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."

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."

Apple, iSacraments and this lonely age

Probing the mysteries of Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI asked his flock gathered in 2006 to ponder what this season might mean to people living in the Internet age. "Is a Savior needed," he asked, "by a humanity which has invented interactive communication, which navigates in the virtual ocean of the Internet and, thanks to the most advanced modern communications technologies, has now made the earth, our great common home, a global village?"

What the world really needed, quipped Gizmodo writer Brian Lam, responding to the pope, was a new spiritual tool. Thus, digital believers were waiting for a John the Baptist -- Apple's Steve Jobs -- to "unveil Apple-Cellphone-Thingy, the true Jesus Phone" during the upcoming rites of the Macworld Conference.

That online exchange set the stage for an Apple advertisement that serves as a stained-glass image moment revealing the mysterious role that digital devices now play -- moment by moment -- in the lives of millions, according to University of Notre Dame business professor Brett Robinson, author of "Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs."

In the ad, a human finger reached out of darkness toward the rows of icons on the glowing iconostasis of the new iPhone screen above this incantation: "Touching is Believing." For Robinson, there is no way to avoid a connection with the biblical image of Jesus inviting the doubting St. Thomas to put his finger into the wounds on his resurrected body and, thus, "be not faithless but believing."

"It's all about the metaphors," said Robinson, in a telephone interview. "You cannot explain what cannot be explained without metaphors. Technology needs metaphors to explain itself to the world and the same is true for religion."

Thus it's significant that, for some many consumers, the use of Apple products have become what scholars have long called the "Apple cult," he said. It's also clear that Jobs -- drawing on his '60s driven devotion to Eastern forms of religion -- set out to combine art, technology and philosophy into a belief brand that asked consumers to, as stated by another classic ad, to rebel and "think differently."

"It's easy to get into arguments about what is a religion and what is not," said Robinson. "But there's no question that the giant glass cube of the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue" in New York City serves as "a cathedral and that people go travel there on pilgrimages and that their local Apple Stores are like local parishes. ...

"The goal is to consume something bigger than themselves and then they can draw a sense of identity from those products."

Jobs knew all of that. After fleeing the Missouri Synod Lutheranism of his youth, he went out of his way to rattle traditional cages throughout his career. This was, after all, the man whose company logo was a rainbow apple -- minus one Edenic bite. He tested an early product with a prank call to the Vatican, pinned a $666 price tag on the Apple I and dressed as Jesus at the company's first Halloween party.

In his famous 2005 Stanford University address, Jobs told the graduates to "trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. ... Don't be trapped by dogma. ... Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice."

At the heart of the Apple mythos, stressed Robinson, is an amazing paradox, the yin-yang doctrine that Jobs was trying to sell consumers good computers in order to help them escape a chilly world dominated by bad computers. He sold his refined, graceful devices by using images of enlightenment and community, while users may end up spending untold lonely hours staring at digital mirrors in their hands or on their desks.

The bottom line: Have the products inspired by the "Jesus Phone" turned into narcissistic rosaries?

"That iPhone provides some of the comforts and a sense of security that religious faith provides," said Robinson. "It promises to connect you to the world and to the transcendent. ... Yet most people spend most of their time looking at the same five or six sites online -- like Facebook -- that primarily are about their own lives.

"They spend untold hours in this intimate ritual of touching those phones, clicking and clicking their way through their own interests, their own desires, their own lives. The emphasis ends up being on the 'I,' not the other."

Boy Scouts, canon law and trying to predict the future

Every since the gay Boy Scouts earthquake, many Catholics have been asking canon law expert Edward Peters to fill a role he has clearly stated he has no desire to play -- that of a prophet. "I'm no good at predicting the future. My only concern is with the BSA policy as written," said Peters, reached by email during a busy week. "That policy does not conflict with the church's teachings on homosexuality or homosexual persons."

Right now, it's logical for parish leaders and Catholic parents to be asking two questions, in the tense aftermath of the recent Boy Scouts of America declaration: "No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone."

Question No. 1: Should Catholic organizations continue to sponsor Boy Scout troops? Question No. 2: May Catholic groups or parents cut their ties to the Boy Scouts?

However, the nervous partisans in these debates keep asking Peters variations on questions that boil down to this: "What it?"

For example, "What if gay-rights groups sue troop sponsors seeking the acceptance of gays and lesbians as Boy Scout leaders?" Or there is this one: "What if openly gay Scouts want to date each other?"

How Catholics respond will be crucial, since Catholic organizations sponsor more than 8,000 Boy Scout troops or packs. Other religious organizations will also pay close attention to these debates, since Catholic teachings on related topics are so specific.

Peter's views have been circulated widely, after he posted detailed essays on his "In the Light of the Law" website. He teaches canon law at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

For Catholics, he wrote, the key is not to be pulled into speculation, but to seek a logical and compassionate application of all church teachings linked to homosexuality.

"First, the Church's absolute rejection of homosexual acts and her description of same-sex attraction as objectively 'disordered' ... is not subject to question among Catholics. Second, the Church calls on persons who experience same-sex attraction 'to fulfill God's will in their lives' ... and to practice chastity," he noted. As for all unmarried persons, this means, "complete continence."

Catholic teachings, he added, also warn society to avoid "every sign of unjust discrimination" against those who experience same-sex attraction.

The line between orientation and behavior is crucial, due to a clarification issued by the Boy Scouts: "Any sexual conduct, whether homosexual or heterosexual, by youth of Scouting age is contrary to the virtues of Scouting."

This firm statement, Peters argued online, "seems wholly in-line with sound Catholic teaching against sexual activity outside of marriage and stands in welcome contrast to the indifference toward premarital sex shown by some other youth organizations. ... Aside from youth programs expressly oriented toward chastity, I know of no other secular organization that so clearly declares all sexual conduct by its youth members to be contrary to its values as does the Boy Scouts."

At this point, Peters thinks it would be premature to reject the Boy Scouts, although it would not be wrong for cautious Catholics to cut those ties.

Meanwhile, another key player in ecumenical discussions of this issue -- the new leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission -- is concerned that the Boy Scouts have adopted "highly politicized" language that defines personal identity in terms of sexual orientation. This could affect how the Boy Scouts approach marriage and family.

"Churches have the ability to distinguish between penitents and seekers, and to articulate concepts of sin, etc.," said the Rev. Russell Moore, via email, while drawing these kinds of moral lines is a challenge for the Scouts. This new homosexuality policy may mean the "Scouts will have little ability to speak of, as normative, sexuality expressed only in terms of conjugal marriage and family."

Once again, said Peters, it's hard to predict what will happen as this policy is implemented, attacked and defended. However, Catholics must clearly communicate to Scouting leaders that the church cannot accept mixed signals about marriage.

"Again, I'm not good at guessing which way things will play out," he said. "But the principles for a Catholic approach here are pretty clear. Persons of the same sex cannot marry, so conduct implying that they can marry is either forbidden outright or is at least strongly discouraged on the grounds of prudence."

Was Jesus religious enough for HHS mandate?

When describing how his disciples should serve the needy, Jesus told a parable about a Good Samaritan who rescued a traveler who had been robbed and left for dead. This businessman didn't care that his act of kindness took place in public and that the injured man didn't share his faith.

This raises an haunting question for those involved in the church-state struggles surrounding the Health and Human Services mandate requiring most religious institutions to offer their employees, and often students, health-insurance plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including "morning-after pills."

As Sister Mary Ann Walsh of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops noted in an online memo: "HHS has such a narrow standard as to who operates a religious ministry, Jesus himself couldn't pass muster."

After all, the Good Samaritan wasn't ordained and didn't work for a church or a non-profit ministry, noted Stanley Carlson-Thies, president of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance. He spoke during a recent religion-and-politics symposium at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., which was streamed online.

Also, this businessman provided food and health care and the "very point of the story" is that he "cared for the injured man even though ... the man was of a different religion," stressed Carlson-Thies. Today, it would appear that any ministry that follows Jesus "by giving a cup of cold water to anyone who needs it, including those of other or no religion ... has put itself outside the category of a religious employer."

After all, the HHS mandate only recognizes the conscience rights of employers if they "fit a particular tax code definition that applies only to churches and their closely controlled affiliates," he said. These non-profit employers must have the "inculcation of religious values" as their goal, primarily employ persons who share their "religious tenets" and primarily serve persons who share those same tenets.

The mandate has created a legal storm. Critics are asking whether the White House is promoting a two-tier approach to the First Amendment -- with "freedom of worship" favored over a broader right to the "free exercise" of religious liberty. Currently, an unprecedented number of lawsuits against the federal government -- 54 cases with more than 160 plaintiffs -- are creeping through the courts.

Meanwhile, noted Carlson-Thies, some branches of the government seem confused about what forms of religious work they want to encourage in public life.

For example, if leaders of religious organizations want to fit into the exempt category under the HHS mandate, they must be willing to violate the federal rules governing the faith-based initiative that seeks to promote cooperation between religious groups and the state. After all, he said, the faith-based initiative "requires groups that receive federal dollars to serve everyone, without regard to faith."

But there are complications that mandate opponents must acknowledge, said political scientist Leah Seppanen Anderson, responding to Carlson-Thies. For example, many schools, hospitals and social agencies that retain some ties to religious bodies also are willing to hire employees, and admit students, that do not affirm their doctrines or practice their faith.

Anderson noted that she teaches at Wheaton College and willingly signs a covenant expressing support for this evangelical school's approach to life and faith. However, this is not the case on campuses such as Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame. Many women work, study and teach there and have not signed doctrinal covenants.

"What about these women, then? Why does the religious freedom of these organizations, who choose to hire people who do not ... necessarily share their religious values and convictions" matter so much, she asked, but "these women either have their religious freedom limited or their health-care options limited?"

It would be better, she said, if American public life continued to welcome many different religious perspectives on these kinds of divisive issues, but "that may not be the reality."

In the end, stressed Carlson-Thies, that kind of broad civic tolerance is what must be defended.

"To my mind," he said, "this is the most significant religious freedom challenge in our country in our time -- to struggle against these restrictive trends in order to preserve the freedom of faith-based organizations to serve the public in a countercultural way, to follow what they believe God calls them to do even when those practices differ from the popular consensus."

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."

God and The New York Times, once again

When it comes to the daily news, the recently retired editor of The New York Times has decided there is news and then there is news about religion and social issues.

When covering debates on politics, it's crucial for Times journalists to be balanced and fair to stakeholders on both sides. But when it comes to matters of moral and social issues, Bill Keller argues that it's only natural for scribes in the world's most powerful newsroom to view events through what he considers a liberal, intellectual and tolerant lens.

"We're liberal in the sense that ... liberal arts schools are liberal," Keller noted, during a recent dialogue recorded at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. "We're an urban newspaper. ... We write about evolution as a fact. We don't give equal time to Creationism."

Moderator Evan Smith, editor of the Texas Tribune, jokingly shushed his guest and added: "You may not be in the right state for that."

Keller continued: "We are liberal in the sense that we are open-minded, sort of tolerant, urban. Our wedding page includes -- and did even before New York had a gay marriage law -- included gay unions. So we're liberal in that sense of the word, I guess. Socially liberal."

Asked directly if the Times slants its coverage to favor "Democrats and liberals," he added: "Aside from the liberal values, sort of social values thing that I talked about, no, I don't think that it does."

The bottom line: Keller insists that the newspaper he ran for eight years is playing it straight in its political coverage.

However, he admitted it has an urban, liberal bias when it comes to stories about social issues. And what are America's hot-button social issues? Any list would include sex, salvation, abortion, euthanasia, gay rights, cloning and a few other sensitive matters that are inevitably linked to religion. That's all.

Keller's Austin remarks were the latest in a series of candid comments in which the man who has called himself a "crashed Catholic" has jabbed at his newspaper's critics, especially political conservatives and religious traditionalists.

Shortly before stepping down as editor, he wrote a column insisting that religious believers -- evangelical Protestants and conservative Catholics, in particular -- should face strict scrutiny when running for higher office. After all, he argued, if a candidate believes "space aliens dwell among us," shouldn't voters know if these kinds of beliefs will shape future policies?

In another recent essay, Keller flashed back to an earlier national debate about the integrity of the Times and its commitment to journalistic balance, fairness and accuracy. It was in 2004 that the newspaper's first "public editor" wrote a column that ran under the headline "Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?" Then, in his first sentence, Daniel Okrent bluntly stated: "Of course it is."

Discussions of this column continue to this day. The key to that earlier piece, noted Keller, was its admission that the Times' outlook is "steeped in the mores of a big, rambunctious city," which means that it tends to be "skeptical of dogma, secular, cosmopolitan."

This socially liberal worldview does have its weaknesses when it comes to covering news outside zip codes close to Manhattan.

"Okrent rightly scolded us for sometimes seeming to look down our urban noses at the churchgoing, the gun-owning and the unlettered," noted Keller. "Respect is a prerequisite for understanding. But he did not mean that we subscribe to any political doctrine or are foot soldiers in any cause. (Anyone who thinks we go easy on liberals should ask Eliot Spitzer or David Paterson or Charles Rangel or...)."

As for the future, the newspaper's new executive editor has carefully offered her own opinion on the worldview of the newsroom she leads. In an interview with current Times public editor Arthur S. Brisbane, Jill Abramson joined Keller in stressing that it's crucial to remain unbiased -- when covering politics.

"I sometimes try not only to remind myself but my colleagues that the way we view an issue in New York is not necessarily the way it is viewed in the rest of America," she said. "I am pretty scrupulous about when we apply our investigative firepower to politicians, that we not do it in a way that favors one way of thinking or one party over the other. I think the mandate is to keep the paper straight."

What, me worry? Whatever

EDITOR'S NOTE: First of two columns on teens and ethics. Take comfort in this: The items on the following "to do" list do not apply to all teens today.

Lie to your parents about those wild weekend plans -- check.

Steal that scarf you want at the mall -- check.

Download that term paper off the Internet and add a few mistakes to confuse the teacher -- check.

Inflate your volunteer hours at your church's soup kitchen to pump up that college application -- check.

The problem with the Josephson Institute's latest survey -- the 2008 Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth -- is that it contained so many bad numbers that many depressing readers were tempted to pin an "all of the above" verdict on most teens.

Consider the numbers on stealing. Nearly of third of the students surveyed -- 29,760 in 100 randomly selected public and private high schools -- admitted stealing from a store during the previous year. Also, 23 percent said they stole from a parent or relative. The numbers were lower for honors students and those who attended religious schools, but around 20 percent of them stole something from someone.

It's easy to criticize the young, but it's also important to know that they're learning these behaviors from the adults around them, said Michael Josephson, founder of the Los Angeles-based ethics center.

"Did you lie about your child's age to save money? Did you provide your child with a false excuse for missing school? Did you lie about your address to get your child into a better school?", he asked, in a commentary about the survey. "Most of us stray from our highest ethical ambitions from time to time, but we usually do so selectively, convincing ourselves that we're justified and that occasional departures from our ethical principles are inconsequential when it comes to our overall character.

"Most of us judge ourselves by our best actions and intentions, but the children who watch everything we do may be learning from our worst."

The sobering numbers leapt into headlines nationwide, while the researchers said the truth was almost certainly worse -- since 26 percent of the participants admitted that they lied on at least one or two of the prickly questions. Students took part in the survey during class sessions, with guarantees of anonymity.

Other results noted by the institute included:

* More then eight in 10 students -- 83 percent -- admitted that they lied to a parent about an issue of some importance, while 43 percent of the students in public and private schools said that they have lied to save money.

* In a 2006 survey, 60 percent of the students said they cheated on at least one test and 35 percent cheated two or more times. This year, the numbers rose to 64 percent and 38 percent on the same issues.

* The Internet makes plagiarism easy, with 36 percent of the students confessing that vice -- up from 33 percent in 2004.

* Self-esteem is not a problem, since 93 percent of the students reported that their ethics and character were satisfactory and, in a popular quote from the survey, 77 percent said, "when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know."

Buried deep in the survey form was another question that would be of special interest to clergy and other religious leaders who work with the young. When asked if they had done "things in violation of my religious beliefs" during the past year, 48 percent of those polled affirmed a simple answer -- never. Another 15 percent confessed to one violation of their personal religious beliefs.

This survey is more proof that something has gone wrong with the way Americans are teaching their young people the meaning of right and wrong, said evangelical activist Charles Colson.

"Instead of being rooted in an objective moral order that exists independently of ourselves, right and wrong are subjective -- they're the product of the person's 'values.' In that case, it makes perfect sense that people can lie, cheat, and steal and still be 'satisfied' with their ethics," he said, in a radio commentary.

"After all, they are not answerable to God or the community, only to themselves. The question isn't, 'How shall we live?' but, 'How do I feel about it?' "

NEXT: The theological content of "whatever."

Hiding behind pulpits

Reporter Louis Moore didn't know much about the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod when he began covering its bitter civil war in the 1970s. Nevertheless, as a Southern Baptist with a seminary degree he knew a biblical-authority battle when he saw one -- so he caught on fast. Soon he was appalled by the viciousness of the combat between "moderates" and "conservatives" as the 2.7 million-member denomination careened toward divorce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEXT WEEK: Why Catholic doors kept closing.