BOB ABERNETHY: We want to take measure of what happened this year with the help of three of this country's top religion reporters. First, our own year-end review with excerpts from some of the stories we covered. For the national media, religion all of a sudden is hot, the darling of news magazines and the season of commercial television.

TIM RUSSERT: We'll talk of faith, morals, ethics, and religion in America.

ABERNETHY: The controversial NOTHING SACRED on ABC, about a hip Catholic priest, joined TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL on CBS as one of eight prime-time programs now with a religious theme.

It was books and audiotapes that led the way. Religion and spirituality books have been the fastest growing category of all adult publishing.

PHYLLIS TICKLE (Author and Editor): Would you like a book? There you go.

Unidentified Woman #1: Thank you.

Ms. TICKLE: The overwhelming factor is boomers. We have a huge chunk of the adult population, 65 million of them, who are passing over the magic 50th birthday. When you turn 50, you turn around and say, "My God, how'd I get here?" And the minute you put it that way, it's become a theological question.

ABERNETHY: Meanwhile, hip-hop gospel music is reaching young people, especially on the streets. If you turn on a contemporary radio station, the chances are good you'll hear a pop gospel song that has become a BILLBOARD hit. What's happening all across the media reflects what's happening around the country, beginning with America's new religious diversity. Largely due to changes in the immigration laws 30 years ago, America's population now includes more newcomers from Asia and the Middle East, and they've brought their faiths with them.

Professor DIANA ECK (Harvard University): I think the moment you actually meet people face to face, Muslims or Buddhists or Hindus who are faithful in their own way, it's very difficult to come to that conclusion that everyone else's path is somehow off the mark.

ABERNETHY: Many of the once foreign religious traditions now growing in the U.S. are attracting American converts. Converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity were among those welcoming Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew when he visited the U.S.

Unidentified Woman #2: As an Orthodox, there's a popular mysticism and expectation that every person is on a path toward oneness with God. It's not something just for someone on a mountaintop in a desert, but every person is on this journey of what we call Theosis, Union with God.

ABERNETHY: Buddhism too is attracting Americans who welcome its emphasis on meditation practice as opposed to theology. Our chief correspondent, Maureen Bunyan, explored Buddhism in America.

MAUREEN BUNYAN: In its 2,500-year history, Buddhism has spread to many lands. Today it is the fourth largest religion in the world.

Unidentified Man #1: Each and every one of us has the Buddha nature in us, in that we are already Buddha and all we have to do is bring that out, and I think that it just makes sense to Americans in a very real way. It just makes sense.

ABERNETHY: Of all the new traditions, the one with the most converts is Islam, especially the traditional Islam practiced by many African Americans. Maureen Bunyan interviewed the leader of the largest branch of Islam in the U.S.

BUNYAN: He is known as Imam Wallace Deen Mohammed. He says he is the spiritual leader to two million followers.

Imam WALLACE DEEN MOHAMMED (Muslim American Society): We have a need to feel comfortable with our own worth -- self-worth, our own worth as people, and Islam satisfies that need in us. It makes us feel comfortable with our color, with our features.

ABERNETHY: The "who is a Jew" issue continues to plague the American Jewish community. A proposed law that would give only Orthodox rabbis the power to conduct conversions in Israel deeply offended American Jews.

DAVID SAPERSTEIN (Religious Action Center): Symbolically it says to Jews, if you're Reformed Conservative Jews, you are a second-class Jew and have a second-class level of protection of your religious freedom by the government of Israel.

ABERNETHY: Among America's Christian faiths, the numbers of Roman Catholics are holding steady at about 60 million, by far the largest single group of U.S. Christians. Evangelicals are the largest group of Protestants, with Southern Baptists the largest Protestant denomination. Membership in mainline Protestant churches as a whole continued to decline, but some churches have begun turning that around.

First-Meridian Heights Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana, 170 years old, lost two thirds of its members in the mainline decline, but has begun growing again. Attendance at its classic worship service, Sundays at 10:45, is still going down, but at 9:15 on Sundays, it also now has this. They call it "Alive Time." Instead of an organ, a rock band. Instead of coat and tie, blue jeans.