Political junkies pay close attention to Bill Clinton’s jogging partners. One morning last summer, the president ran alongside the Rev. Bill Hybels, whose Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago is a hot spot for Baby Boomer believers. Afterwards, the two adjourned to the White House porch facing Pennsylvania Avenue to pray — in full view of reporters and tourists. A mere photo opportunity? A megachurch pastor communing with a sincere seeker? A politician wooing an evangelical superstar? All of the... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more