on a TV soundstage? Check.

"We tell our spies ... that if it seems like they have walked into an 'American Idol' show, then they have to include that in their reports," said Lawless.

In the end, the most important thing clergy and laypeople must realize is that many visitors who dare to walk through their doors are there because they are experiencing some kind of crisis in their lives. They are seeking help and sense of community, said Lawless, but they are also afraid of being ambushed and smothered.

Most newcomers and seekers are "afraid of being asked questions that they are not ready to answer. They're afraid of being embarrassed," he said. "They are afraid and they are confused and the last thing you can afford to do is leave them standing there alone wondering, 'What in the world is going on?'

"You have to welcome them and let them know that this is a safe place to find fellowship and help. But it's also important not to scare them off."

John Paul II and the death of 'Christian' America

It was just another day, another Washington, D.C., press conference and yet another appeal for the U.S. government to allow believers to follow the doctrines of their faith, as opposed to a Health and Human Services mandate. "The United States, at its best, is unique among the nations of the world when it defends the self-evident freedom of all people to exercise their faith according to the dictates of their consciences," said the "Standing Together for Religious Freedom" text. It was signed by 58 faith leaders, mostly from conservative bodies such as the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Evangelicals and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"Many of the signatories on this letter do not hold doctrinal objections to the use of contraception. Yet we stand united in protest to this mandate, recognizing the encroachment on the conscience of our fellow citizens. ... HHS continues to deny many Americans the freedom to manifest their beliefs through practice and observance in their daily lives."

This was just another sign of the times, along with a Texas filibuster opposing a late-term abortion ban and the U.S. Supreme Court's approval for a state-by-state legal approach to same-sex marriage.

None of this would have surprised the Blessed Pope John Paul II, according to one of America's most controversial Catholic priests. In one of his most sweeping encyclicals, John Paul foresaw a "conspiracy against life" that would threaten the suffering, the elderly and children, born and unborn.

That 1995 document was called "Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life)," and the Rev. C.J. McCloskey of the Faith and Reason Institute was recently asked to write a meditation on it during a Vatican celebration of its lasting influence.

"I was asked to write an article that would help cheer people up. Sorry, but I just couldn't do that right now," said McCloskey, in a telephone interview from Chicago.

In particular, the Opus Dei priest was struck by this sobering John Paul declaration: "The eclipse of the sense of God and of man inevitably leads to a practical materialism, which breeds individualism, utilitarianism and hedonism. ... The only goal which counts is the pursuit of one's own material well-being. The so-called 'quality of life' is interpreted primarily or exclusively as economic efficiency, inordinate consumerism, physical beauty and pleasure, to the neglect of the more profound dimensions -- interpersonal, spiritual and religious -- of existence." The human body, thus, is "simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency."

While this judgment will offend most liberals and some political conservatives, those words led McCloskey to write this blunt verdict: "Face it folks, the United States is no longer a Christian country.

"We already have the most liberal abortion laws in the world, responsible (at a minimum) for tens of millions of deaths, with the morning-after pill now available at your local pharmacy for teen-age girls. ... Pornography is the most profitable and watched form of 'entertainment.' Marriage is being redefined not as a covenant between man and wife, with one of its purposes being the procreation of children, but as more or less whatever one wants it to be. ... And who can disingenuously doubt that universal euthanasia for the incurable will become common with the help of our new 'health' plan?"

McCloskey knows these harsh judgments anger elites in places like Wall Street and inside the D.C. Beltway, since he worked at Citibank and Merrill Lynch after graduating from Columbia University and later led the Catholic Information Center on K. Street, near the White House. Yet over the years he has led many prominent Americans into Catholicism including columnist Robert Novak, abortion-rights pioneer Dr. Bernard Nathanson, Judge Robert Bork, U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback and economist Lawrence Kudlow.

Truth is, he noted, parts of America are more open to some forms of faith than others. Thus, McCloskey is convinced traditionalists will eventually need to cluster in states that are more faith-friendly on abortion, marriage, parental rights, home schooling and other hot-button cultural issues.

"No one in this country has ever really suffered for their faith in any meaningful way," he said. "Those days are ending, especially in certain states. ... Among Catholics, we may soon find that many are Americans more than they are Catholics."