Talk of a "spiritual awakening" is sweeping America. Book sales on the soul are rising off the charts. Suburban "megachurches" fill with thousands of seekers. Men meet in football stadiums to repent. TV shows touch on angels. Newspapers start religion beats. Polls say 90 percent of Americans believe in God, and 45 percent go to church every Sunday.

So churches must be brimming with members, right?

Not so. The number of people who participate in churches, keeping them alive through daily or weekly attendance, appears to be down--though a majority of Americans claim a religion either by birth or by being listed on a membership roster.

Mainline churches have lost one-fourth of their members in the past 30 years. Some 48 percent of Episcopalian children leave the church at age 18. Since 1965, the Methodist Church, to use the most dramatic example, has lost nearly 1,000 members a week, down to 8.5 million in the 1994 count (making it "the largest exodus in religious history," according to one scholar). Religious sociologist Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University estimates only 5 percent of the US population is actively engaged in prayer or devotional practice on a daily basis.

At a deeper level, society's faith in physical sciences is more entrenched than ever--as an explanation for everything from the origin of the universe to human behavior and health. Moreover, popular culture is often linked to a "post-modern" spirit of the age--one in which ideas of right and wrong and moral sense are simply choices individuals make.

"We had a reporter recently call to ask if genocide could be categorized as something 'wrong,'" says John Seel of the Postmodernism Project at the University of Virginia. "What you see these days is a total lack of any authority in intellectual life. Everything is just OK as long as you think it is."

Britain's church leaders have astonished many prominent Christians by producing a prayer to mark the millennium which omits any reference to God or Jesus Christ. The prayer, known as the Millennium Resolution, is at the heart of the main Christian activity on New Year's Eve, 1999.

It has been drawn up by the Millennium Group of Churches Together in England, a body which represents all the main Christian denominations. The group, chaired by Baroness Richardson, the recently ennobled Methodist minister, is planning to distribute the prayer with a candle to every household in the country. George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Basil Hume, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, are both presidents of the group. It is thought they will be severely embarrassed by the production of the resolution, which is expected to be adopted by equivalent bodies in Wales and Scotland.

John Broadhurst, the Bishop of Fulham, said he was appalled at the plan. "It is extraordinary in the face of worldly pressure that Christian leaders should secularise their unique contribution to the millennium event.

A New York City junior high school teacher has been fired for leading her class in prayer and discussion about Jesus, God and Heaven after a fellow sixth-grader died. She told her sixth-grade students that a drowned classmate was in Heaven, and that Jesus was a savior who came to save all the human race. She then led a prayer.

The self-described born-again Christian tells the New York Post: "A lot of programs are brought into our schools, where they talk about condoms, drugs, and everything else, but we cannot talk about God. This is an injustice. Without Him, nothing is possible."

Sinners fretting about the fate awaiting them in the hereafter may want to consider a move to Finland, where a leading minister of the normally austere Lutheran Church has declared that Hell does not exist and everyone will end up in Heaven. "It's an entirely false construct," said the Rev. Antti Kylliainen, a Helsinki priest and author of a book that has sparked a furious row among the generally docile Finnish faithful.

Adding fuel to the flames on earth is another outspoken minister, the Rev. Olli Arola, who told a newspaper that Jesus Christ was "in all probability" married to Mary Magdalene and that the immaculate conception and virgin birth were "highly unlikely ever to have happened." Lutheran bishops gave Mr. Arola a mild roasting but decided against taking formal action.

And despite holding a full inquiry into Mr. Kylliainen's book, they voted against punishing him--apparently because doing so would have infringed on his right to free speech.

If secularists can call for taking God out of public schools, why not take Christ out of the calendar? In the article "The Year Zero Campaign," Chris Stamper reported that Alan Dechert, a computer programmer for the city of Sacramento (who's trying to help fix the 2000 bug for a living), wants the year after 1999 to be year zero.

According to Mr. Dechert, we live in a New Age and the days of A.D. need to be replaced by N.E. (New Era). "Most people in the world are not Christian," the Unitarian Universalist says. "Many feel that a numbering system that is not based on any religious event would be more reasonable and fair." The less controversial reason for year zero is that starting with zero means there will be less confusion over the beginning and ending of decades and centuries.

Earlier this month he announced that secular humanist guru Paul Kurtz had endorsed his movement. "Human consciousness is now global," Mr. Kurtz beamed. "We need a new planetary ethics expressing this and transcending the chauvinistic divisions of the past."

Year zero sounds like a fringe movement, but so is every other piece of political correctness: Christmas break is now winter vacation. The traditional calendar makes Jesus the center-point of human history, but the new calendar would erase the past and start history over from scratch. The new beginning of human history would be the advent of the computer age.

LONDON -- A bishop's son has written a 20th-century version of the medieval mystery plays, removing all anti-Semitism and references to religion.

In an update of the 700-year-old original texts, Jesus is a homeless beggar, St. Peter is a mugger who swears repeatedly, Mary Magdalene is a prostitute and St. Matthew is a commodities broker.

Edward Kemp, 32, son of the Bishop of Chichester, who describes himself as a "devout atheist," says his five-hour production is filled with sex, violence and swearing.

"We have cut the devil, and there is no nonsense about fallen angels and people dressing up as snakes with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden."

Describing the play as "grim, dark and nasty," Mr. Kemp said, "I am very happy for other people to believe in God. He just isn't any use to me."