In a hopeful but unexpected legal decision decided yesterday, The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the same court that ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002 when he sued to make The Pledge of Allegiance illegal since it incorporated the words, "Under God," this time ruled that;  "The Pledge is a patriotic excercise and is not an endorsement of religion."  more....

Judge Stephen Reinhardt who ruled in favor of Newdow in the original case, was the lone dissenter in this one. Judge Dorothy Nelson, a Jimmy Carter appointee, who strenuously dissented against Hawaii's decision to make Good Friday a legal holiday (that measure was passed), cast the deciding vote with Judge Carlos Bea. In a separate ruling, the court also upheld the words "In God We Trust" on the national currency, according to Dan Levine of Law.com.

Michael Newdow had unleashed a flurry of lawsuits against everybody, including this writer, one of the first to reveal (in a story) that Newdow had no legal standing to file the suit on behalf of his daughter, since his daughter did not live with him and that he never married the child's mother.

Newdow, who had a lawsuit pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, sued over that article with a complaint that I had influenced the Supreme Court to rule against him. He had filed a 'libel' case that went on for six years. It was eventually ruled that Newdow had not been libeled, ending that case. The Thomas More Law Center defended me pro-bono and won the case once and for all.

Unity is a challenging issue for Christian churches, since they haven't been able to agree on one single thing since their founding 2000 years ago. Indeed, it wasn't that long in the space of history, from its inception, that the original church split into two factions, Catholic and Orthodox and from there, off it went.

It could all have been prevented if "called ministers of God" would honor God and His Word as true and the ultimate authority, instead of trying to shape it all in their image to please the itching ears of their congregations....

Squabbles over doctrine, methods of baptism, which day is the Sabbath Day, the gifts of The Holy Spirit, the elements of Communion (is it symbolic or do the elements really become the blood and body of Christ?), sacred music vs.slam-bang modern choruses, Calvinism, The Trinity...length of hair and makeup has all resulted in heated debate over the centuries as new denominations were constantly appearing on the scene with their own particular take on The Holy Scriptures.
 

Churches base their doctrine on specific Scriptures, like the 7th Day Adventists whose main doctrine is when to celebrate the Sabbath....the strange snake handling cults that base their message on, "...and they shall pick up serpents (without harm), " Mark 16:18, and certain holiness churches that believe anything that is not worshipping God is sin...the list goes on and on.

In a preview of what a stronger European Union government will look like when it comes to religious freedom, Italians were stunned to hear that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that they had been violating the "religious and educational rights" of their children for generations by forcing them to attend school in classrooms with crucifixes hanging on their walls.

The court's decision came about as a result of a 2002 complaint:

...a Finnish-born mother of two children in the Italian school system objected to the crucifixes in their classrooms. The school principal was unmoved. Italy's Constitutional Court dismissed her complaint. So she filed a case in Strasbourg, France, and now she's won.

The Euro court's ruling hasn't exactly had the intended effect.  In fact, quite the opposite.

The response? Outrage, a swelling popular rebellion, even, against the prospect that because of one woman's agitation, the entire country may have to rid its schools of a treasured symbol that as much bespeaks Italian cultural identity as it does Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

Mayors and town councils across Italy are not only refusing to remove crucifixes from their schools, but are buying new ones and putting them up in places where they don't already hang.

A news conference of lawyers and Christian Leaders took place this morning at 11 AM (EST) at the Faith and Action Ministry House in Washington, D.C. to discuss the case coming before the United States Supreme Court tomorrow morning (Wednesday). This is the case the ACLU has been salivating over since its founding. The intention of the case is to force America to tear down all crosses in public view, including crosses in National Cemeteries.

 A lot of thought went into how to pull off this case. The Marxists-atheists went after a cross that has stood for 75 years (without incident) in a remote area of the Mojave Desert as a War Memorial. The ACLU recruited one man to complain about the cross. That is all it took. One complaint from one individual and the case was filed and will now be heard by the Supreme Court to decide if the cross is in violation of the Constitution.

 The constitutionality of a Memorial Cross in tribute to America's fallen heroes must be debated in a court room?....based on a complaint by one person who probably does not even live in the area?  And if the Communists win this case of the little cross that could in the desert, it will pave the way for every visible cross in America to be torn down. That is how law works.

Try as the atheist might to manipulate objective data to fit their hypothesis with some evolutionists going so far as to invoke the law in order to suppress perspectives conflicting with their origins account, the assumptions of atheism fail to square with the facts of nature and with the revelation of nature's God.  At one time earlier in the modern era, it was quite common for the atheist to portray himself as the true friend and ally of science.  However, as impartial observational science has probed deeper onto the macroscopic realm of cosmic space as well as the microscopic world of the subatomic particle, this relationship once prided by the atheist turned out not to be as solid as originally thought.

It seems that over one-hundred and eighty clergy members of nine different deonominations in Vermont have made a public declaration of their support for gay marriage in that state.  This move is just in advance of consideration of a gay marriage bill by that state's Senate Judiciary Committee.

Currently, Vermont already has gay "civil unions", (the first state in the country to allow the practice), but that's not enough for these guys.  They've decided that it such an important issue that it's necessary for them to come out from behind the pulpits and stand up for calling evil good - and demand that the state sanction it. 

The Pew Forum has an interesting breakdown of the religious affiliations of US Presidents, (image below).