'Broad Minded' Church Growth?

Visit all of the churches in an American city on the same Sunday and the experience would feel something like channel surfing on cable television.

Click. A lecture. Click. Stand-up comedy. Click. Self-esteem tips. Click. A stone vault with statues. Click. A high-tech arena. Click. Classical music. Click. Bouncy pop. Click. People in three- piece suits. Click. Folks who appear to be doing the wave.

The ratings for some of these churches are way down and their age demographics are way up. These facts are hard to avoid.

"Many times I have heard my colleagues say, as they look at the preponderance of people in their 50s, 60s and even 70s in major leadership positions in the church, `Where will my church be in 10 years?' This is a good question," wrote Father Christopher Chamberlin Moore, in a national Episcopal newsletter. "Where will the church be ... if we do not nurture future generations?"

This raises another question: Can churches make major stylistic changes without offending the faithful? Clergy fear -- with good reason -- that older members will stay home, or sit on their wallets, when drums appear in the sanctuary.

Perhaps the answer is "parallel development," a strategy that calls for adding the new without burying the old, said Moore, who served as communications director for the Diocese of New Jersey before moving to Holy Comforter Parish in Drexel Hill, Pa. One church might add a Mass targeting baby boomer families, another new self-help programs for its neighbors. A large church might even offer simultaneous Sunday services -- formal rites in the sanctuary and another in the fellowship hall for "seekers."

These are not new ideas in church growth circles. Still, many oldline church leaders have declined to take these kinds of steps, in part because they do not want to be associated with methods used by conservatives. Moore is convinced that adopting some megachurch methods does not mean adopting their theology. For example, he noted that a recent Connecticut study found signs of growth in some "Broad Minded" as well as "Jesus Focused" parishes.

But this raises yet another question: If growing churches offer more rites and programs, why not go further and allow members to set their own theological agendas? Spiritualities 'R' Us?

In the study cited by Moore, the Rev. Peter A.R. Stebinger of Hartford Seminary said that "Jesus Focused" churches focus on traditional doctrine, while "Broad Minded" parishes assume that, beyond sharing a few core beliefs about God, members will take different stands on other issues.

"Growth in holiness is linked less to a specific doctrinal stance and more to a subjective sense of deepening connection to God," wrote Stebinger. In "Jesus Focused" churches "holiness is inextricably linked to the person of Jesus Christ. ... The Bible is the key source of authority, a marked contrast from the Broad Minded congregations, where the locus of authority is largely in the individual's experience."

Moore said he felt relieved to finally see some data about growth -- even modest growth -- in a circle of liberal churches.

"For so long, it seemed like we only had two choices," he said. "We could go the charismatic-fundamentalist route and see our churches grow. ... Well, that isn't a road many Episcopalians or other mainline people like us will want to take. The other choice was to take the mainline-liberal road and face numerical decline. That's not much of a choice."

Conservative churches tell people that "Jesus is the answer," said Moore. "Broad Minded" churches must find a way to be just as urgent while delivering a more nuanced message.

"Jesus is the answer, but we have to have tolerance for the many ways in which people come to grasp that and the ways in which they try to live that out," he said. "Broad Minded" churches that want to grow will "teach that there are different paths people can take to God, but the church is still where they should go to take that journey. ... If we don't get that last part of the message across, then we'll be in trouble."

Bathsheba at the Beach

JEKYLL ISLAND, Ga. -- Every summer, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians and others flirt with making historic changes in their doctrines on sex.

But the debates that matter the most aren't held in convention halls and ecclesiastical offices. They take place when youth groups pack into church vans and travel to conferences and camps that function as unofficial sex education programs for thousands.

Each summer, counselor Jeannie Gregory faces rooms full of young women here at the Fun In The Son conference, helping them wrestle with sin, salvation, self esteem and sex. This week, she began her seminar with a parable she could have called "Bathsheba at the Beach."

"They always ask the same kinds of questions," she said. "They want to know what I think about America, these days, and why things seem so messed up. ... Then the questions get pretty practical -- like how much, or how little, should they wear at the beach."

So Gregory read a blunt story about King David. The Bible reports that, during an evening walk on his roof, he saw "a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, `Is this not Bathsheba ... the wife of Uriah the Hittite?' So David sent messengers and took her ... and he lay with her."

This story of adultery includes a pregnancy and two deaths. It's easy blame David, but Bathsheba made some bad choices, too.

"Many of these girls don't like to hear about that," said Gregory. "They don't like to hear that there are all kinds of choices that can lead to being pregnant and abandoned. ... Too often, we don't want to be responsible for our choices. Nothing is ever our fault."

When told that it might be wise to be more modest, the girls laugh. That's not what they see in thousands of media images or hear at school or the mall.

"All I can say is, `OK, so you put on that bikini and you bounce out there, today," said Gregory. "Now, what do YOU think that says and is that what the GUYS think it's says? ... They know where they're leading the guys. The question is, do the girls really want to go there?"

People still ask these kinds of questions at Fun In The Son, one of a cluster of national conferences run by Presbyterians For Renewal. More than 800 attended this week's sessions, which have been held on this island for two decades. The week includes Bible studies, prayer time and sessions on subjects such as dating, college and coping with parents. Worship services mix rock music, low-key preaching and multi-media humor based on TV and movies -- entertaining evangelism. The leaders know these teens were baptized in church as infants, but have been immersed in media ever since. And then there's the free time.

"Fun In The Son raises some good issues about faith and Jesus Christ, but mainly it's a four-day hormone rush," said one girl, watching the parade to the beach. A bronzed guy loitering in the deep end added: "What's this all about? It's about looking pretty at the pool. Some people really get into that."

Youth pastors know this tension exists. They also know church kids have been touched by divorce, the hidden sins of parents and head-spinning church debates about sexual morality. Many of those who tote study Bibles at Fun In The Son also carry secret burdens. Polls in many denominations have yielded sobering results about premarital sex, abuse, abortion and broken hearts.

Yet most churches seek safety in silence.

"We're so concerned that people may think we're fanatics or something," said Gregory. "Many pastors and youth pastors are scared to talk about these kinds of issues because they're afraid people may leave the church. .... Well, we may have to cause some guilt. We may have to offend some parents. But how many will we save? How many kids will we prevent from making terrible mistakes? How much pain will we prevent? How many marriages will we save?"

Snakes, Miracles and Biblical Authority

Church historian Bill Leonard never expected to become friends with the late Brother Arnold Saylor, let alone grow to appreciate his theological insights.

Leonard is a scholar. Saylor was an illiterate country preacher who -- until he died of old age in 1991 -- would take rattlesnakes with him into the pulpit. Both men were surprised to learn that they wrestled with similar mysteries.

"Serpent handlers may be very, very weird, but they're not crazy," said Leonard, who was recently named dean of the new divinity school at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. "What people like Arnold Saylor can teach us is that we need to take second or third looks at some really important issues about the Bible and religious experience."

Millions of Americans say the Bible contains no errors of any kind. "Amen," say the snake handlers. Others complain that too many people view the Bible through the lens of safe, middle-class conformity and miss its radical message. Snake handlers agree.

Millions of Americans say that miracles happen, especially when believers have been "anointed" by God's Holy Spirit. "Preach on," say snake handlers. Polls show that millions of spiritual seekers yearn for ecstatic, world-spinning experiences of divine revelation. "Been there, done that," say snake handlers.

The bottom line: Snake handlers say they have biblical reasons for engaging in rites that bring them closer to God. They wonder why others settle for less riveting forms of faith, said Leonard, during a lecture series on Appalachian religion.

"What if every time you went to church you knew it could kill you? That would pick up the old Sunday service a bit, wouldn't it?", he said. "For these folks, taking up serpents is a kind of sacrament that helps them face life-and-death issues. But if this sacrament brings life, it also can bring death. ... It becomes the ultimate religious ritual, the ultimate religious experience."

The practice of handling snakes in worship began in 1909, when a Baptist named George Hensley joined a Pentecostal fellowship near Cleveland, Tenn. The result was a fiery revivalism that combined a rock-ribbed view of the Bible with a Pentecostal emphasis on signs and wonders. Hensley died of a snake bite in 1955.

Writers have always been fascinated by snake handlers despite the fact that, at any point in time, only 2,000 or so people have practiced these rites and as few as 75 worshippers have died. Some of the tackier media coverage attempts to use snake handlers as symbols of the South or of fundamentalist Protestants, in general. Others try to find complex psychological explanations for why these people do what they do.

Snake handlers themselves merely quote the end of the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is recorded as telling his disciples: "And these signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."

True believers note that the verse says believers "shall" take up serpents -- not "may."

"This becomes an ultimate test for the total truthfulness of the Word of God, a kind of slippery slope," said Leonard. "If handling serpents isn't true ... then none of the Bible is true. It's right there in the book, so they believe it. They can't understand why other people don't believe it."

Meanwhile, churches battles rage on. Many preach that miracles continue to happen. Others disagree. Some interpret every verse of the Bible literally, both as science and history. Others insist that biblical injunctions about peace and justice are "divinely inspired," while passages about sexual morality are out of date.

"What the serpent handlers keep saying to us -- whether we want to listen or not -- is that we all tend to emphasize the parts of the Bible that make us feel comfortable," said Leonard. "We try to make it a tame book. Whatever the serpent handlers teach us, they can teach us that the Bible cannot be domesticated."

The Human Face of Religious Persecution

So far, Robert Hussein has lost his wife, children and fortune and, right now, his only safe home is on the Internet.

The trouble began when he lost his Muslim faith and announced his conversion to Christianity. The prominent businessman -- he was worth $4 million before the controversy -- has lived in hiding since a religious court's May 29 ruling that he is an apostate.

Kuwait allows churches for foreigners and Arab Christians. However, Hussein is the region's first known Muslim to openly convert. His case is especially symbolic since Western leaders said one goal of the Persian Gulf War was to reinforce Kuwait's status as a relatively progressive Islamic regime. Still, tensions remain between civil and religious laws.

"They have taken everything that I have," said Hussein, in an interview posted at a World Wide Web site backing his cause. "Christians in the Middle East have been suffering. ... Enough is enough. In Algeria they have been killed. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia they have been beheaded ... and nobody is talking about them."

The Web site (www.domini.org/hussein/home.htm) is sponsored by a British religious coalition and contains government documents and media reports, as well as links allowing readers to fax Kuwaiti officials or to contact Hussein's protectors. The Islamic Court of Appeals will review his case on Sept. 15.

The May verdict noted that Kuwait's constitution guarantees religious freedom, but this "does not mean a Muslim should be allowed to convert from his religion to another." It also said an apostate "who is born of two Muslim parents ... must be killed. The Iman should kill him without a chance to repent."

Judge Jaafar al-Mazidi told Reuters that some might interpret the ruling as permission to kill the convert. This would, however, be considered murder under Kuwaiti civil law.

But to say Hussein will be protected by civil law ignores the pivotal question: Should those who commit crimes against Islamic orthodoxy be tried in civil or religious courts? Or, as Hussein asked a judge: "Your honor, how can a Sunni Muslim sue a Protestant Christian before a Shiite court?" The answer will affect moderate Muslims as well as members of other faiths.

"Obviously, it's hard to say where religion ends and civil authority begins in Kuwait," said Jeff Taylor, of the Compass Direct religion news agency.

Meanwhile, both the White House and Bob Dole campaign officials have rejected calls to address religious persecution issues. Why? "Oil is important and everybody knows it," said Taylor. "That can make it hard to focus on other issues -- such as religious freedom."

A U.S. State Department paper responding to the May verdict echoed Kuwait's view that its constitution protects religious freedom and that Hussein is in no danger. The statement also noted that, as an apostate, Hussein "loses his custody rights to his children and inheritance rights to his father's estate. ... These are the only ramifications of the court's decision."

This statement infuriated human rights activists because it seemed to assume such measures were fair punishment for the mere act of converting to another faith, said Nina Shea, director of Freedom House's work on religious freedom. Also, U.S. officials have downplayed calls -- by clerics and some in Kuwait's parliament -- for Hussein's death. Many in the Islamic world continue to believe that apostasy is a crime worthy of the death penalty.

"We simply don't know how much danger Hussein is in, right now. But he's keeping on the move and trying to keep his actions unpredictable," said Shea.

Meanwhile, reports continue about China's crackdown on house churches, ongoing persecution in North Korea, the demolition of evangelical churches in Cuba and Christians sold into slavery in Sudan. In Kuwait, many Christian converts live double lives -- waiting to see what happens next.

"What the Robert Hussein case does is put a face on an otherwise abstract problem," said Shea. "It's so easy for people to hear all of the terrible statistics from around the world and then slip in compassion fatigue. Sometimes, it's easier for people to identify with a single human face."

Hello World, Welcome to the Bible Belt

Somewhere, there's a big book that determines how networks televise the Olympics.

In addition to the games, they are instructed to offer hours of pageantry, inspiring parables about athletes and sermons about what it all means. The final ingredient: Mini-documentaries that dissect whatever foreign, mysterious land is hosting the Olympics.

So hello world, welcome to the Bible Belt.

While some may question whether Atlanta remains in "the South," there's no doubt TV crews can find the real thing in Birmingham, Ala., Savannah, Ga., and the Tennessee and North Carolina mountain towns near the Ocoee River.

"Some parts of the South are definitely further south than others," said the Rev. Harold Bales, director of ministries for United Methodists in Western North Carolina. He also produces -- whenever he feels like it -- a newsletter called "The Southern- Fried Preacher." As a whole, he said, "the South remains a kind of strange country that some folks just can't figure out."

So God only knows what'll happen when 20,000-plus media professionals flock to the 17-day summer games, which should draw about 1.5 million people.

"You have to ask: What's different about the South, these days? What does it mean to be `Southern'? The problem is that I'm not even sure many Southerners have a rock-solid answer for questions like that, anymore," said Bales.

Bales said he keeps returning to three subjects -- food, family and faith. In Southern lingo, those are his three points (alliteration helps) and, yes, he has a poem. If you don't grasp the symbolism of three points and a poem, then you didn't grow up in a Southern pew.

Links between food and faith are fundamental. For many Southerners, church suppers remain weekly rituals and flocks may split while defining terms such as "barbecue" and "Brunswick stew."

In a poetic fit, Bales once composed a hymn to a beloved vegetable, while alluding to Southern populism. "Thou much-maligned by foolish folk, the suave, the chic, the mod," he wrote. "Remember, thou art nobler yet than they, dear humble pod! ... In skillet and in stewpot now, where knowing cooks all put thee, exult thou soul-food; take a bow. I love thee grand ole okree!"

But times change, even in Southern homes. Much has been written about the "new South" and the region's relatively recent transition from a agrarian economy into the age of supermalls. The result: Sweeping changes in the lives of children, parents and grandparents. Still, Southerners remain a few generations closer to older family patterns than many other Americans and, thus, are quick to defend the ties that bind.

"It wasn't fashionable, awhile back, to talk much about traditional families and loving your kinfolks," said Bales. "People said that kind of language excludes some people or just isn't realistic, today. Well, there aren't many people in the South who would agree with those kinds of complaints. The family never went out of style, down here, especially in Southern churches."

But Southerners know that family life has dark and light sides. The same is true of Southern faith, which Bales admitted can be infested with "creepy crawly things," such as racism, sexism, superstition and fear of religious minorities. Also, a lingering regional inferiority complex often causes a shrill defensiveness. Few Southern folks will be shocked if, amid headlines about church burnings, folks from the East and West coasts focus many Olympic reports on this dark side.

But the truth is more complex than that, said Bales. For example, the South contains as many or more truly interracial congregations as any other American region. Another example: The Southern tendency to dwell on issue of sin and evil also can make it easier to move people with appeals to repentance and justice.

"For sophisticated people, the power that religion has down here may not always be as logical as they'd like it to be," said Bales. "But you have to understand the appeal of this kind of complex, sometimes paradoxical faith, or you just can't understand the South."

Southern Baptists, Disney and Media Reality

For the next 12 months, the Rev. Richard Land will try to convince Southern Baptists to reconsider the ties that bind their homes to the Walt Disney Co.

Meanwhile, the leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's Christian Life Commission also will watch for signs that Disney executives are willing to discuss the threat of a boycott by America's largest non-Catholic flock.

It's hard to say which task will be more difficult. Most church leaders don't take entertainment seriously and most media leaders don't take churches seriously. However, media leaders know that millions of churchgoers shell out billions of dollars for their products and use them as video babysitters -- just like everyone else.

"We know we've done pitifully little to help our people deal with the media age," said Land, whose Nashville-based agency is best known for its political activism. "We haven't done enough to help them think seriously about the role that TV and movies and VCRs and everything else play in their lives. We will -- believe me, with this Disney situation we will -- step up our efforts."

"The Disney situation" refers to the media storm after a June 12 Southern Baptist Convention resolution accusing Mickey Mouse and company of various moral sins. It encouraged "Southern Baptists to give serious and prayerful reconsideration to their ... support of Disney products and to boycott The Disney Company and theme parks if they continue this anti-Christian and anti-family trend."

The vote protested a variety of Disney actions, such as granting insurance benefits to partners of homosexual employees, hosting homosexual events at theme parks, the publication of books for homosexual children and the hiring of a convicted child molester to direct the movie "Powder."

Land stressed that the convention resolution did not establish a boycott, but asked his agency to monitor Disney's responses -- to see if a boycott is needed.

The official Disney response stated: "We find it curious that a group that claims to espouse family values would vote to boycott the world's largest producer of wholesome family entertainment. We question any group that demands that we deprive people of health benefits and we know of no tourist destination in the world that denies admission to people as the Baptists are insisting we do."

Disney chairman Michael Eisner was more blunt, telling the Los Angeles Daily News: "We think they're a very small group of the Southern Baptists that took a very extreme position, which we think is foolish." The company's only other known response was a June 13 appeal for support, sent to gay and lesbian Internet sites.

"I would have to say," said Land, "that if Disney's leaders continue to give us the back of their hand ... then I think you'll see us vote next June to this turn into a real boycott."

So the clock is ticking. Southern Baptist leaders have a year to use their own educational publications and media to reach 15.6 million members in nearly 39,000 churches. The goal: to make a case that changes at Disney demand a response that will affect everyday life at the level of wallets, TV remotes and family-room shelves lined with video cassettes. Land said he already has met with leaders at the SBC's powerful Sunday School Board, one of America's largest religious publishers.

But talking about a boycott affects more than Disneyworld and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Disney's kingdom now includes everything from "Live with Regis and Kathie Lee" and "Nightline" to "Home Improvement" and "Monday Night Football." Also, gay-rights activists note that dozens of media giants, including all the major studios, have taken steps similar to those at Disney.

Land knows many will continue to ask: Why pick a symbolic fight with Disney?

"Disney has asked to be judged by a different standard," he said. "For years, they've told parents that their company will be family friendly. ... It's going to be hard for them to back the gay-rights cause and then turn around and tell traditional families and church groups that things haven't changed out at the Magic Kingdom."

Online Religion II: Net Wits Set Free

All Quentin Schultze did was run the "Top 15 Biblical Ways to Acquire A Wife" in his online "Internet For Christians" newsletter.

No. 1 was: "Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails and give her new clothes. Then she's yours (Deuteronomy 21: 11-13)." No. 2: "Find a prostitute and marry her (Hosea 1: 1-3)." And so forth.

The problem was that the Calvin College professor's decision to run the list in three installments caused a cyber riot. Legions of readers fired back digital demands for items six through 15.

At that point in March, the "Internet For Christians" site on the World Wide Web already was being used 5,000 times a day, while thousands read copies and copies of copies via e-mail. Before the "Ways to Acquire A Wife" rush was over, the incoming messages "fried" the software that controlled the newsletter.

"That was like the last domino," said Schultze, who recently revamped his newsletter to handle the load. "That told us we had created a real community, of some kind. ... It also told us that humor was a key to establishing that sense of community."

Modern humor takes many forms -- from the crass broadsides of network TV to gentle winks that cue friends' inside jokes. However, it's more common to hear people joke about faith at the dinner table than on the Tonight Show. While religion may be a funny, researchers have found that relatively few entertainers dare to prod sacred cows in the secular marketplace. It's safer to ignore religion altogether. Meanwhile, religious media tend to avoid humor that makes people squirm.

However, it appears that the Internet -- offering both global networks and personal niches -- may actually encourage funny faith.

"Everybody knows that the great masses out there have a whole different approach to life," said Rob Suggs, whose "Brother Biddle" cartoons appear on Christianity Online and in many magazines. "Normal people think a whole lot of things are funny or interesting that cautious editors don't think are funny or interesting."

Net wits can joke around all they want without the blessings of secular producers or skittish preachers. The Web features everything from gentle jokes about church life to biting theological satires. The former will appeal to anyone who frequents a pew or reads Bible stories to toddlers. The later -- much of it anonymously written -- may appeal only to those who, perhaps, grew up in Dutch Reformed Calvinist pews or face Unitarian toddlers.

Much of the religious humor in cyberspace mirrors mainstream fads. Lists are everywhere, such as the "Top 10" ways for pastors to know if their sermons are boring. (No. 4: When you dream you are preaching and wake up to discover that you are.) Another site notes that "you might go to a fundamentalist church if" women's bee-hive perms keep getting caught in the ceiling fans.

Some of best Net humor blurs the line between computers and faith. One famous example was a bogus Associated Press story saying that Microsoft's Bill Gates had bought the Catholic Church. A later story said IBM retaliated by purchasing the Episcopal Church. Many reports claim to prove that Gates is the Antichrist.

Also, with its interactive blend of text and graphics, the Web is a natural home for cartoonists.

Dennis Hengeveld's "Reverend Fun" site on the Gospel Communications Network combines modern and biblical images, such as a cartoon showing Satan glaring at a beeping smoke detector on the ceiling of hell. Suggs has allowed his readers to offer punch lines and characters to expand on the themes previously explored in books such as "Preacher From The Black Lagoon."

"I think we're about to see a whole new approach to humor and, maybe, media in general," said Suggs. "Things are starting to bubble up from people out there on the Net, instead of just coming from the people who are used to calling the shots. We're all going to have to listen and learn."

Cyberspace Religion: Part I

Quentin Schultze felt relieved and sad as he transmitted what he thought would be his last Internet For Christians newsletter. The communications guru at Calvin College unplugged his cyber- publication after only 18 biweekly issues. It was just too successful. Day after day, 250 or more messages invaded his computers in Grand Rapids, Mich. Night after night, he ate dinner with his family and then vanished to battle e-mail until the clock neared midnight.

"With the click of a mouse, people could write me, ask questions, send in ideas and on and on, world without end," he said. "The main thing I learned is that success on the Net is a good news, bad news situation. ... Sooner or later, this medium forces you to either limit all those interactive responses or direct them somewhere else. Otherwise, you drown."

So Schultze told his sponsors at the Gospel Communications Network that he was waving a white flag.

"It was a real catharsis to sit at my computer and hit `delete,' `delete,' `delete' on hundreds of messages," he said. "But at the same time, it felt like I had lost a friend or thousands of friends around the world."

Soon, Gospel Communications Network executives said they would provide staff help to run the newsletter. Within hours of a May 31 announcement, 90 messages arrived containing items submitted for the first new issue. This time around, Schultze removed his e-mail address and aimed the digital river at a neutral site -- ifc- submit@gospelcom.net.

Right now, statistics charting the growth of the Internet, and the graphics-intensive World Wide Web, are changing so rapidly that no one knows what is going on. In the religious marketplace, early projects such as Ecunet, organized by oldline Protestant churches, and the Southern Baptist Convention's work with CompuServe have led to a dizzying number of digital resources -- sponsored by everyone from individual scholars to seminaries, from local churches to giant corporations. In April alone, 4.7 million individuals used the Gospel Communications Network's Web sites and 730,000 visited Christianity Online on America Online.

When Schultze started Internet For Christians, he assumed his core audience would be 100 or so loyal readers -- mostly academics, denominational leaders and parachurch "decision makers." He didn't think, for example, that many pastors and church leaders were leaping online. Apparently, he was wrong.

However, no one really knows how to count the people who are using the Web, let alone to do business with them. At its peak, the Internet For Christians "home page" was welcoming 10,000 visitors a day and the computerized list of those sent electronic copies contained 5,000 names. But most of Schultze's e-mail came from readers who appeared to have read the cyber-world's equivalent of a carbon copy. Subscribers can -- again, merely by clicking a mouse -- spray digital copies of texts to online friends, who may turn around and do the same thing. All of this costs far less than letters, faxes or long-distance telephone calls.

"We need a new term for this," he said. "`Word of mouth' doesn't fit. Maybe `Web of mouth' or `word of Net'?"

Another key is that the Web has created a somewhat level playing floor on which small ministries and publications can compete -- or cooperate -- with large groups. Online, one or more creative people with time and creativity can have approximately the same impact as a well-established organization. A dissident group's online publication may have the same impact as a denomination's official newspaper.

The new medium also makes financial sense, in a world of rising costs for ink, paper and postage. Schultze said his research indicates that the ratio of costs in traditional publishing, in comparison to "digital publishing," may be as high as 1000 to 1.

"Clearly, the Net is becoming a place for religious discourse that is being ignored in public media and isn't being allowed in the sanitized world of official church publications."

Can Reform Jews Keep the Faith?

Time after time, Reform Judaism's new leader made one point: It's obvious that millions of modern Jews are hungry for faith.

"They are tired of the cult of novelty and the caprices of modern fashion," said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, during the June 8 rites in which he was installed as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. "They are tired of a world in which the heroes for their children are Bart Simpson and Madonna. They are overwhelmed by an avalanche of images and specialized information so dizzying that it stuns the brain. And they can't help but feel that whenever they find a moment to themselves, someone turns up the speed on the treadmill of their lives."

Where, he asked, will these sophisticated, cynical and skeptical people take their dilemmas, their "yearning for the sacred" and their children?

To answer that question, leaders of North America's 850 Reform congregations must face other issues. For starters, they must teach that "fervent prayer in a Reform synagogue should not been seen as eccentric or embarrassing," he said. Educators must insist that Jewish education can have both scholastic and spiritual content. Reform Jews must talk openly about Judaism in terms of religious faith, as opposed to merely secular culture.

Why? There are 3.5 million unaffiliated Jews in North America. While liberal leaders say they want to reach outsiders and assist in their spiritual journeys, that may not be how matters look to others, said Yoffie, the movement's first president who was raised as a Reform Jew.

"Which religious movement takes the greatest interest in the spiritual life of the unaffiliated? Who finds them on campus, or in out-of-the-way places? Who instructs them in the lighting of Shabbat candles and in all manner of Jewish rituals? Who reaches out to them with classes and audiotapes and satellite TV?"

While some Reform groups are getting the job done, more are not, he said. What the rabbi left unsaid is that Orthodox Jews and traditionalists have excelled where liberals have not -- reaching the mission field of secular Judaism.

Reform leaders should not be surprised, because liberalism stunted the faith of many, according to conservative David Klinghoffer. In a National Review article that included an ironic dissection of his bar mitzvah in a Reform synagogue, he accused reformers of swapping politics for faith, abandoning Jewish morality and, in general, peddling a kind of Judaism Lite.

The key, he said, is Reform's ideology, a "theoretical contraption asserting the existence of God while denying that the Jews or any other people possess a document containing clearly revealed instructions from Him." The result is "kitsch religion," he said, a Judaism that is "influenced less by the traditions of the Oral Torah than by the editorial page of the New York Times."

Klinghoffer said an angry Reform rabbi, writing in New York's Jewish Times, summed it all up: "We have become a vacuous, no- demand, no-standards, no-requirements, no-guilt, do-good enterprise of sloppy sentimentality: a liberal Protestant Christianity without Jesus."

As the former leader of Reform Judaism's Commission on Social Action, Yoffie was quick to defend the movement's work on behalf of liberal political and moral causes. He also said Jewish pluralism must recognize that there are "many kinds of authentic Jews -- less traditional and more traditional, activist and contemplative, believing and unbelieving."

But this doesn't mean that the way to reach unaffiliated Jews is by "erasing boundaries and eliminating distinctions," he said. There must be some differences between those who claim Jewish faith and secularists who do not.

"The warning I was trying to give is this: Some people have said that Jewish community life is enough, that Jewish culture is enough. It isn't," he said, days after his installation service. "If you extract the Jewish element -- if you extract the element of religious faith -- from Jewish life, then there isn't enough there to sustain a sense of Jewish identity that will live in future generations. ... We must believe that and teach that."