It sounds like either a joke or a math problem.

But I just finished interviewing a rabbi and a Muslim kadi, a type of judge, as they were riding together on a train from New York to Philadelphia. I didn't ask them how fast they were traveling, or that really would have made for a nice algebraic equation.

The unlikely pair -- both from Jerusalem - are on something of a world tour promoting what they like to call the "other peace process" -- grassroots discussions between people of different faiths in Israel.

On Friday, they will be in Indianapolis, appearing at the convention of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana. You can read more about them in Friday's Star or at indystar.com.

Rabbi Ron Kronish is a veteran of interreligious work. In 1991, he founded the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Jerusalem.

Kadi Mohamad Zibdeh is both a judge and an educator who has been encouraging people in his Muslim sphere of influence to engage in discussion with their Jewish neighbors, even doing so with his Arab students at a school in the Israeli city of Jaffa.

Part of their message for Indianapolis is simple: If a Muslim and a Jew from Jerusalem and can travel together and speak the language of interreligious peace, what excuse do those of us in America have for not doing the same?

I spent Sunday morning in a small country church this past weekend -- Shiloh Community, about three miles east of Franklin.

I'm getting to the know the folks at Shiloh, which had 53 people in worship on Sunday, for a story focused on one small -- and in some ways iconic -- Indiana church's efforts to remain vibrant and growing in a megachurch world.

Once a month, Shiloh hosts a visiting Gospel quartet and throws a pitch-in. The Disciples Quartet from Tipton, Ind., brought a hefty bounce to the church.

Pastor James Moore said he's not sure Shiloh has ever seen some of the dance moves of the exuberant young lead singer. And the day ended with a fall harvest of green bean casseroles, corn puddings, mashed potatoes and other fixings on the side of some lovely ham and roast beef.

I'm just getting to know the folks at Shiloh. They've got a lot of history and a love for their small church. Coming soon, a coon hunt with the pastor.

Pope Benedict XVI today appointed an Indiana priest as the new bishop of the Diocese of Wyoming.
Rev. Paul D. Etienne, 50, has most recently been serving as a priest in his hometown of Tell City, Ind., along the Ohio River.

Previously he was the pastor at St. John the Evangelist and St. Simon churches in Indianapolis. He also served the Archdiocese of Indianapolis as its vocations director and as a vice rector at the Bishop Simon Brute College Seminary in Indianapolis.

Etienne's appointment was announced Monday in Rome. He takes the helm at one of the largest and most rural dioceses in the country, one that covers the entire state of Wyoming. It has 49,000 Catholics spread over 100,000 square miles.

Etienne comes from a devoted Catholic family and credited his venture into the priesthood largely to his family's influence, according to this profile of his family in the archdiocesan newspaper.

I think it was along about Tuesday afternoon, with my Dad back home and watching his grandchildren playing on the tire swing in his backyard, that I realized that this was a moment we almost lost.

My dad had a heart attack on Friday. He was in his favorite place -- the woods -- with a shotgun in hand and getting ready to open fire on a couple of treed squirrels who will never know how lucky they are. Just as he was about to draw a bead on them he felt a dull ache deep inside his chest, something he'd never felt before. He knew it wasn't good.

My dad (his name is John Paul King, but for our purposes here, he's just Dad) had a cell phone with him. But he was only about a mile from the hospital. So he did what any man of the mountains who doesn't care for a fuss does. He drove himself to the ER.

Good thing too. Later we learned that one of the main arteries to his heart was all but closed down -- a tunnel along a mountain highway that had given way to a rock slide. He was on the verge of a massive (read deadly) heart attack. Because he responded so quickly, got to the hospital, got some meds, got airlifted to a regional medical center and got a heart catheterization to unblock the highway, he is with us today. He is able to watch his grandchildren swing in his backyard and tell them stories about growing up in the mountains and able to make plans for next year's vegetable garden.

I suppose I should offer a mandatory public service announcement here: If you are at risk of heart attack and feel a pain in your chest, get help immediately. It could save your life and spare your family immeasurable grief. There, that's out of the way.

But what I really want to talk about here is a Dad who embodies every sense of that word and a guy who is also the embodiment of the word community.

As a Dad, he coached my pee wee league and little league baseball teams for six years. He brought the water bucket and threw the batting practice and hit the infield grounders. He never missed a game, even when I went with mom to Florida on vacation. When I was older, we rode together to my American Legion summer baseball games. He was my toughest critic and best coach.

When it came to other aspects of fathering -- having the "talk," teaching good values and showing me how to be a man -- Dad was a man of few words but a great example. The sum total of his wisdom about girls was this (and I paraphrase here for family readership):

Have you prayed for your liberal, today?

The Liberty Counsel hopes so.

The nonprofit legal, education and policy group with ties to Liberty University and a shared opposition to abortion and same sex marriage, has come up with an Adopt-a-Liberal prayer program.

President Barack Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg head the roster of liberals being promoted for adoption.

The program encourages the faithful to "Pray that the Lord would move upon them and cause them to be the kind of leaders who will encourage others to lead "a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence."

That's a reference to the Bible verse (1 Timothy 2:1-3: "Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior."

I think it is great that a group of folks want to pray for their leaders. The folks on that list are mere human beings charged with leading the country in extraordinarily difficult times. I'd say most of the leaders on the list would welcome the prayers.

But why - other than one's personal political agenda that is hyper-focused on two or three hot-button issues to the exclusion of all others - would you just want to limit your prayers to liberals?

Are the conservative folks above needing help from the divine? Or have they got it all figured out on their own. Was Rep. Joe Wilson being "quiet and peaceable" when he called the president a liar in the middle of his speech? Maybe Joe could use a prayer too.

Just a thought.

Who knew there were "fundamentalist atheists?"

In a rebuke of the group he founded, Center for Inquiry Transnational creator Paul Kurtz says in an essay that a blasphemy contest sponsored by CFI "is not dissimilar to the anti-semitic cartoons of the Nazi era."

And, to his credit, Kurtz takes to task the "fundamentalist atheists who have resorted to such vulgar antics to gain press attention."

The contest, which was the subject of a considerable discussion here on Tuesday, coincides with today's celebration (?) of International Blasphemy Day.

Kurtz, who is part of the pantheon of the contemporary atheist community, wrote:

"The right to publish dissenting critiques of religion should be accepted as basic to freedom of expression. But for CFI itself to sponsor the lampooning of Christianity by encouraging anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, or any other anti-religious cartoons goes beyond the bounds of civilized discourse in pluralistic society."

He goes on to say:

"In doing so they have dishonored the basic ethical principles of what the Center for Inquiry has resolutely stood for until now: the toleration of opposing viewpoints."

If this sounds familiar -- moderates within a belief system counseling radicals (extremists?) about the need for caution -- it is because it is the same story we've seen before in a different suit of clothes.

The Center for Inquiry Indiana, the local affiliate of CFI Transnational, has expressed concern about the blasphemy contest and is not participating. That's good. But isn't this another lesson that they and everyone else needs to consider -- that when it comes to belief systems, the sins of the outliers shouldn't color the reputation of all?

There is a part of the atheist community that equates religion to a farm system for terrorism. They should take note. And here's hoping the fundamentalists among them see the light Kurtz is shining in their face.

Tomorrow is International Blasphemy Day.

And to celebrate, the skeptical folks at the Center For Inquiry, a conglomerate of atheists, agnostics, naturalists and others with a hearty distaste for traditional religion, say it is important that there be no restrictions on speech that is critical of religion.

So, with that in mind, the Center For Inquiry has come up with the extraordinarily bad idea of a "Blasphemy Contest." That's right -- a test of wits to see who can be the wittiest in blaspheming, which they define as "denying or scoffing at God or God's alleged attributes."

The winner will be determined by a panel of judges unless, the rules state, "God strikes them dead first."

An announcement about the contest, which has an Oct. 1 midnight deadline for submissions, say that the primary purpose is not to offend religious sensibilities. I'm serious, I promise you it says this.

The CFI folks reason that throughout human history "religious institutions have successfully used force or the threat of force to suppress criticism. People have been subject to severe punishment (e.g., tongues being cut out, branding, or death) merely for questioning religious dogma."

Aside from the very important fact that Martin Luther was the ultimate rebel, schism and revolt don't seem to come easily to Lutherans these days. That much became evident to me after spending a good part of the weekend with a group that says it very well could break away from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America within the next year.

How do I know this?

The folks who met in Fishers, Ind. over the weekend as part of the Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) were angry and disappointed in their Churchwide Assembly's vote last month to allow Lutherans in same sex relationships to serve as clergy. They stood up and called the denominational leaders heretics. They talked about withholding their money from the national church headquarters.

And when it sounded like they were getting ready to burn down the denominational headquarters they decided... to spend a year coming up with a recommendation.

Leaders of the movement said this non-action action was a mark of prudence and of diligence and a desire to avoid being recklessly hasty in birthing a new denomination before they were ready. And while a good many folks in the audience wanted to fire on Fort Sumter, they too seemed OK with a decision roughly equivalent to calling for sanctions and more U.N. inspectors.

We hesitate these days to stereotype folks. But even some in the crowd said it simply isn't in the Lutheran ethic to be bold and brash and quickly decisive on something with long-term and profound consequences.

Couple that with the fact that the bulk of American Lutheranism is centered in the Midwest (someone said there are more Lutherans in Minnesota than in heaven) and you've got a powerful formula for pause and contemplation and resistance to change.

I can say this as someone who has lived in South Carolina and other such places with a shorter collective fuse and as someone who, now living in the Midwest, has found a region that epitomizes conservatism in its classic pre-Reagan/Limbaugh/Beck terms.

It is the kind of conservatism that draws good character lessons in the deliberate work of glaciers and the ninth month of pregnancy.

So, we will wait a year and see what the Lutheran reformers come up with. Perhaps they'll fire on Fort Sumter. But don't bet against more U.N. inspectors.

You had to know that there would be a backlash from the decision of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to allow people in committed same-sex relationship to serve as clergy. And here it comes -- to Indiana.

A group calling itself the Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) is holding a convocation of some 1,200 people Friday and Saturday in Fishers -- a gathering of dissenters, so to speak.

The meeting was originally scheduled to be held at Christ the Savior Lutheran Church in Fishers, which is lead by Rev. Joe Freeman, a vocal opponent of the ELCA's movement to allow for gay clergy. But the convocation quickly outgrew Christ the Savior's building. And now the convocation is being held at Holy Spirit Parish in Geist.

The presiding bishop of the ELCA, Rev. Mark Hanson, has asked that the CORE group exercise restraint and has expressed disappointment that some are encouraging congregations and members of the ELCA to act in ways that "will diminish our capacity for ministry," according to an official ELCA statement.

CORE members, who think the ELCA abandoned scripture and its "confessional integrity" when it made way for gay clergy, might accuse the bishop and the denomination of being responsible for diminishing the ministry themselves.

The real question is how far with the CORE reformers go? Will they splinter off and form their own denomination? Will they stay and try to reclaim control of its direction?

Bartlett Chapel United Methodist Church in Avon is perhaps taking this trend for non-traditional worship a bit too far with what they've got in mind for this Sunday morning's services.

They're cancelling them.

Based on the bizarre philosophies of a first century radical, the church is attempting to look beyond its walls to the needs of its surrounding community.

Instead of gathering for Sunday school and morning worship, the church is sending its members into the community for a variety of public service projects that includes a free car wash, a canned food drive, a highway trash pickup and an effort to fatten up the local police and fire departments with cinnamon rolls fixed by their pre-K and kindergarten kids.

In another sign the congregation has totally lost touch with modern thinking, the church members will actually be walking through the community and praying for people who live inside its homes.

Rev. Don Cline, the senior pastor at Bartlett who seems intent on turning the established order on its ear, said the biggest problem with churches is that they are too inwardly focused and this is small, humble step toward solving that.

"I want this neighborhood to know that we do care about them and we are here for them. One day probably won't make a difference but I'm hoping it will change attitudes for after that," he said. "Church isn't just a place we go to on Sunday. It is a way of life."

Clearly, he has taken leave of his senses.

After spending their morning out in the community, church members will return for lunch and a 1 p.m. worship service, which -- in another sign of warped priorities -- conflicts with the Sunday afternoon NFL football telecasts.