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."

Unusual challenge from a Greek Orthodox bishop

It happens all the time: Church leaders stand at podiums and urge members of their flocks to go and share their faith, striving to win new converts. These speeches rarely make news, because they are not unusual. But something very unusual happened earlier this month in Brookline, Mass.

"You will surely agree that our mission ... is to lead our brothers and sisters -- both inside and outside the church -- to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," said the featured speaker.

"This is becoming more and more difficult because many hesitate to share their faith, fearing they will be considered quaint and bothersome. This is especially the case in America's colleges and universities where atheism and indifference on matters of faith and religion reign supreme."

This would be ordinary, if not tame language in a gathering held by Campus Crusade for Christ, the Southern Baptist Convention or any Bible Belt megachurch. But this speaker was Metropolitan Methodios, the white-haired leader of the Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Boston, addressing clergy and laity in a conference center dedicated to Greek culture.

The spiritual leader of Greek Orthodox believers in New England didn't stop with this call to evangelize people inside and outside his flock's sanctuaries. Instead, he directly challenged the lukewarm or even compromised version of the faith that may result from the media "bombardment of materialistic and hedonistic philosophies" that shape the public square.

All too often, he said, the result is neither orthodox nor Orthodox.

"People today fashion their personal beliefs by integrating Orthodox and non-Orthodox elements," he explained, in the speech text posted online (.pdf). "Without realizing it, they become 'cafeteria Christians.' Just as they do not partake of every food item in a cafeteria line -- but only those foods which they like -- in the same way they feel they can pick and choose from what Orthodoxy teaches. ...

"Let me be clear: Core teachings of our faith are not subject to popularity polls or political correctness."

Metropolitan Methodios even, without mentioning a specific name, criticized a New England legislator who "claims to be an Orthodox Christian" and who "champions Greek political causes" because of his public advocacy of same-sex marriage.

It's important to note that, through the years, Eastern Orthodox bishops have released occasional public statements in which they affirmed basic tenets of their ancient faith. In some cases they have applied these doctrines to public issues in American life.

For example, the Eastern Orthodox bishops of North and Central America recently released a document that expressed "deep concern over recent actions on the part of our respective governments and certain societal trends concerning the status of marriage in our countries, in particular the legalization of same-sex unions."

Also, the symbolic leader of the world's 250 million Orthodox Christians (including me) recently addressed challenges to church teachings on marriage. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Istanbul stressed that the "partnering of the same sex is unknown and condemned" in church teachings, along with the "contemporary invention of 'mutual cohabitation,' which is the result of sin and not the law of joy."

These kids of documents are good, but only carry so much weight, noted Father Johannes Jacobse, head of the American Orthodox Institute in Naples, Fla. It is one thing for bishops to affirm two millennia of church teachings. It is something else for a bishop to openly challenge his people to life by them.

"This is the first time I have heard a Greek Orthodox bishop speak publicly with this kind of clarity and certainty on some of the pressing moral issues of our day," said Jacobse, who served as a Greek Orthodox priest from 1991 to 2009 and currently leads an Antiochian Orthodox parish. In this case, a veteran bishop "just stood up there and SAID IT. There seemed to be no sense of hesitation or fear that someone might think that he sounded like -- heaven forbid -- an evangelical or a moral conservative or something."

The bottom line, concluded Metropolitan Methodios, is that clergy and lay leaders must recognize that they need to "re-evangelize, to re-catechize, to re-teach the faith" to their own people, especially those on the margins of church life.

"The truth," he stressed, "is that many brethren sitting in the pews of our parishes are not knowledgeable of even the basic teachings of Orthodoxy."

The pope, the media and balance on pro-life ministries

It was the telephone call heard around the world, because the pope made the call. On the other end of the line was a single woman in central Italy, who mailed Pope Francis a confused, anguished letter after learning she was pregnant by a man who turned out to be married. The man demanded that she have an abortion and she refused.

Then a strange telephone number appeared on her caller ID screen. It was the pope, who called to say that she made the right decision because the "child was a gift from God" and that he wanted to help.

Pope Francis, she told The Catholic Herald, assured her that "as Christians we should never be afraid. He told me I had been very brave and strong for my unborn child. I told him that I wanted to baptize the baby when it was born, but I was afraid, as I was divorced and a single mother. ... He said he would be my spiritual father and he would baptize my baby."

If the baby is a boy, she plans to name him Francis.

A few news organizations, but not many, covered this media-friendly parable.

But two weeks later, the pope unleashed a media tsunami with a long, candid interview published exclusively in America and other Jesuit magazines around the world. While the pope talked about confession, sin and mercy, one quote leapt into news reports and headlines more than any other.

"We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible," he told the interviewer, a fellow Jesuit. "The teaching of the church ... is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time."

Stressing the need for improved pastoral responses on hot-button issues -- such as abortion and homosexuality -- Pope Francis said the church "cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently. .... We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel."

The pope, of course, stressed the need for balance between pronouncements and pastoral care, not the end of the church's public advocacy on its moral doctrines. He said that Catholic leaders cannot insist "only" on issues linked to sexual ethics, which is not the same as saying they should be silent on them.

The church, he said, must be a "field hospital" for the wounded and its most important message is "the first proclamation: Jesus Christ has saved you. And the ministers of the church must be ministers of mercy above all."

The world of Catholic bloggers, insiders and experts exploded, both on the doctrinal left and the right. Some traditional Catholics expressed sadness and concern, focusing on secular media editing of the pope's remarks, more than on the content of the actual interview.

While the media storm raged, Pope Francis did an interesting thing -- especially in light of his alleged call for the church to tone down its teachings on abortion and other hot-button issues. He addressed, with little media fanfare, a gathering of Catholic gynecologists, urging them to remember that a doctor's "ultimate objective" must always be the protection of life.

"The culture of waste, which now enslaves the hearts and minds of many, has a very high cost: it requires the elimination of human beings, especially if they are physically or socially weaker," he said, according to a English translation offered by The National Catholic Register.

"Our response to this mentality is a categorical and unhesitant 'yes' to life. ... Things have a price and are sold, but people have a dignity, worth more than things and they don't have a price. Many times we find ourselves in situations where we see that which costs less is life. Because of this, attention to human life in its totality has become a real priority of the Magisterium of the Church in recent years, particularly to the most defenseless, that is, the disabled, the sick, the unborn child, the child, the elderly who are life's most defenseless."

In the end, stressed the pope, the church must continue to proclaim that, "Each child who is unborn, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who, even before he was born, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world."

Goodbye to a radical Baptist patriarch

The old Southern preacher had walked through many airport security gates using his cherry-wood cane and was surprised -- especially years before 9/11 -- when a guard ordered him to send it through the X-ray scanner. After that rite, the Rev. Will Campbell asked the guard to bring him the cane. The guard, somewhat miffed, asked if he could walk through the scanner without it. The preacher, somewhat vexed, said that was a question for his doctor.

Facing a nervous crowd, the guard ordered Campbell to walk through the gate. So the famous civil-rights activist -- the only white leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invited to the first Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting -- got down on the floor and crawled through. Then he retrieved his cane.

Campbell admitted, when telling this parable to Baptist progressives in 1994, that he then gave the cane a "sassy little twirl." His wife asked: "Why do you do things like that?"

"Because, I'm a Baptist! I come from a long line of hell-raisers," said Campbell. "I was taught that I wasn't a robot -- that I was a human being with a mind, capable of reason, entitled to read any book, including the Bible, and interpret it according to the ability of the mind I was given. That's why I do things like that."

The key, he said, is to ask what happened to all the Baptists who kept clashing with authority figures in the past. Where are the Baptists who were willing to be "tied on ladders and pushed into burning brush heaps because they believed in and practiced freedom of conscience," who "were so opposed to the death penalty they wouldn't serve on juries" and who "would not go to war, any war, for church or state? ... Where are they now?"

Campbell, he died last month at the age of 88, was a complex activist and writer who made lots of people mad for lots of reasons. Raised in rural Mississippi, he thrived at Yale Divinity School and failed as a small-town pastor. He accompanied the Freedom Riders in 1961 and marched in Birmingham in 1963. He tried to avoid reporters, but was tight with country-music rebels like Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. He opposed both abortion and the death penalty and, late in life, backed gay rights.

The self-proclaimed "bootleg Baptist" spent his life preaching forgiveness and reconciliation, yet also called religious conservatives "ecclesiastical highwaymen" who were "espousing a course that is a rollercoaster to a fascist theocracy." Pushed to summarize his theology he stated: "We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway."

"Will was fond of saying that if you are going to love one then you have to love everyone. ... This meant rednecks as well as radicals," wrote the Rev. Timothy George, for the conservative "First Things" journal. He is the dean of Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Ala., and a former member of Campbell's Committee of Southern Churchmen.

Campbell "infuriated many," George added, "when he befriended members of the Ku Klux Klan and even visited James Earl Ray in prison. Campbell wrote: 'I have seen and known the resentment of the racist, his hostility, his frustration, his need for someone upon whom to lay blame and to punish. With the same love that we are commanded to shower upon the innocent victim, the church must love the racist.'

"The fact is Will Campbell was simply sui generis. He cannot be comfortably squeezed into anyone's box."

In the end, the only box Campbell accepted was a Baptist box that fit his own iconoclastic specifications -- rejecting all creeds, traditions and hierarchies.

"Institutions, by their very definition, are evil," he said, in that 1994 address. "Their raison-d'etre is always and inevitably self-survival. They, all of them, when they are threatened will go to any length, tell any lie, engage in any program to protect themselves. And justify it as being in defense of Almighty God."

For Baptists to be true Baptists, he said, it's crucial for them to teach that Jesus never "demanded of the people who wanted to follow him that they must first know this or that, this creed, or that catechism, the nature of the Trinity or the plan of salvation, or subscribe to an Abstract of Principles to the satisfaction of the Sanhedrin. He had not insisted on any systematic belief whatsoever."

Rather faith-free WPost story about ministry to the hungry

As happens about this time every summer, tmatt headed to the Southern Highlands to take a week off. Thus, there was no new Scripps Howard column. There was, however, this post from GetReligion.org that I think will interest the readers of my weekly column. Enjoy. For the past two decades, I have spent quite a bit of time driving the back roads of the Southern Highlands, which is one of the many names that locals use to describe the Appalachian Mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

One of my very favorite East Tennessee roads runs from the back of Johnson City — where my family lived during our Milligan College years — down the Nolichucky River into the back side of Greeneville. The mountains there are high, lonesome and as beautiful as any in the region. They are almost completely free of development, especially when it comes to tourists.

But as any local knows, there are mountain people up in there and their lives are very hard. The word “Appalachian” has many meanings and extreme poverty is part of the picture.

The Washington Post ran a fine, but haunted, news feature the other day about a rolling food-bank project to fight hunger among the shattered families along those mountain roads above the Nolichucky. Please read it all, because it’s well worth the time.

If you look carefully at the photo that ran with the piece, you learn that this particular anti-hunger project has a name, a name that is not mentioned in the article for some reason. However, readers do find out quite a bit about the bus driver and the people he feeds.

The driver’s name was Rick Bible, and his 66-mile route through the hills of Greene County marked the government’s latest attempt to solve a rise in childhood hunger that had been worsening for seven consecutive years.

Congress had tried to address it mostly by spending a record $15 billion each year to feed 21 million low-income children in their schools, but that left out the summer, so the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to spend $400 million more on that. Governors came together to form a task force. Michelle Obama suggested items for a menu. Food banks opened thousands of summer cafes, and still only about 15 percent of eligible children received regular summer meals.

So, earlier this year, a food bank in Tennessee came up with a plan to reverse the model. Instead of relying on children to find their own transportation to summer meal sites, it would bring food to children. The food bank bought four used school buses for $4,000 each and designed routes that snake through some of the most destitute land in the country, where poverty rates have almost doubled since 2009 and two-thirds of children qualify for free meals.

Good stuff.

However, as a former resident of the region, my religion-ghost alarm went off immediately when I saw — in that photo, not in the story text — that the name of the food bank was Second Harvest. As it turns out, this charity is linked to Greeneville Community Ministries.

The obvious question: Is this a purely government project or, as one would expect deep in the Bible Belt hills, is this worthwhile and remarkable effort just as much a ministry among the volunteers and donors as it is a tax-funded project? It could, of course, be both. If so, that’s a very interesting angle to include in the story.

As it is, the story is poignant, moving and essential reading — yet strangely faith-free if you know anything about that part of Tennessee. Why write the story without including the religion angle?

For the full text, click here.

Making a case for the common hymnal

There was a time when the faithful in the heavily Dutch corners of the Midwest would not have been able to sing along if the organist played the gospel classic, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." True, some may have recognized the hymn that Mahalia Jackson sang at the 1968 funeral of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., since this was the civil rights leader's favorite: "Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home."

But, by 1987 this beloved African-American spiritual had been added to the Christian Reformed Church hymnal. A generation later, it has achieved the kind of stature that puts it in the core of the "In Death and Dying" pages of the church's new "Lift Up Your Hearts" hymnal.

"When you're creating a new hymnal, you know that you have to retain all those heart songs that just can't go away," said the Rev. Joyce Borger, editor of the 1,104-page volume, produced in collaboration with the Reformed Church in America. "We're talking about the hymns that you cannot imagine living without, and 'Precious Lord, Take My Hand' certainly falls into that category now. It has become one of our songs."

Research indicates the average church may have "a repertoire" of 150-plus hymns -- not counting Christmas carols and seasonal songs -- that worship leaders can list in the Sunday bulletin and know that most people will sing them with confidence.

The challenge facing teams that create hymnals is that "core songs" will vary radically from flock to flock, depending on where they are located, the dominant age groups in the pews and the cultural backgrounds of the worship leaders. The favorite-hymn list of a World War II generation pianist from rural Michigan will overlap some, but not much, with that of a Generation X guitarist in urban Detroit.

Also, while it's impossible to ignore classics from the Dutch Reformed tradition, Borger said "Lift Up Your Hearts" also needed to acknowledge the growing diversity found in today's churches, in North America and worldwide. In the age of increased contact between believers around the world -- not to mention YouTube -- it's common for suburban American teens to return from church trips to Africa or South America with notebooks full of new hymns they now cherish.

Then there is the surging popularity of pop-rock "praise choruses," which rise and fall in popularity from year to year, if not month to month. Also, the larger the modern church sanctuary, the more likely it is to feature video screens on which lyrics are constantly streamed into view. Why would digital worshippers want to tie up their hands with analog hymnals?

The pace of musical change is one reason hymnals are being now being recreated every generation, as opposed to remaining intact for a half a century or so as in the past, said historian John Witvliet, another member of the "Lift Up Your Hearts" team who leads the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Recent decades have seen a number of other factors that have caused musical earthquakes, he said, including a multimedia revolution in worship facilities, the global surge of Pentecostalism, the rise of seeker-friendly "megachurch" congregations that value relevance over tradition and increased ecumenical contacts between Catholic, evangelical and liberal Protestant churches

Thus, the 965 numbered selections in this new hymnal include 137 selections from its 1957 counterpart and 302 from a 1987 volume. However, it also includes at least 100 contemporary "praise choruses" and 50-plus hymns from around the world, with texts translated from 30 different languages. Every hymn in the book is annotated with guitar chords.

"There is no period of time in church history -- ever -- in which there have been this many waves of change shaping Christian worship at the same time," said Witvliet. "A generation ago, we assumed that the hymnal in the pew WAS a church's musical repertoire. No one assumes that now."

But no matter how rapid the changes, he added, hymnals are symbols that the "church needs a common body of music to help keep it united. There must be some ties that bind."

An earthy reality in the words of Pope Francis

There is nothing unusual about a Catholic leader urging priests to draw closer to their flocks, to focus on day-to-day issues that bridge the gap between pulpit and pew. Still, it caught Vatican insiders off guard when Pope Francis, a week after his installation Mass, used a somewhat pungent image when discussing this problem.

"This is precisely the reason for the dissatisfaction of some, who end up sad -- sad priests -- in some sense becoming collectors of antiques or novelties, instead of being shepherds living with the smell of the sheep," he said. "This I ask you: be shepherds, with the 'odor of the sheep,' make it real, as shepherds among your flock, fishers of men."

At this point, "it's safe to say everyone in the Catholic world knows that line, if they're paying attention at all," said Father Robert Barron, president of Mundelein Seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake near Chicago. He is also known for his work as founder of the Word on Fire media ministry and as an NBC News analyst.

It's easy, when talking about this pope's back-to-basics style, to stress his life in Argentina, growing up in the home of immigrants from northern Italy. But when considering his preaching, said Barron, the key is to remember his experience at the parish and diocesan levels. While Pope Benedict XVI speaks with the precision of an academic comfortable in European classrooms, Pope Francis has spent much of his life preaching in slums.

"When you look at him in the pulpit you just have to say, 'This is a preacher in a parish.' He's going up there with notes, not a formal five-page text" the Vatican press officers distributed in advance, said Barron, in a telephone interview. "Every now and then you catch him looking up with a kind of twinkle in his eyes and you can tell he's enjoying what he's doing, what he's saying."

Recently, the conservative journal First Things collected a few "vivid images" drawn from early sermons and remarks by the Jesuit pope. For example, the pope has warned Catholics not to focus on temporary things and, thus, become "teen-agers for life." On another occasion, he said some Catholics complain so often they could become "Mr. or Mrs. Whiner" or end up with faces resembling "pickled peppers."

Other sound bites in this list included:

* On March 14, Francis used a bit of policy wonk lingo: "We can walk as much as we want, we can build many things, but if we do not profess Jesus Christ, things go wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the church, the bride of the Lord."

* It's crucial for Catholics to live their faith, not just talk about it privately, the pope said in mid-April: "When we do this the church becomes a mother church that bears children. ... But when we don't do it, the church becomes not a mother but a babysitter church, which takes care of the child to put him to sleep."

* While some insist on talking about faith in vague terms, Francis reminded an April 18 audience: "When we talk to God we speak with persons who are concrete and tangible, not some misty, diffused god-like 'god-spray,' that’s a little bit everywhere but who knows what it is."

* Stressing the importance of Easter, he noted: "Efforts have often been made to blur faith in the Resurrection of Jesus and doubts have crept in, even among believers. It is a little like that 'rosewater' faith, as we say; it is not a strong faith. And this is due to superficiality and sometimes to indifference, busy as we are with a thousand things considered more important than faith, or because we have a view of life that is solely horizontal."

What runs through these words is the new pope's desire to awaken in his listeners a "religious sense," a "religious sensibility" that insists that there is more to life in the real world than mere materialism, said Barron.

Pope Francis knows that "if you want people to act, you have to touch them at the level of the real, the earthy and the practical," he said. "As a pastor, he has used this language before. Now he is using these kinds of images again -- from the throne of St. Peter."

Old religion-beat questions linger, even after 25 years

Every year or so, editors are asked to sit patiently while market researchers dissect thick reports about what consumers say they want to see in their newspapers.

That was already true back when Harry Moskos was editor of The Knoxville News Sentinel. But he immediately noticed something strange, when handed the executive summary of one late-1980s survey.

Two words near the top of the subjects valued by readers caught his attention -- "religion" and "family." Yet the professionals interpreting the data offered zero suggestions for improving coverage of those subjects.

"I remember saying, 'Look at that.' ... Those words just jumped out at me, primarily because I knew people in Knoxville tend to see those subjects as connected," said Moskos, 76, in a telephone interview. He recently ended his 60-year journalism career, with most of that work in Albuquerque, N.M., and Knoxville, Tenn.

Of course, he admitted, the fact he noticed the words "religion" and "family" also "says something about the life I've lived and how I was raised" in a devout Greek Orthodox family. "I just knew we had to do something ... to respond to that interest among our readers," he said.

Thus, Moskos asked his team to create a section on faith and family life. As part of that effort, he asked -- at a meeting of Scripps Howard editors -- if the newspaper chain could start a national religion-news column.

That's how -- 25 years ago this week -- I began writing this "On Religion" column for the Scripps Howard News Service. At that time, I was the religion reporter for one of the chain's major newspapers and then I continued this work while teaching, first in a seminary, then in two liberal arts colleges and, now, as director of the Washington Journalism Center.

Through it all, I have been amazed that many people still think religion is a boring, unimportant subject that can be relegated to the periphery of news coverage. The late Associated Press religion writer George Cornell once noted that -- year after year -- at least half of the items in that wire service's global list of the top news events have obvious ties to religion.

And what about that journalistic mantra, "Follow the money"? When hundreds of thousands of sports fans -- spending millions of dollars -- head to stadiums or face their televisions, news organizations respond, big time. What happens when millions of religious believers -- spending billions -- do the same? Not so much.

"Usually, where people put their time and money, that's where their interests are," Cornell told me in 1982. "Newspapers' attention and space are supposed to be geared to people's interests. Right?"

The other big mystery, for me, is why professionals who lead newsrooms rarely seek out experienced, even trained, religion reporters. Discussions of this topic often reference a religion-beat opening Washington Post editors posted in 1994, noting that their "ideal candidate" was "not necessarily religious nor an expert in religion."

Please note the word "ideal." Try to imagine editors saying their "ideal" candidate to cover the U.S. Supreme Court would be someone who is not an expert in the law. How about similar notices for reporters covering politics, education, sports, science and film?

"The religion beat is too complicated today for this kind of approach to be taken seriously," said Russell Chandler, who covered religion for years at The Los Angeles Times. I interviewed him for "Blind Spot: When Journalists Don't Get Religion," from Oxford Press.

"If you don't have experience you have to pay your dues and get some. Then you have to keep learning so that you get the facts right today and tomorrow and the day after that," he said. "I have never really understood what this argument is about. It's like saying that we want to sign up some people for our basketball team and we don't really care whether or not they can play basketball."

This logic also rings true for Moskos, who noted that he once interviewed five skilled sportswriters when seeking someone to cover University of Tennessee football -- a quasi-religious subject for locals. Why not take that approach to religion news?

"If you send somebody out to cover the Oak Ridge National Laboratory," he concluded, "you'd better find yourself a journalist who knows something about science. ... If people are going to get the job done covering religion then they need to find some journalists who know a thing or two about religion."