For the first half of the 1990s, Father Christopher Moore spent most of his Sunday mornings guest preaching in parishes across New Jersey.

Each week, he stood in another pulpit, gazing at another set of Episcopalians in another set of pews. He quickly spotted trends.

"I found an incredible similarity from church to church, even from service to service. It seemed like I kept seeing the same 20 people at 8 o'clock and the same 100 people at 10 o'clock," said Moore, who served as the Trenton-based Diocese of New Jersey's communications director. Today, he leads a parish in Pennsylvania.

Eventually, Moore made a master list of unspoken assumptions that governed life in these parishes, whether people knew it or not. His conclusions will disturb some leaders in the oldline Protestant churches that have struggled to reach new members and fulfill old missions in a changing culture.

Each passing season brings dispatches from the church-state front lines in America's public schools.

In New Jersey, students asked to list "Christmas characters" didn't receive credit if they named Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Out in Oregon, a public-school calendar for December listed Kwanzaa, Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice -- but not Christmas.

And so it goes. Some students have been ridiculed for whispering prayers at lunch, disciplined for discussing faith or sent home for wearing religious t-shirts. Others have had papers rejected, or art projects trashed, because they focused on Christian themes. Students who create Christian publications or music may be silenced, while their secular counterparts thrive.

"Some educators keep saying that we make these cases up. But there have been so many that it's getting harder to say that with a straight face," said Mathew Staver, president of the conservative Liberty Counsel in Orlando, Fla.

But something different happened last fall outside Orlando.

Moments after he pulled the trigger, Yigal Amir announced that God told him to gun down Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The former seminarian later defended himself by quoting chapter and verse from ancient Jewish writers, while authorities investigated whether he had received guidance from rabbis on the right fringe of Israel's powerful, and some say paranoid, Orthodox community. Now, Amir's lawyers are suggesting that it all may have been a mistake.

After shocks from Rabin's death will rattle Israel, the Middle East and American Jewish groups for months and years to come. And in its end-of-the-year poll, the Religion Newswriters Association of America has named the assassination as 1995's top story on the religion beat.

A majority of journalists voting in this year's poll could not agree on a religion newsmaker of the year -- with most of the votes divided between Pope John Paul II and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

Since Santa Claus was on break, Cherie Shelor and her baby son had extra time to soak up the holiday atmosphere.

It was one of the last shopping days before Christmas last year and Santa's photo line snaked into the heart of the 200-plus stores of the Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem, N.C. The longer Shelor waited, the more she tuned into the mixed signals around her.

"This is THE mall -- the biggest in this part of the country -- so this is THE Santa," she said. "I got to listening to what the children were saying to their parents and what they were saying to Santa. ... I was shocked. I would have never talked to my mother like that. It was all `Get me this' and `Get me that' and `I want,' `I want,' `I want.' "

Just before they reached Santa's throne, Shelor had an epiphany that sent her home determined to change things for her family and perhaps even for others. While many talk about keeping Christ in Christmas, she vowed to try to get Jesus into the mall.

"I looked up there and I thought, `Just who is this man in red? If this is Christ's birthday and we say we're Christians, then why is Santa the star of this show?'," she said. "I mean, here we all were, lined up, telling our children lies about Santa and doing just what the world tells us to do."

There was nothing unusual about the Rev. Herschel Hobbs rising to speak at a tense moment in the Southern Baptist Convention.

After all, he held the president's gavel in the early 1960s, when Southern Baptists flirted with schism. He guided the writing of "The Baptist Faith and Message," a 1963 tract that came as close as anybody has ever come to creating a doctrinal statement for this fiercely anti-creedal flock. When he died on Nov. 28, the 88-year-old Hobbs remained a legend as a pastor, writer and orator.

Yet one of the most symbolic events in his career was a moment of painful failure.

The knives were out at the SBC's 1980 assembly in St. Louis, the second year of a fundamentalist surge to control America's largest non-Catholic denomination. After days of infighting, Hobbs decided he had to say something.

Southern Baptists, he said, shared a deep respect for scripture, even if all could not agree to march under the banner of "biblical inerrancy," the belief that the Bible is without errors of any kind. Above all, it would be wrong to try to create a standardized, mandatory set of interpretations of the Bible.

Beware the lures of "creeping creedalism," warned Hobbs, voicing a familiar theme.

Every year, members of the Greek Orthodox parish in Flushing, N.Y., gather after sundown on Dec. 5 to honor their patron saint.

A throng of nearly 1,000 fills the sanctuary for this vespers service, as the faithful remember a man known for his self-sacrificing love of children and the poor, as well as his determined defense of Christianity. After sunrise the rites begin again, because Dec. 6 is the feast day of St. Nicholas.

Millions of shoppers would know this saint's name, but few would recognize his face in Orthodox icons.

"One thing that we know about St. Nicholas, because all accounts of his life mention it, is that he was a faster," said Father John Lardas of St. Nicholas parish. "He regularly went without food, both to pray and to identify with the poor." In early paintings, he noted, St. Nicholas is "tall and thin and he has a somewhat gaunt, determined look. ... It's hard to imagine him as a pudgy, fat man saying `ho, ho, ho.' "

How a saint evolved into the crown prince of shopping malls is a long story, with major roles played by everyone from the Norse god Wodan to the Coca-Cola company.

Shortly before his grandson's health forced him out of school, the Rev. Jimmy Allen dropped by for lunch with Matthew and some classmates.

The young boy talked openly about what it was like to grow up HIV positive, in a family decimated by AIDS and haunted by the fears of others. Referring to an event at church, he casually added, "That was before they kicked us out," then continued.

"I have never heard sadder words," recalled Jimmy Allen.

It could have been one of several churches, because Matthew and his family were driven out of so many as, first, his baby brother and then his mother died of AIDS. Finally, 13-year-old Matthew died on Nov. 10. After years of silence, his grandfather has written a simple, but urgent, book entitled "Burden of a Secret." What pulled the story into the news is Jimmy Allen's stature as a global church leader, former Southern Baptist Convention president and award-winning television producer.

"Our churches are big on calling people to repent," said Allen. "Now it's time for the church to repent for ... rejecting people who are hurt and in need."

Frank Peretti thinks it might be fun if his next novel is a real howler.

No, this doesn't mean that the fantasy superstar who many insist on calling the "Christian Stephen King," wants to build his next bestseller around a holy war between saints and werewolves. No, Peretti is pondering a different plot twist.

"I could go any which way," he said. "I really don't think that my next one will be a horror book, at all. Hey, I might write a humorous book, something that's really off-the-wall and funny. Wouldn't that be a scream?"

After all, Peretti is known as a witty public speaker who constantly spins out wacky tales and wisecracks about modern life. It would be natural for him, a banjo player turned preacher, to consider writing humor.

But there's a problem. A Peretti comedy would inspire howls, but they might be screams of horror from Christian booksellers. Truth is, "Peretti" has become a commercial label. More than 5 million of his books are in print, led by "This Present Darkness," his breakthrough saga about spiritual warfare. Peretti is a franchise and it's hard to mess with success.

As printed, the program for the upcoming assembly of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations looks like business as usual.

Delegates to the Atlanta assembly will attend workshops on everything from cyberspace to ancient laws, from finances to rituals, from conception to life after death. Activists will focus on hot social issues, such as supporting gay rights and opposing the Religious Right. Vice President Al Gore will drop by.

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was scheduled to be the final speaker in the Nov. 29-Dec. 3 meetings. Liberal Jewish leaders planned -- as usual -- to endorse the peace process.

Then everything changed.