AP via KGO News: "Stevens Creek [School] has recei-ved hun-dreds of angry phone calls and more than 3,000 e-mails—some vulgar, others threatening—since Nov. 22, when one of its teachers, Stephen Williams, filed a federal lawsuit against the school. The fifth-grade teacher alleges his civil rights were violated when school principal Patricia Vidmar ordered him to stop distributing documents to his students 'because of their religious content.' Among the banned documents, the suit says, were religious excerpts from the Declaration of Indepen-dence, various state constitutions and writings by George Washington, John Adams and William Penn. Vidmar also banned a document Williams created call-ed 'What Great Leaders Have Said About The Bible.'"

AP via CBS News: "'I don't believe I owe an apology,' Ward Churchill said Friday on CNN's 'Paula Zahn Now' program. He defended the essay which compared those killed in the Sept. 11 attack to 'little Eichmanns,' a reference to Adolf Eichmann, who organized Nazi plans to exterminate European Jews. He said the victims were akin to U.S. military operations' collateral damage—or innocent civilians mistakenly killed by soldiers....The furor over Churchill's essay erupted... after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Campus officials discovered that an essay and follow-up book by Churchill characterized the Sept. 11 attacks as a response to a long history of U.S. abuses abroad... Churchill who...remains a tenured professor, said he would sue if he were dismissed."

Powerline: "I read [Bill] Moyers' piece after several readers pointed out how over-the-top it was. I knew Moyers' claims about Watt couldn't possibly be true, for two reasons. First, the concept of stewardship is so fundamental to Christian theology that the claim is laughable on its face. Second, I remember the Reagan administration. James Watt was a controversial figure; but one thing he was not controversial for was advoca-ting environmental pillaging, on the theory that Jesus would be back any day now. That would have been quite a news story in the early 1980s, had it been true. ...I put the matter aside, not having time to pursue it further. Friday morning, I was sitting in my office when my telephone rang. On the phone was a soft-spoken man who said...'My name is James Watt.'"

Ann Oldenburg: "Now, an episode of Postcards From Buster, which combines animation with live action to highlight multiculturalism, includes a real girl introduc-ing her lesbian parents to the bunny. That episode has struck a nerve in a nation already split over the question of same-sex marriage. Buster is produced by WBGH in Boston, where same-sex marriages are legal; the ser-ies is aimed at ages 6 to 8. It's not so much a toler-ance question as it is a question of age-appropriate-ness, says Stephen Bennett, executive director of Stephen Bennett Ministries and special issues editor on homosexuality for the American Family Association. 'When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, it's about teaching kids about some kind of sexuality,' he says."

In Christianity Today: "When, in Tom Wolfe's most recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, Charlotte's mother asks her during Christmas break where students go on dates at Dupont University, Charlotte responds: 'Nobody goes out on a date. The girls go out in groups and the boys go out in groups, and they hope they find somebody they like.' This is Charlotte Simmons's description of 'hooking up.' 'Hooking up' has replaced traditional courtship and dating among today's college students. 'Hooking up' is dating sans courtship or expectations of a future relationship or commitment. It is strictly about user sex. I use you and you use me for mutual pleasure. And liquor is more often than not the lubricant that makes things go."

AP's Richard Ostling: "The postelection phone survey of 2,730 people, conducted by the University of Akron and sponsored by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, is a close study of voting behavior and religious faith. Among non-Hispanic Catholics, Kerry won the support of 69 percent with those with liberal or 'modernist' beliefs, while 72 percent of 'traditionalists' favored Bush. But im-portantly, 55 percent of the key swing group of 'centrists' picked Bush over Kerry, who was criticized by bishops for his support of abortion rights. The upshot: A one-time Democratic mainstay, Catholics gave Bush an overall edge of 53 percent to Kerry's 47 percent. Overall, the mainline Protestant vote split evenly, the poll found, with a Bush decline of 10 percent from 2000 and the best showing for a Democrat since the 1960s...."  

Reuters: "Christian Conservative groups have issued a gay alert warning over a children's video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon favorites. The wacky square yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 U.S. schools in March. The makers—the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation—say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity. But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality. 'A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality,' wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association. "

John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge: "Ever since 1945, European elites have preferred their politics to be technocratic—mainly managing capitalism for the com-mon good, rather than tackling private issues of faith and morality. This is partly because Europeans are less passionate about religion. Only one in 10 French people says religion plays an important role in his or her life. But lately, cultural issues have begun to force their way back into the mainstream of European politics, stoked by three things. The first is the willingness of politicians to ride roughshod over ancient traditions—and the grow-ing willingness of what Edmund Burke called the 'little platoons' to fight back. The Labor government's bill banning fox hunting in England and Wales...has created a furor in rural England—and not just among toffs."  

DrudgeReport: "Proposing new political language about abortion rights for an increasingly skittish Democratic Party, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that friends and foes on the issue should come together on "common ground" to reduce the number of "unwanted pregnancies" and ultimately abortions, which she called a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many women." Clinton, in a speech to about 1,000 abortion rights supporters at the state Capitol, firmly restated her support for Roe v. Wade. But then she offered warm words to opponents of abortion and said that faith and organized religion were the "primary" reasons teenagers abstained from sexual relations. The NEW YORK TIMES is set to splash the Hillary speech."

Beliefnet: "In many developing countries, only the persecutors themselves deny that that they are perse-cuting Christian minorities. In Pakistan or Sudan, for example, Christians have been physically attacked by the Muslim majority and have little or no legal protec-tion. Hindu nationalists in India have passed laws bar-ring conversion to Christianity in some states and pres-sured Christians to "reconvert" to Hinduism. Saudi Ara-bia bans churches and public Christian worship. In Iraq, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world is rapidly disappearing as many frightened members emigrate to escape church bombings, kidnappings, and attacks by Islamist militants. These and more cases are amply documented in UN human rights reports."

Mark Moring and Jeffrey Overstreet: "Seems like there were saviors—and a Savior—all over the big screen in 2004. They came in all shapes and sizes— from a comic-book superhero to a kind-hearted music teacher, from a courageous soul trying to save over 1,000 of his fellow men to the King of Kings dying to save all of mankind. The films depicting these char-acters were all stories of redemption. They certainly weren't all "feel-good" movies which left you bouncing out of the theater with a smile on your face (though a few of them certainly did just that). But they were all stories that communicated truth, love, grace and redemption—and they're the movies that make up our first annual list of The 10 Most Redeeming Films of the year."

Peter Steinfels: "don't suppose that the fixation on Christian fundamentalists is limited to giddy holiday revelers in Manhattan. Here is Bill Moyers, liberal sage par excellence...: 'One of the biggest changes in poli-tics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.' ....does it really serve critics of the administration to convince them-selves they are dealing with some alien species that holds Washington in the grip of a 'fantastical' religious vision, rather than with adversaries who [represent a] mix of political and economic ideology, self-interest, good intentions and stubborn blindness...?"

Julia Tier on beliefnet: "Considering the fact that Catholicism has been an overwhelmingly positive part of my life, it’s unfortunate that something as important as sexuality should be the one area of my life with no Catholic influence. It seems that, like me, the people I recognize at church on Sunday found a way to have a positive relationship with an institution that views our lifestyle as sinful. Some might consider us 'cafeteria Catholics' who simply pick and choose the teachings they are comfortable with. I disagree. Those of us in the pews for the Sunday night campus liturgy struggle to reconcile our faith with the reality we encounter everyday. We consider ourselves Catholics, but I sometimes wonder if the institutional church would agree."

BBC News : The Shroud of Turin is much older than suggested by radiocarbon dating carried out in the 1980s, according to a new study in a peer-reviewed journal. A research paper published in Thermochimica Acta suggests the shroud is between 1,300 and 3,000 years old. The author dismisses 1988 carbon dating tests which concluded that the linen sheet was a med-ieval fake. The shroud, which bears the faint image of a blood-covered man, is believed by some to be Christ's burial cloth. Raymond Rogers says that his research and chemical tests show the sample used in the 1988 radiocarbon analysis was cut from a medi-eval patch woven into the shroud to repair fire damage. This was responsible for an erroneous date being assigned to the original shroud cloth. "

National Geographic News: "at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains. Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts"....A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though. For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals. What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species."

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