J Gordon Melton

A witch walks through the lobby of a Laguna Beach hotel and no one even notices. She looks too normal. Wiccan high priestess Phyllis Curott, a sleek blond with a full set of teeth, has none of the storybook traits. Nose, wartless; hair, snarl-free though long; complexion, more pink than green; outfit, above suspicion except for the chalice on a cord that hangs around her neck. Maybe it's just a vase. Her life story, though, is a bit off-center.

Continuing to win converts at an impressive pace, the Mormon Church recently announced that it passed the 7-million mark in worldwide membership late last year. Little surprise there: The litany of growth recited by the Salt Lake City-based church in the post-World War II era is as steady as the repertoire of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. - Global membership has climbed sevenfold since 1947. A U.S. membership of nearly 4.5 million makes it the sixth largest religious denomination in the country.

To err is human. But is punishment divine? And if God is unleashing his wrath, how do you know? These eternal questions arose last week when New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the hurricanes that devastated his city showed that "God is mad at America" and black communities. A few weeks earlier, TV evangelist Pat Robertson suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was payback for pulling out of the Gaza Strip.

The quiet, tragic end of 39 lives inside a palatial home in Rancho Santa Fe this week may have had its roots in a chance meeting more than 20 years ago of two disaffected people--one a nurse and the other her patient in a Texas hospital. The two were Bonnie Lu Trousdale Nettles and Marshall Herff Applewhite, who, according to experts and a videotaped history produced by the Heaven's Gate cult, has more recently been known as "Do" (pronounced Doe), the cult's charismatic leader.

Promise Keepers, the Christian group that filled the nation's capital in October with hundreds of thousands of repentant and tearful men, will lay off its entire paid staff next month in order to eliminate the $60 admission charge to its stadium rallies. The organization, founded in 1990 by former University of Colorado head football coach Bill McCartney, announced Wednesday that it will no longer have the money to pay its 345 staff members.

Today is the sixth day of the sixth month, six years into the second millennium, and for some people that adds up to Apocalypse. For others, 666 -- the mark of the beast in the New Testament -- is a marketing opportunity. Hollywood today is releasing a remake of "The Omen," a 1976 thriller about a family raising a child, born on June 6, 1966, who is destined to become the antichrist.

A neck-biting nobleman dispatched by 19th-Century literature to haunt this wind-swept outreach of Transylvania has stirred to life in the post-Communist era as the embodiment of a culture clash between patriotic Romanians and Hollywood. Romanians, only recently acquainted with the Western version of Dracula, are spurning the caped count of Irishman Bram Stoker's 1897 novel. That's because they fear the fictional vampire--and his celluloid successors--may taint the reputation of a real-life hero.

Rebounding from a staffing crisis, the Promise Keepers movement returns to the Memorial Coliseum next weekend with a Los Angeles rally unchanged in its emphasis on male Christian duties to family, church and racial reconciliation. The major change this time is that admission is free.

Ten days after fugitive cult leader Tony Alamo was arrested in Tampa, Fla., and jailed without bail, WRFA-820 in nearby Largo, an AM radio station featuring religious programming, broadcast its regular 1 p.m. show, "The Watchman." "This is Tony Alamo, rightly divining the word of the living God," said the prerecorded voice of the jailed preacher.

Applied Scholastics International, the Hollywood organization that promotes the teaching methods of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, is spreading its ideas and school textbooks through inner-city communities in a partnership with a Baptist minister from Compton. The company has teamed up with the Rev. Alfreddie Johnson in a grass-roots campaign to bring Hubbard's "Study Technology" to church and community tutoring programs in low-income areas.