King Abdullah of Jordan will be in town Monday, just in time to deal with the news that Jordan has expelled more than two dozen foreign Christians and is denying visas so that overseas evangelicals can study at a popular Amman-based seminary.

The latter is Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary (JETS), one of a handful of Protestant seminaries in the Middle East. They're not going to be around much longer if their current troubles don't let up. Bone up on the topic by reading this recent story by Compass Direct, an evangelical Christian news service:

I get reams of magazines but I do try to make room for Tricycle, the glossy Buddhist review that does as well as any publication in explaining this religion to me. Only in 2002, when I made forays to Thailand and Japan, where I interviewed Buddhists or former Buddhists for a piece in our foreign section, did I realize the complexity of this world religion.

Recently, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life put out a massive survey of 35,000 people that gave as good an outline of any as to what shape the major religions have taken on American soil. Two-thirds of American Buddhists, it said, are first-generation converts; an impressive percentage.

Other facts: Forty-five percent of the country's Buddhist live out West, followed by 23 percent in the South, 17 percent in the Northeast and 15 percent in the Midwest.

The biggest age group is that of 30- to 49-year-olds, the same demographic advertisers crave. Just over half are male. Fifty-three percent are white and 32 percent are Asian; they are equally distributed among income and educational levels, 45 percent are married and 31 percent have never married. Seventy percent have no children. Hmmm. Sounds like this is a group that will be quite slow in reproducing itself for the next generation.

Back to Tricycle, its spring issue has an intriguing Q&A with minimalist composer Philip Glass, a convert from Judaism to Buddhism. Thirty years ago, he wrote a Sanskrit-language opera about Mahatma Gandhi, "Satyagraha," about the Gandhi's early years in South Africa. An updated version will be performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera House in April while Pope Benedict is in town. Maybe he can drop by?

One of the most intriguing points in the story (found on the site) is how Gandhi, a Hindu, studied Christianity in London, where he found Jesus' teachings on compassion so compelling that he based his life on them. The New King James Version words a key verse (Matt: 25: 35-36) as follows: "For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me."

Photo courtesy of Tricycle magazine

"I think there is something very much at the heart of Gandhi in those words," Glass said near the end of the Tricycle interview. "And of course it's Christian. And that may make it a hard pill for us Buddhists to swallow."

He added, "I think that basically the Buddhist community is a weak community. And it's weak because it's guided by self-interests." I was not sure, by the end of the piece, whether he held out much hope for Buddhism's ability to change hearts, much less national destinies.

Is there something vital missing in Buddhism that it took a Hindu acting along Christian principles to liberate India from the British? (Remember, one does not have to believe in God to be Buddhist). Does its inwardness have anything to do with such a high percentage of American Buddhists remaining childless? Folks such as Philip Glass are asking really interesting questions.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

Here's something for President Bush to accomplish that will be a true legacy: Instruct the U.S. military and State Department to do what it takes to prevent the extinction of Iraq's Christians.

Only Pope Benedict XVI is offering much in the way of meaningful protest against the way Assyrian and Chaldean Christians, not to mention other non-Muslim groups that are also being run out of the country or killed. Although much the same thing is happening all over the Middle East, Iraq has one of the world's oldest surviving Christian communities. In one week of January, nine Christian churches in Baghdad, Kirkuk and Mosul were bombed and several people injured. The Iraqi government does little or nothing to prevent such attacks.

John Eibner, the CEO of Christian Solidarity International and Pascale Warda, a Baghdad resident who's the former Iraqi minister of migration and displacement, recently visited my office to try to publicize this ongoing ethnic cleansing. They arrived soon after I got a phone call from Elizabeth Valgiusti, an Italian filmmaker who recently showed her film, "Iraq's Christians," on the Catholic University campus.

I've enclosed a still here from the film, which describes the systemic destruction of 2,000 years worth of Iraqi Christian churches and monuments by Muslims.

A car bomb damaged this Chaldean church in west Mosul on Jan. 17, 2008. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Valgiusti)

"While the United States is the occupying power in Iraq, it has enormous influence there and can do something," Eibner said. "I was just at the State Department and it's clear they know the facts. But the United States doesn't even want to acknowledge the problem as they fear reaction from the Arab world. It would confirm Muslim charges that the Americans are crusaders who are there on behalf of the Christians."

Eibner, whose organization has begun a "Save Iraqi Christians" campaign, finds this attitude tremendously unfair.

"President Bush said he wants to win the hearts and minds of Muslims; he's never said that about any other religion," he said.

While the Americans dither, Christian homes and neighborhoods are taken over or destroyed and their occupants -- if they survive -- are forced into penury in Jordan or Syria. Some move to the Kurdish north of the country, but one must speak one of two Kurdish dialects to survive, and most Iraqi Christians know neither. Imagine, my two visitors said, having to move to Texas and get by only in Spanish. Or never knowing if your Sunday morning worship time will get delightfully interrupted by a car bomb.

Those who move north are forced to join one of the two main Kurdish political parties there and produce a hard-to-get residency permit. And they are sunk if they are not part of a Kurdish clan, which helps its own members through well-established patronage systems. There are Christian villages north of Mosul (on the site of ancient Nineveh) but they do not have the space nor resources to take on thousands of refugees from Baghdad.

I told them of my 2004 trip to that exact area, where I visited an Assyrian monastery and orphanage where everyone spoke Aramaic, the same language Jesus spoke. In my short time in the Kurdish cities of Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaymania, I saw how everything depends on who you know. I learned that many Kurds feel animosity towards Christians because Saddam Hussein favored them so while persecuting the Kurds. Now that the Kurds are in the ascendancy, they feel there was no one to help them during the years Saddam was using them for target practice and that the Christians can wait in line along with everyone else.

Warda disagreed with my assessment, saying she was raised in Ainkawa, a Christian suburb of Erbil where she underwent hardships along with everyone else. What she wants is a safe haven for Christians on the Nineveh plain, due east of Mosul, with foreign help in making the fertile area habitable with electricity, water, phone lines and the other accoutrements of civilization. It's all farm or pastureland at the moment.

"Roughly half of the Christian community in Iraq lives abroad now," Eibner said. "As of 2003, one million Christians lived in Iraq. Maybe 600,000 remain."

Mesopotamia was once overwhelmingly Assyrian Christian with a sprinkling of Jews from the first through sixth centuries, they reminded me. The rise of Islam in the seventh century began putting a stop to that. Iraq's last Jews fled after World War II, leaving eight remaining Jews in Baghdad today.

"And of the 600,000 Christians left," he said, "many aren't living in their own homes. They are internally displaced. Whole districts of Baghdad were depopulated of Christians" by Sunni or Shi'ite militias. It's as if all the Christians were driven out of Georgetown, old town Alexandria and Hyattsville.

"There's no major program to bring Christians back home," he said. "What's needed is a Marshall Plan for Iraq. The USA must create conditions for the return of people to somewhere in Iraq that is secure. I believe politically it could be done in a plan to return all Iraqis with a provision for Christians and other non-Muslim minorities."

"We have religions that don't exist elsewhere in the world," said Pacale Warda, in reference to the Yezidis (angel worshippers) and Mandaeans (followers of John the Baptist). The two have ranged the halls of Congress to try to get something done, but only Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback has spoken on the record about the dismal situation.

Christians are still even in Basra, Warda informed me, even though news reports infer the city has gone totally Shi'ite. But there won't be any left in the country if the current carnage continues.

In his last 10 months in office, President Bush has a strange sort of freedom in that he is no longer beholden to public or even world opinion. Why not use this time to shore up the persecuted in Iraq? And if anyone complains, why should he care?

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

I get tons of press releases every day, but this one really irked me. Thomas Nelson, a mega-publisher of Bibles and all things Christian, announces a new "eco-friendly" edition of the Holy Book and a company-wide switch to "environmentally conscious Bible bindings and practices."

You can take a look at it here.

The Nashville-based publisher is addressing the "environmental needs" of its customers, it announce by switching from synthetic covers to "bonded leather, leather and hardcover formats" and "green" binding material. Sounds to me like high-grade paper and leather.

"In moving away from oil-based covers we're not only honoring our customers' needs, but we're also honoring our Godly calling to be good stewards of the things He has given to us," says Wayne Hastings, the group's senior vice president. The phase-out of polyurethane/oil-based covers should be complete within five years.

The publisher actually has an environmental policy that informs us that "part of God's message is to be respectful of the planet and all the resources in our care."

Other than a few verses in Genesis, where does it say that in the Bible? Nowhere. So to say that 21st-century enviro-speak is "part of God's message" is a bit of a stretch.

Plus, I didn't know my trusty bedside Bible had "environmental needs." And about that leather: Doesn't that mean the death of a horse or cow in there somewhere? How environmentally friendly is that?

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

It's always intriguing to see which churches have grown and which denominations have faded in the past year. According to the 2008 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (a Bible of sorts for us religion writers), the fastest-growing religious body in 2007 was the Jehovah's Witnesses at 2.25 percent.

Following them were the Mormons at 1.56 percent and the Roman Catholics at .87 percent. Compare this to last year's states that had the Catholics out front at 1.94 percent, followed by the Assemblies of God at 1.86 and the Mormons at 1.63.

The denomination with the biggest decrease is the Episcopalians at 4.15 percent.
There are all sorts of arguments why some of these figures on the list below are bogus. For instance, several of the historic black churches with the "no increase or decrease listed" after their name do not release statistics at all. So the membership figure after their name is a guess at best. Plus churches' standards for membership are different. Baptist groups tend to count only those who have made an adult profession of faith. More liturgical churches include any child that has been baptized.

Still, the majority of church groups on this list are not growing. Of the top three churches [Roman Catholics, Southern Baptists and United Methodists], the Methodists are losing members.

There are some surprises here. The Lutheran Church/Missouri Synod decreased by .94 percent. I thought all conservative churches were growing. Ditto for the two Orthodox bodies listed here that are also losing members.

And there are more members of the Assemblies of God than Episcopalians. Guess which of the two gets more news coverage.

Here are the top 25:

1. The Roman Catholic Church, 67,515,016 members, an increase of .87 percent.
2. Southern Baptist Convention, 16,306,246 members, an increase of .22 percent.
3. The United Methodist Church, 7,995,456 members, a decrease of .99 percent.
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5,779,316 members, an increase of 1.56 percent.
5. The Church of God in Christ, 5,499,875 members, no increase or decrease reported.
6. National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., 5,000,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 4,774,203 members, a decrease of 1.58 percent.
8. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc., 3,500,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
9. Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 3,025,740 members, a decrease of 2.36 percent.
10. Assemblies of God, 2,836,174 members, an increase of .19 percent.
11. African Methodist Episcopal Church, 2,500,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
11. National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, 2,500,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
11. Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc., 2,500,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
14. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), 2,417,997 members, a decrease of .94 percent.
15. Episcopal Church, 2,154,572 members, a decrease of 4.15 percent.
16. Churches of Christ, 1,639,495 members, no increase or decrease reported.
17. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, 1,500,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
17. Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Inc., 1,500,000 members, no increase or decrease reported.
19. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 1,443,405 members, an increase of .21 percent.
20. American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., 1,371,278 members, a decrease of 1.82 percent.
21. United Church of Christ, 1,218,541 members, a decrease of 0.47 percent.
22. Baptist Bible Fellowship International, 1,200,000, no increase or decrease reported.
23. Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, 1,071,616 members, no increase or decrease reported.
24. The Orthodox Church in America, 1,064,000, no increase or decrease reported.
25. Jehovah's Witnesses, 1,069,530 members, an increase of 2.25 percent.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

When is an award not an award?

When a conservative Catholic Supreme Court justice meets up with bunch of Conservative rabbis, that's when.

According to the original press release for Religion and the Public Square, a Feb. 10-14 meeting of some 400 rabbis representing the leadership of the nation's Conservative movement, Chief Justice John Roberts was slated to receive an award tonight.

Called the Truth and Justice Award, it was to have been presented by the Rabbinical Assembly in the Presidential Ballroom of the Capitol Hilton downtown. That was as of mid-January. No sooner had the announcement been made, than folks began to murmur. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency captured well the ambivalence some folks felt about giving the justice an award when so many of them disagree with him several things, such as abortion.

I was told by people connected with the conference that rumbling was going on but that the award was going not so much to the man as to his office.

"He is the highest official of the highest court in the land and he represents to the American community the various principles that are basic to our religious tradition, such as justice and concern for the poor," said Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg of Adas Israel Congregation in the District. "We are not awarding an individual, we are awarding the chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States."

Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlberg. (Photo courtesy of Adas Israel)

Well, that was then.

Midway through the conference, which ends Thursday, I got another e-mail from one of the folks handling PR for the gathering. The award had been downgraded to a book.

"The situation is that we will be handing John Roberts a Tanach … the Hebrew Bible (5 books of Moses, Prophets and the various other holy writings), and that we are honoring him for his office, not endorsing or commenting in any way on his public record," it said. "We hope he will read thru the Tanach and be guided by its teachings."

Not that I know Justice Roberts personally, but I am sure he already has some familiarity with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

I talked with Rabbi Susan Grossman of Beth Shalom Congregation, who drafted the Rabbinical Assembly's 2007 resolution on reproductive freedom and health care, which says Judaism believes that personhood and human rights begin at birth, not conception. Roman Catholics believe life begins at conception. Major difference there.

"We are thrilled that Supreme Court justice wants to come speak to us even though we are pro-choice and for women's rights," she said from the Capitol building where she was lobbying for the passing of the Freedom of Choice Act. "We're not pro-abortion, but we believe there is not a place for the government to interfere where there is not unanimity in the public square."

Well, chances are that Justice Roberts will be none the wiser for receiving the award-that-was-not-an-award.

One more note from Wohlberg, 66, the incoming president of the Rabbinical Assembly. He told me he'd like to ramp up the numbers of Conservative American Jews, currently at about 1 million.

Whereas the Orthodox branch of American Judaism has seen a resurgence, as have Reformed Jews, "There is this popular perception that implies that Conservative Judaism has changed dramatically," he said. I assume he meant changed for the worse.

"But," he insisted, "we are the strong middle."

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

Tuesday was the second anniversary of the death of Sister Dorothy Stang, who at the age of 73 was gunned down in the rural Amazon by two gunmen.

According to her just-released biography, "The Greatest Gift," by Binka Le Breton, it was the rich landowners and various government officials who did her in, as they were sick of her ceaseless activity on behalf of the poor farmers who lived along the Transamazon Highway in Brazil.

The Amazon rainforest is one amazing piece of real estate containing one-fifth of all the Earth's fresh water and billions of dollars worth of minerals under its red soil. It constitutes a billion acres spread out over several nations. More than 20 percent of the world's oxygen is produced there. The rainforest is being cut away at the rate of 1 1/2 acres every second, thanks to the short-sighted Brazilian government, multinational logging companies and rapacious landowners.

There were plenty landless peasants trying to live off this land, and Sister Dorothy was committed to protect them.

She would still be living in obscurity had two thugs, paid off by rich landlords, killed her early on the morning of Feb. 12, 2005. According to the book, she was reading outloud to her murderers from the Beatitudes when she was gunned down. Although the hired gunmen were brought to trial and sentenced to many years in prison, those who masterminded her murder were never brought to justice.

So light a candle in the hope that Sister Dorothy did not die in vain.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

Here is a note to the folks out in Hagerstown who voted last week to bar a Muslim group from building a mosque and retreat center out there in Frederick County. First read this to come to speed on this issue.

The Ahmadiyya Muslims who want to build this facility aren't al Qaeda by a long shot. Not only have they been denounced as not being true Muslims, they've been continually persecuted, especially in Pakistani Punjab. And what for? Its 19th century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, said he was the Islamic "mahdi" (messiah), making him greater than Muhammad, the founder of Islam. This has not gone over well in mainstream Islam. In 1984, the Pakistani government, under General Zia-ul-Haq, banned proselytizing by Ahmadis and also banned calling Ahmadis as Muslims.

According to this ordinance, any Ahmadi who refers to oneself as a Muslim by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representation, directly or indirectly, or makes the call for prayer as other Muslims do, is punishable by imprisonment of up to 3 years.

They also believe that Jesus survived the crucifixion and travelled towards India to search for the lost tribes of Israel. Furthermore, they claim that his tomb, containing his body, has been recently discovered in Kashmir.

Agree or disagree with this group (their web site is here if you want to know more), they have never been connected with violence.

courtesy of www.alislam.com

I just happened upon Pickled Politics, a blog that compared Ahmadiyya Muslims to Mormons in that they both believe in continuing revelation. Both were founded in the 19th century by men (Joseph Smith, Mirza Ahmad) who claimed to be reformers calling both religions (Christianity, Islam) back to their original pure states. Neither have been accepted by these religions as bonified.

Considering how the Admadiyyas have been hounded non-stop for claiming to be Muslim, chances are they simply wanted a piece of Maryland countryside they could call their own and be left in peace. The zoning appeals board there needs to get a better grip on the differences between violent and non-violent Muslims. The town's claim that it could not sustain an annual Ahmadiyya camp-out of 5,000 to 10,000 people there is bogus. Small towns host Christian music festivals all the time that attract similar crowds. I don't hear them complaining about being overwhelmed.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

"At this final prayer breakfast as your president, I thank you for your prayers," President Bush said this morning.

He was speaking to some 4,000 people crammed into the Washington Hilton ballroom, most of whom had shelled out $175 a piece for repast of granola, fresh fruit, coffee and Danish. The full text of his speech, which was quite theologically sound, is at www.whitehouse.gov. I'd include a photo of the event but none of us were allowed to bring in cameras.

The National Prayer Breakfast, by the way, is a three-day event crammed with seminars and tours for guests from around the country. The expensive ticket prices for the breakfast subsidize a host of international visitors — plus some heads of state — who are flown here for what's essentially low-key intros to Christianity. A lot of other meetings happen here; this is the event that provided a forum for Jordan's King Abdullah to have closed-door meetings with American evangelicals in 2006.

I've been twice before to these breakfasts but as a member of the White House press pool. This time, I went as an ordinary person — my employer did not pay for my ticket — just to see what it's like to be in the peanut gallery.

To my right was a woman who was running an NGO from North Dakota that ministers to poor Guatemalan children. To my left was the director of a local crisis pregnancy center and a builder from Kirkland, Wash. The speakers were also mixed bag. The keynote, Ward Brehm of the Africa Development Fund, joked that his audience had never heard of him, then went on to give an entertaining talk about his transition from hard-boiled businessman to advocate for Africa's poor.

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, a Democrat and a Roman Catholic, emceed much of the gathering. After he praised Sen. Dianne Feinstein as a roll model for the Senate, she followed up with what was supposed to be a reading from Scripture. Instead it was a New Agey-sounding essay written by a Reform rabbi.

The best quote of the gathering came from Judge Carlos Lucero, who serves on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. "Poor New Mexico," he mused. "So far from heaven. So close to Texas."

The better show was actually the night before at columnist Cal Thomas' annual media dinner. Mickey Rooney, 88, brought down the house with a no-holds-barred Christian message and a short film with clips about his famous life. He was there with his eighth wife, Jan Chamberlin, with whom he has stayed married for 30 years.

Mickey Rooney and wife Jan (www.mickeyrooney.com)

Actress Patricia Heaton's monologue was by far the funniest of the evening but I was most struck by a short speech by Jim Pinkerton, one-time political analyst for Fox News Channel and Newsday columnist.

I hadn't known he had decided to forsake it all and become a senior advisor to the Huckabee campaign. Talk about selling all you have and giving to the poor.
Had he done it for the money, I asked him afterwards.

"Oh, no," he said, "I'm still a volunteer."

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

Now that we're all taking a breather from Super Tuesday, I wanted to mention I have four new books on my desk on a general theme that goes like this: The religious right is in the trash heap of history and the real energy and all the good ideas are coming from the religious left. Three of these books all have red, white and blue covers. Hmmmm.

There's Tony Campolo's "Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith & Politics," with an attractive design showing a church in blue hues on an American flag background. "Red Letter Christians," a concept introduced at the National Press Club more than a year ago, refers to those who say their main guide is Jesus' own words — outlined in red in some editions of the Bible.

The church, say the RLC'ers, has lost its focus on Christ's direct commands and teachings. Atop this book is an endorsement from Bill Clinton; not a surprise in that Campolo was one of three ministerial counselors called in when Clinton was in his moral and ethical free-fall 10 years ago. Remember those days?

Not to be outdone is Jim Wallis' "The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America." He has an endorsement from Jimmy Carter atop his front cover. I've been following Wallis since before 1976 when, as a college student, I interviewed him for The Washington Star. He had just relocated his evangelical activist group from Chicago to the District and had founded a community of Christian households, at the time a radical innovation. Sojourners, which is what Wallis renamed his group, has been a staple of the evangelical left since then in the District but only came into its own about four years ago when Democrats discovered that religious faith was important in national politics.

After Sen. John Kerry's defeat, Wallis, who was immensely sympathetic to Democratic ideals, was brought in to advise them on how to make them less tone-deaf to religion. A quick skim reveals the book is pretty much an update of an earlier book, "God's Politics."

Then there's Joel Hunter's "A New Kind of Conservative," again with a white background with red and blue figurines on the cover. This is more a teaching book, as Hunter is a pastor. The subject is, again, faith and politics. My goodness, we're still in primary season and I'm already weary of this topic. The theme of this book — and to some extent the two others — is that there's a "new" kind of evangelical Christian out there who wants to move beyond abortion and homosexuality issues to the environment, AIDS, poverty and justice. The era of the Christian Coalition is long gone, there's a new wave coming and so on.

Maybe I am just out of touch, but the kind of folks I bump into at church and other religious gatherings aren't spending a lot of time worrying about any of these topics. I can't say I spend a lot of time discussing the immorality of U.S. policy on torture with anyone I know, mainly because none of my friends or neighbors really care about the matter. Or the war in Iraq, for that matter. Of course they should, but they don't.

The only people I see protesting in front of the local abortion clinic is a handful from a nearby Catholic parish, although I will say several friends of mine take part in the annual March for Life on Jan. 22. But that's it.

So, who is reading these red, white and blue books? Kids on college campuses?
It turns out the most interesting book in the pile has a blue and black color scheme: Amy Sullivan's "The Faithful Party: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap." She's got the juicy behind-the-scenes gossip on how the Dems have made every mistake in the book as to appealing to people of faith plus she's the best writer of the four. And what's on her cover?

A donkey.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times

OK, so we're a little late in filing some observations on last week's council meeting of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

After two days of attending the annual event the Reston Hyatt, I want to list three things Virginia Episcopalians care about the most. How can I tell? Easy: The lengthiest debates were on matters of sex, immigration and Shrinemont.

First off, it was plain the diocese is re-branding itself after suffering the loss of more than 5,000 members a year ago when 11 of its churches pulled out, saying the Virginia diocese was too liberal on theological and moral issues. Just before the council meeting, Virginia Bishop Peter Lee posted an open letter on the diocesan web site, www.thediocese.net, calling the diocese "orthodox and open." Signs posted at the entrance to the council meeting proclaimed, "Virginia: Church of the Future" and "A Story Waiting to be Written."

The emphasis was very much on how the diocese is moving on to better things with just a teensy bit of a slam against those who've jumped ship.

"As I listen around the church, the one consistent theme that I hear is that clergy want to be in the Diocese of Virginia," Suffragan Bishop David Jones said near the end of the council. "I find it very disconcerting to read disparaging comments about us from our former members. Labels have been applied to us that have no connection with reality. To say that we have abandoned Scripture is blatantly not true. I am proud that we have not responded in kind."

Two delegates sidled up to the press table at one point and began talking with a blogger from Episcopal Cafe, operated by the Diocese of Washington.

"There's so much better atmosphere here this year," one remarked.

"Well, that's because the element that was causing trouble was removed," said the other.

Now to the aforementioned items: for as long as I've been covering these diocesan meetings (since 2004), there's always been some resolution on the hot topics of Episcopaldom: same-sex unions or ordination of openly gay clergy. This year it was "inclusiveness in ordained ministry;" a resolution that got vastly watered down to say Virginia Episcopalians would only give the matter "discernment and reflection." Which goes to say Virginia is vastly different than the Diocese of Washington across the Potomac River. Washington, which at last count has at least 14 gay couples on its clergy roster. Washington also announced in its diocesan newspaper that it's developing a strategy "for the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the life of the Church."

About immigration: Lots of passionate rhetoric on this one. Northern Virginia has been quite the center for a national debate on whether local governments should pay for places where (mostly) illegal immigrants can keep warm and dry while looking for jobs or waiting for work.

But the biggest blow up was on a proposed cut of $6,970 in scholarships to Shrinemont, the diocese's lovely retreat in Orkney Springs in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. Now Shrinemont really is a nice place, filled with gardens and places for children to play. A historic, four-story hotel filled with balconies and porches and rocking chairs dominates the place. A parish or youth retreat here is a big deal.

So, delegate after delegate came to the microphone with sad stories about how young people depend on this money to get to this camp, how young lives could be ruined without it and so on. Finally, one enterprising woman suggested that if 69 people contributed $100 each on the spot, the deficit could be resolved.

Everyone dug into their pockets and purses and came up with $19,700. When someone suggested from the stage that the extra funds might go toward other areas in the cash-strapped diocese, a big "NO" welled up from the crowd.

In the Virginia diocese, you can say what you want about theology, sex, immigration or the local bishops. But don't mess with Shrinemont.

— Julia Duin, assistant national editor/religion, The Washington Times