At least once a year, most religious groups feel the need to issue a lengthy document about this or that social issue.

These texts emerge after private debates in which committees write, rewrite and edit each line. Early drafts often surface in the media, before the word-crunching continues in public meetings. The results usually resemble government legislation or sausage. Rare is the person who yearns to inspect the contents.

This is ironic, since most of these statements are supposed to be practical, "pastoral" letters from leaders to the faithful.

This week, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops released "Faithful For Life: A Moral Reflection," a pastoral statement that attempts to break the mold. First, it was created amid little fanfare or controversy. Second, the 25-page booklet is candid, concise and smoothly written.

Clearly, the writers hope that real people may actually read and understand it.

The time is the near future and the new Republican president is a Yankee blue blood who tilts way right, except on moral issues.

The "Christian Alliance" screamed when he won the GOP nomination, then fled to form a third party. Afterwards, some cursed politics. A few began planning rebellion.

The plot twists start early in "Gideon's Torch," the first novel by former Nixon White house counsel Charles Colson and Ellen Santilli Vaughn. A fake patient guns down a famous abortionist. The president responds with a get-tough legal crusade that intimidates pro-life moderates, but invigorates radicals. The government starts promoting late-term abortions, after researchers learn that fetal brain tissue is the key to curing AIDS. So anti-abortion activists cut into an ABC News satellite signal. Then things get complicated.

But there is more to this political thriller than blood, dirty tricks and movie-script editing. The cover needs a warning sticker: Warning – contains disturbing moral issues. Consider this exchange between the central character, Attorney General Emily Gineen, and a powerful Christian politico.

Hillsdale College's Dan Bisher did what any campus leader would do, as he flipped through Money magazine's annual issue rating colleges.

First, he found Hillsdale in the Top 100 chart, at No. 31, and at No. 5 in the crucial "best buys" in the Midwest list. Then he looked for the competition. He was surprised when he couldn't find Calvin College, another of Michigan's top liberal arts colleges.

"I thought, `That's strange,'" said Bisher, Hillsdale's media-relations specialist. "Calvin's always up there in these lists."

Calvin has fared well in lists from U.S. News & World Report, National Review, the New York Times, Barron's and others. These guides consider familiar criteria, such as the quality of the faculty, library resources, entrance exam scores and the number of alumni who earn graduate degrees.

But this year, Money's 96-page guide considered another factor – religion. Thus, 150 schools were eliminated because they were too religious. Among those dropped were nationally-known colleges such as St. Olaf, Centre and St. Mary's (Ind.), as well as Calvin, Wheaton, Gordon, Asbury, Taylor and 85 others in the Coalition for Christian Colleges and Universities. (In candor, another was Milligan College, where I teach.)

Twenty-six miles northwest of Denver is a mysterious, exotic place that many people call the People's Republic of Boulder.

Baby Boomers in Boulder are more likely to evolve into Buddhists than Baptists. Visitors to the downtown Pearl Street Mall may think they had strolled into an impromptu meeting of the World Parliament at Religions.

So some people chuckled back in 1991 when Bill Honsberger was appointed as a Conservative Baptist missionary to Colorado, and, in particular, to Boulder's new Age flocks. Obviously, the former deputy sheriff wasn't going to be a typical home, or even foreign, missionary. He was going to work in an alternative state of mind.

Today, the man that New Age Journal once labeled "Missionary Impossible" labors on, attending Hindu workshops, metaphysical fairs and meeting one-on-one with apologists for every imaginable brand of religion. But one of the toughest parts of his job is getting ordinary church leaders to realize that Boulder isn't all that unusual anymore.

"You can't find anyone, anywhere, who will admit to being a New Ager," said Honsberger. "Now, everybody's got their own brand of what's called `spirituality.' ... You have feminist spirituality and gay spirituality and environmental spirituality and people-who-pick-their-toes spirituality and you name it. It's one big pot of pluralistic soup."