Carol Marshall left the Catholic Church many years ago. Now 63, she is an evangelical Protestant, a transformation that came from her search for a more personal faith.

She grew up in Philadelphia's Mayfair section, in a family she says was devoutly Catholic, and attended St. Hubert Catholic High School for Girls.

"We never missed church on Sundays," she said. But "from the time I was a little girl, I was searching for something. ... I learned a lot of rules and regulations about God, and I was the type of kid that took everything very seriously. If the sister said it, I believed it. ...

"I went through high school with a great amount of fear - fear of God. ... I saw God as a guy who had a big stick and was going to slap my hands every time I did something wrong."

Her husband, Paul, grew up in a devout Baptist family.

"They were joyful Christians," she says. "They didn't fear death, and I did. I used to think, '... I wish I had this peace.' "

When they were married 37 years ago, Carol and Paul struggled to find a church that would accommodate both of their faiths, and initially settled on the Episcopal Church, with its Catholic-like ritual and liturgy.

When she was in her early 30s, she says, she prayed, "God, if you're really there and you want me to know you, please show me the way."

Soon afterward, her husband fell playing tennis and struck his head on the concrete floor. At the hospital, she found a Gideon Bible in the waiting room and turned to Psalm 23.

"I saw this: 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me.' And it was like a lightbulb came on... . And I knew that no matter what happened that night that God ... was with me."

Paul, who had a severe concussion and fractured skull, recovered fully. For Carol, it began "a process of discovering a very real, a very personal God who loves me."

She studied the Bible and concluded that her Catholic upbringing had taught her things without biblical basis.

"They pray to saints, they believe in immaculate conception, they believe the pope is head of the church," she said. Protestants "don't pray to saints. You go right to God the father through Jesus Christ the son."

- Paul Nussbaum