CLEVELAND (RNS)—Imelda Ellison sits quietly in her pew as, one by one, dressed all in white, the members of the Emmanuel Women of Worship come down the center aisle.

Their heads held high, 15 women step and sway, clapping and singing. For a few mesmerizing moments, the women’s choir is the center of Sunday worship.

At times like this, Ellison—who feels a “burning” call to the ministry—envisions herself up front leading the flock in prayer.

But when the women take their seats near the pulpit, the male ministers seated on either side of Emmanuel Baptist Church’s pastor take over the service.

Pastor David Cobb Jr. started the women’s choir six months ago to increase the visibility of women in the service, but his congregation is not ready for women ministers, he said.

Black women activists say change is long overdue in their struggle for equal opportunities in their church. They can be trustees and teachers and can even be ordained as deacons and ministers in some black churches.

But like many evangelical churches, many individual black congregations still ban female clergy. And even among churches that accept women ministers, it is rare for a woman to be a senior pastor.

To be sure, there are success stories—three women bishops in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, for example. Yet they are mostly the exceptions. Many black churches such as Emmanuel still have all-male deacon boards to oversee the congregation’s spiritual life.

Tradition and a literal interpretation of biblical texts urging women to be silent are part of the reason women have been kept from the front of the black church, observers say.

There are concerns that women clergy could undermine the historic role of pastors as important leadership models for black men. The issue also is about power and sexism, some women insist.

“How can we say we love the Lord, and we oppress women?” Ellison asked.

In the late 1950s, an Emmanuel leader informed Doris Jamieson he would nominate her to be the only woman on the board of trustees, which oversees church finances and administration.

“But you got to learn to keep your mouth shut,” Jamieson recalls being told.

Today, a third of the 12 trustees at Emmanuel are women. And women there, unlike at many other black churches, serve the Lord’s Supper. Visiting women ministers preach on Women’s Day.

Cobb would like to find a more prominent role for women at his church. In coming months, he plans to feature women at least monthly in the service in roles ranging from reading Scripture to leading congregational prayer.

“I want everybody in the church to know they can play an important part,” Cobb said. “I don’t want it to appear the only thing women can do is cook and hand out clothes.”

Ellison teaches a new-member class and is part of the youth ministry team at Emmanuel. More than a month ago, she asked Cobb if she could be a minister at Emmanuel.

Cobb has not made up his mind on women as senior pastors, but he sees biblical support for women as associate clergy.

“Women have just as much right to preach and serve in leadership positions in church as do men,” he said.

Ellison, who is close to earning a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Ursuline College, explored other churches before returning to Emmanuel in 2005.

“God was saying this was where he wanted me to come,” Ellison said. “It was very hard for me, really, to come back here, because I knew I wasn’t going to be accepted.”

Many black male clergy keep women from the pulpit based on Bible passages that emphasize female submission.

This has led many black women to turn to predominantly white mainline churches such as the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Vassar College religion professor Lawrence Mamiya said studies by Delores Carpenter of Howard Divinity School showed substantial numbers of black women seminary graduates have switched to white denominations. More than half of the 380 ordained black women in one study turned to white denominations.

Mamiya noted the number is declining slightly with the opening of opportunities in historically black denominations such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“However, denominational switching still remains a significant factor for black women in ministry, and black church denominations are losing,” he reported.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) — A television documentary that shines a light on the problem of pornography addiction among Christians premieres Sunday, Nov. 30, and airs again Dec. 7 on the ION Television Network, formerly PAX TV.

"Somebody's Daughter: A Journey to Freedom from Pornography" features three men and one married couple active in Christian ministry who describe struggling with and overcoming addiction to pornography.

The program was produced by Music for the Soul, a ministry that promotes healing through music, as a DVD-CD multimedia compilation to promote healing for people struggling with pornography addiction. In addition to the 62-minute television documentary, the DVD-CD package includes 18 music and spoken word tracks and four music videos.

The project takes its title from a song written by Christian recording artist John Mandeville and Steve Siler, founder and director of Music for the Soul, after Mandeville revealed to Siler his struggles with pornography. After attending a meeting for sex addicts, the two men wrote the song to illustrate that women should be viewed not as objects but as somebody's daughter, a starting point for Mandeville's healing.

Siler says he hopes the project will "turn on a bright light" to the destructive power of pornography on individuals and marriages and open awareness and dialogue in churches.

According to recent surveys, nearly 60 percent of Christian men and 37 percent of pastors admit to struggling with pornography. And the problem is not limited to men — 35 percent of women also admit to the addiction.

The producers say "Somebody’s Daughter" is an attempt "to shine the light on how the $13.3 billion pornography industry is plaguing those who profess Christianity, and to promote healing and deliverance from the growing epidemic."

People in the documentary say they used to rationalize their pornography habit by arguing that it didn't hurt anyone, but over time it became something that came between them and God. Separation from God was followed by separation from their spouse, children and other loved ones.

"Pornography erodes the ability to maintain healthy intimacy," Siler says.

Siler says pastors are vulnerable, because men are most susceptible when they are physically and emotionally drained, and spiritual leaders work under high levels of emotional and physical strain.

Compounding the problem, Siler says, is the "shoot our own" response often seen in churches.

"Instead, we need to be giving our leaders the support and help they need to overcome this problem so that they can return to offer guidance to the men in the pews."

"I'm not saying we shouldn't hold them accountable," Siler says. "I'm just saying we shouldn't automatically treat this sin as somehow worse than all others and drive good men out of the church because they have struggled with this issue."

Siler says he knows several ministerial leaders "who have been restored from this problem who are serving the church with tremendous energy, courage and vision."

Siler says churches should partner with Christian counselors to offer members a safe place to get help with pornography addiction and sponsor accountability groups or one-on-one partners to help them on the road to recovery.

"Members should know that forgiveness and healing are possible, and that as long as they acknowledge their sin and commit to the work of recovery, they will have a place in the community," Siler says.

Siler says the church has been slow to respond to viewership of pornography by Christian leaders and laypeople because sex is an uncomfortable topic for the church.

"God made our bodies but there is still a lot of theology out there that says the body is bad," he says. "As a result, it makes a lot of us uncomfortable to talk about it."

"What's strange about this to me is that we profess to believe that God sees what we do in secret already. We might as well talk about what God already knows is happening."

"Somebody's Daughter" also is slated to air on INSP, the Daystar Television Network, Faith TV and "It's Time for Herman & Sharron" show this winter. Check local listings for air times.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—Louie Stotz is ready to share his family’s Thanksgiving tradition with your family—and percent of the profits with Mission Arlington.

For 31 years, the Stotz family has played the Thanksgiving game.

“Thirty-one years ago, my wife and I were asked to host the Thanksgiving meal for my mother-in-law. Our mothers alternated each year as hostess, and that year my mother-in-law was flying in from the Mayo Clinic, and we were asked to stand in for her,” Stotz recalled.

The weather was bad that year, and her plane was delayed.

“You don’t start Thanksgiving without your mother-in-law—you just don’t. I think that may be biblical truth,” he quipped.

“So, stalling for time, I said, ‘We’re going to play a game.’ And we’ve been playing every year since.”

Stotz acknowledges the game has evolved a bit since that first off-the-cuff endeavor, but in essence, it’s still the same game. It involves three primary facets— thanksgiving, thanks-guessing and thanks-sharing.

Players start off by writing down things they are thankful for that have happened since the last time the game was played.

“But you have to think about it. If you’ve just had a baby and you put down ‘I’m thankful for my new baby,’ it’ll make it pretty easy to figure out.”

As players guess who is thankful for what, they can Shoot the Turkey for extra points.

“It’s a competitive game. Guys especially seem to love it, but for most everyone, once you play it, you’re hooked,” Stotz said.

About two years ago, Stotz’s son-in-law, Tim Lester, told him the game was too good to keep within the family. “He said, ‘You’ve got to share this game with the world. It’s wholesome, it’s fun and I’ve seen it change people’s lives,’” Stotz related.

His son-in-law was working for the Commonwealth of Kentucky at the time. Stotz told him that if he was that convinced, he would match his salary if he wanted to prepare and market the game to the public.

The Thanksgiving Game can be found on Amazon, LifeWay Christian Bookstores and Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores. The game sells for $19.99, and 5 percent of the profits will go to Mission Arlington.

Several years ago, Stotz, who teaches a Sunday school class for college-aged young people, was asked to come to Mission Arlington with an eye toward starting a similar ministry in Lexington.

During that visit, a story was related that on several occasions the feeding of the many who come for the Thanksgiving meal was miraculous, because it was believed that not enough food would be on hand, but God always has provided.

Upon hearing that story, Stotz said he knew why he had been asked to come.

Mission Lexington now is up and running, and “we’re splitting a tithe of the profits to each of those organizations, so each will get about 5 percent after expenses,” he ex-plained.

Stotz stressed making a lot of money is not his goal.

“My whole thought for many years is that we waste Thanksgiving. This gives people an opportunity to have meaningful conversations about meaningful things. We’ve seen the Holy Spirit open up hearts through this game, because sometimes we’ve had people participate that you weren’t sure they had anything to be thankful for.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—In life, the 900 people who followed Jim Jones to build a utopian commune in the South American jungle in 1977 were relatively anonymous.

But in death, the Jonestown pilgrims became front-page news when they died a year later after following Jones’ order to drink punch laced with poison.

On Nov. 18, the names of those members of the Peoples Temple will echo in public again during a ceremony marking the 30th anniversary of their deaths. Their names will be unveiled on a memorial and read aloud during a “Speaking Their Names” ceremony at the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

Three of the names hit home for Rebecca Moore, whose sisters Carolyn Layton and Annie Moore died at Jonestown along with her nephew, Layton’s 4-year-old son, Kimo.

“For weeks, we didn’t know if my sisters and nephew were alive,” remembered Moore, who never joined Peoples Temple and now is an associate professor of religion at San Diego State University.

“One thing that was hardest for survivors and relatives was the fact that they were not allowed to grieve in ways people connected to other tragedies were allowed to grieve. The deaths were seen as too horrible, the people were seen as brainwashed cultists.”

Moore has spent the three decades since Jonestown challenging that perception, writing books, spearheading the annual “Jonestown Report” and overseeing a website that offers firsthand accounts of life with Peoples Temple.

The site features first-person accounts from Peoples Temple members, even audio tapes of Jonestown meetings. On one tape, babies wail in the background as Jones urges his followers to drink “medication,” telling them “death is a million times preferable to 10 more days in this life.”

Need to humanize the victims 

“People today don’t appreciate the depth of religious commitment that members had in joining Peoples Temple and in moving to Jonestown,” Moore said. “Survivors today will talk about that intense desire to create a better world, and that’s what people were trying to do. That’s one reason we put on our website the list of people who died with their pictures—to humanize them.”

Reading aloud the names of those who died this year “is a much more personal way of thinking about them,” said Laura Johnston Kohl, who joined Peoples Temple in 1970. She left Jonestown three weeks before the Nov. 18 mass suicide to work at the group’s house in Georgetown, Guyana.

“We have to make sure the people who died aren’t just written off as crazies,” said Kohl, one of a few dozen Temple members at the Georgetown home the day of the mass deaths. “We had people who really could have made a difference wherever they were. Those are the same people we really need these days.”

The list of those who died includes a U.S. congressman and five others sent to investigate; they were killed in an ambush at an airstrip near Jonestown the day before the mass deaths. The extent of the Jonestown tragedy drove some survivors underground, said Jordan Vilchez, who left Jonestown the day before the deaths to work at the Peoples Temple house in Georgetown.

She lost her mother, two sisters and two nephews.

“I think for the most part people just needed to be alone and build their lives apart from contact with Temple members,” said Vilchez, 51, who now lives in Richmond, Calif.

Distanced by shame 

“I felt shame about being connected with a group that went to that extreme. I think that in order to develop into healthy people, we needed to maintain a distance.”

But she began erasing that distance three years ago, reaching out to others connected to Jonestown. Attending the annual Peoples Temple memorial service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif., has helped, she said.

“I want to remember the part of (Peoples Temple) that was really good and provided people with a sense of belonging,” Vilchez said. “That became overshadowed by the shame that resulted from losing everyone. Tragedy got in the way of our ability to see the bonds that we had.”

Those connected to Jonestown are “a chosen family,” said Kohl. She also attends the ceremony at Evergreen, which houses a mass grave for unidentified and unclaimed bodies from Jonestown. A woman who lost a mother and 26 other relatives organizes the event.

“I go every year now, and I can’t imagine being anyplace else on Nov. 18,” said Kohl, who now lives in Southern California. “Nobody understands what we’ve been through. We just wanted to make a better world, and we stay with that love.”

Moore said survivors also have found comfort at the California Historical Society, which marks the Jonestown deaths by inviting survivors, friends and relatives to visit its library to study memorabilia from Jonestown.

“The story of Peoples Temple does not begin and end on Nov. 18, 1978,” she said. “These were individuals who had life histories and who had relatives that mourned their loss, and continue to mourn their loss.”

Beginning Nov. 18, holiday ads from the American Humanist Association will appear on Washington, D.C., buses, declaring: “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” The $40,000 ad campaign is not necessarily targeting religious people or challenging their beliefs, officials said, but rather is an attempt to reach existing atheists and agnostics to let them know they are not alone, said Fred Edwords, communications director for the humanist group. The signs direct people to a website that helps atheists connect to others like them in the Washington area and around the country. Other organizations have been running similar campaigns in other cities.

State ready to produce “I Believe” license plates. South Carolina has announced it is ready to start making controversial “I Believe” license plates, a move that already is the subject of a lawsuit. The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles posted an announcement on its website that it has received enough pre-applications to begin manufacturing the plates. The Hindu American Foundation and some Christian and Jewish leaders sued state officials in June over the plates, which feature the words “I Believe,” a yellow Christian cross and a stained-glass window. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington watchdog group, is representing them in a suit that claims the plates give preferential treatment to a particular faith. The state’s General Assembly unanimously passed legislation in May that authorized the plates. Gov. Mark Sanford allowed the bill to become law without his signature.

Zondervan acquires Bible search engine. Christian book publisher Zondervan is acquiring BibleGateway.com, a popular nonprofit Bible search engine, from Gospel Communications Inc. of Muskegon. The agreement includes the Bible search engine, which averages 6 million users each month, and Gospel.com , a central website for more than 250 Christian groups. Owned by HarperCollins, Zondervan expects to expand the Bible search site to incorporate more reference materials and study resources.

Vatican workers back on the clock. John XXIII is perhaps most famous for calling the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to “throw open the windows of the church” and allow the fresh air of modernity to stir things up a bit. Less well known is his decision to stop making Vatican staff members clock in for work. Now Pope Benedict XVI, whom critics have accused of undoing John’s legacy of liberalization, has canceled that reform too. For the first time in nearly half a century, the Vatican’s 4,500 employees will have to punch in and out. Or to be more precise, they’ll have to swipe their newly issued magnetic ID cards through electronic readers. The new timekeeping system is part of a broader move toward greater efficiency. Starting in January, salaries for Vatican employees—currently between about $1,700 and $3,000 a month—will partially reflect performance. Until now, raises have been based purely on seniority.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—When the medieval church wanted to communicate the biblical narratives to a largely illiterate society, it used stained-glass windows to illustrate the stories.

So, as the modern church looks for ways to reach a generation unfamiliar with the Bible, the most obvious medium, they say, is movie theaters.

“Theaters are our 21st century stained glass,” said Joel Schmidgall, one of the pastors of National Community Church, a congregation that meets in four campuses—three movie theaters and a church-owned coffeehouse—around Washington.

“We wanted to be in the middle of the marketplace where people are used to going already,” he said.

Most people who attend National Community Church are people who grew up going to church and have since stopped going, or those who have never been to church at all, he said.

“People might not be comfortable going to a church building, but they might go and check out something at a movie theater,” he said.

Churches have been meeting in theaters for a number of years, but the trend has exploded in recent years. Barry Brown, director of regional sales at National CineMedia, said six years ago, only three churches were meeting in theaters through his company. Today, they number more than 180.

“The theaters have down time on Sunday mornings, and from a church perspective, it’s a cost-effective way to get some space,” Brown said.

On a recent Sunday morning, worshippers filed past an empty food court in the basement of Washington’s Union Station and into the movie theater National Community Church calls home. Some stopped at the concession stand for a cup of coffee that they carried into the dimly lit theater.

Chris Jarrell leads worship services at National Community Church, which meets in a movie theater at a Washington, D.C., train station. (RNS photos/ David Jolkovski)

Inside, people quietly filled the tiers of seats, and some dozed off in the quiet. As the service started, a live band sprang to life and lyrics to praise songs flashed on the giant screen. Schmidgall used the screen to show a short film clip and to broadcast a PowerPoint outline of his sermon.

The congregation of about 1,200 regular worshippers uses two theaters at Union Station on Sunday mornings; childcare is provided in the hallways. Services sometimes are broadcast to the two satellite cinema locations and the nearby Ebenezers Coffeehouse, which the church renovated and opened in 2006.

Having church in a theater may seem a bit unconventional, but pastors say people are attracted to the idea. “They are engaged and excited about what we are doing,” said Jeff Bell, pastor of Granger Community Church in Elkhart, Ind.

Instead of trying to bring people to the church, pastors of cinema churches try to bring the church to the people. People know what to expect when they walk into a movie theater, but that’s not always the case when they walk through the doors of a traditional church.

“It’s an attempt on behalf of pastors to create space that will be hospitable for people searching for God,” said Brian McLaren, the author of Everything Must Change, and a popular speaker among emerging-church Christian leaders. “A lot of people who don’t go to church feel like it’s foreign.”

Bell said his Indiana church was initially “a little hesitant’’ about whether worshippers would come to a theater. But because “people come to the movies expecting to be moved by something on a screen,” a cinema church feels comfortable, familiar, he said.

“People are ready to sit back, watch and be moved,” Bell said.

Meeting in theaters also allows these churches to go where the people are.

“It’s the highest density gathering point,” Bell said. “Our original church campus is 15 miles away,” he said, and with the economy in its current state, people are less willing to travel far to church. “This allows us to have a presence in the community.”

Going into cities and using theaters reaches a demographic that has been ignored for a number of years. Decades ago, many churches followed their members to the suburbs, and for some who stayed, members were not willing to drive back downtown for church.

“Statistically, urban areas are the least-churched part of the country with the youngest people,” said Mark Driscoll, the pastor of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church and founder of Acts 29, a church-planting network that has helped start more than 150 churches nationally and internationally.

“The effort is being made to return where culture is made, where influence is to be had,” he said, and theater churches are part of a “sincere effort to get back involved.”

Not only do these churches go to where the people are, they speak their language. Driscoll’s church, for example, allows worshippers to send text messages to the pastor while he’s preaching.

“Having a big screen allows access to the digital world, which is native territory for younger adults,” McLaren said.

Theater churches and other nontraditional types of services are affecting the people around them. Driscoll’s church started 12 years ago and now has 20 services with seven locations in Washington state.

“I think for many people, this is a scary time for the church,’’ McLaren said. “Oth-ers of us see it as a time for creativity.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A national atheist lobbying group is calling on President-elect Barack Obama to overhaul military policies in an effort to reduce what it sees as religious discrimination in the armed forces.

The Secular Coalition for America has written a letter asking Obama to scrutinize new ap-pointees to ensure fairness to atheist soldiers, to survey the military on current religious conditions and to establish a commission on “religious accommodation” within the Defense Department.

“We wrote these recommendations before we knew the outcome of the election,” said Lori Lipman Brown, director of the coalition. “The truth is we had no better expectations of one candidate over the other when it came to this particular issue.”

The group also asked for chaplain-training curriculum that addresses free exercise of religion. One-fifth of military personnel identify themselves as atheists or having no religion.

“For the past three years, we have seen the problems of harassment, coercive proselytizing, efforts to convert and discrimination against those holding certain beliefs go unresolved,” Brown said.

The military operates under Department of Defense Directive 1300.17, which allows members to observe their respective religions. In addition, Directive 1350.2 states that “persons shall be evaluated on individual merit, fitness and capability, regardless of … religion.”

“Our president-elect has been alternatively labeled as an atheist and a Muslim,” said Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers . “The truth is he’s a Christian, and in many ways, he’s worn religion on his sleeve. … As we hope for change, we want to make sure that he understands our position as well.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Sarah Vowell loves the Puritans, who left England in search of religious freedom and then condemned and expelled those who didn’t believe exactly as they did.

“What can I say?” Vowell said. “I love a contradiction. Massachusetts was supposed to be this community of like-minded individuals, but basically it was a totalitarian community like the Soviet Union.”

The man who embodied those contradictions was John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company.

Winthrop is best known today for his sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” which includes the phrase “city upon a hill” and has been referenced in speeches by John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and other politicians.

Winthrop had a lot more to say about community and charity that appealed to Vowell, who made Winthrop the focus of her new book, The Wordy Shipmates.

Winthrop, she discovered, was incredibly industrious and learned, “a real jack-of-all-trades” who organized and built a community from scratch while thinking deeply about faith and spirituality.

“He was a sweet guy as long as you agreed with him,” Vowell said. “If not, you got the boot.”

Roger Williams found that out. Will-iams, a young minister, arrived in Boston from England after Winthrop and immediately began stirring up trouble with his contrary views.

Among other things, Williams believed Native Americans should be treated with respect and that the king of England had no right to sell their land.

Williams also believed in the separation of church and state—a radical notion in Puritan New England.

He bounced around from Salem to Plymouth before being kicked out of the colony. He eventually founded Rhode Island and the first Baptist church on American soil.

“Roger Williams was quite eccentric and a very annoying man who I would not want to hang out with for more than 10 hours or so, but he’s kind of the hero of my book,” Vowell said.

“He was an amazing thinker who came up with a lot of the concepts that good people in this country now hold dear. … I think he was fairly heroic. He was just born too early.”

Vowell is conducting a media blitz for The Wordy Shipmates. She’s beloved for her work on Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life and is a popular guest on talk shows, particularly David Letterman’s.

For someone who loves to be home by herself learning about history, it’s a little disconcerting. Vowell said she’s going to take inspiration from another Puritan who was banished from the colony for speaking her mind, Anne Hutchinson.

“Anne Hutchinson was a mouthy dame who couldn’t shut up,” Vowell said. “I’m a stay-at-home loner by nature, and it’s worth remembering that there were times in this country when if you didn’t shut up, you could lose your home.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—For some Americans, ghosts, Bigfoot and UFOs aren’t the stuff of tabloid teasers or X-Files reruns. They believe paranormal phenomena are real—as real as a resurrected Jesus and a devious Satan are to millions.

In the United States, though, not all supernatural beliefs are accepted equally. How people seem to parse the paranormal depends in part on religious belief and practice, a survey from Baylor University shows.

“If you are a strong Christian who goes to church a lot, you will wholeheartedly endorse the Christian supernatural beliefs, but you will stay away from the psychics, the Bigfoots,” explained Baylor sociology professor Carson Mencken.

Carson Mencken

“But if you are someone who reports pretty high levels of conventional Christian belief but doesn’t practice that faith, doesn’t go to church very often, if at all, you’re also very likely to hold other types of paranormal or supernatural beliefs. You’re going to believe in a little bit of everything.”

Denomination and an individual’s self-identification as spiritual versus religious can play a role in such thinking as well, according to Baylor’s research.

“Catholics actually score pretty high on paranormal beliefs, which if you look at Catholic theology, that kind of makes sense,” said Mencken, citing the role of apparitions, such as those of the Virgin Mary in places like Lourdes or Fatima.

“Most religion, traditionally, approaches faith or approaches God and the divine as something which is a realm that is greater than what we understand or can deal with and is filled with surprises,” said Christopher Viscardi, chairman of the division of philosophy and theology at the Jesuit Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. “There is a broad range, including the paranormal, including the supernatural.”

Evangelicals, meanwhile, are much more likely to be in line with conventional supernatural thought and much less likely to believe in traditional paranormal ideas, said Mencken, who noted that conservative Christian congregations tend to be at odds with secular culture and “keep a pretty tight rein on their members.”

Overall, though, “paranormal beliefs are out there,” Mencken said.

Close to 50 percent of the population believes places can be haunted, he said, while 20 percent of the population believes in the ability of psychics.

“My reading of history— American history and world history—is that it’s a phenomenon of human nature, especially when there is anxiety and fear, or when there’s a lack of spiritual depth, a phenomenon to look for things that will either respond to that anxiety or fill that emptiness,” Viscardi said.

Christine Wicker

According to Christine Wicker, former Dallas Morning News religion reporter and author of Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic is Transforming America, paranormal beliefs have gone mainstream.

Wicker posited that one factor behind the “resurgence of magical thought” is “widespread disappointment with organized religion.”

She cited Daniel Maguire, an ethics professor at Marquette University who said belief in the great faiths is collapsing.

“People are looking for something to replace them, much as they did in the first century as Christianity began to rout paganism. Now it seems to be the other way around,” she wrote.

Cecil Taylor, dean of the School of Christian Studies at the Baptist-affiliated University of Mobile, put it this way: “In a post-Christian age, when the Christian consensus is removed, all sorts of paganism rushes in to takes its place. And I view most of these things as a renaissance of paganism.”

Some of it, though, may simply be a matter of semantics.

While Mencken can’t say for sure, he would hypothesize that it’s more likely the case that where one person perceives a guardian angel (55 percent of Americans say they’ve been protected by one), another may see a UFO (24 percent say UFOs probably are spaceships from other worlds and 27 percent are undecided).

But, Mencken said: “If you say you believe in UFOs and you’ve been abducted by a UFO, you’ll get a different response than if you tell people you believe in the resurrection of the body of Christ. And that’s the drawing line there, is to what extent society has defined a set of beliefs as OK/conventional versus defined them as kind of out there or kooky or unconventional.”

“It’s a function of a variety of social processes,” he said, “where one set of beliefs has become acceptable and normative over time.”

Taylor identified another determining factor: Scripture.

“Evangelicals would look at the Bible to validate experience,” he said. “We check the Bible to see: Is this within the realm of possibility? Is this validated by Scripture? Because there are many powers, there are many beings in the world, spiritual as well as physical. There are angels, both good and bad, if we’re to believe the Bible, and I do. And so simply the fact that you have an experience doesn’t mean it’s with God, and so you must check the Bible, which is the norm, as validation for any experience you may claim.”

Finally, while belief and practice tend to play a role in shaping views toward the non-Christian paranormal, geography matters too. Mencken noted that generally speaking, Southerners aren’t much interested in the occult.

“Now, if we were to look only at Christian paranormal beliefs—if we were to look at who believes in Satan and who believes in hell—you would find that the South scores pretty high on that,” Mencken said. “But again, it is paranormal in the sense that it defies any scientific explanation.”

Kristen Campbell writes for The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala.

WASHINGTON (ABP)—All religious groups shifted toward Barack Obama, the candidate opposed by the Religious Right’s leadership, in his historic presidential win. Still, religious conservatives managed a few victories.

The Democratic candidate garnered about 52 percent of the popular vote to GOP nominee John McCain’s 46 percent. While McCain and running mate Sarah Palin—a favorite of the right—lost the night’s biggest prize, four statewide ballot initiatives aimed at curtailing gay rights did manage passage. Other ballot initiatives watched closely by religious conservatives—like gambling and abortion rights—were a mixed bag.

Obama improved significantly on John Kerry’s performance in 2004 in every major religious category, according to exit polls analyzed by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Kerry lost white evangelicals by huge margins and Catholics by a narrower margin in losing to President Bush’s re-election bid.

Obama did better than Kerry among evangelicals and won a majority of Catholics. He also scored increased support among Jews, Protestants in general and those not affiliated with any religion.

On state ballot initiatives, religious conservatives scored a big victory in California by passing Proposition 8, which repeals the marriage rights that the state’s highest court authorized in May for same-sex couples.

Evangelicals, conservative Catholics and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined together to promote the measure.

Bans on same-sex marriage in Florida and Arizona—which defeated a similar state constitutional amendment two years ago—passed easily.

Nearly 57 percent of Arkansas voters approved a ban on unmarried couples serving as adoptive or foster parents. The measure bans both same-sex and opposite-sex cohabiting couples from caring for children, but opponents and some supporters said it was targeted at keeping gays from adopting. It came in response to a 2006 Arkansas Supreme Court decision striking down a ban on homosexual foster parents.

Anti-abortion forces didn’t fare nearly as well as opponents of gay rights. Measures to outlaw or restrict abortion lost in California, Colorado and South Dakota. The measure in South Dakota would have been the nation’s strictest abortion ban. It was similar to an abortion ban that state defeated by a similar margin in 2006.

Lottery or gambling-expansion measures passed in three of six states where they appeared on the ballot.

Washington state approved the nation’s second assisted-suicide law, after Oregon.

WYOMING, Mich. (RNS)—David Karel does not know what comes next for him and his 1,500 fellow workers at the General Motors metal stamping plant, following a recent announcement it will close by December 2009.

But of one thing the Baptist minister is certain: God will be there for them.

“God is the one who can provide for us, if we allow him to do it,” Karel said, standing outside the plant in a steady rain. “If we put him first, he says everything else will be taken care of.”

Karel tries to reassure his coworkers of that as they struggle with the shock of the 72-year-old plant’s closing. As a volunteer chaplain for UAW Local 730, he helps workers cope with the devastating news from a spiritual perspective.

“I say our faith is not in General Motors,” said Karel, 59, a GM employee for 25 years. “It’s in God. Nothing surprises him, and we know he will provide a way for us, no matter what.”

Along with John Lem-ery, also a trained chaplain, Karel tends to the emotional and spiritual problems of fellow workers in addition to his job. Karel is a tractor-repair mechanic, Lemery an electrician.

Karel, an interim minister at Byron Center Baptist Church, heads the chaplaincy program. He and Lemery are available to help calm workers in crisis situations, talk informally about their problems and, if asked, pray with them. They also attend funerals of fellow or retired workers.

In recent days, they’ve mostly just been there to listen.

“Everybody is basically in shock mode,” said Lemery, 61, a 29-year employee. “They’re reeling. They’re saying, ‘Holy cow, is this really happening?’“

Although he was hoping to work at the plant until he retires, Lemery takes the closure philosophically.

“My life, whether I live or I die, is the Lord’s,” he said. “It’s a very easy way to live.”

But these are tough times for workers who prided themselves on their plant’s productivity. Karel said it feels much like a funeral.

“Even today, they’re still struggling,” he said after his shift ended. “We’re waiting for somebody to tell us what’s next.”

Will the plant close before December ’09? How many workers will be cut before then? Will there be buyouts or a jobs bank? Many asking those questions already have been displaced from other closed plants, Karel noted.

“Now, they’re all facing this again,” Karel said. “But, now, there’s no place to go. Our whole economy is crashing around us.”

He faces that insecurity, too, hoping he can stay until he turns 60 in June and qualifies for full retirement benefits. But he says God has seen him through adversity before.

The Vietnam veteran was laid off from GM’s diesel plant for two years, and he and his wife got by with no insurance until he was hired at the metal stamping plant.

“God has always taken care of us,” he said firmly.

Charles Honey writes for The Grand Rapids Press

Religious hate crimes dropped last year. Hate crimes directed against people on the basis of religion decreased in 2007, according to the FBI. In 2006, the FBI reported 1,597 hate crimes motivated by a religious bias. That figure dropped to 1,477 in 2007, the bureau reported. Of the religiously based hate crimes, attacks against Jews rose from 64 percent in 2006 to 68 percent in 2007. Anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased from 12 percent in 2006 to 9 percent in 2007. Hate crimes against Catholics accounted for 4 percent of the reported hate crimes motivated by religious biases—down from 5 percent in 2006. Four percent of the hate crimes were motivated by anti-Protestant biases, and 9 percent were against other religions. Of the reported hate crimes motivated by religious bias, 18 percent occurred in churches, synagogues or temples; 26 percent occurred in or near residences or homes; and 12 percent occurred in schools or colleges.

Luther’s trash found in German dig. Archaeologists have discovered Martin Luther’s kitchen trash, revealing new personal information about the father of the Protestant Reformation, the German publication Der Spiegel reports. The dig that started in 2003 took place at three different excavation sites in Germany—Luther’s parents’ house in the town of Mansfeld, his estate in Wittenberg, and the floor of the building where he was born in Eisleben. So far, archaeologists have found broken dishes, food remains, toys, and what they think is his wife’s wedding ring along with 250 silver coins. The article claims the new discoveries reveal Luther’s parents were more affluent than Luther claimed they were. But his adult home was “in keeping with his economic standing.”

Queen asked to pardon witches posthumously. A campaign has been launched in Britain to try to persuade Queen Elizabeth II to grant a royal warrant pardoning more than 400 men and women executed as witches in England four centuries ago. A petition citing eight grave “miscarriages of justice” and bearing hundreds of signatures is on the way to the British government’s justice secretary, Jack Straw, whose support is needed to put the issue of posthumous pardons before the monarch. In the 16th and 17th centuries, when crops failed, butter would not churn, and cattle sickened and died, blame was heaped on alleged practitioners of witchcraft. The 1735 Witchcraft Act ended the trials in Britain—if not the controversy.

Brits see room for Islamic law. The British government has ruled some aspects of Islamic sharia law can be accepted into the country’s legal framework, provided they comply with standard practices of jurisprudence. Bridget Prentice, a justice minister in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government, told Parliament family courts in England and Wales could “rubber stamp” sharia decisions if they decide the Islamic rulings are fair. Sharia is a set of principles governing the lives of Muslims, 1.6 million of whom live in Britain, and occasionally has come into conflict with traditional British law.

—Compiled from Religion News Service