The family of Zack Smith, 14, sued to halt the religious sentence, when the judge refused to permit their son to do community service with a secular nonprofit group in lieu of serving time at church.
The Gideons arrogantly announced they will continue the illegal distribution at Sumter District 2, and public schools in Lee and Clarendon counties.
A 21-member Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad issued a report making some 100 recommendations, including basing foreign aid and trade on a nation's record of religious tolerance.
Turning the tables, a United Nations official visited Utah in late January to gather testimony about religious intolerance and discrimination in that state.
Abdal Fattah Amor, law professor at the University of Tunis and U.N. Special Raporteur on Religious Intolerance, is investigating conditions in Salt Lake City, Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
A Jewish law professor from Salt Lake City told him: "This is not Bosnia. But neither is it an ideal place to live." American Indians testified about their children being "stolen," under such auspices as the Indian Placement Program of the Mormon Church.
Democratic lawmakers contend that Republicans are using ministers to intentionally offend, by politicizing invocations with homilies to pass antiabortion legislation, make partisan attacks, and end prayers "in Jesus' name." House guidelines specify that prayers are to be "nonsectarian."
A hasty decision on Feb. 13 by the House of Delegates to end the practice of inviting clergy to deliver the prayer was just as hastily reversed the same day by House Speaker Casper R. Taylor, Jr.
Parents brought suit two years ago against a Medford elementary school when a first-grade teacher would not let their six-year-old read aloud from the "Beginner's Bible" to his first-grade class.
Braddock, a septuagenarian, maintains there is no comma between "one nation" and "under God." He is old enough to know that "under God" was not in the original pledge, which was changed in 1954 to include "under God."
Nine other states, plus the District of Columbia, have adopted laws barring discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment, housing, public accommodations and credit. Gov. Angus King, who supported the law, said the fight is not yet over.
"What's condemned in Afghanistan is allowed to go on in Charlotte County, Virginia," wrote Connie Hannah in a letter appearing in the Washington Post on Feb. 8, 1998.
"The number of home-schooled children in Virginia is growing, as is the number of religious exemptions granted," Hannah observed.
"State legislators need to do something about this exemption that allows parents to disregard minimal educational standards for their children."
Only one supporter testified on behalf of the bill at the hearing, while the room was packed with opponents.
"When we looked around to see what worked, we found that many of the very best programs were associated with faith-based institutions," claims pious sponsor Sen. John Ashcroft, R-MO.
This year, at the behest of the Christian Coalition, Congress will consider extending tax dollars to more religious programs.
Although recipients are supposed to be able to refuse services from a religious group and find a different provider, the law does not require churches to notify welfare clients of that right. Nor does the law forbid preaching to welfare recipients coming to them for life-and-death assistance.
The unprecedented funding of religious programs to perform government functions is expected to be challenged.
Both Pat Robertson's ACLJ as well as the ACLU called the school's prior policy a violation of the Federal Equal Access Act, which requires that high schools permitting student clubs must also allow religious ones.
The ACLU backed Congress' adoption of the Equal Access Act in 1984, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. That Act ostensibly prevents outside or adult control of bible clubs. However, an Associated Press report found that campus ministeries are behind most high school clubs, including Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Youth for Christ, Student Venture and Young Life.
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes claims chapters in 6,073 junior and senior high schools.
In all, Christian clubs operate in more than 10,000 of the nation's 56,000 secondary schools, according to Doug Clark of the National Network of Youth Ministries in San Diego.
Edward Childs, 15, wants the school district in Poplarville, Miss., to "follow federal law and state law precisely as it is."
"I learned my lesson that it was wrong to pray on the intercom, that it was unconstitutional," Childs said, after filing his second lawsuit on Jan. 5 in U.S. District Court in Jackson. Acting as his own lawyer, Childs points out that a 1994 ruling which struck down a state school prayer law also makes prayer during school sporting events unconstitutional.
The Federal Constitutional Court struck down a state law in 1995 mandating crosses in public school rooms, after a ten-year fight by a Bavarian artist who didn't want his three children subjected to the "image of a bleeding, half-naked male corpse" in their classrooms.
The predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria responded by adopting a law requiring crucifixes, unless a parent raises a "serious and reasonable" objection. This is the law the high court refused to review.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl with the Christian Democratic Union has vowed to preserve the identity of Germany as "a bastion of Christian civilization."
Germany imposes a 9% church surtax on every registered Catholic, Protestant and Jew, with church taxes, totaling about $11 billion in 1996, paying salaries for priests, for the construction of churches and for church-run daycares, kindergartens and social programs. A glut of pastors and a fragile economy are provoking second thoughts about a church partnership with the government.