They are images that can shake the rock of faith: A purported American serviceman sprawled dead, his arm reaching out. The worried faces of captured soldiers forced to tell the world who they are.

With scenes of an unexpectedly grim day in the war on Iraq playing in their minds, churchgoers in Orange County and around the nation on Sunday sought solace in God and guidance from ministers.

Pastors scrapped planned sermons and devoted services to prayer. Worshippers asked urgently about the justice of war. And skeptics of U.S. motives wrestled with evidence of the enemy's cruelty.

"When I see those images, I feel bad for the prisoners and the Iraqi people," said Lupita Aguilar-Ramirez, a parishioner at Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Santa Ana. "On one side, you feel bad for (the Iraqi people) - we're attacking them. Then you see ... the faces of the soldiers, how they're treating them. Then you feel that the American soldiers have gone for a good cause."

Nationally, church leaders who had lobbied against war took the pulpit to rally their flocks around U.S. troops.

"Whether you're against it or whether you're for it, your primary obligation is prayer for those people while they are deployed there," Father John Conway told Roman Catholics in Albuquerque, N.M.

Meghan Greene, a Florida State University student attending Baptist services in Tallahassee, said this is not the time for debate. "A lot of that is irrelevant now that we're in it," she said.

In West Virginia, worshippers donned yellow ribbons. Conway in Albuquerque posted a "wall of honor" listing those serving in the war. At the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, parishioners displayed pictures of family members in the military next to a big patch of desert sand.

And at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange, spiritual leaders representing four faiths gathered Sunday evening to pray for soldiers - though some participants had earlier opposed war.

"Lord, save us, our people and our leaders from hate or vengeance for any people," said Dr. Muzammil Siddiqui, imam at the Islamic Society of Orange County. Siddiqui joined a Buddhist academic, Lutheran and Catholic bishops, a rabbi and an Episcopalian rector at the altar, where speakers also turned attention to the war's victims.

"Some die, guilty of nothing more than being born in the wrong place and the wrong time," said Rabbi Allen Krause of Temple Beth El in Aliso Viejo.

Earlier, some Orange County pastors, even at evangelical Protestant denominations where support for war runs high, said apparent images of U.S. dead intensified congregants' questions about the proper Christian response to the violence of combat.

"I think people do want to understand" God's view of war, said Dale Burke, pastor of First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton.

Burke preached on Jesus' command to the turn the other cheek, explaining that, in his view, God expects individuals to show kindness to enemies but entrusts government with the power to mete justice, by war if necessary.

"A lot of people came up after the service and said it was the clearest explanation they had ever heard," he said. "That no matter what you believe about military action politically, that Romans, Chapter 13, does clearly call on governments to, at times, use force to punish evil."

Tiffany Cooper, 24, said she went to Saddleback Church in Lake Forest with questions, especially after seeing the war so graphically on TV.

"I was asking my dad if he thought, because of there being so much oil and that being such a big issue - did he think that God put the oil there so this war would come together now? The sermon answered that: God decided beforehand that some nations would (behave like Iraq), and we'd have to go to war."

At Saddleback, worshippers were encouraged to contemplate the personal cost of battle. Senior Pastor Rick Warren, briefly mentioning the morning's news of American setbacks, put aside the sermon he had planned and, with three assistant pastors, led the congregation in a series of intimate prayers for troops, U.S. leaders and Iraqi people struggling to survive in a land become a battlefield.

At one point, Assistant Pastor Brad Johnson asked dozens of relatives of soldiers posted in Iraq to stand. Worshippers broke into loud applause, then huddled with the relatives and, hands on their shoulders, prayed for them.

Burke said that images broadcast Sunday of apparent American casualties, though prompting questions, in the end solidified faith in God and American efforts.

"It sickens you," he said. "It shows you that there is something very evil in this regime, and anyone that denies that is just not looking at reality. One person asked me on a national basis, is this still a case where you should turn the other cheek? I think we've patiently turned the other cheek for 12 years and now it's time for action. That's my opinion, but it probably reflects the opinion of many in our church."

Other leaders were more circumspect. "It's a tense time for all of us," said Immaculate Heart Pastor Enrique Sera, pointing toward the candle-lit shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe, where worshippers had recently placed a gilt-framed collage of photos of six parishioners serving in Iraq.

Though Sera spoke with feeling about one soldier, an 18-year-old Marine who had been an altar boy at the church, he said the realities of war erase moral certainty. Pointing to the photos, he said: "Let us pray that they may be able to live with their consciences for what they must do in this war."

Aguilar-Ramirez said there are a few things people of all persuasions can pray for: "For peace in the world and also for the servicemen. That's something for everyone."

LISTENER: Sherrel A. Johnson of the Council on American-Islamic Relations listens to speakers during the interfaith service at Holy Family Cathedral in Orange on Sunday night.
ANDY TEMPLETON / For the Register