AUSTIN—One week each quarter, volunteers at First Baptist Church in Austin transform Sunday school classrooms on the fourth floor of the downtown church’s building into temporary housing for homeless families.

First Baptist works with the Interfaith Hospitality Network to provide housing for working poor families as they transition into permanent housing. In Austin, the network serves as one component of the local Foundation for the Homeless, helping provide safe and secure short-term housing for families while parents learn life skills and gain job experience that enable them to achieve self-sufficiency.

“This is a lay-driven ministry that grows out of the passion of some of our members and the connections they have in our community,” said Joe Bumbulis, minister of missions and students.

Congregations in the Interfaith Hospitality Network—such as First Baptist—make space available to homeless families. Foundation for the Homeless volunteers provide transportation, case management, referrals and other services to help families achieve self-sufficiency and attain permanent housing. Last year, 93 percent of the families in the foundation’s Family Promise program entered safe and stable housing.

After Sunday morning worship at First Baptist, volunteers move tables and chairs out of the way, set out mattresses for guests, make towels and linens available and help families move in their belongings before serving lunch.

Other volunteers stay overnight in the host room to provide on-site security, meet needs as they arise and have coffee ready when families wake up in the morning.

On weekday evenings, volunteers join their guests for a meal and make themselves available as hosts—playing games or reading to children, visiting with parents and providing a ministering presence.

“Many of the volunteers who are involved say the single best part of being involved is that it’s such a relational ministry,” Bumbulis said. “They have the opportunity to learn their names, hear their stories and get to know the families.”

The church’s weeklong guests typically include working-class families who lost their homes when one parent lost a job and the family fell behind in its bills, or when a catastrophic illness depleted resources and left the family unable to pay for housing, he explained.

Some sought short-term relief from payday lenders and ended up trapped in a cycle of debt they could not escape, due to exorbitant interest and fees, he added.

“On a daily basis, we see and meet the needs of the chronically homeless. This is a preventive ministry, to keep people who are temporarily homeless from getting into that kind of situation,” Bumbulis said.

“For our church, it’s a natural expression of our faith.”

Giving money to a person begging on a street corner may enable substance abuse or at least encourage dependency, many Christians conclude. Instead, they choose to contribute to a local food pantry or benevolence ministry.

Author Robert Lupton insists Christians never should do anything for the poor that they have the ability to do for themselves.But many of those ministries also struggle with the question: How can Christians meet needs in ways that really help the poor?

Some preach tough love.

“Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people,” said Robert Lupton, founding president of Focused Community Strategies Urban Ministries.

Lupton, author of Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It), insists Christians never should do anything for the poor that they have the ability to do for themselves.

“For disadvantaged people to flourish into their full, God-given potential, they must leave behind dependencies that impede their growth,” he writes. “Initiatives that thwart their development, though rightly motivated, must be restructured to reinforce self-sufficiency if they are to become agents of lasting and positive change.”

Lupton insists “one-way” giving should be limited to emergencies such as natural disaster—and then only for a short time. He encourages micro-lending and investing to encourage small business initiatives, urging that grants be offered sparingly.

David Cosby, pastor of First Baptist Church of New Orleans, couldn’t disagree more.

David Cosby“True love is never toxic,” he wrote in a November 2011 column for sbctoday.com. “The very idea of toxic love attacks the foundation of Christian ethics and the central truth of human experience.”

The New Testament Greek word agape means “one-way, unconditional love,” and that is the kind of love Christians are commanded to show, Cosby insists.

“If I expect something in return for my supposed ‘charity,’ that is not charity at all but an economic exchange,” he wrote.

Cosby acknowledged Lupton’s point that “efforts at social activism may indeed harm the recipients instead of helping them.” But he fears acceptance of the concept of “toxic charity” could result in “the justification of evil attitudes and motives that were never true charity in the first place.”

Even some ministry providers who agree in part with Lupton’s call for empowerment insist they cannot become full-service employment agencies or experts in community renewal. Their ministry may be able to focus only on one need, such as providing food for families or individuals who need help.

Toni Medina, coordinator of the food pantry at First Baptist Church in Elgin, recognizes without the help her church provides, some families in her community east of Austin would suffer.

First Baptist Church’s food pantry helps many of the single-parent households headed by women, which comprise more than three-fourths of the poor families in Elgin.In 2009, 27 percent of Elgin residents lived below the poverty line, compared to a state average about 23 percent. More than 11 percent of Elgin residents reported income below 50 percent of the poverty line. Single-parent households headed by women comprised more than three-fourths of the poor families in Elgin.

“There’s great need in Elgin, and we don’t want to turn people away,” she said.

The food pantry, which receives support from the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering, has safeguards and systems in place to avoid abuse.

The Elgin food pantry lacks the resources to provide job training or placement for the unemployed, but workers do their best provide referrals and link people in need to available services, Medina said.

Still, she wishes volunteers could do more to develop meaningful relationships with the people they serve.

“That weighs heavy on my heart. We’re first of all a ministry of the church, not just a program,” she said.

That desire to minister to people as individuals, not just maintain a benevolence program, reflects an important step for any Christian ministry to the poor, said Gerald Davis, community development strategist with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“Seek the Lord’s direction in putting in place a wholistic strategy that goes beyond the handout,” Davis suggested.

He recommends churches develop benevolence strategies with input from recipients. Churches need to understand the causes of poverty and implement effective ways to respond to the specific needs in a community, he said.

“Seek ways of entering into the lives of those you are assisting—or needing to assist—and develop ministries or partner with other agencies that wholistically meet the needs of those who continue to come to the benevolence door,” he said.

Joshua and Jessica HearneJoshua and Jessica Hearne understand what it means to enter into the lives of the people they want to help. The Hearnes serve as self-funded Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries living and working with Grace and Main—an “intentional Christian community” among the poor in Danville, Va.

They open their home to provide overnight lodging for homeless people, and they offer meals, medicine, substance abuse recovery ministries and the gospel.

Hearne firmly believes Christians should build communities and congregations that cultivate relationships among the marginalized.

“Social programs don’t change lives. Relationships change lives,” he said. “As such, we should fill our meals, homes and lives with those least able to pay us back and cultivate the kind of equal and dignity-preserving relationships that allow us to struggle together toward a common goal. If we do that, enabling and dependency fade in the light of love.”

WACO—The rich need rescue as much as the poor—just a different type, Gerald Britt, vice president of CitySquare, a social service and social justice organization in Dallas, told the No Need Among You conference.

Wealthy people don’t realize they are just as impoverished as the poor, but in different ways, Britt told the conference, sponsored by the Texas Christian Community Development Network and Mission Waco.

Participants at the No Need Among You conference came from across the state, representing congregations, non-profits and parachurch organizations seeking ways to revitalize communities and to help the 4 million Texans currently living in poverty.Before joining CitySquare in 2004, Britt served as senior pastor of New Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in south Dallas. In his 22 years in church leadership, he interacted frequently with other pastors who preached to wealthy white church members. Some of those pastors suggested to Britt what he should preach to his underprivileged congregation.

After a handful of those conversations, Britt realized the rich needed the gospel just as much as the poor—but it makes a different set of demands on their behavior.

‘Gospel of the projects and the penthouse’

“There is a gospel for the projects, but there is also a gospel for the penthouse,” he said.

So, Britt made a deal with pastors of affluent congregations.

“I preach the gospel to the projects,” he proposed to them. “You preach the gospel to the penthouse. I will talk to them about personal responsibility, education and work. You talk to them about greed and arrogance, and we will see where we get.”

Britt acknowledged problems among the working poor, such as drinking, smoking and gambling. However, he also noted problems like greed, entitlement and a mentality of superiority among the rich.

Exposing selfishness

Preachers and social workers should expose the egregious sins of the rich and call for a change in their relations with the poor, Britt insisted.

“Our work is to turn on the headlights so that men who try to hide in dark places of selfishness, materialism and greed have no place to hide,” he said.

The rich do not adequately care for the poor in part because society largely avoids them, Britt said. Public support and assistance for the poor meet immediate needs, but they are charity—not the best way to alleviate poverty, he asserted.

“If we are going to just serve people in poverty, then philanthropy and charity are OK,” he said. “But if we are going to get people out of poverty, then that means there is going to have to be a dramatic, fundamental, radical reorientation of things in order to really meet that need.”

Society as a whole—and the rich in particular—looks down on the poor and does not want anything to do with them, Britt said.

“We have so stereotyped them that we have now become comfortable saying that we don’t want to see them,” he said. “We seek to make them invisible, as invisible as possible. … We leave them behind every day and don’t want to hear from them.”

Level the playing field

Britt called for a level playing field between the rich and the poor. If the poor don’t have access to healthcare, the rich should start a clinic for them, he suggested. If children from a foster care home need counseling, the wealthy should make sure they provide it. Everyone deserves equal opportunity to succeed, he insisted.

“The only thing we want is for the playing field to be leveled, for the rules to be clear and the same for everybody, and to provide access and opportunity for everybody,” he said. “We will never make it as long as the playing field is not leveled.”

WACO—About one-third of the Baylor Alumni Association board of directors—including four officers—resigned in the wake of a failed attempt to approve a transition agreement with Baylor University.

Collin CoxBaylor Alumni Association President Collin Cox, a Houston attorney; President-elect Si Ragsdale of Childress; Secretary Kyle Gilley of Sioux Falls, S.D.; and Past President Elizabeth Coker, a district judge from Livingston, resigned from the board.

New officers elected Oct. 12 are President George Cowden III of San Antonio, President-elect David Lacy of Waco, Secretary Emily George Tinsley of Houston and Treasurer Charlie Jones of Waco.

At least 13 other directors—Lori Baker of Waco; Bob Barkley of Dallas; Brent Beasley of Fort Worth; Craig Cherry of McGregor; Lori Coulter of St. Louis, Mo.; Meredith Pinson-Creasey, Kimberly Dominy and Russ Frank of Houston; Brian Daugbjerg of Longview; John Howard, Ben Lamm and Bob Pemberton of Austin; and Ella Prichard of Corpus Christi—also resigned from the 52-member board.

Baylor Line without staff

All alumni association staff except Chief Operating Officer Chad Wooten and Development Officer Pete Rowe resigned to accept jobs with Baylor University. The resignations leave The Baylor Line magazine without editorial and production staff.

Chad Wooten“The Baylor Alumni Association is a 154-year-old organization with over 17,000 members and nearly $7 million in total assets. We take our responsibility to this organization very seriously, and we are working hard to determine the most appropriate path forward at this pivotal time,” Wooten said.

The series of resignations followed a Sept. 7 vote on an agreement that would have disbanded the alumni association, allowed the university to assume all alumni-engagement activities and created the Baylor Line Corporation to preserve what proponents termed “an independent alumni voice.”

Alumni association members who participated in the called meeting voted 830 to 669 to approve the transition agreement with Baylor University, but it fell 170 votes short of the required two-thirds supermajority.

Fallout from Sept. 7 vote

Subsequently, Baylor President Ken Starr emailed a letter to “Baylor Nation” saying the university’s previously announced intention to terminate its licensing agreement with the alumni association went into effect Sept. 8, and the school was giving the association 90 days to phase out use of Baylor’s licensed marks.

In his Oct. 10 letter of resignation, Cox said he had viewed the transition agreement as the “last, best hope” for reconciliation between the alumni association and Baylor University. While Cox said he believes “a clear majority of our membership want nothing to do with a fight” with the university, a minority strongly believe the alumni association should defend its legal agreements with Baylor—in court, if necessary.

“It appears the time for an unfortunate fight, whether started by the university, by the BAA or by individual BAA members, is on the horizon,” he said, adding he could not support “any prospect of full-blown litigation against Baylor.”

The alumni association’s governing documents use phrases such as “unity of purpose,” “the best interest and support of the university” and “a genuine interest in Baylor’s welfare,” he noted.

“This is a very difficult and personal decision. But I do not believe a more adversarial approach against the university is consistent with the BAA constitution. I, therefore, am not the person to lead the association at this juncture,” he said.

Hope for healing

“I will stand aside, prayerful that God’s will shall be done and that the Baylor family—the entire Baylor family—shall heal. I fervently hope, no matter what the future brings, that the university will create a forum for an open exchange of ideas, a fundamental part of any healthy campus community.”

An informal survey emailed to alumni association members reveals an organization divided about its future direction. According to information on the Baylor Alumni Association website, the survey generated about 1,900 responses and more than 800 written comments.

Half of the respondents—50.49 percent—favored making organizational changes to try to retain control of the association’s endowment, possibly as a foundation to provide scholarships to Baylor students from alumni families.

A little less than one-third—30.14 percent—wanted to defend the alumni association’s legal agreements and maintain use of the “Baylor” name, even if it meant a lawsuit against the university and significant expenditures from the association’s endowment.

One respondent in five—19.37 percent—wanted to change the organization’s name and seek to maintain its roles in alumni relations and communication but operate completely outside the university structure.

Strained relations

Relations between the alumni association and the university have been strained—and at times contentious—for more than a decade, since Baylor developed its own alumni services office—the Baylor Alumni Network—and began publishing its own magazine for alumni and donors.

In 2009, Baylor presented the alumni association a proposal asking the group to give up its independent status and come under the authority of the university administration. However, Baylor withdrew that proposal about six weeks later, citing what it perceived as the alumni association’s lack of positive response.

The university ceased to grant the alumni association access to students at graduation and homecoming, and it no longer provided the association a list of graduates.

This summer, the university demolished the Hughes-Dillard Alumni Center to make way for a plaza leading to the bridge that will connect the campus and Baylor Stadium. The alumni association moved its offices to the university’s Clifton Robinson Tower.

WACO—In one of northern Philadelphia’s most-dangerous neighborhoods, a 20-person Christian group thrives, embracing a lifestyle of radical community.

Shane Claiborne, leader at The Simple Way, speaks to participants at the No Need Among You conference.Shane Claiborne, leader of the 10 households in the Kensington neighborhood, helped found The Simple Way in 1995 as a faith community that lives and serves among the poor.

“We are not a church plant. We are a community plant,” Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, told the No Need Among You Conference, sponsored by Texas Christian Community Development Network and Mission Waco.

Members of The Simple Way community commit to alleviating poverty by living among the poor and sharing individual resources with them.

New Monasticism

The Simple Way has birthed and connected many other radical Christian communities around the nation. The New Monasticism movement values living among the poor in dangerous parts of cities abandoned by the affluent.

Most Christians want to help the poor but refuse to invest in their world, Claiborne said—a distinction he doesn’t consider biblical. The gospel propels Christ’s followers toward people who are hurting, he insisted.

“It takes us to the pain, the poverty and those in need,” he said.

Volunteers work with members of Claiborne’s community to clean up Phoenix Community Park in Philadelphia.The community lives simply and communally. Members share lawn mowers, washers and dryers, cars—and even their paychecks. Each member of the community gives 10 percent of his or her income to a common emergency fund. A medical collaborative can cover up to a $150,000 incident for Claiborne’s community.

“We share stuff because we have community,” he said. “We don’t have community because we share stuff.”

Discipleship and submission to the larger body of Christ serve as unifying threads of the New Monastic community. The communities are eclectic in faith, with no single denomination ruling the intentional community. Members are encouraged to participate in a local church but do not attend together.

Prayer

Lamenting and praying for social and racial injustice also are central to the heartbeat of The Simple Way community. Claiborne’s community meets every weekday morning to pray for the neighborhood and the injustices of the world.

“I think prayer is a really beautiful thing,” he said. “For some of us involved in social justice, we forget to pray.”

Rather than giving to an organization, community members are encouraged to give only to those with whom they have a direct relationship.

The Simple Way has transformed a formerly dark and dreary neighborhood into a creative display of the beauty of God, he said. Creativity has been restored through inspirational murals and artwork spread across Kensington buildings.

Gardening and the Gospel

Furthermore, the community has taken initiative in gardening and landscaping projects to care properly for God’s earth, a value essential to the community.

“To us, it has everything in the world to do with the gospel, because this is a part of how we see God,” he said. “We are connecting with God through creation and the miracle of life. … It’s hard to believe in a God of resurrection if we see a lot of death and a lot of suffocation. So, part of what we do is free up some of that debris.”

Claiborne recognizes other forms of intentional community can thrive, but he yearns for the people of God to come together in unified community with the sole purpose of connecting people to God.

“I can’t help but think it makes God smile when the church comes together and challenges the patterns of this world,” he said. “In the end, it’s not about us. In the end, all of this is to point toward a good and wonderful God that is transforming hearts and streets in the world.”

NASHVILLE (BP)—Bill Jones, an associational director of missions in East Texas, had to deliver the message to one of the pastors in his association: “The man serving snow cones at your Vacation Bible School is a convicted sex offender.”

The pastor had approached Jones after learning a volunteer, who had been a “model church member” two years, might have had a criminal record.

The LifeWay security program runs background screenings on children’s ministry workers, camp counselors, bus drivers, or other volunteers and staff at discounted rates.The pastor “asked if I would do a background search, as I often do for our smaller churches that cannot afford it themselves,” said Jones, executive director of Neches River Baptist Association.

The report uncovered a sex offense conviction, so the pastor and one of his deacons dealt with the volunteer.

That church was one of nearly 5,000 churches and religious organizations that have used backgroundchecks.com over the past five years, through a relationship with LifeWay Christian Resources. More than 84,500 background checks have been run through the LifeWay.com/backgroundchecks program during that time.

Half had some issue

Of those checks, 53 percent (44,946) returned some type of issue, said Jennie Taylor, a LifeWay coordinator who manages the program. Issues range from minor traffic violations to felony convictions, Taylor said. Not all of the issues required any action, but more than 22.5 percent (19,202) of the screenings returned records with misdemeanor or felony offenses.

The East Texas church now understands the importance of running background checks ahead of time, Jones said.

“They now have a policy that everyone who works in (children and youth) areas will have a current background check on file,” he said.

Monongahela Baptist Association in West Virginia also runs background checks on all volunteers for their children and youth camps.

“It’s a way to help keep kids safe,” said Jerilyn Smith, administrative assistant at the association. “We want to assure parents that we are doing all we can to protect their children from those who would want to harm them.”

Discounted rates

Under the LifeWay program, churches and religious organizations can use the background check service at discounted rates. The service runs background screenings on children’s ministry workers, camp counselors, bus drivers, or other volunteers and staff.

“Leaders from churches and organizations who use LifeWay’s background checks service say protecting those God has placed under their care is paramount,” Taylor said.

Having access to a national database was important for First Baptist Church in Brownsville.

Checks all 50 states

“I tried using another background check website, and they only searched through Texas,” said Heather Smith, office assistant at First Baptist Church. Backgroundchecks.com examines records from all 50 states.

“All churches should run background checks and should have policies in effect on how those checks can be used in a redemptive manner for those that come back with a criminal past,” Jones said.

For more information, visit LifeWay.com/backgroundchecks or call (800) 464-2799. For additional resources to help churches avoid the effects of sexual abuse and other moral failures by staff members or volunteers, visit www.sbc.net/localchurches/ministryhelp.asp and http://sbclife.net/pdf/ProtectingOurChildren.pdf.

Texas Baptists launch construction ministry. The Texas Baptist disaster recovery office is launching Shalom Builders, a ministry to mobilize church and community groups with tool trailers and skilled construction volunteers. For more information, contact Marla Bearden at (214) 828-8382 or marla.bearden@texasbaptists.org or Gerald Davis at (214) 828-5392 or gerald.davis@texasbaptists.org.

Host sites needed for training. Texas Baptist Men is seeking associations or churches that would be willing to serve as hosts for training events for first-time volunteers in Restorative Justice Ministry. Bill Glass Champions for Life ministry has asked Inmate Discipler Fellowship, a partner ministry of TBM whose materials are made available through the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions, to provide follow-up for all inmates who make professions of faith in Christ during prison crusades. Significant numbers of volunteers will be needed to fulfill requests. Interested churches or associations can contact Don Gibson at don.gibson@texasbaptistmen.org or (214) 275-1111.

Texas Baptists develop international first-responder teams. The Baptist General Convention of Texas disaster recovery office is seeking firefighters, emergency medical technicians, police officers, nurses and physicians who are interested in being part of a special force of first responders to international disasters. For more information, contact Chris Liebrum at (214) 828-5292 or chris.liebrum@texasbaptists.org or click here

Mitch Harper to First Baptist Church in Franklin as pastor.

Jim Houser has resigned as pastor of Blue Ridge Baptist Church in Marlin.

More than 180 men attended the fifth annual Robert L. Breckenridge men’s breakfast at Baptist Child & Family Services’ assisted living community in Tyler, Breckenridge Village. More than $50,000 in scholarship assistance was raised for Breckenridge Village residents.

Baylor University will begin its homecoming activities Oct. 16 with a 7 p.m. worship service in Waco Hall. Included in the numerous activities will be Singspiration, Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. at Seventh and James Baptist Church; homecoming parade, 8:30 a.m. Saturday; and the football game versus Iowa State University at 6 p.m. A full schedule of events is available here.

Buckner International will celebrate the opening of a new cottage at Buckner Family Pathways with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at noon Oct. 18 at the Buckner campus at 5200 South Buckner Boulevard in Dallas. Kosmos Energy donated $250,000 to fund the construction of the new duplex home that will provide a safe haven for single-parent families seeking higher education in the Dallas area. Since it began in 2004, Buckner Family Pathways has supported more than 110 single-parent families in the Dallas area.

The last installment in a lecture series called “Faith and Freedom in the Lone Star State: Exploring the Religious History of Texas” will be held at 7 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Palladium, 729 Austin Avenue in Waco. The free lectures are sponsored by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion. The lectures will be titled “The Fight is on in Texas: African-Americans in the Church of Christ,” presented by Edward Robinson, assistant professor of Bible and history at Abilene Christian University; and “Slavery, Civil War and Freedom: Texas Baptists in the Civil War Era, focusing on Baylor University and Waco University,” given by Michael Parrish, professor of American church history at Baylor University.

Hardin-Simmons University honored several alumni at homecoming events. Melinda Stricklin received the John J. Keeter Jr. Alumni Service Award. Sue Conley, Ivan Smith Jr. and Louanne Stephens were named distinguished alumni. Inducted into the HSU Athletics Hall of Fame were Todd Baumann, Jan Briggs, Kendra Hassell and the 2010 women’s soccer team.

The East Texas Baptist University debate team placed third at a debate tournament held at the University of Arkansas-Monticello. Competing against 10 other teams, it was ETBU’s second consecutive top-three finish.

Anniversary

Basilio Montez, 10th, as pastor of Iglesia Tierra Santa in Cameron.

Licensed

Carson Choy to the ministry at Belmore Baptist Church in San Angelo.

Revival

Blanconia Baptist Church, Blanconia; Oct. 20-23; evangelist, David Parks; pastor, David Mundine.

DALLAS (RNS)—Reviews of the new hit movie Gravity note it’s an unusually fine science fiction film. What they don’t mention is that the main character represents an increasingly common theme in American religion—the spiritual “none of the above.”

Yes, the special effects are splendid. And I’ll take the word of astronauts who say the visuals capture amazingly well what it’s like to work in the microgravity of near-Earth orbit.

But there are moments where spiritual and philosophical themes take center stage.

An accident in space brings spiritual and philosophical themes to center stage. (Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)(Spoiler alert: If you really want to know nothing about the movie, see it first.)

There’s precious little dialogue in this relatively short film devoted to anything but technical details. So it’s perhaps a bit surprising that a significant chunk of it is about faith—or the lack thereof. Ryan Stone, a researcher-turned-newbie astronaut played by Sandra Bullock, is eventually alone and probably facing imminent death, stuck in a damaged tin can zipping through shrapnel-loaded airless space.

‘No one will pray for my soul’

So she starts a monologue. “No one will mourn for me,” she muses. “No one will pray for my soul. … I’ve never prayed. … Nobody has taught me how. …”

But she sort of prays through action. Stone is one Right Stuff space jockey once the early panic wears off. And then she sort of gives up. And in a way, the answer to her prayers shows up in the person of the experienced astronaut played by George Clooney—sort of.

George Clooney as Matt Kowalski in Warner Bros. Pictures’ dramatic thriller “GRAVITY.” (RNS Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)(As a friend of mine told me: “I mean, he’s my answered prayer, but seriously?”)

Central questions of existence are raised: “What’s the point of going on? What’s the point of living?”

Why, indeed? Stone, we’ve learned, has been emotionally adrift since her 4-year-old daughter died in an accidental fall. But somehow, somewhere, she comes up with an answer that she doesn’t monologue to those existential questions. She does talk about her daughter as an angel and asks the spirit of one of the characters who hadn’t made it to give the kid’s spirit a hug.

And when she finally ends up safely—we assume—on a beach somewhere on Earth, she grabs a handful of sand and murmurs, “Thank you.”

But who is she talking to?

The ‘Nones’

And that takes us to the “nones,” the religiously unaffiliated who make up one in five Americans these days. If they’d all sign up on a list, only the Catholic Church could claim more members in the United States. The whole point of being unaffiliated, of course, is that they don’t want to sign on to any constraints. When asked to identify their faith on a list, they’ll choose “none of the above.”

Sandra Bullock portrays Ryan Stone in “GRAVITY.” (RNS Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)But there’s pretty good survey evidence most of the nones, like Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Ryan, aren’t “nothings.” Some embrace the title “spiritual but not religious,” and even some who say they’re atheists retain some religion-ish trappings.

A 2008 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report found about half the unaffiliated surveyed said they believed in some kind of life after death—including 18 percent of the atheists and 35 percent of agnostics. About 40 percent of the unaffiliated believe in heaven—including 12 percent of the atheists and 18 percent of agnostics. And on the big question, only 30 percent of the unaffiliated said they were pretty sure there was no God.

As for prayer, the issue raised by the fictional Dr. Stone? Almost half the unaffiliated said they pray at least occasionally. And while this survey didn’t probe it, I’ll bet the likelihood of interest in prayer goes up when confronted with imminent death.

The few details we get about Bullock’s character don’t suggest an open hostility toward religion. Just a lack of contact—and a personal tragedy of the sort that pushes even some of the devout into doubt.

So where does she find the spiritual strength and internal fortitude to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds? Maybe the same place that so many other Americans are looking these days: To overcome her peril in the sky above, Dr. Stone turned to “none of the above.”

Most American Catholics agree with pope about church’s obsession. Pope Francis rocked the Catholic world last month when he gave a wide-ranging interview in which he declared the church had become “obsessed” with a few hot-button moral issues and needed to find a “new balance.” A new poll indicates American Catholics think he’s right. The survey, released by Quinnipiac University, shows two in three (68 percent) adult Catholics questioned said they agreed with the pontiff’s observation the church has become too focused on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and contraception. Just 23 percent disagreed, and the breakdown was virtually the same across age groups and among both weekly Mass-goers and those who attend church less frequently. The national poll—conducted the last week of September—also showed American Catholics have a favorable (53 percent) or very favorable (36 percent) opinion of Francis, and just 4 percent view him negatively.

Yale’s humanists lose bid for campus recognition as faith group. A newly formed humanist group at Yale University suffered a setback when the school’s broader religious community declined to grant it recognition as a faith organization. The Yale Humanist Community, founded last year to support humanists, atheists, agnostics and other nontheists on the campus in New Haven, Conn., was denied membership in Yale Religious Ministries, an umbrella group of religious groups that serve the university’s students, faculty and staff. The group was denied membership because it is explicitly nonreligious. Yale Religious Ministries includes Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and other organizations. Chris Stedman, the Yale Humanist Community’s coordinator and assistant humanist chaplain at Harvard University’s well-established humanist community, said the Yale group wanted to officially join the campus’ religious community because its members share many of that group’s values, including fostering compassion and morality and working for the greater good.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A couple of weeks after the Breaking Bad finale aired, the ending of the megahit cable series continues to gratify, infuriate and above all fascinate the moralists—professional and amateur—who constitute the audience’s fanboy core and who always framed the most vigorous debates about the show.

That’s understandable. The series at its dark heart is a study of good and evil, and more specifically about how good people can do bad things, how they become bad, or whether we all have a seed of evil within us that can germinate and run amok under the right conditions.

Further proof that the series’ drama is a profoundly religious one is the fact theologically minded people still are fiercely disputing exactly what the ending meant, and what the series—and its anti-hero, Walter White—stood for in moral and metaphysical terms.

Skyler White (Anna Gunn) in a scene from the final episode of “Breaking Bad.” (RNS Photo courtesy Ursula Coyote/AMC)Is the chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cooker an irredeemable monster? Or maybe he is just one of us—a struggling, middle-class worker bee who gets a diagnosis of lung cancer and, hearing how profitable the drug trade can be, uses his talents to concoct premium-grade drugs to make a quick score that will support his wife and children long after he’s dead.

Certainly the ending was inevitable and unsurprising: White dies, as he had to. The show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, made it clear “this story was finite all along. It’s a story that starts at A and ends at Z.”

But how Walt died, who he would take down with him—or spare—and whether he ended in a state of grace were burning questions for devotees of the series, as they are for all believers.

Eschatology, the study of our ultimate fate, is what all religious exploring points to. So do TV dramas.

“I want to believe there is some sort of cosmic balancing of the scales at the end of it all,” Gilligan said last year. “I’d just like to believe there’s some point to it all. I’d like to believe that there is. Everything is just too random and chaotic absent that.”

Not surprisingly, many who watched the finale saw a light at the end of the series for Walt. One genius of the show is that it co-opted viewers into rooting for Mr. White—as Walt’s co-conspirator Jesse Pinkman always called his onetime high school teacher—no matter how low he sank.

So despite the trail of carnage and ruined lives Walt left behind, the hope that he would find grace at the end and his death would somehow sanctify was overpowering.

Critics as varied as Emily Bazelon in Slate and Allen St. John in Forbes declared Breaking Bad ultimately a “love story” because White managed to do what he set out to do in the first season: He found a way to provide for his family, and at the end, he finally confessed his original sin in becoming the drug kingpin dubbed Heisenberg.

“I did it for me,” as he tells his devastated wife, Skyler. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … alive.”

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in a scene from “Breaking Bad” – Season 5, Episode 16. (RNS Photo courtesy Ursula Coyote/AMC)Writer Sonny Bunch even saw Gilligan slyly turning White into Jesus Christ—the wounds in Walt’s hand and side, his reference to the view of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains, his “sacrificing himself to save the people he loved,” his cruciform death pose. White also “made peace with those who had wronged him and those he had wronged (one way or another) so as to prepare himself for the afterlife.”

Well, “making peace” may be pushing it. White actually used his intellectual gifts one last time to build a Rube Goldberg killing machine and orchestrate a bloody—if improbable, without divine aid—denouement that destroyed all his enemies.

“His moment of clarity at the end doesn’t make up for all the hubris of Heisenberg,” Bazelon wrote. “But it did mean I could wholeheartedly root for his scheme of revenge.”

And that’s the theological problem. White used evil to the very end to accomplish something good. But Walter Wink would not approve. Wink, a theologian who died last year, called this rationale the “myth of redemptive violence”—the very antithesis of the Christian message but the “dominant religion” of the modern world.

“The belief that violence ‘saves’ is so successful because it doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts,” Wink wrote. “The gods favor those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favor of the gods.”

Moreover, Walt’s “confession” at the end hardly was repentance. He did not give himself up to the authorities or allow himself to be publicly humiliated. He died the way he wanted, caressing the cold steel of the meth lab cookers the way Gollum—the creepy, corrupted creature of The Lord of the Rings series—fondled the magical golden ring.

“He’s patting his Precious, in Lord of the Rings terms,” Gilligan said after the finale. “He’s with the thing he seems to love the most in the world, which is his work and his meth lab, and he just doesn’t care about being caught because he knows he’s on the way out. So, it could be argued that he pays for his sins at the end or it could just as easily be argued that he gets away with it.”

Even if White does get away with it by cheating earthly justice, his ending can be seen as instructive—as long as it is viewed as a cautionary tale rather than a model for living, and dying.

And you have to appreciate that Gilligan ended the show so clearly and cleanly.

Other television anti-heroes have faded to an ambiguous black, like Tony Soprano, or suffered a premature demise at the hands of network executives before we could learn their true destiny. And many viewers still await the fate of compromised characters like Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, Don Draper in Mad Men and Frank Underwood in House of Cards—not to mention most of the cast of Game of Thrones.

We all find ourselves rooting for them. But rooting for them to do what, exactly? The moral logic White used to engineer the ending of Breaking Bad is the same rationale he used to start his meth business. And we saw where that led.