The Status Quo Is Rejected

The Conservative Jewish movement, meanwhile, in early December moved to allow gay rabbis and same-sex unions while also giving local synagogues the option of maintaining traditional prohibitions. Activists on both sides said the tortured compromise was unlikely to prove a lasting solution.

Within the Catholic Church, payouts for clergy sexual abuse topped $1 billion in March. U.S. bishops, meanwhile, adopted a formal ban on gay men being priests, reiterated church teaching against homosexuality and birth control, and approved changes to the familiar words of the English-language Mass that has been used by U.S. Catholics for 40 years.

As some evangelicals moved to broaden their agenda beyond hot-button social issues, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Rev. Ted Haggard, resigned in disgrace in November after admitting to "sexually immoral conduct" involving a male escort and drug use. Another evangelical leader, Florida pastor Joel Hunter, abruptly resigned as the new head of the Christian Coalition after his efforts to broaden the group's activism were rejected by the board of directors.

Not far from Haggard's church in Colorado Springs, Colo., church-state concerns flared at the Air Force Academy -- and throughout the military -- over charges of aggressive proselytizing by evangelicals, coupled with questions over how military chaplains should share their faith. Meanwhile,the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in February that a small South American sect in New Mexico could not be denied access to hallucinogenic tea used in sacred rituals.

Perhaps the year's most poignant story was the response of Pennsylvania's Amish community to a schoolhouse shooting that left five young girls and their killer dead. Drawing on deep -- and rare -- wells of forgiveness, the Amish in Nickel Mines, Pa., reached out to the killer's family, attended his funeral and helped raise money to pay expenses.

Their acts of generosity, forgiveness and sturdy resolve won them the vote by the Religion Newswriters Association as the year's biggest newsmaker.

"Forgiveness is woven into the fabric of Amish faith," wrote Donald Kraybill, an expert on all things Amish at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster County, Pa., after the shootings. "Such courage to forgive has jolted the watching world as much as the killing itself. The transforming power of forgiveness may be one redeeming thing that flows from the blood that was shed in Nickel Mines."

Greg Garrison of the Birmingham News contributed to this report.