BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, the last in our series on Faith and Family in America. Today, how churches and other religious groups are responding to the growing number of families who are not the traditional married mother and father with children -- single mothers, cohabiting men and women, gay couples, and the divorced.

Judy Valente begins her report with conservative Protestant evangelicals trying to preserve traditional marriage.

TONY PERKINS (President, Family Research Council) (Speaking at Event): We've got to take a stand, even if it means people say bad things about you.

JUDY VALENTE: Tony Perkins is champing at the bit. The president of the Family Research Council told a California audience he is looking forward to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito. Perkins believes Alito will not be the kind of high court judge who tries to redefine marriage, but one who will uphold traditional religious values.

Mr. PERKINS (Speaking at Event): This nation will only be as strong as its families, and the families will only be as strong as the parents and marriages that bind them together.

VALENTE: Earlier this month, Texas became the 19th state to pass an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Mr. PERKINS: In every state where a marriage amendment has made its way to the ballot it has passed, on average with over 70 percent of the support of the voters.

VALENTE: These votes, he says, will put pressure on Congress to pass a similar amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Mike and Harriet McManus started Marriage Savers nearly 10 years ago. They say their program has saved 50,000 marriages that would have ended in divorce.

MIKE MCMANUS (Co-founder, Marriage Savers): You are declaring, by your actions here, a new day for marriage and an old day for divorce.

VALENTE: McManus says churches need to stop being wedding factories and start working to preserve marriages. Marriage Savers appears to have made an impact. Earlier this month, Cheyenne, Wyoming became the 198th city in which his "Community Marriage Policy" has been adopted. Clergy from different denominations signed the policy, agreeing to require four months of preparation for couples wanting to marry in their churches. The plan also provides support for troubled marriages.

Mr. MCMANUS: We think that there are couples in every church who could be trained to be mentors -- to help people either prepare for marriage, to enrich existing ones, or save troubled ones. And this is really a new idea.

Pastor JERRY DYCE: I'm Pastor Jerry Dyce; my wife Opal, from Cheyenne Christian Center.

VALENTE: Those who volunteer to be mentors get a weekend of training before they begin to counsel other couples.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: I came because I love children, and having been a teacher for many, many years, and watching the pain that children go through from a divorce -- they don't adjust well.

HARRIET MCMANUS (Co-founder, Marriage Savers): They're sitting on a great mother lode of wisdom, a wealth of experience, some of it not so pleasant, but hopefully some of that experience has helped them to hone and fashion a more successful, more healthy marriage over the years.

VALENTE: Pam and Chad, who live together in Chicago, are about to take a premarriage inventory. She is Methodist. He is Catholic. And they want to get married in the Catholic Church. Each has filled out a lengthy questionnaire which includes specific questions for interfaith couples and for cohabiting couples. Now they will compare notes with a facilitator from the Archdiocese of Chicago.

EILEEN SMITH (Facilitator, Archdiocese of Chicago): Rather than marry and then over time have some of these items come to the surface -- both strengths and challenges -- take a look at it ahead of time and be able to communicate about it. Are we ready to plunge in?

PAM: I think so.

Ms. SMITH: Okay.

ELSIE RADTKE (Director of Family Ministries, Archdiocese of Chicago): Many of the young couples getting married today come from families of divorce, and they do not want to go though the pain of divorce. So their rational is, "If we live together it's like test-driving the car. If we live together, then we'll see how that is." Of course, what they don't know is what research is showing us, and that is that about 70 percent of the couples that do cohabit will end up divorced. You cannot test-drive commitment.

VALENTE: Pam and Chad, both from stable, intact families, are confident about their relationship.

PAM (To Ms. Smith): We have mutual respect for each other that I think we'll always have. I think that's kind of what makes a marriage work.

CHAD (To Ms. Smith): We seem to do everything together and we work together really well.

VALENTE: Without a camera in the room, Pam and Chad would go on to discuss more delicate issues, including their different faiths and their approaches to child rearing. In the end, the couple said they were pleased with the experience.

CHAD: I think we learned that we already have a strong communication base between the two of us and that, I think, we're going to be in really good shape.

PAM: Yeah.

VALENTE: The counseling doesn't always go so well. Sometimes couples discover the relationship wasn't as good as they thought.

Ms. RADTKE: One of the ladies in our office that does the facilitation calls herself now the "marriage buster" because she has found that about 20 to 23 percent of the couples that she has worked with -- and she's worked with hundreds of couples -- end up either postponing their plans to marry or canceling them completely.

VALENTE: For religious institutions, preserving traditional marriage is one aspect of supporting family life. Another is how to support couples who are not married.

Even in some conservative faith traditions, cohabitating couples, single moms, gay couples, and stepfamilies are not uncommon in their congregations. Some churches have been slow to address these changes in family life and now find themselves in a dilemma: how to pass on their traditional religious teachings while still reaching out to nontraditional families.

Sociologist Penny Edgell of the University of Minnesota has studied church outreach to couples and families. She found a lot of nostalgia for the traditional family.

Professor PENNY EDGELL (Sociologist, University of Minnesota): But I also found that there were a lot of congregations where there was really quite a bit of innovation. There was a lot of talk about how we make dual family earners fit. There was a lot of talk about ministry to single parents and the divorced.

Pastor GENE APPEL (Willow Creek Community Church): There's not a person in this room that doesn't need a family -- some kind of place to belong, to be loved, to have mercy extended to you there. Let's pray together.

VALENTE: Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago is one of the best-known of the megachurches. There are gay couples and cohabiting couples in the congregation. They are welcome, but there are no specific ministries for them.