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."

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."

Concerning God, sex, worship and babies

Pollsters have been asking Americans questions about God, sex and babies for a long time and the answers used to be pretty predictable. Early in the 20th Century it was easy to predict which flocks of believers would produce the most children -- with Mormons reporting the highest numbers, followed by Catholics, then Protestants and so forth as fertility rates declined. But things changed as the century rolled on and America became more pluralistic and, in elite zip codes, secular.

After Woodstock and the Sexual Revolution, it was clear "what really mattered wasn't what religion you claimed to be practicing, but the degree to which you actually practiced it -- especially whether or not you were in a pew week after week," said journalist Jonathan A. Last, author of "What to Expect When No One's Expecting."

These days, people who attend worship services once a week or more have a sharply different fertility rate from those who avoid religious sanctuaries and "it really doesn't matter what kind of services we're talking about -- Catholic, evangelical, Jewish, Mormon, whatever. What matters is whether you show up."

The bottom line: An activity that encourages people to get married sooner, stay married longer and have a higher rate of happiness while married will almost certainly produce more babies. "When it comes to people having what people today consider large families -- three or more children -- there are two Americas out there," he said, and the division is between those who actively practice a faith, especially a traditional form of faith, and those who do not.

This is crucial information in an era in which declining birth rates affect debates about a wide array of hot-button cultural issues, from Social Security to national health care, from immigration reform to the future of major religious groups.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that U.S. births appear to be leveling off, although the numbers continued to show some decline. While birth rates edged up for women in their early '40s and throughout their '30s, rates kept falling for women in their '20s and among Latinos.

A key factor, Last explained, is "aspirational fertility," or the number of children that parents say they want to have. In the early 20th Century, a clear majority of Americans favored having three or more children. Now, 66 percent of those who seldom or never attend worship services say zero, one or two is ideal, while 41 percent of those worshipping weekly desire three or more children. If a woman frequently attends worship services, it is much more likely she will have a larger family, if that is her goal.

It's hard to pin political or cultural labels on some behaviors that are inspiring so many people to avoid marriage, to marry later, to have fewer children or to have their children later in life. At one end of the cultural spectrum is the 30something male whose solo life remains focused on his Xbox. At the other end is the professional woman working 70-hour weeks while striving to rise in a major law firm, even as her biological clock ticks loudly.

Of course, it also matters that children are expensive. In his book, Last examines a variety of expenses and career realities and concludes that it costs about $1.1 million to raise a single child, with home costs and college expenses higher in prime locations. When living in New York City, San Francisco or Washington, D.C., having two children is "having a lot of children," he said. "What's countercultural in one city is normal in another."

The bottom line is that Americans who choose to have large families are almost certainly making "some kind of theological statement," he said. "They are making countercultural decisions and people just don't keep taking specific countercultural actions without having some kind of purpose, a larger reason for what they are doing. ...

"Think of it this way. At some point, you have to ask: 'Am I the most important -- or even the only -- character that matters in the movie of my life? ... Parents just can't think that way and the more children you have the less you can afford to think of yourself as the center of everything that happens in the world. ... That's a very important lesson to learn about life."

The Anglican wars roll on (and Holy Communion for dogs)

The German Shepherd's name was Trapper and he came to St. Peter's Anglican Church with his owner, a newcomer at the historic Toronto parish. At the end of the Mass, Trapper went forward with everyone else for Holy Communion. That's when the vicar, in what she later described as a welcoming gesture, served the dog some of the consecrated bread that Anglicans believe has -- in a mysterious manner -- become the body of Jesus Christ.

So one parishioner complained to the bishop and, in a flash, critics online were quoting Matthew 7:6 ("Do not give dogs what is holy...") and the controversy -- this story has had long legs -- even reached BBC with the headline, "Canadian priest sorry for giving dog Holy Communion."

It seems that strange and dramatic events of this kind happen year after year in the global Anglican Communion -- truly one of God's gifts to headline writers.

Also, it appears unlikely that this trend will change anytime soon. Recently, in a burst of candor in Mexico, the current Archbishop of Canterbury harkened back to the English Civil War and quoted sobering advice from Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who was under the patronage of Archbishop William Laud when the latter was executed in 1645 by the Puritan parliament.

The Most Rev. Justin Welby noted that Taylor warned: "It is unnatural and unreasonable to persecute disagreeing opinions. ... Force in matters of opinion can do no good, but is very apt to do hurt."

These are hard words in an era in which England's shrinking flock of Anglicans is still fighting over female bishops and, across the Atlantic, the shrinking flock of Episcopalians continues to fight over non-celibate gay bishops. Meanwhile, leaders in the growing Global South churches of Africa and Asia are calling for repentance and doctrinal discipline.

During an August 13 address in Monterrey, Welby said he sometimes worries that Anglicans are "drifting back" into a true civil war of their own.

"Not consciously, of course, but in an unconscious way that is more dangerous. Like a drunk man walking near the edge of a cliff, we trip and totter and slip and wander, ever nearer to the edge of the precipice," he said, in the released text.

"On one side is the steep fall into an absence of any core beliefs, a chasm where we lose touch with God, and thus we rely only on ourselves and our own message. On the other side there is a vast fall into a ravine of intolerance and cruel exclusion. It is for those who claim all truth, and exclude any who question. When we fall into this place, we lose touch with human beings and create a small church, or rather many small churches -- divided, ineffective in serving the poor, the hungry and the suffering, incapable of living with each other, and incomprehensible to those outside the church."

The problem? One bishop's "core beliefs" are another's cruel dogmas. And, according to Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Christianity is entering another 500-year cycle of doctrinal reform similar to that of Martin Luther.

"The major shifts of focus of these periodic seismic events are profoundly unsettling to many people, but they seem to be necessary to God's mission," she said, in an August 15 address at the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting in Pittsburgh.

Anger and fear caused by rapid political and cultural changes have caused some members of liberal Protestant flocks to flee, said Jefferts Schori, whose denomination has declined from 3.6 million members in 1965 to 1.9 million in 2011. In the tumultuous past decade, average Sunday attendance has declined nearly 25 percent, to roughly 650,000 Episcopalians.

Jefferts Schori's flock is also aging rapidly, in part because -- as she boldly told The New York Times in 2006 -- Episcopalians are "better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates" than Catholics and other believers and because they "pay attention to the stewardship of the earth."

While other are seeing signs of peril, she said, progressives must see progress, especially when fighting for gay rights, racial justice and causes central to their faith.

"The challenges that both our churches have experienced around issues of inclusion of all human beings in recent years have reminded us that God is always at work -- on us, within us, and among us," said Jefferts Schori. "Some have judged our smaller numbers as faithlessness but it may actually be the Spirit's way of pruning for greater fruitfulness."

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."

What, me worry? Whatever II

EDITOR'S NOTE: Second of two columns on teens and ethics. When pollsters ask Americans the Eternal Question they almost always say, "I believe in God."

Ask young Americans about faith and the response is something like, "I believe in God and stuff." Finding the doctrinal meaning of "and stuff" is tricky.

"God made us and if you ask him for something I believe he gives it to you. Yeah, he hasn't let me down yet," said a 14-year-old Catholic from Pennsylvania, when researchers Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton asked him why religion matters. "God is a spirit that grants you anything you want, but not anything bad."

The key is that this God -- part Divine Butler, part Cosmic Therapist -- watches from a safe distance.

"God's all around you, all the time," said conservative Protestant girl, 17, from Florida. "He believes in forgiving people and what-not, and he's there to guide us, for somebody to talk to and help us through our problems. Of course, he doesn't talk back."

If grown-ups roll their eyes at litanies such as these, most teens offer a chilly response that sums up their creeds -- "whatever."

Thus it was significant, in the Josephson Institute's latest Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth, that 48 percent of the students surveyed in 100 random public and private high schools said they had "never" violated their own "religious beliefs" during 2007. Other parts of this survey made headlines, especially its reports that a third of the students said they stole something from a store during the previous year, while 38 percent committed plagiarism, 64 percent cheated on a test and 83 percent lied to a parent about something important.

Few of these young people are "unbelievers" or, heaven forbid, "secularists," noted Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. The overwhelming majority of them -- like their parents -- would insist that they are practicing Christians, Jews, Muslims or whatever.

"Plenty of religious kids do steal and cheat and whatever," he said, responding to the Josephson survey. "They have in their heads some image of what 'religious' really looks like. For many -- not all -- young people, the meaning of that word is so vague it can mean almost anything or nothing whatsoever. The bar is set low and their take on religion certainly doesn't include concepts such as self sacrifice, repentance or self mortification."

These young people are religious, he stressed. They are simply practicing a new religion, one that Smith and Denton called "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." When crunched to its basics, this faith teaches that:

* A God exists who "created and orders the world" and watches over our lives.

* This God wants people to be good, nice and fair to one another, as taught by most major religions.

* The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good.

* God is rarely involved in daily life, except when needed to solve a problem.

* Good people go to heaven.

This is not a faith that can stand on its own, noted Smith, in a lecture at the Princeton Theological Seminary Institute for Youth Ministry. Instead, it is a "parasitic religion" that creates weakened, less rigid versions of other faiths -- such as Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Hinduism. There may even, he noted, be "Nonreligious Moralistic Therapeutic Deists" in modern America.

When describing their beliefs, most young people say it's important to be kind to one another and to try to live a good life. There are few limitations on behavior, other than loose rules that say it is wrong to hurt other people, especially one's friends. "Don't be a jerk" is a common refrain.

Words such as "sanctification," "Trinity," "sin," "holiness" and "Eucharist" have little or no meaning. Most references to "grace" refer to the television show "Will and Grace." If teens mention being "justified," this almost always means that they think they have a good reason to do something that others consider questionable.

This faith, Smith explained, blends well with popular culture and media.

"It's a religion that works at the level of email and texting and long hours talking on your cellphones," he said. "It's all about relationships. Your religion has to work with your friends and it has to bring you happiness. That's what really matters."

Joking about Jonestown

It only takes a few words to call back the memories from 30 years ago, all those nightmare images from the jungle sanctuary in Guyana. "Revolutionary suicide" may do the trick, especially when combined with that grim quotation from one survivor, "They started with the babies." But it was another Jonestown catch phrase that leapt into the national consciousness.

Sherri Wood Emmons heard it when she accepted a job with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) only four years after the massacre.

"Don't drink the Kool-Aid," said a friend, laughing.

"It's understandable, I guess. We use humor to distance ourselves from things we don't understand, things that frighten us," noted Emmons, in her editorial introducing a DisciplesWorld journal issue marking the Jonestown anniversary. "It's easier to poke fun at people than try to understand them. Those crazies, we say, shaking our heads. They must have been nuts."

But there's a problem with America's three decades of sick laughter about 900-plus people drinking cyanide and fake fruit juice in honor of one man's vision of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The Rev. Jim Jones really did flourish in the American heartland and begin his ministry in Indianapolis, of all places. In the early 1960s, his idealistic, multi-ethnic Peoples Temple was embraced with open arms by the Disciples of Christ, a mainstream church at the heart of the Protestant ecumenical establishment. When he moved his flock to California, he forged strong ties to George Moscone, Harvey Milk, Willie Brown and the San Francisco political establishment.

And those Jones disciples? "They were living out their faith in wants that might shame some of us today," according to Emmons. "And they were Disciples of Christ. As much as we might like to forget that."

In other words, Jones was a charismatic, talented minister whose work united rich and poor, black and white, young and old. That was before he started preaching socialism and saying he was the reincarnation of Jesus. That was before the sexual abuse, torture, drugs and violence.

Why didn't anyone see who and what he was?

After the tragedy unfolded, the headlines marched past day after day, with each bizarre revelation adding to the horror and confusion. The Jonestown news coverage made a strong impression on me because I was young journalist, just out of college, who wanted to become a religion-beat reporter.

I kept waiting for mainstream journalists to dig into the religious roots of these tragic events, to explain what Jones believed and why his followers were so loyal. I waited a long time.

This was an important religion story. Wasn't it?

Frustrated by why I was reading, and not reading, I called the dean of the religion reporters, the late George Cornell of the Associated Press. I remember the calm anger in his voice as he explained that few, if any, major news organizations had assigned religion specialists to help cover this shocking story that centered -- for better and for worse -- on the shocking demise of a pastor and his flock.

For many journalists, Cornell explained, Jonestown was too important to be a religion story.

"I think that a lot of newspaper people, a lot of journalists, grew up in a tradition where religion, at least the substance of religion, was out of the ballpark as far as newspapering is concerned," he told me. "They hesitate to cover religion because they see it as a private matter. They don't want it in the newspaper. Of course, this attitude could also be due to their ignorance of religion."

That's why it was hard to take Jones seriously during his rise. That's why it was hard to take him seriously after he died and took his followers with him. That's why it's easier to laugh or to look away.

Jonestown was not an isolated case, explained Cornell. Anyone who wants to understand how the world works has to take religion seriously. But many journalists just didn't get it. This blind spot is real.

That was true 30 years ago and it's true today.

"I mean, look at every major flash point in the world," said Cornell. "There's almost always a religious element involved -- and it's almost always a powerful one. ... People just don't see where the hammer is falling -- where the vital brew is brewing. Religion is usually mixed up in it."

Wink, wink pulpit wars

The political endorsement was clear, although the words were carefully chosen. New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop clearly wanted to inspire his supporters, even his own priests, to back Sen. Barack Obama. Still, he stressed that his endorsement was personal, not corporate.

''I will not be speaking about the campaign from the pulpit or at any church function,'' the bishop told reporters, in a 2007 conference call that drew low-key, calm news coverage. ''That is completely inappropriate. But as a private citizen, I will be at campaign events and help in any way that I can.''

The reaction was different after the Rev. Luke Emrich preached to about 100 evangelicals at New Life Church this past weekend, near Milwaukee. Veering from scripture into politics, he said his beliefs about abortion would control his vote.

"I'm telling you straight up, I would choose life," said Emrich, in a text that is being sent to the Internal Revenue Service. "I would cast a vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin. ... But friends, it's your choice to make, it's not my choice. I won't be in the voting booth with you."

Like the liberal Episcopal bishop, Emrich openly endorsed a candidate. And, like the bishop, he made it clear he was speaking for himself. The difference was that Emrich spoke from a pulpit, not a desk at the top of a church hierarchy.

Legal or illegal? That's a matter of location, location, location.

Emrich is one of 33 pastors nationwide who signed up for "Pulpit Freedom Sunday," an attempt by the Alliance Defense Fund to challenge IRS code language that says nonprofit, tax-exempt entities -- including churches -- may not "participate in, or intervene in ... any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for public office."

While all the sermons during this initiative mentioned candidates, some of the ministers used different approaches, said Erik Stanley, the Alliance Defense Fund's senior legal counsel. The organization is voluntarily sending the sermons to the IRS.

"We did not mandate for these pastors what they should or shouldn't say. We didn't write the sermons," he said. "I know that we had pastors who said, 'I would not vote for so and so.' I know others said, 'I urge you not to vote for so and so.' Some said, 'I plan to vote for so and so, but I'm only speaking for myself.' "

There's the rub. For decades, many clerics -- liberal and conservative -- have practiced a variety of wink-wink endorsement strategies. For example:

* Supporters of abortion rights have long challenged the "Respect Life Sunday" events in Catholic parishes in early October. However, some priests use this day to stress Vatican pronouncements on the uniquely evil nature of abortion, which can be seen as a nod to Republicans. Meanwhile, other priests proclaim a broader "Culture of Life" agenda, stressing health care, the environment and issues that may favor Democrats.

* Some clergy, in a various ethnic churches and doctrinal camps, have invited politicians into services, where they are openly embraced and honored them with cheers that "this candidate is one of us." The congregation applauds and shouts "amen." Is this an endorsement?

* Pastors may deliver sermons that stick to a moral or religious issue and then say that it's sinful to support politicians -- while avoiding names -- who violate what the pastor says is the biblical stand on that issue. In this case, it doesn't matter if the issue being discussed is the war in Iraq, abortion, immigration or gay rights.

* Some religious leaders merely "recommend" candidates, rather than offering explicit "endorsements."

Finally, what if an endorsement is delivered from an office at the heart of a sacred bureaucracy, rather than from the pulpit in a sanctuary?

There's the big question, said Stanley. When do winks and nods become illegal? Are the rules applied the same way for liberals and conservatives?

"This is what we're trying to find out," he said. "How is a pastor supposed to know what he can and cannot do? Many pastors are afraid of crossing some line out there and they censor themselves, because they don't know exactly where it is. They want to address these great moral issues from a biblical perspective, but they don't know how far the IRS will let them go."

Obama's awesome testimony

Play the right guitar chords and worshipers in megachurch America will automatically start singing these words: "Our God is an awesome God. He reigns from heaven above. With wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God."

So Barack Obama caused raised eyebrows when he turned to that page in the evangelical songbook during the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

"We worship an awesome God in the Blue States," he said in the speech that made him a rising star. "We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. ... We are one people."

Obama has mixed gospel images and liberal politics ever since, and his ability to reach pews without frightening the skeptical elites is crucial to his White House hopes.

Thus, all kinds of people paid close attention last week when he spoke to the 50th anniversary convention of the United Church of Christ, a small flock that has proudly set the pace for liberal Christianity. At the heart of his speech was his own spiritual rebirth two decades ago, when he responded to an altar call by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

"He introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ," Obama said. "I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

"It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle ... and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church, like folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. ... But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truths and carrying out His works."

Over at the Christian Broadcasting Network, commentator David Brody offered a candid evaluation of the speech, "That, ladies and gentlemen, is called a conversion experience."

While conservatives will certainly criticize that Obama and his church have taken on sexy moral issues — the UCC ordained its first gay pastor in 1972 and backs same-sex marriages — they also need to praise his candor.

"Besides Obama, how many times have you seen a presidential candidate get up in front of a large crowd and talk in depth about his salvation? I'll give you the answer: Zero," said Brody, on his CBN weblog. "For Obama to stand up and talk about how Jesus changed his life, my friends, that takes guts. ... Shouldn't we like it when someone talks about Christ being the missing ingredient in his life?"

It is also crucial for Obama to define his faith in his own terms. After all, his father, stepfather, brother and grandfather were Muslims and his name, "Barack," means "blessed" in Arabic. Meanwhile, his mother was a disillusioned Methodist who was deeply spiritual but most of all a skeptic about organized religion. As a child, Obama attended a Catholic school and then a Muslim school. Later, he was drawn to the writings of Malcolm X.

Eventually, he told the UCC convention, he knew that he had to make a decision about his own faith. Obama is convinced that he isn't alone in feeling a hunger that's deeper than a desire for political change.

"It seems to me that each day, thousands of Americans are going about their lives — they're dropping the kids off at school, driving to work, shopping at the mall, they're trying to stay on their diets, they're trying to kick a cigarette habit — and they're coming to the realization that something is missing," said Obama, drawing laughter from the crowd because of his own struggles with smoking.

"They're deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. ... And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them — that they are not just destined to travel down that long road toward nothingness."