The hypothetical questions were flying at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and that was not a good sign for Summum, a small church that wants to place a monument to the Seven Aphorisms of its faith near a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah.

The questioning suggested that the justices were finding it hard to identify a principle that would compel the city to accept the Summum monument without creating havoc in public parks around the nation.

“You have a Statue of Liberty,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said. “Do we have to have a statue of despotism? Or do we have to put any president who wants to be on Mount Rushmore?”

Can the government accept a statement for display in a playground, Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked, that says “don’t throw food at your brother” but not one that says “pull the dog’s tail”?

Does allowing someone to place a John McCain sign on your front lawn, Justice David H. Souter asked, suggest that you support his candidacy?

Would it be all right, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, for the government to exclude the names of gay soldiers from the Vietnam memorial?

And what was the church’s position, Justice Antonin Scalia wanted to know, about “a monument to chocolate chip cookies”?

The case arrived at the court in unusual doctrinal garb, which explains some of the confusion. The justices are used to thinking about cases involving Ten Commandments monuments under the First Amendment’s religion clauses, which prohibit government establishment of religion and protect its free exercise.

But this case, Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, No. 07-665, involves the First Amendment’s free speech clause. The clause generally forbids the government from discriminating among private speakers in public forums on the basis of the content of their speech.

The Summum church contends that the government can no more discriminate among donated private monuments in public parks than it can among speeches and leaflets.

Governments, however, do not need to give equal time to contrary ideas when they are speaking for themselves. Daryl Joseffer, representing the federal government, said that monuments in public parks were just that kind of government speech.

“If we couldn’t formulate and express viewpoints,” Mr. Joseffer said, “I would be here today in support of neither party.”

In fact, the government supported the city.

Lawyers for the church accepted the point about government speech as a general matter, but they said the city must explicitly adopt the message of the Ten Commandments monument for it to count. The city has said only that the monument reflects the area’s pioneer heritage; it has stopped short of endorsing the religious message on the monument.

Mr. Joseffer said the First Amendment imposes no such adoption requirement. Monuments in public parks, he said, need not “have some formal disclaimer on them saying, ‘I am the United States and I approve this message.’ ”

It is enough, he said, for the government to own the given monument and have the right to display it, “drop it to the bottom of the ocean” or “sell it on eBay.”

Chief Justice Roberts said there was a tension in the city’s position.

“You’re really just picking your poison, aren’t you?” he told Jay A. Sekulow, who represented the city. “The more you say that the monument is government speech” to avoid the free speech clause problem, the chief justice said, “the more it seems to me you’re walking into a trap under the establishment clause.”

Pamela Harris, representing the church, said “the city is a bit on the horns of a dilemma” in that regard. But Ms. Harris’s answers to the series of hypothetical questions, and in particular her insistence that the city must formally adopt the message of the Ten Commandments monument, did not seem to satisfy several of the justices.

Mr. Joseffer had to be pressed to answer the question about excluding the names of gay soldiers. In the end, he said the First Amendment’s free speech clause, at least, places no limits on whom the government chooses to honor.

Justice Scalia agreed. “It seems to me the government could disfavor homosexuality,” he said, “just as it could disfavor abortion.”

ADAM LIPTAK

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Spotlight on Summum: Journey of one's essence

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Transference through mummification

Imagine you've just died and are watching what unfolds. That burial comes soon, maybe too soon. You watch as your boxed-in body is lowered into the ground and covered with dirt. Or perhaps you see it consumed by flames.
    The experience might be confusing, if not horrifying. "Maybe you haven't let go," Ron Temu suggests. What Summum, the spiritual group with which he's affiliated, offers through its modern mummification process is guided "transference," a way to help people and animals - or really the "essence" of them - move "from this address to the next address."
    This belief and practice is central to the small Salt Lake City-based community that's gained the attention of

America's highest court. U.S. Supreme Court justices heard arguments Wednesday in an appeal from Utah County's Pleasant Grove, which wants to block Summum from displaying its own monument beside the Ten Commandments already standing in a municipal park. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in 2007 that the city is required to allow the monument under the First Amendment. If it is erected, the new structure would include Summum's seven guiding principles.
    In a bronze-colored pyramid on Salt Lake City's west side, Temu - a 60-year-old licensed funeral director who helps families with arrangements - sits in front of a large Egyptian-like and empty mummiform. To his left is a row of mummified cats: Vincent, Oscar and Smokey. Across the room, there are Butch and Wendy, both Dobermans, Maggie the poodle, Rooster the bull mastiff and a scattering of unidentifiable resin-sealed cocoons that turn out to be birds.
    Since 1986, the group has been offering mummification for humans and says it's the only outfit in the world doing what it does. Summum's method, a modernized approach that Temu says leaves a person's DNA perfectly intact, keeps the dead looking just as they did when they

died - not all dehydrated and discolored, like the mummies of old.
    All people of all backgounds, says Temu, who was raised in Ogden in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are invited to partake of its services. Mummification - and more generally the Summum philosophy - can work hand in hand with any faith tradition, he says.
    Summum is less a religion, per se, than a way to look at life, Temu explains. "Summum accepts all philosophies. There are so many beautiful paths on this planet."
    Beside Temu, in a magazine rack, are copies of various religious texts, including a copy of the Quran, The Book of Mormon, and the Hebrew Bible. A handful of Buddhas dot the room.

Temu points out that in different faith traditions, mummies or mummification get nods. In Genesis 50, both Jacob and Joseph were embalmed, "an ancient word that means to wrap and preserve for eternity with resin inside and out," he says. In John 19, Nicodemus arrived with myrrh and aloes to take care of Jesus' body. In The Pearl of Great Price, one of the Mormon faith's four books of scripture, scrolls found with ancient mummies are believed to reveal teachings.
    About 1,500 individuals, from all corners of the globe and various religious backgrounds, already have signed up for these arrangements through their local funeral homes, he says. But only one - in the 22 years of offering this service - has been mummified, and that is Temu's old friend and the Summum founder, Corky Ra, who died at the beginning of this year.
    "Sign up for mummification, you live forever," Temu said with a laugh. "I guess it's just the design of the universe that he [Ra] was first."
    The process, one Ra spent years perfecting with an embalming specialist, is not quick, easy or cheap. A body must be submerged in a vat of special mummification fluids for at least 77 days. The organs are completely washed and replaced, the skin sutured and slathered with lanolin, the body wrapped with seven layers of gauze. It's then painted with many layers of butyl rubber, covered with a carbon fiber cloth, butyl rubbered again and cocooned in fiberglass, before going into a welded bronze mummiform or casket which is purged of oxygen and then filled solid with resin. That amounts to about 1,000 hours of labor, Temu says. All told, the process takes about six months. The starting price for a human: $65,000.
    Temu pulls up on his phone an image of Ra's mummiform, which was commissioned by local artist Stan Watts in 1985 and is still being completed at a cost of about $40,000.
    An underground mausoleum is being built on the south side of Summum's property, and that's where a mummified-Temu will eventually rest. But when Ra's mummiform is completed, with the Summum founder inside, it will stand in all its 2,000-pound glory in the group's pyramid.
    In ancient Egypt, the pyramid tombs were considered "a place for transference," an environment to help the soul in its journey, Temu explains. Summum offers a modern-day chance for similar soul travel, and the actual mummification process is a mere means to an end, the physical reality to help in the transference.
    "We're not a funeral home. We don't want to be a funeral home," Temu says of the nonprofit organization. "We're a religious sanctuary that performs a religious rite for people."
    To do what it does, Summum requires - in addition to the legal paperwork available online - a "spiritual will," written by the person who wants to be mummified. This document outlines where an individual hopes its soul will go in the next lifetime. During the minimum of 77 days that a body floats in fluids, Summum officials will read to it - at least once a day - a copy of the person's spiritual will.
    It's as if the soul is on a boat traveling down a river, trying to decide where to jump off, Temu explains. The spiritual will serves as a reminder of one's hopes.
    "I am looking to be born into a family that's at peace raised in an environment that will allow me to be exposed to all cultures," Temu says, describing his own will. We're "giving people an opportunity to choose a destination, and we will sit beside you and read you your transference as you travel to your next destination."
Jessica Ravitz

The Roman Catholic Church has issued guidance for future priests to have psychological tests to weed out those unable to control their sexual urges.

A senior churchman said a series of sex scandals had contributed to the rewriting of the guidelines.

The authors said screening would help avoid "tragic situations" caused by what they termed psychological defects.

The guidance says the voluntary tests should also aim to vet for those with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies".

Among other traits that might make a candidate unsuitable for the priesthood, the advice lists "uncertain sexual identity," "excessive rigidity of character" and "strong affective dependencies".

The document also makes reference to heterosexual urges.

Seminarians should be barred if testing makes it "evident the candidate has difficulty living in celibacy: That is, if celibacy for him is lived as a burden so heavy that it compromises his affective and relational equilibrium", it says.

The advice stipulates priests must have a "positive and stable sense of one's masculine identity".

The document, approved by Pope Benedict XVI and made public on Thursday, stresses that the screening must always have the candidate's consent.

The Catholic Church has been rocked by a series of sex scandals in recent years involving paedophile priests, notably in the US, Latin America and Europe, triggering lawsuits that have cost hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements.

And a seminary in Austria was shut down in August 2004 after revelations that students openly indulged in homosexual conduct.

Gay rights groups have accused the Church of using homosexuals as scapegoats for abuse scandals.

The Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), a US-based group of victims of sexual abuse, said the revised guidelines did not go far enough.

"Catholic officials continue to fixate on the offenders and ignore the larger problem: The Church's virtually unchanged culture of secrecy and unchecked power in the hierarchy," it said in a statement.

"These broader factors are deeply rooted in the Church and contribute heavily to extensive and ongoing clergy sex abuse and cover up." >>>> 

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Pope sorry for priests' sex abuse

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Pope Benedict XVI has told Australians he is deeply sorry for the sexual abuse of children by some Catholic priests.

Speaking at a gathering of bishops in Sydney, the Pope spoke of the "shame we have all felt" and called for abusers to face justice.

A campaign group criticised the speech, saying the Pope should have met some victims to apologise in person.

The Pope was speaking as thousands of Catholic pilgrims began gathering for a candlelit prayer vigil in Sydney.

The pontiff will lead the vigil at the city's Royal Randwick Racecourse.

The Pope is in Australia to mark World Youth Day, which is drawing Catholics from around the world to the country.

Mixed response

Speaking earlier at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, he said: "I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured.

"These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation.

"Those responsible for these evils must be brought to justice," the Pope said.

Former victim John McNally said he accepted the apology - although the abuse had long-lasting effects.

"It didn't just happen 40 years ago, as in my case," he said.

"I re-live it day-after-day, and victims re-live their trauma day-after-day. They need constant care with dignity, and the Church has never provided care with dignity."

Anthony Foster, the father of two Australian girls who were raped by a Catholic priest, said: "He [the Pope] didn't settle the issue we're very concerned about - the issue of him taking direct responsibility to ensure that all the archdioceses provide practical unlimited help to the victims of the Catholic Church."

Daniel Bidinger, a 25-year-old German pilgrim in Sydney, said the Pope's apology was " a good gesture".

"The church should be open about it and shouldn't cover up these incidents," he told the AP.

Broken Rites, which had wanted the Pope to meet some of the victims in person, said the pontiff's apology "is not enough".

"Victims want action, not just words," the group said in a statement.

Broken Rites says there have been 107 convictions against Catholic clergymen on sex charges in Australia. But the campaigners estimate the number of victims to be in the thousands.

There was no immediate confirmation of whether the Pope would meet abuse victims - as he did during a US trip in April, when he also expressed shame for the scandal.

The BBC's Nick Bryant, in Sydney, says victims have complained that the Church in Australia has tried to stall compensation claims and cover up certain cases.

On Saturday, several hundred protesters rallied in Sydney against the Pope's opposition to homosexuality and contraception.

Police said there were minor scuffles as some of the demonstrators pelted Catholic pilgrims with condoms. >>>>

Dozens of Greek and Armenian priests and worshippers exchanged blows at one of Christianity's holiest shrines on Orthodox Palm Sunday, and used palm fronds to pummel police who tried to break up the brawl.

The fight came amid growing rivalry over religious rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the site in Jerusalem where tradition says Jesus was buried and resurrected.

It erupted when Armenian clergy kicked out a Greek priest from their midst, pushed him to the ground and kicked him, according to witnesses.

When police intervened, some worshippers hit them with the palm fronds they were holding for the religious holiday. The Eastern Orthodox churches, including the Armenians and Greek Orthodox, follow a different calendar from Western Christians and celebrate Easter next Sunday.

Two Armenian worshippers who attacked the Greek Orthodox clergy were briefly detained by Israeli police. Scores of Armenian supporters then protested outside the police station during the questioning of the two, beating drums and chanting.

The Holy Sepulcher is shared by several Christian denominations according to a centuries-old arrangement known as the "status quo."

Each denomination jealously guards its share of the basilica, and fights over rights at the church have intensified in recent years, particularly between the Armenians and Greeks.

Father Pakrad, an Armenian priest, said the presence of the Greek priest during the Armenian observances violated the status quo. "Our priests entered the tomb. They kicked the Greek monk out of the Edicule," he said, referring to the tomb area.

Pakrad accused the Greek Orthodox Christians of trying to step on the Armenians' rights. "We are the weak ones, persecuted by them for many centuries."

The Greek Orthodox Patriarch in the Holy Land, Theofilos III, told The Associated Press that the Armenians are pushing to change the rules, challenging what he said was the dominance of the Greek church in the Holy Land.

"This behavior is criminal and unacceptable by all means," he said. "They wanted to trespass on the status quo concerning the order that regulates the services between the various communities."

The Church of the Nativity in nearby Bethlehem — where Jesus is said to have been born — also falls under the status quo arrangement. Last year, pre-Christmas cleaning in that church turned ugly when robed Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests went at each other with brooms and stones.

SARAH EL DEEB

There's a widespread belief that the penalty for leaving Islam is death - hence, perhaps, the killing of a British teacher last week. But Shiraz Maher believes attitudes may be softening.

Ziya Miral's parents disowned him when he converted from Islam to Christianity.

"They said 'go away, you're not our son.' They told people I died in an accident rather than having the shame of their son leaving Islam."

Born and raised in Turkey, he decided to convert to Christianity after moving to university. He knew telling his parents would be a difficult moment even though they're not particularly observant Muslims, and he planned to break the news to them gently.

In the end, events overtook him. Before heading back to Turkey for the holidays, Ziya briefly visited a Christian summer camp where he was filmed eating a bowl of spaghetti.

The first his parents heard of his conversion was when they saw Ziya on the national news being described as "an evil missionary" intent on "brainwashing" Turkish children.

His parents decided they would rather tell people that he was dead than acknowledge he was a Christian. And Ziya, who now lives in the UK, is not alone in this experience.

Sophia, which is not her real name, faced similar pressures when she decided to become a Christian.

Coming from a Pakistani background but living in east London, 28-year-old Sophia spoke about the extreme cultural pressures her family put her under.

"They kept saying: 'The punishment is death, do you know the punishment is death?'"

In the end, Sophia ran away from home. Her mother tracked her down and turned up at her baptism.

"I got up to get baptised, that's when my mother got up, ran to the front and tried to pull me out of the water.

"My brother was really angry. He reacted and phoned me on my mobile and just said: 'I'm coming down to burn that church.'"

For Sophia and Ziya, a lot of the prejudice they faced seemed to be borne out of cultural ideas, which are particularly ingrained in the South Asian community relating to notions of family honour.

But it's too easy to say this is just a cultural problem. Dig a little deeper and you find that there is a theological argument which advocates the death penalty for apostates, which has serious implications for British society.

Last week, British teacher Daud Hassan Ali, 64, was shot dead in Somalia. His widow, Margaret Ali, said her husband was targeted by Islamists who "believe it is ok to kill any man who was born into Islam and left the faith".

Those renouncing their faith for atheism or agnosticism are viewed in a similar way to those who adopt another faith.

A poll conducted by the Policy Exchange last year suggested that over a third of young British Muslims believe that the death penalty should apply for apostasy.

Until recently, I would have shared that view, but since personally rejecting extremism myself, I've been re-examining the issues which I once regarded as conclusive.

Discretion

I was staggered to learn that the Quran does not say anything about punishing apostates and that its proponents use two hadiths instead to support their view. Hadiths are the recorded traditions and sayings of the Prophet which, in addition to the Quran, provide an additional source of Islamic law.

The hadiths which relate to apostasy are linguistically ambiguous and open to interpretation. Distinguished scholars told me that the hadiths actually speak about a death penalty for treason, not apostasy. And even then, they stressed the punishment is discretionary.

Dr Hisham Hellyer is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies at University of Oxford, and has researched classical Islamic law.

He believes the death penalty punishment is no longer applicable and should be suspended under certain circumstances.

Usama Hassan, a Cambridge-educated scientist and an imam, goes further and says the classical scholars were wrong in how they interpreted the Quran. He is unequivocal in denouncing those who advocate the death penalty.

"I believe the classical law of apostasy in Islam is wrong and based on a misunderstanding of the original sources, because the Quran and Hadith don't actually talk about a death penalty for apostasy."

Last year Egypt's Grand Mufti, Ali Gomaa, unequivocally told the Washington Post that the death penalty for apostasy simply no longer applies. It provoked a flurry of debate in Egypt and the wider Middle East.

Traitor

The idea of killing apostates has become a resurgent theme in recent years, a fact closely-related to the increasing politicisation of Islam since 9/11.

It epitomises the "us and them" mentality felt by many Muslims between themselves and the West. And there's an uncomfortable conclusion to all this.

If there is a death penalty for treason, then who defines what treason is?

Earlier this year a group of men from Birmingham pleaded guilty to charges of conspiring to kidnap and behead a British Muslim solider because they regarded him as a traitor. Joining the British army was to them treason against Islam.

So while the debate surrounding one aspect of apostasy continues, it is simultaneously throwing up an entirely new series of challenges around other issues including what should be considered treason against Islam.

Muslim attitudes towards apostasy are a metaphor for the wider struggle taking place within Islam, between those who argue for a progressive form of Islam and those who argue for more dogmatic interpretations.

Attitudes to apostasy may be a useful barometer for judging where it's headed. >>>>

They knew it would be risky to exhibit a homoerotic version of Christ's Last Supper, but curators at museum of Vienna's Roman Catholic Cathedral weren't ready for a barrage of angry messages and calls to be shut down.

The source of the dispute, which Austrian media has dubbed Vienna's version of the Mohammad caricature row, is a retrospective honoring Austria's cherished artist Alfred Hrdlicka, who turned 80 earlier this year.

But not everyone has been wishing Hrdlicka a Happy Birthday. And the Cathedral Museum's director and Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, the archbishop of Vienna, have both come under fire from some museum visitors and Catholic websites.

The Church hastily removed the main picture, "a homosexual orgy" of the Apostles as Hrdlicka describes it.

But the protest has continued, much to the surprise of the small Cathedral Museum which is nestled down a narrow street in Vienna's historic Gothic quarter.

The museum's director defends both Hrdlicka's work and his decision to host the artist's controversial versions of biblical imagery in a museum tied to the Catholic Church.

"We think Hrdlicka is entitled to represent people in this carnal, drastic way," Bernhard Boehler said in his small museum office, across the street from Vienna's imposing St. Stephan's Cathedral.

He said the museum never intended to offend people but that art should be allowed to provoke a debate.

Sylvia Westall

At least 25,000 people protested in Pakistan's largest demonstration yet against an anti-Quran film made by a Dutch lawmaker, urging their government to expel the ambassadors of the Netherlands and Denmark.

The 15-minute film by Geert Wilders, which sets verses from the Muslim holy book against a background of violent images from terror attacks, was released in March. It has prompted weekly protests in Pakistan, usually drawing hundreds of people after prayers on Friday, the Muslim holy day.

Police officer Syed Suleman estimated Sunday's crowd at 25,000, while organizers claimed more than 100,000 people turned out.

"They call this freedom of expression, but it's freedom of aggression," Munawwar Hasan, a leader of the main Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami, told the crowd.

Wearing head bands inscribed "We are ready to sacrifice our lives for the sanctity of the prophet," protesters marched for more than a mile, then gathered on Karachi's main street to listen to speeches. They also burned an effigy of Wilders.

"The Muslim world is on one side, but Muslim rulers like (President Pervez) Musharraf are toeing the Western agenda under the garb of secularism," Hasan said, referring to Musharraf's role in Washington's war on terrorism.

Another Jamaat-e-Islami leader called for expulsion of the ambassadors of the Netherlands and Denmark, where newspapers have reprinted drawings considered blasphemous to Prophet Muhammad.

"We demand of the government to expel the Holland and Denmark diplomats from the country," said Mohammed Hussain Mehanati.

ASHRAF KHAN

Responding to an accusation of sexual abuse of a 16-year-old girl, Texas enforcement officers and child welfare investigators raided a West Texas ranch founded by the convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and removed 52 children, officials said Friday. All were girls. Eighteen of the children, ages 6 months to 17 years, were believed to have been abused or at risk of abuse and were placed in foster care by Child Protective Services, said Darrell Azar, communications manager for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Thirty-four were taken to a nearby civic center for questioning, Mr. Azar said. There were no immediate arrests and no resistance, officials said. But state troopers, Texas Rangers and other investigators with search and arrest warrants late Friday were still inside the 1,700-acre compound, the Yearning for Zion Ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect. The compound is in Eldorado, roughly 160 miles northwest of San Antonio. An armored police vehicle stood by in case officers had to be evacuated quickly. Roads to the compound were sealed off by police roadblocks. Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said an undisclosed number of people, but fewer than 10, were named in the arrest warrants. Investigators with the department, Ms. Mange said, “were able to talk to the folks they wanted to talk to.” Mr. Azar said the raid, which began late Thursday, stemmed from a complaint to child and family services on Monday that a 16-year-old girl at the ranch had been sexually and physically abused. On Friday, he said, child welfare investigators workers “legally removed” 18 girls and transported 34 for questioning to the civic center. “We haven’t talked to any boys yet,” he said. “We will be interviewing boys, too.” Mr. Azar said the girls were removed “because we had reason to believe they had been abused or were at immediate risk of future abuse.”

The ranch was built in 2003 by followers of Mr. Jeffs, who was sentenced last November in Utah to 10 years to life in prison for forcing a 14-year-old girl to marry her 19-year-old cousin and to submit to sexual relations against her will. Mr. Jeffs is in jail in Arizona awaiting trial on separate rape charges involving the arranged marriages of two teenage girls to older relatives. Local authorities monitored the compound over the years. But aside from a few traffic tickets, there were no problems with sect members, said Raymond Loomis, the Schleicher County attorney. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — with an estimated 10,000 members in the West — split from the mainstream Mormon Church after church leaders in 1890 repudiated the polygamy prescribed by its founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and excommunicated members practicing plural marriage. The breakaway group continued to teach that a man must have three wives to reach heaven’s highest realms. Mr. Azar said religion and lifestyle played no part in the action. “Our only interest,” he said, “is in protecting children from abuse and neglect.” RALPH BLUMENTHAL

Court acts wisely on Ten Commandments rulings

On the stage on which the American culture clash over religion is playing out, enter the Supreme Court.

Monday's twin decisions allowing the display of the Ten Commandments on the Texas State Capitol grounds, but not in Kentucky courtrooms, settle a major contentious issue between political religious conservatives and secular humanists.

In this contest, religious conservatives seek to advance a brand of morality in America by actively promoting religious themes and ideas in government. On the other side, secular humanists demand a strict elimination of religious themes from the public square - whether it be on a town common, in the Pledge of Allegiance, or on the US currency.

Other Christians concerned

In recent decades, though, their clash has gradually widened in scope and players. It's not just the conservatives and secularists anymore, but also other people of faith, many of them devout Christians, who have become alarmed at the aggressive agenda of the conservatives.

As former Sen. John Danforth, a Republican from Missouri, recently opined in the New York Times, "It is important for those of us who are sometimes called moderates to make the case that we, too, have strongly held Christian convictions... Our difference concerns the extent to which government should, or even can, translate religious beliefs into the laws of the state."

The senator appeared to speak for a largely unheard constituency in the religion debate, and also hinted at the contest's larger scope in politics, legislation, courts, and schools.

A single and profound question underlies the religious tussle: To what extent should government bring religious beliefs into people's lives?

A case of overstepping

The nation need look no farther back than last week to see how harmful a coercive approach can be. The Air Force, investigating complaints about proselytizing by evangelical Christians at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado, concluded Wednesday that while there was no religious discrimination at the Academy, there was "certainly insensitivity."

Complaints included a banner hung in the football locker room that pronounced players to be members of "Team Jesus Christ"; pressure for cadets to attend chapel; a Jewish cadet being told that the Holocaust was a revenge for killing Jesus, and government e-mails citing the New Testament.

While acknowledging improvements, the investigating Air Force panel recommended the academy establish guidelines for religious expression so that no minority feels coerced into others' views (the vast majority of the cadets identify themselves as Christian).

Guidelines are exactly what the Supreme Court appeared to establish with its two rulings on the Decalogue.

In the Kentucky case, framed copies of the Ten Commandments in two courthouses went too far in endorsing religion, the court held.

But on the Texas capitol grounds, where the Mosaic law shares space with other monuments highlighting other themes, the court found that this was an allowable display of American heritage, and upheld the Constitution's stance of neutrality toward religion.

Walking a fine line

The court took a moderate tack - not "establishing" a religion, which is forbidden by the Constitution, but not stripping God from the public sphere either.

The rulings recognized the historic role of religion in the foundation of this country and its laws.

The decisions brought to mind the "creche" cases of the 1980s, in which the high court walked a fine line by essentially saying that displaying religious symbols was allowable as long as they were part of a larger, primarily non-religious grouping.

Diversity needs respect

The use of religion in government-related places where there is an element of coercion or unfair treatment should be avoided. Any attempt at coercion unglues the respect that holds this diverse country together.

That's why, as the former Missouri senator so aptly concludes, "efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith." >>>>

Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.

"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.

He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population — a stable percentage — while Muslims were at 19.2 percent.

"It is true that while Muslim families, as is well known, continue to make a lot of children, Christian ones on the contrary tend to have fewer and fewer," the monsignor said.

Formenti said that the data refer to 2006. The figures on Muslims were put together by Muslim countries and then provided to the United Nations, he said, adding that the Vatican could only vouch for its own data.

When considering all Christians and not just Catholics, Christians make up 33 percent of the world population, Formenti said.

Spokesmen for the Vatican and the United Nations did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Sunday.>>>>

Holland's prime minister roundly condemned the anti-Muslim film "Fitna" on Thursday within hours of its appearance on a Web site in the Netherlands.

The country's cabinet went into a crisis meeting directly after the "debut" of the controversial film by right wing politician Geert Wilders as police formed a security cordon around the Dutch Parliament building in the Hague.

"Fitna" links verses of the Quran to a background of violent images from terrorist attacks.

Wilders had been unable to get his film posted on the Web or broadcast, but at 7 p.m. Dutch time Thursday his political party PVV put a link to the 15-minute short on its Web site. English- and Dutch-language versions were posted at www.pvv.nl via a link to LiveLeak.com. No TV channels aired the film.

Local media immediately swarmed over the story with widespread speculation about the possible impact of the film's release. The Dutch government had warned Wilders that a film offensive to Muslims could spark protests in Islamic countries as violent as those two years ago after European newspapers published cartoons of Mohammed.

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Thursday night that the Department of Justice will investigate whether Wilders has broken Dutch law with his attack on the Quran. Balkenende condemned the film as "out to hurt" the Dutch people.

The immediate reaction from the Muslim community in Holland appeared constrained regarding the bow of "Fitna," which combines images of Sept. 11, the London and Madrid attacks and the murder of Dutch director Theo van Gogh with quotes from the Quran. Many local Muslim organizations reacted with moderation, saying it did not put forward any new views that could insult Muslims in the Netherlands.

Members of the Dutch Parliament had mixed views. The Christian-democratic party CDA condemned it for not helping immigration issues in the Dutch community. The Green Party (Groen Links) called it an "anti-climax." The Liberal VVD, the party that Wilders left some years ago, was disappointed that "Fitna" did not offer any solutions.

"Fitna's" appearance after months of controversy brought a wave of traffic to the PVV site. Within two hours of the posting, about 1.6 million viewers had clicked on the film. The English version attracted an audience of 800,000.

Wilders told reporters that he made the film because "Islam and the Quran are dangers to the preservation of freedom in the Netherlands in the long term, and I have to warn people of that." >>>>