Signs of the Times?

Or signs of the end times?

If you went to a Baptist Church today you might have heard about this:

The annual meeting of the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention voted Wednesday to end its eight-year boycott of the Disney Co., with Baptist leaders saying the company has taken a turn toward producing more family-friendly entertainment and fewer morally objectionable films.

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The Rev. Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, Calif., a few miles from the Disneyland theme park, said a recently released Disney movie on DVD, "America's Heart and Soul," was a "good wholesome family movie" and that Disney even produced a Bible-study guide to go with it.

He doesn't believe Disney would be producing such family-oriented fare if it weren't responding to the boycott by evangelical Christian organizations. The American Family Association also recently dropped its boycott of Disney.

"They knew it was hurting their bottom line," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He noted that business journalists have detailed declining profits and stock prices that led to Disney's announcement of the impending departure of Disney chief executive officer Michael Eisner, who plans to step down this year.

"Disney's financial picture has been cloudy," Land said. "Mike Eisner didn't get his bonuses. Disney stores were closed down, disproportionately in the Southeast and Southwest, where Baptists are most concentrated."

..."We have cost them millions and millions of dollars," Drake said.

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Michelle Bergman, a spokeswoman at Disney headquarters in Burbank, Calif., said the company had no immediate comment.

"Herbie" is made to order for families seeking something utterly wholesome for the entire clan, the Disney goodness slathered on like Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread.

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The movie is as much an anachronism as a 1963 VW Bug still cruising the highways. It has not a trace of the irreverence or mild toilet humor common to family films today.

It's as though Herbie made a beeline from the '60s straight to the 21st century, with all his tapioca sweetness intact. In Herbie's world, a few people are bad, most are nice and a handful are extra-super nice. And in the end, you know the little car with a mind of his own will sort them out.

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Lohan is at her most perky and least bratty, which makes her less interesting than the schemers and whiners she played in "Freaky Friday" and "Mean Girls."

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Keaton clearly just wants to work these days. He makes a decent father figure, though it's fun to imagine him veering into old manic-madman ways and turning the Disney formula on its head, say in a hybrid sequel, "Beetle Juice 2: Herbie Goes to Hell."

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"Herbie: Fully Loaded," a Disney release, is rated G. Running time: 101 minutes. Two stars out of four.

In other Jesus news:

The first study of physician religious beliefs has found that 76 percent of doctors believe in God and 59 percent believe in some sort of afterlife. The survey, performed by researchers at the University of Chicago and published in the July 2005 issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found that 90 percent of doctors in the United States attend religious services at least occasionally, compared to 81 percent of all adults. Fifty-five percent of doctors say their religious beliefs influence how they practice medicine.

Hill said belief in a supreme being "is vitally important to physicians' ability to take care of patients -- particularly the end-of-life issues that we deal with so often."