(RNS) For two years of her life, Louise Allison says she looked and felt like trash. She was a straggly-haired teenager sold for sex on Dallas streets. Her traffickers often drugged her and dumped her in a park to await customers.

Storm Ervin (below) places her handprint on the canvas freedom banner at the Freedom Movement booth on the University of Missouri campus Monday, April 23. The Freedom Movement is part of a nationwide effort on university campuses to end human trafficking.

Allison is one of millions of people who have been trafficked—or sold into slavery—for underage sex or forced labor. Now she directs Partners Against Trafficking Humans, a Little Rock, Ark.-based Christian nonprofit that provides safe housing for human trafficking survivors.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told a Little Rock audience earlier this week (April 25, 2012) that the Justice Department would have zero tolerance for forced labor and underage prostitution—problems that plague the United States as well as developing nations.

The cause of human trafficking has gained traction within the faith community, especially among college students who are working across faith lines toward a goal of eradicating the bonds that enslave an estimated 27 million people.

Across the United States, dozens of colleges and high schools planned spring or fall events to bring attention to the problem of human trafficking.

Many of these events, including a Freedom Movement Week held April 23-27, were inspired by Passion 2012 earlier this year. Passion 2012, a 42,000-student worship conference in Atlanta last January, centered on human trafficking and raised more than $3.3 million from the mostly student attendees to support nonprofits that fight human trafficking.

Claude d’Estree, who directs the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Denver, has watched a growing number of faith-based groups take up this issue since he began human trafficking work in 1998. D’Estree noted the importance of religious leaders in U.S. fights over slavery 150 years ago.

“It’s not surprising to me that religious groups got involved again,” d’Estree said.

Texas A&M junior John Amini, 21, prayed about how to spend Spring semester at Texas A&M while attending the Passion 2012 conference. After hearing speakers on human trafficking, he decided to unite college campuses in a national battle against it.

Amini and friends soon had more than 30 U.S. college campus partners. In addition to the five universities participating in Freedom Movement Week this month (April 2012), other schools are creating programs for fall and raising money.

At Texas A&M, students created an anti-slavery benefit album with sales benefiting anti-trafficking nonprofits Tiny Hands International and Unlikely Heroes. Amini said the Texas A&M chapter hopes to raise $25,000, with about $6,000 raised so far.

Amini said that although Freedom Movement is driven by Christian values, non-Christians are welcome. On other campuses, Jewish and Muslim student-centered groups are joining the fight against human trafficking.

Sophomore Jane Carter (right) paints Zane Vandnais’ (left) hand green for the hand-printing event at the Freedom Movement booth in Lowry Mall on the University of Missouri campus Monday, April 23. The Freedom Movement is an organization on campuses across the U.S. that raises awareness to prevent human trafficking.

Seattle-based Robert Beiser, who directs social justice programs at the University of Washington Hillel, said Jewish students identify with the retelling of the Biblical story of Moses leading slaves out of Egypt by groups fighting human trafficking.

“Students were really getting energized about the idea that they could use our cultural identity as Jews and Passover as a starting point to work on this issue,” Beiser said. University of Washington students helped launch the national Freedom Shabbat in collaboration with Not for Sale, a nonprofit group.

Students reached out through social media and other means to get more than 100 synagogues and other Jewish communities active in Freedom Shabbat, usually held around Passover.  The group also works to encourage grocery stores to carry fair-trade gelt—the chocolate coins given during Hanukkah—in order to guarantee that no slaves helped produce the cocoa.

Not for Sale working most closely with the Jewish community is looking for Muslim leaders to build a Freedom Salat movement for Muslim students and groups.

Kevin Austin, who manages Not for Sale’s faith outreach, said seven Muslim communities have pledged to participate once Freedom Salat is fully launched.

Trafficking Graphic2

(RNS) As nearly 1,000 delegates from across the world gather in Tampa, Fla., for the United Methodist Church’s General Conference, gay and lesbian activists have printed pamphlets promoting their cause in five languages, including Portuguese and Swahili.

The UMC’s global reach, stretching from the Philippines to Philadelphia, compels the multilingual lobbying. Nearly 40 percent of the delegates, who meet through May 4, live outside the United States, according to church leaders.

“We see it as a challenge to deal with the cultural differences,” said Bishop Rosemarie Wenner of Germany, who will be installed in Tampa as president of the UMC’s Council of Bishops. “But we also see it as a gift.”

Convened every four years, General Conference legislates decisions on everything from pensions to prayer books. But few debates garner as much attention and acrimony as the role of gays and lesbians in the UMC.

The homosexuality debate dates to 1972, when a phrase calling homosexual activity “incompatible with Christian teaching” was added to the Book of Discipline, which contains the denomination’s laws and doctrines. The UMC also bans noncelibate gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

The UMC’s long and painful membership decline in the U.S. looms over the debate, as church leaders search for ways to reverse the decades-long drop.

Gay rights activists argue that the UMC must become more inclusive to attract young Americans who view the sexuality prohibitions as hypocritical. Conservatives counter that only churches that hold fast to traditional doctrines are growing.

United Methodists who support gay rights have proposed about 100 resolutions this year that would lift the bans and excise the “incompatible” phrase from the Book of Discipline. Leading up to General Conference, they argued that momentum is on their side.

For example, last year a UMC court barely punished a Wisconsin minister who sanctioned a same-sex marriage; more than 1,200 retired and active UMC clergy have pledged to perform gay marriages; surveys show young Christians generally support gay rights; and other mainline Protestants — including Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians — have adopted gay-friendly policies in recent years.

Conservatives counter that all of those churches have subsequently split, with traditionalist congregations packing up and starting new denominations.

Gay and lesbian Methodists acknowledge that their church’s complexity presents unique challenges. For example, their General Conference includes delegates from states where gay marriage is legal, but also from countries like Liberia, where “voluntary sodomy” is a crime.

“Our structure is different, so that has impacted how we move on these concerns,” said Ann Craig, a United Methodist and gay activist who witnessed votes by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Presbyterian Church (USA) to allow partnered gay clergy.

“We’re going to move together when we move,” Craig said of her own UMC.

But others argue that trends favor traditionalists.

For example, the UMC’s membership in the United States has fallen to 7.8 million, while it has grown to 4.4 million abroad, mainly in Africa and the Philippines, where homosexuality is denounced. As those numbers shift, so does the balance of power, since delegates to General Conference — the only church body that can change the homosexuality bans — are apportioned based on membership.

Compared to the 2008 General Conference, this year there are 100 fewer delegates from the U.S. and 100 more from abroad, according to Mark Tooley, a United Methodist and president of the conservative Institute on Religion & Democracy. “With that lineup, a major shift would be unlikely,” said Tooley.

In addition, UMC growth is stronger in the Bible Belt than in the relatively liberal West and Northeast, said Russell Richey, co-author of a two-volume history of Methodism in the United States and former dean of the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.

Some United Methodists argue that policy should be set by regional conferences and reflect local mores.

For example, pastors who live where gay marriage is legal should be permitted to wed same-sex couples in their congregations, said the Rev. Dean Snyder, senior pastor of Washington’s Foundry United Methodist Church.

Foundry proposed a resolution that would allow churches in six states and the District of Columbia to celebrate same-sex marriage, and sent 50 volunteers to Tampa to lobby for it.

Snyder said his church has celebrated about 10 same-sex weddings since 2010, when D.C. legalized gay marriage. That admission could place the longtime pastor’s career in jeopardy if UMC policy is not changed at General Conference.

“We are really praying that General Conference makes some movement,” Snyder said. “It’s going to be very disappointing if there is no movement at all.”

(RNS) The statistics, some evangelicals say, can no longer be ignored.

Eighty percent of young evangelicals have engaged in premarital sex, according to a new video from the National Association of Evangelicals, and almost a third of evangelicals’ unplanned pregnancies end in abortion.

It’s time to speak honestly about sex because abstinence campaigns and anti-abortion crusades often aren’t resonating in their own pews, evangelical leaders say.

In some instances, that is beginning to happen:

– At this month’s Q conference in Washington, participants were asked at the end of a session on “reducing abortion” if churches should support the use of contraception among their single 20-somethings. Responding by text message, 64 percent said yes, 36 percent said no.

– A “Sexuality and Covenant” conference this week (April 19-21) co-sponsored by Mercer University and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship includes on its agenda the statement that “marital sexual relationships” are not available for many Christians.

– In addition to its video, the NAE is preparing to distribute information packets to pastors that include testimonies from birth mothers and adoptees, as well as definitions of almost a dozen “prevention methods” ranging from abstinence to sterilization.

“This cultural moment calls for a both/and approach that I think can be challenging for churches,” said Jenell Williams Paris, a Messiah College professor, at the Q conference. “Both lift up the ideal of premarital chastity, and support people who do otherwise with knowledge and resources that can help them prevent pregnancy.”

Paris, who has authored books on Christian approaches to sexual identity and birth control, also was slated to speak at the Mercer conference.

Sarah Brown, the CEO of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, said the majority of the Q audience probably preferred reducing premarital sex over considering conception. But that may no longer be realistic.

“Isn’t it better for unmarried, sexually active young people to use contraception than to not use it, experience a distressing pregnancy and elect abortion?” Brown said. “It’s a difficult choice. It’s a difficult question, but I think that’s what we have to ask ourselves.”

More than 10 years ago, Sarah Walsh Landini, a Pittsburgh barista, was one of those evangelical 20-somethings who abstained. But at age 23, she didn’t, and within a month she was pregnant.

“The Bible says not to do it, but I think, for most people, they need more than that,” said Landini, now 35, who still sees her 11-year-old son, Jacob, whom she gave up for adoption. “We want to know why. And most of the time folks aren’t prepared to answer the question why.”

David Gushee, director of Mercer’s Center for Theology and Public Life, said the 15-year gap between the average onset of puberty and the average age of marriage is part of what has stopped some of the silence about sex.

“Maybe there is a trend, realizing that ‘just say no’ and True Love Waits is not enough, that we need a more thorough, more comprehensive and more realistic conversation that goes ahead and deals with the realities that we face in our time,” he said, “while attempting to ask what does the Lord require of us in this area.”

The discussions are reaching people where they are, said Anika Smith, director of Generation Forum, the NAE program aimed especially at reducing abortion among church members.

“I had a lot of people who came up to me when we showed our video and were crying and saying ,`That’s me,’” she recalled. “`That number up there, that was me. I had that abortion,’ or ‘My girlfriend had that abortion and didn’t tell me.’”

She said a sense of shame over premarital sex can lead an unwed woman to choose abortion, and while her organization doesn’t push contraception outright, it is trying to educate pastors about what’s happening between the sheets with the people in their pews.

“We need to create a safe space in our churches for this discussion to happen without shame or condemnation,” said Smith, who has single friends in their 20s who found support for unplanned pregnancies through their churches. She wants to see such churches become “not the exception but the rule.”

Evangelical leaders are grappling with how they can do more than simply decry abortion. Author Jonathan Merritt envisions in his new book, “A Faith of Our Own,” a community of churches working jointly to help birth mothers pay for diapers, doctor visits, schooling and day care. He said he was pleasantly surprised about the results of the nonscientific Q survey.

“If someone chooses to have sex outside of marriage or if they are married but unprepared to have children, I absolutely think they should use contraception,” he said.

Not everyone, however, is ready to advance the conversation to contraception.

Jimmy Hester, co-founder of  “True Love Waits,” an abstinence initiative started by the Southern Baptist Convention’s LifeWay Christian Resources, said: “Any discussion of contraception weakens the abstinence message.”

Although Landini admitted at the Q conference that she prayed for a miscarriage, she said that in the end, her unexpected pregnancy brought blessings.

“I’m proud of being a birth mom,” Landini said. “I’m proud of my decision. I’m proud of Jacob. I didn’t like some of the behaviors that got me into that behavior, but God has been good through that.”

Why Jesus? is the third and final seeker-friendly "stepping stone" web site operated by Jesus Net Japan. The site features a five-week course supervised by "e-coaches," and culminates in an invitation to a gospel meeting and connection to a local church in Japan.

But following last year’s cataclysmic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, many Japanese who faced life’s tough questions that religious syncretism — a general amalgamation or merging of several religions — simply cannot answer are open to the Christian gospel. And they’re finding answers, of all places, online.

“People with a heart for Japan, for evangelism and for the application of technology to the furtherance of the gospel really identify with this tremendous cause,” said Christian Zebley, U.S. spokesman for Jesus Net Japan. “The Japanese are a very private people; it’s very unlikely that they would ask a stranger — even someone they know is a Christian — such personal questions as who God is or how they can be saved,” he said.

“The Internet lets them learn about God and His plan for salvation in a way that is comfortable for them and respectful of their culture. We believe this is the long-awaited moment for harvest in Japan.”

Internet Evangelism Day is observed on the fourth Sunday of April each year and is designed to draw attention to the tremendous role the Internet plays in society. More than 2 billion people use the Web, while more than 4 billion use mobile phones that increasingly are Web-equipped. According to ABC News, two million people around the world “look for God each day” on line.

Hope for Living introduces visitors to disaster survivors’ stories that illustrate how they have been strengthened by faith in God, or how they got to know Jesus amid their turmoil. The site also contains prayers and words of hope to encourage those who are afraid, tired, lonely or going through difficult times.

The next web site “stepping stone,” Knowing God, introduces inquiring users to the gospel, helping them understand the concept of monotheism and the fact that for Christians, the God of the Bible is the one, true God.

Why Jesus?, the final web site, is an interactive course led by “e-coaches” to assist seekers during the five-week experience, at the end of which they invite them to a gospel meeting and help connect them to a local church.

“One of the primary goals of evangelism is to meet people where they are and introduce them to Jesus,” said Andy Game, Jesus Net Japan director. “The Japanese are huge consumers of digital technology. If we want them to know that they matter to Jesus, we need to meet them where they live. Much of that is online.”

WASHINGTON (RNS) A growing tide of young Americans is drifting away from the religions of their childhood — and most of them are ending up in no religion at all.

One in four young adults choose “unaffiliated” when asked about their religion, according to a new report from the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.

But most within this unaffiliated group — 55 percent — identified with a religious group when they were younger.

“These younger unaffiliated adults are very nonreligious,” said Daniel Cox, PRRI’s research director. “They demonstrate much lower levels of religiosity than we see in the general population,” including participation in religious rituals or worship services.

Some of them will return to their faiths as they age, “but there’s not a lot of evidence that most will come back,” added Cox, who said the trend away from organized religion dates back to the early 1990s.

The study of 2,013 Americans ages 18-24 focused on the younger end of the cohort commonly known as the “Millennials” or “Generation Y,” which generally includes young adults as old as 29. Interviews were conducted between March 7 and 20.

Across denominations, the net losses were uneven, with Catholics losing the highest proportion of childhood adherents — nearly 8 percent — followed by white mainline Protestant traditions, which lost 5 percent.

Among Catholics, whites were twice as likely as Hispanics to say they are no longer affiliated with the church.

White evangelical and black denominations fared better, with a net loss of about 1 percent. Non-Christian groups posted a modest 1 percent net increase in followers.

But the only group that saw significant growth between childhood and young adulthood was the unaffiliated — a jump from 11 percent to 25 percent.

The study also posed a wide range of questions to the group, from their views on the Tea Party to labor unions to same-sex marriage.

It also delved into more philosophical territory, questioning whether younger Millennials’ moral views are more universal (there is always a right and wrong) or contextual (it depends on the situation).

The researchers found a morally divided generation, with 50 percent of respondents placing themselves in the contextual category and 45 percent believing in universal rights and wrongs.

Answers to questions on the nature of morality varied widely depending on political party affiliation, education and religion, with the most dramatic differences correlating with religion.

An overwhelming majority of white evangelical Protestants (68 percent) said they believe that some things are always wrong, compared to 49 percent of black Protestants, 45 percent of Catholics and 35 percent of the unaffiliated.

More specifically, on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, younger Millennials hardly think as a group. “We see some really stark divides,” said Cox, which he said belies the conventional wisdom that bills this as the “Kumbaya” generation, in which everyone understands each other and gets along.

“It’s something to watch as these folks start moving through society and start to vote regularly,” he said.

Specifically:

– A sweeping majority of the religiously unaffiliated (82 percent) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. More than two-thirds of religiously affiliated non-Christians agreed.

– White evangelical Protestants were most opposed to abortion, with nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) saying it should be illegal in all or most cases. Among Latino Protestants, 71 percent shared this belief. Catholics were more divided, with 48 percent saying abortion should mostly be legal and 51 percent disagreeing.

– On same-sex marriage, nearly six in ten younger Millennials (59 percent) approved, with distinctions among religious groups generally mirroring those on abortion.

Read the report here: Millennials Survey Report

ISTANBUL (CDN) — After a memorial service for three Christians who were murdered in Malatya, Turkey five years ago today, an Istanbul pastor who was attacked over Easter weekend said he’s experienced hostility from Muslims nearly all his life.

Semir Serkek, 58, pastor of Grace Church in Istanbul’s Bahcelievler district, said he personally knew Turkish converts to Christianity Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and German Christian Tilmann Geske, who were brutally murdered by five young men in the southeastern city of Malatya on April 18, 2007.

“I looked at their fate with some envy, because they were young and I am old, but they left – I have gone through many things,” he said. “But they were so young, so young.”

On a day when memorial services were held for the three slain Christians in Malatya, Izmir and Elazig as well as the ones Serkek attended at both the Kozyatag Cultural Center and Gedikpasha Church in Istanbul, the pastor said the physical violence on him the evening (April 7) before Easter Sunday surprised him.

“I’ve been verbally abused for being a Christian many times, but this was the first time I was hit, so this was surprising and made me sad,” Serkek said.

Serkek was alone at Grace Church finishing preparations for the next day’s Easter celebration when at around 9 p.m. he heard frantic pounding at the door, he said. Opening it, he found four young men in their late teens who claimed they had questions and demanded to enter.

The men, whom Serkek said appeared to be about 18 years old, were agitated, and when he refused to let them in they used insulting language, he said. They threatened to kill him if he didn’t recite the Islamic testimony of faith.

“This made me uneasy, and I told them that this was a church and they should come back in the morning,” Serkek told Compass. “‘This is a Muslim neighborhood, what business does a church have here?’ they asked me, and told me again and again that if I didn’t accept the final religion I would die.”

Finally one of the men kicked Serkek in the chest. The blow threw the pastor down the entrance steps to the ground. The Muslims ran away laughing, Serkek said.

Born to a Syriac Christian background family in the southeastern city of Mardin, Serkek said that while the violence surprised him, he has known verbal abuse since childhood and especially since he started serving God and began openly sharing his faith 35 years ago.

“To be honest, I’ve experienced these things from my childhood,” Serkek said. “I know these things closely. I’m from Mardin, and I’m a Syriac Christian. We are serving actively, and we have to spread the Word to be a source of blessing. This is what we are called to do, to bless. This is how God will use us, and I believe this with all my heart.”

Two days after the attack, Turkish Director of Religious Affairs Mehmet Gormez called Serkek from Denmark, where he was traveling, to express his disappointment about the attack on him, according to local press.

“I don’t want to be ungrateful, but I also told him that these men are trained in the mosques,” Serkek said. “At least 10 times they repeated their demand that I say the kelime-i sahadet [Islamic testimony of faith]. They pressured me. They told me I will die. They had violence in them. They didn’t even know me. They used insulting language. Their goal was to provoke me.”

Serkek said he is convinced the four Muslims who attacked him did not pass by his church site by accident or impulsively. He said the attack was planned, and that if police catch them he would like to know who put them up to it.

On Sunday (April 15), 17 activists from a non-profit organization known as Dur De, which fights racism and hate-crimes, came to Grace Church in a show of support to Serkek. Earlier last week, a delegation from a Muslim non-profit called Damla Nur Dursun also visited Serkek and brought him flowers.

On Easter weekend, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul issued official statements wishing the country’s Christians a Happy Easter. Gul stated that “regardless of ethnic origins, language, faith and political views, everyone is an equal citizen in Turkey and equal owners of the Turkish state,” according to the Anatolian Agency. Erdogan wished Christians peace and well-being.

The attack on Serkek, however, came as a bitter reminder to the nation’s Christian community that Turkey has a long way to go in giving equal standing to non-Muslims.

Along with the memorial services around Turkey today, Geske’s family published an announcement in Taraf newspaper.

“While remembering with deep love and respect my husband, our father and our brothers, we pray and invite our beloved country’s people and government to a new level of tolerance,” the announcement read. “A new tolerance that brings peace and alleviates pain from this country where thousands have been killed in the name of religion, race, political opinion and differences of tradition. We invite every child and every citizen to choose life instead of death, good instead of evil and blessing instead of curse.”

Aydin, Yuksel and Geske worked for Zirve Publishing Co. distributing Christian material, as did Serkek for many years. The pastor said that he himself was nearly lynched in the northeastern town of Artvin for handing out Christian materials.

Because of Turkey’s long-term and systematic limitations on non-Muslim communities, the United States Commission on International and Religious Freedom recommended that Turkey be designated as a “Country of Particular Concern” this year. There are an estimated 4,500 Christian converts in Turkey.

(RNS) Kirk Cameron was once one of Hollywood’s babies, the spunky, handsome teenager who starred in the 1980s hit “Growing Pains,” and whose picture was taped inside many a schoolgirl’s locker.

Kirk Cameron

But now, Hollywood scolds and even mocks Cameron who, at 41, is a vocal evangelical Christian, and, in the view of many of his fellow celebrities, kind of a jerk.

Cameron’s more recent acting and directing projects almost always carry a deeply Christian message, and he knows he is now the darling of only a certain segment of America. He even seems to take some pride in the fact.

“I’m kind of a Hollywood freak,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t really turn out the way most people turn out growing up in this industry.”

Which raises the question: Can an actor be both a pop culture icon and an outspoken Christian?

The latest chapter of Cameron’s tense relationship with Hollywood played out as the actor promoted his new documentary, “Monumental,” in which he argues that American civilization will self-destruct if it continues to spurn its Pilgrim forebears’ God-inspired blueprint for a righteous society.

“You look at the state of the world that we live in and all signs say ‘panic,’” he said.

Talking about the film with CNN’s Piers Morgan, Cameron gave his unvarnished opinion when asked about homosexuality. It’s “unnatural,” he said on the April 2 show. “I think that it’s — it’s detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.”

The response drew rebukes from gay rights organizations, and ridicule from several Hollywood stars, including an off-color video from a group of fellow former child actors.

As Morgan later summed up the backlash, many people were “shocked by the fact of this sweet nice boy from ‘Growing Pains’ has come out with what he clearly felt were perfectly normal comments but actually in the cold light of day are transparently offensive.”

“I just don’t think you can sit there with a straight face and say ‘I’m a Christian, God-fearing, all-around good person, but by the way, I hate these people who were born the way they were.’”

Cameron fans, rushing to his defense from both Christian and secular corners of the Internet, made the point that he never actually said he hated anyone.

To them, he was attacked merely for speaking his and their truth; the very secular forces that Cameron warns of in his movies and ministries had once again proved just how eager they are to silence a believer.

“Finally someone had the courage to speak up for the Word of God,” one viewer posted on Morgan’s website. “Thank you, Kirk, you made me proud to be a Christian woman.”

But Cameron’s choice of words still sounded mean and backward to many in a country where a slim majority now supports gay marriage.

Hollywood evangelicals work in all parts of the industry, said Patton Dodd, who writes on religion and culture and has worked closely with evangelical pastors Ted Haggard and Rick Warren. But Cameron takes a different approach than most.

“It’s kind of like the difference between Peyton Manning and Tim Tebow,” Dodd said. Both are NFL star quarterbacks and believers. ”But Manning is quieter about his faith. It’s just as fervent and strong by every indication. But he hasn’t made it part of his public image and Tebow has _ and Cameron’s the same way.”

Well before he appeared on Morgan’s show, Cameron had made himself a hero to many conservative Christians, in both his personal and professional life.

At 17 _ still starring in “Growing Pains” _ he was an avowed atheist raised in a family that did not attend church. Then he went to a service with a friend’s father, and, as he has attested many times, realized that he was headed to hell.

Soon after, Cameron became “born again” and married “Growing Pains” co-star Chelsea Noble. The couple adopted four children, had two more and founded Camp Firefly in Georgia for terminally ill children and their families.

The Cameron family still lives in Los Angeles, not far from the Hollywood sign. His acting and directing, though, has kept him almost exclusively in the realm of Christian media.

In the past 15 years, Cameron has starred in the “Left Behind” franchise, a series of Christian thrillers based on the end of days. The books have sold 65 million copies, and the movies have fared well within Christian markets.

He also headlined the 2008 drama “Fireproof,” the highest-grossing independent film of 2008, about a firefighter who saves strangers but neglects his wife. Christian critics loved it. Mainstream critics found it preachy.

As he has pursued his Christian film projects, Cameron also founded, in 2002, a radio and television ministry, “The Way of the Master,” with New Zealand preacher Ray Comfort. The two men joined forces to inspire and teach Christians to evangelize, and the shows have further endeared Cameron with committed, traditional Christians.

But the choice to partner with the often brash Comfort also helped define Cameron as the kind of Christian who is bound to find himself marginalized in Tinseltown, said Larry Poland, an evangelical minister whose Los Angeles consulting firm aims to bridge the gap between Christians and mainstream Hollywood.

“I wouldn’t have picked Ray Comfort,” said Poland. “Ray Comfort brought to the TV show and to their writing a kind of acidity and an attitude. That didn’t help Kirk perpetuate that image of the gracious, reasonable Christian.”

“Monumental,” which Cameron narrates, was released in 500 theaters on March 27. It promotes the gospel of American exceptionalism, rooted in the religious zeal of the Pilgrims who crossed the Atlantic to build a more divinely inspired society than the one they left in England.

Though educators who work on social studies curricula say most American public school children are taught of the Pilgrim’s religious motivation, Cameron complains of a nationwide campaign to strip Christianity from U.S. history. He refers to public schools as “government schools,”  and deplores an “all-out assault on the Christian heritage of our country.”

In Plymouth, Mass., he finds the Pilgrims’ faith-based blueprint sculpted into a little-known, towering granite monument that was dedicated 123 years ago. Cameron spends a good part of “Monumental” walking around its base with an evangelist, trying to decipher its message.

“Monumental” does not rail against homosexuality or abortion. Cameron asks his audience to help the nation reclaim its godly heritage, but makes few specific demands. Perhaps when the project is nothing short of saving America, it’s best to speak as inclusively as possible.

But Cameron, despite his star status with some evangelicals, may never reach the larger, more diverse audience that made “Growing Pains” a prime-time hit. And maybe he doesn’t care. But given the monumental goal of his latest big-screen endeavor, it seems as if he does.

“The moral fabric of our nation is unraveling so quickly,” he said. “If we care about our kids and the world that they’re living in, we need to change course before the whole thing goes down the toilet in the next 20 or 30 years.”

(RNS) Belief in God is slowly declining in most countries around the world, according to a new poll, but the truest of the true believers can still be found in developing countries and Catholic societies.

The “Beliefs about God Across Time and Countries” report, released Wednesday  by researchers at the University of Chicago, found the Philippines to be the country with the highest belief, where 94 percent of Filipinos said they were strong believers who had always believed.

At the opposite end, at just 13 percent, was the former East Germany.

“The Philippines is both developing and Catholic,” said Tom W. Smith, who directs the General Social Survey of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. “Religion, which is mainly Catholic, is very emotionally strong there.”

The report covered data from 30 countries that participated in at least two surveys in 1991, 1998 or 2008.

In 29 of the 30 countries surveyed in 2008, belief increased with age: Belief in God was highest for those ages 68 or older (43 percent), compared to 23 percent of those younger than 28.

While overall belief in God has decreased in most parts of the world, three countries — Israel, Russia and Slovenia — saw increases. The report said religious belief had “slowly eroded” since the 1950s in most countries of the world.

Atheism and unbelief was most prominent in northwest Europe and some former Soviet states, with the exception of majority-Catholic Poland (just 3.3 percent).

The United States (60.6 percent) was ranked in the top five countries for people who said they knew God existed and had no doubts. Besides the Philippines, the other countries were Chile (79.4 percent), Israel (65.5 percent) and Poland (62 percent).

(RNS) New York Times columnist Ross Douthat doesn’t mince words in his new book “Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics.”

Since the 1960s, Douthat argues, institutional Christianity has suffered a slow-motion collapse, leaving the country without the moral core that carried it through foreign wars, economic depressions and roiling internal debates.

Meanwhile, myriad heresies have bloomed — from the “God-within” theology of Oprah to the Mammon-obsessed missionaries of the prosperity gospel, says Douthat, a Roman Catholic.

In an interview with Religion News Service, Douthat explains his definition of heresy, why he thinks Mitt Romney and President Obama are both heretics, and why more Americans should argue about religion.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why did you write this book?

A: The idea for the book came to me late in the Bush presidency, when the debate over religion in America was generally dominated by the clash between the New Atheists — Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett — and conservative Christians. In many ways, the debate over the existence of God is the most important debate there is, but I thought it would be useful to step back and consider what kind of shape American religion is taking.

Q: And what did you see? 

A: In some ways, depending on what kinds of measurements you use — such as belief in God or spiritual experiences — the country might be more religious than ever. But that doesn’t mean that there are more traditional, orthodox Christians. Instead you have heresy: religions that draw on Christianity and yet are still miles away from the historic core of the Christian faith.

Q: How do you define heresy?

A: Looking at Catholics, Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians, there is an intellectual core in the Christian faith. Sometimes that core gets blurry in various places, but you have the Nicene Creed, the belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God, that the four Gospels are the best sources of information about Jesus of Nazareth. There are a lot of religious movements and ideas that diverge from that core enough to be heretical but not to be a different religion entirely.

All of this is totally debatable, and people can look at the same landscape and disagree about who a heretic is. But the term is still quite useful in describing the reality of a country that is neither traditionally Christian nor post-Christian in any meaningful way. We are in a zone between those two things.

Q: You’re not going to start another Inquisition are you?

A: (Laughs) Well, controversy is good for book sales. Obviously the hunt for heretics has a long and horrible history. An orthodoxy that doesn’t leave any room for heresy is dangerous and destructive; and a world that is all heresy and leaves no room for orthodoxy is dangerous as well. But I don’t see any particular danger in using the term to describe America today.

Q: I’ve read that you think both Mitt Romney and President Obama are heretics.

A: A lot of evangelicals and conservative Catholics will say straight out that they don’t think Mormons are Christians. If you flip that around, you find that Mormons themselves think that all evangelicals and Catholics are in a state of apostasy, that Mormons have the true Christianity. It can be an endless and pointless argument. They both claim ownership of the same religious tradition.

Q: What makes Obama a heretic in your view?

A: Obama’s personal religious beliefs are a little more opaque than Romney’s. He’s not part of a church or specific denomination. But the church (Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago) where he basically converted, or reconverted, back from agnosticism, is a church whose theology diverges and stands in judgment over the traditional Christian churches. The theology of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons is radical — and that’s the whole point. Black liberation theology is much more explicitly political and revolutionary than traditional Christianity.

Q: But is it heretical?

A: I think using the word just clarifies the distance — the very real theological distinctions — between Jeremiah Wright’s vision of Christianity and what a lot of traditional churches consider Christianity.

Q: Even if heretics are no longer burned at the stake, it seems that many Americans have an aversion to labeling others heretical, no?

A: And I would disagree with that very strongly. The promise of a liberal society is that we agree to a kind of truce where nobody will impose their religion on anyone else and the government will not set up an established church, or the Spanish Inquisition. But part of religious freedom is the freedom to have arguments about religious beliefs. People who take religion seriously should have serious public arguments.

Q: You quote Philip Rieff’s idea of a modern prophet who denounces the rise of a therapeutic, ego-driven faith. Do you see yourself in that role?

A: (Laughs) I don’t think I’m comfortable calling myself a prophet. I’m more comfortable calling myself a critic. Even though I use pretty strong language to criticize trends in contemporary theology, I also want to get at what it is about “Eat Pray Love,” for example, that so many people respond to. It’s very easy to be mocking and dismissive from a more highbrow perspective. But there is a coherent theological core at the heart of the prosperity gospel and the “God-within” schools, and I take them seriously.

Q: Why do you say this book was written in a spirit of pessimism?

A: As a practicing Catholic, I have an obvious bias in favor of institutional religion. But if you look at Christian history, the belief that everyone can follow Jesus on their own is not a particularly realistic approach to religious faith. It is a faith best practiced in community with doctrine passed down through generations. What makes me pessimistic is that all the trends in contemporary American life are toward deinstitutionalization, not just in religion but across the board.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Benedict XVI turned 85 today amid renewed speculation about his declining health and possible resignation.

The German-born pope has appeared tired and fatigued in recent months and admitted at a morning Mass to being in “the final leg of the path of my life.” But on Sunday, he signaled his resolve to carry on with his duties as leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, asking the faithful to pray that he have the “strength” to “fulfill his mission.”

Pope Benedict XVI leaves Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 24.
RNS photo by Paul Haring/Catholic News Service

This week will mark a double milestone for Benedict, with Thursday being the seventh anniversary of his election as pope.

Last October, Benedict started using a movable platform to carry him down the central aisle in St. Peter’s Basilica, and he leaned on a cane before boarding the plane for a recent weeklong trip to Cuba and Mexico. He his now the sixth-oldest pope since at least the 1400s; the oldest, Pope Leo XIII, died in 1903 at age 93.

Talk of possible resignation has been swirling around the pope ever since his 2010 book, “Light of the World,” in which he said that if a pope felt “no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of carrying out the duties of his office,” he would have “the right, and in some circumstances the obligation, to resign.”

Last month, prominent Italian journalists who are considered Benedict loyalists openly suggested that the pope might resign in the near future, adding new fuel to the rumor mill.

Still, despite sounding hoarse during the intense liturgical schedule of Holy Week, the pope has not canceled any appointments.

Celebrating Mass with a delegation from his native Bavaria on Monday, an emotional Benedict said he was sure God would help him “proceed safely” despite having entered “the final leg of the path of my life.”

“I don’t know what the future holds for me but I know that … God’s good is stronger than all the evil in this world,” he confided.

He later attended a small Bavarian-style festival in the Vatican. Benedict joined bishops and leaders from his native region in singing the Bavarian national hymn and watched as children performed a traditional dance. Benedict was joined by his older brother, Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, who flew in last weekend from Germany.

Benedict’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II, died in 2005 at age 84 after years of failing health. After his death, it was revealed John Paul considered resigning twice, on his 75th and 80th birthdays, but decided to continue serving “as long as (Jesus), in the mysterious designs of his providence, will want.”