The debate about 'proselytizing'

President George W. Bush said that his conversations with Miss Curry and Miss Mercer have been an "uplifting experience" for him. In their initial phone call, Miss Mercer later told WORLD, the president was upbeat, too. She quoted him as saying, "We've been praying for you. We know it was God who got you out."

Miss Mercer's talk on Dec. 3 at Vienna (Va.) Presbyterian Church, where she had spent her teen years, was also upbeat. She recounted her conversion as a high-school sophomore, her spiritual development, her involvement in a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter, and her move to Waco and Baptist-rooted Baylor University, where she met "people who loved Jesus so much, and they weren't freaks." Members of a home group at Antioch Community Church "discipled" her, she said, and soon she was taking short mission trips to Mexico, Eastern Europe, and Pakistan.