But I ended up going to church that day. Even though I was almost 35 years old, I was still my parents' daughter, I was visiting their home, and I knew they had their hearts set on my going with them. Little did I know how significant visiting their church was going to be for me.

Call it what you will, we have way too many examples of this all around us. And I experience this all the time in various ways and in various places. Just trying to get believers to stand up for what matters seems like an impossible task. Getting them to boldly stand up for their own faith in a hostile public is like pulling teeth.

An unbiassed appraisal of the spiritual, moral, pyscho-emotional, social and educational condition of children under 11 in the 21st century West cannot avoid the conclusion that state-run orphanages or, in the case of the more affluent like the Thatchers, boarding schools are no substitute for the love of mum.

Stay-at-home mums in the West know this and their insight costs them. It costs them materially but arguably more painfully it costs them in terms of their social standing.

"I think that they will feel the crunch. I think that they cannot take for granted that they can come to the church and get the church's sanction and votes and signatures and then go to Springfield and don't speak what the people want them to speak. If that's how we have to be heard, we will be heard."

Bishop Trotter and Bishop Lance Davis, of New Zion Covenant Church in Dolton, are planning the next moves in their campaign to defeat the measure, which appears closer to reality.