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.'"

Wash. Post-syndicated column: "I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews com-plaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it. It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own."

Washington Times: "Steve Lonegan, who is running for the Republican nomination for New Jersey gover-nor, is defying a school-district edict that bans religi-ous music from holiday-season celebrations this year. Mr. Lonegan has asked local residents of all religions to join him at 5 p.m. tomorrow 'to sing and listen to' songs such as George Frederick Handel's 'Messiah' and 'Silent Night,' which have been banned from schools, even in instrumental form, by the South Orange/Maplewood School District. ...'The school district's decision to prohibit even instrumental ver-sions of classic Christmas tunes shows that those who claim to speak for tolerance are, in fact, the most intolerant,' Mr. Lonegan said."

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."

"Mr Bush is in fact in the mainstream of recent presi-dents....Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school while president. Bill Clinton talked about Jesus more often than Mr Bush and has spoken in more churches.... Nor, in the American context, is the president's belief that God is involved in the world's affairs exactly ground-breaking. The last paragraph of the declaration of independence—no less—starts by appealing to the 'Supreme Judge of the world' and ends 'with a firm reliance on the protection of divine provi-dence.' Both references in America's founding docu-ment are considerably more sectarian than Mr Bush's comment about God not being neutral between freedom and fear. They associate God with America's national interest; Mr Bush did not."

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."  

Centre Daily Times: "Seven members of the Dover Area School District board voted unanimously to retain a nonprofit law center that describes itself as a defender of Christians' religious beliefs, the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich....The board did not issue a comment on its decision. The meeting came nearly a week after two civil-liberties groups filed a lawsuit against the south-central Pennsylvania district on behalf of families who objected to the teaching of 'intelligent design,' which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power. About a dozen people addressed the board, and most urged the district not to hire the firm and instead pursue other ways to end the lawsuit."

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."

AP via Court TV News: "At the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sue over a reading assignment they say offends their Christian beliefs. In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicizes student allegations of left-wing bias by professors....And at Columbia University in New York, a documentary film alleging that teachers intimidate students who support Israel draws the attention of administrators. The three episodes differ in important ways, but all touch on an issue of growing prominence on college campuses....increasingly, it is students who are invoking academic freedom, claiming biased professors are violating their right to a classroom free from indoctrination."

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: "Karneg Balekdjian, a bespec-tacled, 30-year-old clerk for the Armenian Church of Jerusalem, won’t be celebrating Christmas this year with his family. He recently packed his suitcases, said goodbye to his loved ones and the only home he’s ever known. 'I’m not leaving Jerusalem for opportunity,' said Karneg 'but for love.' Israeli officials barred Balekdjian’s 26-year old bride, Ivette Askandarian, from immigrating to Israel. Born and raised in Iran — but Christian and ethnically Armenian — Ivette couldn’t even visit Karneg in Jerusalem yet alone live with him. 'We had no idea,' Balekdjian sighed, 'our lives together would begin with forced separation.'"

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.'"

"In Maplewood, N.J., some parents worried that they'd become a national laughingstock after the school dis-trict banned Christmas carols, even instrumental ver-sions.... Even 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' was out, because it mentions Christmas Eve. 'It's worse than silly, it's a great disservice to music education,' said Tom Reingold, the father of two, who is Jewish. 'There's a way to teach music and not make it coer-cive.' John W. Whitehead, president of the conservative Rutherford Institute, calls it the new Golden Rule: Thou Shalt Offend No One....whose group has for the first time in almost a decade re-issued its 'Twelve Rules of Christmas' booklet outlining ways to legally include religion in Christmas displays and observances."

Kenneth Woodward in Newsweek: "Serious Chris-tians have always been ambivalent about how society celebrates Christmas. It’s hard to get children to focus on the birth of Christ, and what that means, when the arrival of Santa Claus—and all that that portends in the way of hectic getting and spending—is imminent. The quiet subtleties of 'Silent Night' are no match for the clang of 'Jingle Bells.' Now it appears that even the secularized Christmas that Santa represents is too sectarian for some keepers of the nation’s public spaces and commercial places. Wherever you look, references to Christmas have been suppressed in favor of a featureless 'Seasons Greetings.'"

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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