South Carolina drivers will be the first in the nation to be offered license plates that carry the phrase “I Believe” and a Christian cross over a stained-glass window under a law that took effect on Thursday.

Critics have threatened to fight the law in court, saying the license plate represents an illegal state endorsement of religion.

The bill authorizing the plate passed the State House and Senate unanimously on May 22. It became law without the signature of Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, under the South Carolina Constitution.

“While I do, in fact, ‘believe,’ it is my personal view that the largest proclamation of one’s faith ought to be in how one lives one’s life,” Mr. Sanford wrote on Thursday in a letter to Glenn F. McConnell, president pro tem of the Senate and a fellow Republican.

The bill directs the Motor Vehicles Department to create the plate.

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — City Council members have taken a moment to pray, reflect or stand quietly at each Monday meeting, during an invocation usually given by a local religious leader.

An atheist group wants to end that.

Thirteen members of the Western Colorado Atheists asked City Council in a letter this month to eliminate the invocation. They say the prayers violate the First Amendment and make residents who don't hold religious beliefs feel unwelcome.

"We do feel excluded and marginalized. We wonder who else out there is feeling excluded and marginalized," said Anne Landman, a group member who joined the letter.

COLUMBIA, S.C. --Faith in the public square would have a high profile in South Carolina as three bills move closer to becoming law.
One creates license tags with "I Believe" in front of a cross; a second makes clear prayers can be offered before public meetings and a third allows set public displays of key historical legal foundation documents that would include the Ten Commandments.

They're all beginning to raise questions about whether the state is taking a role in promoting faith.

"The South Carolina Legislature should not be in the business of telling people how or when to pray, whether to pray or to whom to pray," said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberty Union's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief in Washington.

MIAMI (AP) — Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion.
The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words "I Believe."
Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate's sponsor, said people who "believe in their college or university" or "believe in their football team" already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with "something they believe in," he said.
If the plate is approved, Florida would become the first state to have a license plate featuring a religious symbol that's not part of a college logo. Approval would almost certainly face a court challenge.
The problem with the state manufacturing the plate is that it "sends a message that Florida is essentially a Christian state" and, second, gives the "appearance that the state is endorsing a particular religious preference," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — A football coach violated a ban on teaching religion in public schools when he joined his players in kneeling and head-bowing rituals before games, a US appeals court ruled Tuesday.
The decision could have national implications and may ultimately affect thousands of schools throughout the United States, many of which are believed to employ coaches who engage in prayer with their teams.
Marcus Borden, a Spanish teacher and coach since 1983 at East Brunswick High School in the eastern state of New Jersey, routinely joined in prayers at team meals and invited his players to drop to one knee in a silent locker-room prayer before kick-off.
In 2005 some parents complained of what they saw as Borden introducing religion into the public school system -- an act banned by the US Constitution which calls for the separation of church and state.

A federal judge in Denver gave a preliminary victory to a rapidly growing Christian church that wants to expand on land designated for decades as open space.

The judge, Robert E. Blackburn of Federal District Court, refused to dismiss a lawsuit by the group challenging a Colorado county’s refusal to allow the expansion.

The lawsuit, filed against Boulder County by the Rocky Mountain Christian Church in Niwot, Colo., is an important test of a federal statute aimed at protecting churches and other houses of worship from discriminatory zoning.

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The Supreme Court has agreed to review a ruling involving religious displays and government property. The case, Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summum, involves the placement of a religious monument on government-controlled property (which already contains a Ten Commandments monument). SCOTUS will decide whether, under the First Amendment, the local government can control which (religious) monuments are erected, or if the park should be treated as an "open forum".

"If government creates an open forum, it can't pick and choose among religions," said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director. "Government officials could have avoided this controversy by refusing to put up the Ten Commandments in the first place."

The outcome of this case is going to be a big deal for religious minorities. Remember the battles over Pagan inclusion in government-sponsored religious displays in Green Bay and Ohio? A SCOTUS decision here could all but force local government bodies to enact a fully-open policy concerning religious displays on government-controlled property. In other words, the local city council or mayor couldn't pick and choose which religious displays are worthy to be placed with a Nativity Scene or Ten Commandments monument. It would be all or nothing.

A legal battle is looming over Riverside County’s need to protect children, and people’s right to practice religion without government intrusion.

A prosecutor wants leaders of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation to testify about what a Murrieta man accused of molesting two girls told them. So far, two of the elders who oversee the Windsong Valley Congregation in Wildomar say that defendant Gilbert Simental’s statements are confidential and they do not want to testify.

Simental’s attorney Miles Clark says his client is innocent of the molestation charges.

Riverside County prosecutor Burke Strunsky says the elders should testify because they have already told others that Simental admitted to molesting two girls, and therefore confidentiality laws do not apply, court records state.

California law protects statements made to clergy members who are required by their faith’s practices to keep them secret.

By Jason Leopold

Last week, the prestigious United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs invited three self-described former terrorists who have boasted about murdering hundreds of civilians in the Middle East and blowing up a bank in Israel to speak to cadets about the evils of Islam and their experiences as alleged radical Islamic fundamentalists.

Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zacharia Anani claim they were once members of the Palestine Liberation Organization who "practiced hatred against Christians, Jews and Americans, have rioted, bombed and maimed" civilians. Anani maintains that he was trained to kill Jews as a teenager and claims responsibility for the deaths of 223 Arabs who he says he personally killed in "gang warfare." Shoebat and Saleem are US citizens and Anani is a Canadian citizen.

The ex-terrorists have since disavowed their alleged ties with the PLO, denounced their allegiance to Islam, converted to Christianity, and are now on the lecture circuit where their discussions often center on their faith as Christians and how it is a way to conquer Islamic extremists. They maintain a website, 3exterrorists.com, where they say Muslims by and large are determined to launch "jihad's" against the United States. Shoebat is the author of the book "Why We Want to Kill You," released in February 2007.

Shoebat, Saleem and Anani were asked by Air Force Academy officials to speak at last Wednesday's 50th Annual Academy Assembly on the topic: "Dismantling Terrorism: Developing Actionable Solutions for Today’s Plague of Violence” for which they were paid $13,000.

A Jewish couple's bid to take a tax deduction they say the Internal Revenue Service reserves only for members of the Church of Scientology is getting a friendly reception from a federal appeals court, increasing the possibility of a ruling that could create a tax break for taxpayers of many religions who pay tuition to religious schools.

During arguments on the case this week, three judges who ride the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals expressed deep skepticism of the IRS's position that the way the agency treats Scientologists is irrelevant to the deductions the Orthodox Jews, Michael and Marla Sklar, took for part of their children's day school tuition and for after-school classes in Jewish law.

"The view of the IRS is it can unconstitutionally violate the Constitution by establishing religion, by treating one religion more favorably than other religions in terms of what is allowed as deductions, and there can never be any judicial review of that?" Judge Kim Wardlaw asked at the court session Monday in Pasadena, Calif.

"That is not at all what I said," a Justice Department lawyer representing the IRS, Ellen Delsole, said.