Cybercast News Service: "As the Wisconsin State Capitol decks the halls with season's greetings, a 'Winter Solstice' sign stands there to tell people, 'There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell.' The Freedom From Religion Foundation said this marks the ninth year it has placed its 'Winter Solstice' sign in the first-floor rotunda in Madison. The sign carries the following message composed by the group's founder, Anne Nicol Gaylor: 'At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no evils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.'"

Marc Morano, CNSNews: "'Do you believe in global warming? That is a religious question. So is the second part: Are you a skeptic or a believer?' said Massachu-setts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, in a speech...in Washington, D.C. 'Essentially if what-ever you are told is alleged to be supported by "all scientists," you don't have to understand [the issue] anymore. You simply go back to treating it as a matter of religious belief,' Lindzen said. ...Lindzen is a pro-fessor at MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. ...'But science is not primarily a source of authority. It is a particularly effective approach of inquiry and analysis. Skepticism is essential to science -- consensus is foreign,' Lindzen said."

Guardian: "if the secularists are winning all the bat-tles, many experts fear they may yet lose the war, not least because of the growing influence in the EU of the new east European states, inoculated by communism against too much church bashing. Even the Czech Republic, which can lay claim to being the least reli-gious country in Europe, wanted God in the EU const-itution. ...'For Poland,' says Aleksander Smolar, head of a Warsaw thinktank, 'this extreme secularism dom-inating life in the EU is completely indefensible.' ... deputy head of the main Hungarian opposition party reacted bitterly to the [rejection of an Italian nominee for commissioner because of his Catholic views]. 'Why is it that a Catholic man can't become an EU commis-sioner, while a former communist can?' he asked."

AP via Centre Daily: "A Democratic city councilman has demanded that a baker remove photos of President Bush from his stand in Lancaster's venerable farmers' market, saying the city needs a 'healing period' follow-ing the bitterly contested presidential election. City Council member Nelson Polite approached David Stol-tzfus last month and asked him to remove the pictures. When Stoltzfus refused, Polite vowed to pursue a city ordinance that would ban all political items from public places in the city. Polite said the photo offended city Democrats....After the [Lancaster] New Era published a story about the flap earlier this month, conservative pundits from around the nation skewered Polite as being clueless about free speech."

Kentucky.com: "As church bells chime in the back-ground, a burly bouncer guards the velvet ropes at the church entrance. 'No, step aside, please,' he tells two men holding hands. 'I don't think so,' he says to a young black girl, blocking her entrance. A Hispanic man and a person in a wheelchair are also denied entry. The scene fades to black and a message: 'Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we.' Hoping to boost the numbers of a dwindling denomination, the United Church of Christ launched a nationwide television ad campaign Wednesday, banking on this 30-second spot to let all viewers know they are welcome in the pews. But two major networks have declined to air the ad, deeming it 'too controversial' because it champions one side of the public debate on gay relationships."

Los Angeles Times: "Frank Wright, president of the NRB, called the negative portrayals 'dehumanizing' and compared them to representations of Jews prior to the Holocaust, and blacks in the era of slavery. 'Systema-tic negative portrayals of groups of people are always disturbing,' he said. 'They produce the potting soil that leads to persecution.' The study calls NBC 'by far the most anti-religious network' with 9.5 negative treat-ments for every positive one. Fox had 2.4 negatives for each positive. At the other end of the spectrum was Pax, which the Parents Council said had 90.7% positive depictions of religion. CBS was deemed more positive than negative by a margin of 2 to 1."  

News 14 Carolina: "'Merry Christmas!' 'Happy Hanu-kah!' 'Happy Kwanza!' What do you say this time of year? Sydney Scherr, a Jewish merchant, said, 'I think "happy holidays," and this is strictly for me, is the best thing to say because it includes everyone.' Members of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ say ‘happy holidays’ doesn't include everyone. They challenged all Christians to only shop at businesses that include the greeting ‘Merry Christmas’ in their advertising. Pastor of Upper Room, Patrick Wooden said, 'Merry Christmas is actu-ally being dropped and being phased out. We're just saying we're not going to let you take this from us. If businesses want the gold, frankincense, and myrrh from the Christian community, they ought to at least acknowledge the birth of the Christ child.'"

Toledo Blade: "Donna Chiarelott, whose son is a senior at the school, objected to the band's perfor-mance.'I think there is a place for Christian bands, and schools aren't where they belong,' Ms. Chiarelott said. 'Maybe most people don't really see anything wrong with it, but there is a line and this is crossing it. I'm amazed they even considered it.' ...'I look at it similar to when we have our choir singing songs," Ms. Gernot said. "There is a lot of choir literature that is very Chris-tian in nature, and I don't see that as religious in nature...."Most of the kids want us to play," [a band member] said. "We were going in there to talk about drugs, and what our beliefs are on that. But everyone knows us as a Christian band, and that's a touchy subject, I guess."

Catholic News Service: "The separation between church and state should be respected, but there can be no separation between one's personal faith and one's political and professional participation, he said. The pope addressed the theme of the laity in a talk Dec. 4 to a group of U.S. bishops making their 'ad limina' visits to the Vatican. He began his remarks by saying he appreciated the 'outstanding contribution' lay Catholics have made to the growth and expansion of the church in the United States. But the pope said 'serious pastoral problems' have been created by ambiguity over the relationships among personal conscience, truth and the social order....in all worldly affairs [the laity] must be 'guided by their Christian conscience,' he said."

Richard Ostling via Yahool News: "At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelli-gence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England. Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not active-ly involved in people's lives. 'I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Hus-seins. ...It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.'"

Rockdale Citizen: "'Whether you realize it or not, religion is in the classrooms...in every public school in the United States. John Dunphy puts it in perspective, 'I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school class-rooms by teachers, who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith; a religion of human-ity ... the classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.' ... It’s not a question of religion in the public school classroom. Religion is there. The only question is, which religions are permitted?"

Kathleen Parker, Gwinett Daily Post: It may be true that religious conservatives helped Bush win re-elec-tion. And while some evangelical leaders have express-ed their expectation that Bush will act promptly on some of their pet issues, others have been more temperate....Prison Fellowship leader Charles Colson, for example, wrote Bush after the election to say that Christians shouldn’t be another political-pressure group. He told Bush that he voted for him not because of what he would do, but because of the kind of man he is. The bland truth is that Bush is unlikely to deliver on religi-ous conservatives’ expectations in any dramatic or immediate way simply because it isn’t his style. As Michael Gerson—Bush speechwriter and policy adviser —puts it, Bush is an 'incrementalist.'"

Christianity Today: "The problem began in the 1960s when a bishop of the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), James Pike, began publicly doubting doctrines like the Trinity. His fellow bishops, afraid that church discipline would seem medieval to the rest of America, only mildly rebuked him and dropped the issue. This failure of nerve gradually opened a hole in the church that truckloads of aberrant clerics have since driven through. They have endorsed everything from premarital sex...to homosexual sex (beginning in the 1970s) to the worship of pagan dei-ties (a service...was posted briefly on the church's national website in late October)—not to mention the regular and sundry denials of key church doctrines (like the resurrection and the deity of Christ) by such bishops as Jack Spong and Charles Bennison."

Reuters via Netscape News: "The poster, which appeared on London Underground trains, asked: 'Im-maculate contraception? If only.' 'It might be Christ-mas time,' it read, 'but condoms still split and pills still get forgotten. So if your contraception lets you down, ask your pharmacist for Levonelle One Step.' Schering Health Care, a subsidiary of Schering AG of Germany, said in a statement it had decided to withdraw the 'inappropriate' advert after receiving several letters [most of them related to religion].... Others found the advert irresponsible because they felt it encouraged casual sex and trivialized unwanted pregnancies."

ChronWatch: "On December 2 the United Methodist Church defrocked one of its ministers. [The] Rev. Irene Elizabeth Stroud last year admitted to her bishop and congregation that she lived in a relationship with another woman. She has now been officially released from her position as minister. This is the first decision of its kind since 1987.... 'Self-avowed, practicing homosexuals' are barred from the ministry by Methodist law. 'I did not go into this trial expecting to win...' said Stroud. 'Oh great,' you may say. 'Here goes another conservative bashing the homosexual movement.' No...[h]ere goes another conservative defending the church’s right to distinguish between homosexuals and homosexuality. There is a big difference."

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