Another Halloween is over and workers in stores and malls everywhere are boxing up the cardboard spooks and leftover candy.

If only it were that easy for those cursed to lead schools, day care centers, churches and other such groups in an age in which no demilitarized zone exists between sacred and secular. For them, Halloween 1996 is one calendar's worth of committee meetings away. Time flies, when parents are mad at you.

Truth is, the public square remains haunted by religion. You can't mess with death, dying, evil, devils and the like without raising eternal questions, especially when true believers on both sides have lawyers.

So public school leaders can look forward to hearing from Christian parents who believe that events linked to Halloween -- a celebration rooted in Druidic rites for the lord of the dead -- violate their rights. Some will want to see Halloween activities banned or moved outside school hours, or alternatives offered.

Hidden in the back of the typical American music store -- past the ethnic folk songs and spoken poetry -- is a tiny slot set aside for "Contemporary Christian Music."

Mark Joseph ponders this sad state of affairs whenever he returns home to Tokyo and flips through racks of compact discs, looking for the Christians whose music he markets in Japan through his MJM label.

"Over there, Holy Soldier is next to Jimi Hendrix ... and White Cross is next to White Snake," said Joseph, who is best known in Japan as a U.S. correspondent for CNN's Wow Wow Entertainment Report and the NHK television network. "In Japan, we can get away with that, because to them it's all rock 'n' roll. ... This is exactly how the artists I know would like to see their music handled in the states. But we know that's not possible, since over here `Christian' and `secular' music exist in different worlds."

Of course, no one would try to pin a "Buddhist musician" label on Tina Turner, the Beastie Boys or Courtney Love and lock their music in a commercial ghetto, he said.

LOS ANGELES -- Wherever he goes, veteran movie producer Ken Wales hears the same question: "What now?"

Letters keep arriving asking what happened to Christy Huddleston, the heroine of Catherine Marshall's famous novel about a missionary teacher in the Great Smoky Mountains. In the last episode of the CBS series "Christy," Wales and crew left her facing a romantic cliffhanger. Did she choose the preacher or the doctor?

"Truth is, we hadn't really made up our minds," said Wales. "In the book, she chooses the doctor. ... In real life, the real Christy married the minister."

But there's the rub. Viewers may never know, because the network canceled the series. During a year of CBS ratings disasters, "Christy" maintained solid second-place numbers in various time slots, while generating record numbers of fan letters and calls. That wasn't enough.

"Obviously, the CBS people never quite understood what `Christy' was about. I don't think they wanted to understand," said Wales, who invested nearly 20 years of his time and money in the project. "They gave us five different time slots and never left us in one place more than a few weeks. Anybody who has worked in this town knows that the way you kill a show is to keep moving it."

So there's that question again: "What now?"

No modern papal tour would be complete without services for throngs of the faithful gathered in sports stadiums.

Scoreboard operators don't have much to do during these rites, especially in comparison with big games. They handle a few public announcements or display words for hymns, but that's about it. This is a shame, since many who flock to hear the pope desperately want someone to keep score. As usual, experts searched for signs of a political game plan during John Paul II's recent U.S. visit.

After all, this is an ultraconservative pope. Perhaps his strong words on abortion, euthanasia, sexuality and family values were new clues that he wanted Catholic leaders here to cut decades of ties to the Democrats.

But John Paul also praised America's ethnic diversity and pleaded for renewed efforts to help the poor, care for the sick and welcome immigrants. Could these be words of warning to Republicans, or even the Christian Coalition, amid debates on welfare and tougher laws at U.S. borders?

Sometime between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the typical rabbi slips one or more not-so-subtle messages into the High Holy Day services.

Perhaps the rabbi will remind the throng that the doors are open year round or note that it's usually easier to find spaces in pews. Everyone laughs, because they've heard this before. But once the 10-day holy season has ended, as it did Wednesday, many of the worshippers vanish -- until next year.

The problem is that so many Jews center their faith on a few rites and seasons in synagogues and temples, said Ron Wolfson, director of the Whizin Institute for Jewish Family Life, in Los Angeles. Instead, more need to embrace rituals and symbols that they can use week after week in their homes.

"What we are dealing with here is a supermarket mentality," he said. "People say, `If I want exercise, I can go to the health club. If I want to buy something, I can go to the mall.' ... Then it's natural to say, `If I want some religion, then I know where to go -- I can go to the synagogue.' "

At least once a year, most religious groups feel the need to issue a lengthy document about this or that social issue.

These texts emerge after private debates in which committees write, rewrite and edit each line. Early drafts often surface in the media, before the word-crunching continues in public meetings. The results usually resemble government legislation or sausage. Rare is the person who yearns to inspect the contents.

This is ironic, since most of these statements are supposed to be practical, "pastoral" letters from leaders to the faithful.

This week, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops released "Faithful For Life: A Moral Reflection," a pastoral statement that attempts to break the mold. First, it was created amid little fanfare or controversy. Second, the 25-page booklet is candid, concise and smoothly written.

Clearly, the writers hope that real people may actually read and understand it.

The time is the near future and the new Republican president is a Yankee blue blood who tilts way right, except on moral issues.

The "Christian Alliance" screamed when he won the GOP nomination, then fled to form a third party. Afterwards, some cursed politics. A few began planning rebellion.

The plot twists start early in "Gideon's Torch," the first novel by former Nixon White house counsel Charles Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn. A fake patient guns down a famous abortionist. The president responds with a get-tough legal crusade that intimidates pro-life moderates, but invigorates radicals. The government starts promoting late-term abortions, after researchers learn that fetal brain tissue is the key to curing AIDS. So anti-abortion activists cut into an ABC News satellite signal. Then things get complicated.

But there is more to this political thriller than blood, dirty tricks and movie-script editing. The cover needs a warning sticker: Warning -- contains disturbing moral issues. Consider this exchange between the central character, Attorney General Emily Gineen, and a powerful Christian politico.

Hillsdale College's Dan Bisher did what any campus leader would do, as he flipped through Money magazine's annual issue rating colleges.

First, he found Hillsdale in the Top 100 chart, at No. 31, and at No. 5 in the crucial "best buys" in the Midwest list. Then he looked for the competition. He was surprised when he couldn't find Calvin College, another of Michigan's top liberal arts colleges.

"I thought, `That's strange,'" said Bisher, Hillsdale's media-relations specialist. "Calvin's always up there in these lists."

Calvin has fared well in lists from U.S. News & World Report, National Review, the New York Times, Barron's and others. These guides consider familiar criteria, such as the quality of the faculty, library resources, entrance exam scores and the number of alumni who earn graduate degrees.

But this year, Money's 96-page guide considered another factor -- religion. Thus, 150 schools were eliminated because they were too religious. Among those dropped were nationally-known colleges such as St. Olaf, Centre and St. Mary's (Ind.), as well as Calvin, Wheaton, Gordon, Asbury, Taylor and 85 others in the Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities. (In candor, another was Milligan College, where I teach.)

Twenty-six miles northwest of Denver is a mysterious, exotic place that many people call the People's Republic of Boulder.

Baby Boomers in Boulder are more likely to evolve into Buddhists than Baptists. Visitors to the downtown Pearl Street Mall may think they had strolled into an impromptu meeting of the World Parliament at Religions.

So some people chuckled back in 1991 when Bill Honsberger was appointed as a Conservative Baptist missionary to Colorado, and, in particular, to Boulder's new Age flocks. Obviously, the former deputy sheriff wasn't going to be a typical home, or even foreign, missionary. He was going to work in an alternative state of mind.

Today, the man that New Age Journal once labeled "Missionary Impossible" labors on, attending Hindu workshops, metaphysical fairs and meeting one-on-one with apologists for every imaginable brand of religion. But one of the toughest parts of his job is getting ordinary church leaders to realize that Boulder isn't all that unusual anymore.

"You can't find anyone, anywhere, who will admit to being a New Ager," said Honsberger. "Now, everybody's got their own brand of what's called `spirituality.' ... You have feminist spirituality and gay spirituality and environmental spirituality and people-who-pick-their-toes spirituality and you name it. It's one big pot of pluralistic soup."