The War Memorial Protection Act passed on a voice vote in the Republican-controlled House but faces uncertainty in the Senate.

Religious workers can’t sue for job discrimination, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

They said that churches — not courts — are the best judges of whether clergy and other religious employees should be fired or hired.

A 16-year-old Rhode Island atheist said Thursday she is confident the law is on her side in her fight over a prayer mural that she wants removed from the auditorium of her high school.

Ahlquist sued in federal court in April, saying the mural is offensive to non-Christians.

The Rev. Cary K. Gordon has a prayer he recites as he campaigns against the three Iowa Supreme Court justices who are up for retention in next month’s election.

“Dear God,” he says, “please allow the IRS to attack my church, so I can take them all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Gordon, an associate pastor at Cornerstone World Outreach in Sioux City, says he will defy federal law this month when he urges the congregation to vote to not retain the three justices, who participated in a unanimous ruling that allowed same-sex couples to wed. His mass mailing to 1,000 church leaders in September prompted one national religious liberty group to file a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service.

Advocates of the separation of church and state and some religious leaders say Gordon’s plan is illegal, immoral and an attempt to falsely frame his dispute as a freedom-of-speech violation. The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., called Gordon’s actions one of the most outrageous attempts to politicize a church that he has ever seen.

Others, such as Jeff Mullen, senior pastor of Point of Grace Church in Waukee, are urging Iowa pastors to communicate to their congregations the “biblical mandate for involvement in local and national elections.”

Seems to us at Religion News Blog that some other, more important Biblical mandates are being skipped in the process.

In the US the wall between church and state came a-tumbling down on Sunday, as elected leaders from the five states on the Gulf of Mexico issued proclamations declaring it to be a day of prayer. Although days of prayer are not uncommon here these proclamations conveyed the sense that at this late date, salvation from the oil spill all but requires divine intervention.

Evangelical pastor H. Wayne Williams endorses gubernatorial candidate, insists it's his way of walking with the Lord.

Three times now, including a complaint they plan to file today against the secretive C Street Center in Washington, D.C., the activist pastors have challenged the tax-exempt status of religious organizations they believe have improperly dabbled in partisan politics.

Their numbers fluctuate, but their mission is always the same: protect the divide between church and state.

A nationwide atheist group is asking religious leaders to take Jesus’ advice and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — especially when it comes to taking the federal tax break on their housing.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation says the housing exemption gives churches an unfair advantage because they can compensate their leaders with tax-free housing. Other nonprofits, such as the foundation, can’t do that. So it’s suing the federal government to outlaw the housing allowance.

Charging that the Catholic Church should lose its tax-exempt status, a consortium of atheists and Catholic activists filed two lawsuits against Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, Assemblymember Vito Lopez (D-Williamsburg) and the Catholic Diocese over their role in producing a recorded message sent to Williamsburg’s registered voters less than a week before they went to the polls.

A school district in Georgia, USA, recently decided that cheerleaders could not longer display banners with Bible verses at school football games — one of those ‘Church and State’ issues.

Result? More bible banners than ever, now displayed by fans in the stands instead of cheerleaders on the field.

While constitutional experts agree with the new policy, and many locals understand why it is being applied, the fans are using their right to free speech.

The ‘Christian Right’ has been a major power broker in U.S. politics for 30 years, having played especially important roles in the 1980, 1994 and 2004 presidential elections, and in Republican administrations since the tenure of former President Ronald Reagan.

It appeared at its apex after the 2004 ‘values vote’ election, but now seems on the decline under President Barack Obama. The Christian Right has no clear leader or central movement organization to guide it, and many younger evangelicals are turning away from their parents’ emphasis on a narrow set of contentious social issues.

Nevertheless, it remains a powerful political force capable of resurgence, Forbes writes.

Christian Right organizations are experiencing increased contributions and activism, as Obama and a Democratic Congress push socially progressive legislation.

A couple thousand people gathered outside the Capitol in Sacramento this afternoon to rally for the legalization of same-sex marriages just days after voters imposed a constitutional ban.

The gathering follows several similar events around the Bay Area and California. Earlier today, more than 400 people gathered outside the distinctive Mormon Temple in Oakland to protest the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints‘ support of Proposition 8.

A handful of people who believe digitized photos on state driver’s licenses could be the beginning of the biblical “mark of the beast” will receive special licenses from the Division of Motor Vehicles in Charleston, West Virginia, today.

Under the plan, followers of pastor Butch Paugh will be allowed to have their license photos taken at the Capitol DMV office and then removed from the computer system.

Ignorance is the enemy of liberty. That truth has never been so forcefully made as it has been with the rescue of the hundreds of children from the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints compound in Eldorado, Texas. As the clergy abuse crisis within the Roman Catholic Church has proved, Americans are all too willing to ignore evidence of child abuse when it occurs in the context of religious organizations.

The inquiry into the Buena Park pastor’s actions comes six months after Americans United for Separation of Church and State urged the IRS to investigate the nonprofit status of Drake’s church because of the endorsement.