"Across the country, enrollment is up at Protestant seminaries, but a shrinking portion of the graduates will ascend the pulpit. These seminarians, particularly the young ones, are less interested in making a career of religion than in taking their religion into other careers.

Those from mainline denominations are being drawn to a wide range of fields from academia to social service to hospital chaplaincy, said the Rev. Daniel O. Aleshire, executive director of the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Students who are evangelical Protestants, meanwhile, often end up at advocacy groups, sometimes called parachurches, which have defined the priorities and solidified the influence of conservative Christians.

Only about half of those graduating with a Master in Divinity now enter parish ministry, Mr. Aleshire said. The portion has fallen sharply in a generation, he said, and declined 10 to 15 percentage points in the last five years alone.

...Though mainline denominations have shrunk considerably over the last 35 years, enrollment in mainline divinity schools rose 20 percent from 1990 to 2004, according to the Association of Theological Schools. Part-time study programs and interest from minority applicants and women contributed to the gains.

At the same time, seminary graduates drifted away from becoming pastors. Among United Methodists, about 70 percent of seminary graduates in a recent survey said they would enter pastoral ministry, compared with more than 90 percent of graduates in 1970."

"A gay film festival opened at the University of Notre Dame last week with a sold-out showing of 'Brokeback Mountain.' On Valentine's Day, Notre Dame students staged a production of 'The Vagina Monologues.'

Though the events have been held for the past few years, it may have been their last time on campus. In speeches and interviews recently, the Rev. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame's new president, has said that staging the events on campus implies an endorsement of values that conflict with Roman Catholicism.

...'Precisely because academic freedom is such a sacred value, we must be clear about its appropriate limits,' Father Jenkins said last month in a speech before faculty members and students. 'I do not believe that freedom of expression has absolute priority in every circumstance.'"

Although the retreat from marriage in the United States, expressed in declining marriage rates and increasing age of first marriage, is well documented, a study by three Mississippi sociologists finds that the extent of that retreat varies considerably according to one's faith tradition. In general, the more "conservative" the faith tradition, the greater likelihood that its members will marry and will marry at an earlier age, relative to their peers from a more liberal faith tradition or no tradition.

The researchers analyzed the first wave of data of the National Survey of Families and Households, working with a sample of more than 10,000 respondents. They found that both men and women who are Mormon, conservative Protestant, or moderate Protestant reveal a "greater propensity" to marry -and to marry at considerably younger ages - than the unaffiliated. In terms of the age of first marriage, Mormons marry earlier than conservative Protestants, who marry earlier than moderate Protestants, although the differences between these three groups were not statistically significant.

Although their faith tradition would be considered conservative, Catholics stood somewhere between the early marrying Mormons and Protestants and the later marrying liberal Protestants and the religiously unaffiliated. In fact, the statistical tests yielded no significant differences in marriage timing between Catholics and liberal Protestants. Persons of the Jewish faith, as well as liberal Protestants and the unaffiliated, were found to be the most likely to postpone or delay marriage.

These findings withstood a variety of controls for sociodemographic factors, including education and employment status, that affect marriage timing, leading the researchers to conclude: "The strength and persistence of these patterned associations further demonstrate that there are robust and multifaceted linkages between two prominent social institutions, namely, religion and marriage."