Religion

Dear Editor, As we know, children learn from the environment around them. Many times you hear them repeating something they have heard on the TV, what their parents have said, what was said in school, or even in church. It is innocent enough most times, and they may not realize the meaning of what they say. It is when children repeat things that they have heard to hurt or scare someone such as a peer that it becomes a problem. I am very upset that my children have been subjected to ridicule over religion or a lack thereof for the past two years by their peers.

Dan Johnson watches the fourth- and fifth-graders run up and down the carpeted basketball court and sees boys learning to serve Jesus. The boys are playing in a Saturday league at Mitchellsburg Baptist Church called Higher Goal. Started by Johnson, the church's pastor, it takes its name from Philippians 3:14 in the New Testament: "I press toward the goal for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. " Johnson, who is from Indiana, said hoops and religion were a natural fit. "The Lord blessed us with a building and we're just trying to take advantage of it," he said.

WASHINGTON - Six years after Sept. 11, 2001, its shock still makes its way in slow motion through the federal bureaucracy. In the spring of 2004, the inspector general of the Justice Department issued a report warning of radical Islamist influence in American prisons. It concluded that many prison libraries had not been screened for extremist literature. In what passes for governmental urgency, the federal Bureau of Prisons recently revealed its response: the Standardized Chapel Library Project.

Dear Editor: It's true enough that you have the right to worship however you wish, but to take religion out of schools just because a few kids and their parents don't like it is wrong. Where does my children's freedom to worship when and where they wish come in? I think things should be exactly like they were when I was in school. Pray and say the Pledge. Those who don't agree don't have to be involved. It is wrong to remove religion when there are kids who want these things in school and truly believe prayer makes a difference.

Dear Editor: I have read many letters to the editor on this page about extending marriage benefits to gay and lesbian couples. Many of these admonishments against this extension are based in religion. That is an issue that should not be raised in a society where the First Amendment of the Constitution allows for the free exercise of religion and the state cannot make any laws restricting the practice. How would allowing marriage benefits to gay couples destroy your religious freedoms?

Dear Editor: I publicly stand by my opinions expressed in the previous letter that I wrote on Monday. The issue of a taxpayer-funded vehicle displaying a faith symbol is not an issue of my personal faith, no matter how many are determined to make it seem as such. This is strictly an issue of the separation of our government (and taxpayer-funded programs and services) and religion/spirituality. If anyone supports a "Jesus fish" symbol on a police cruiser, they must also be fully prepared to likewise accept an officer who would choose to display a Star of David of the Jewish faith, crescent and star of the Islamic faith, a pentagram, a tree, or other religious symbol as a statement of their personal faith.

Last week the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) issued a compelling wake-up call to citizens of all 56 member states - including the United States - about the dangers of ignoring religion in public schools. Titled the Toledo Guiding Principles, after the Spanish city where the initial drafting took place, the report urges nations to take religion seriously in education and provides a human rights framework for including fair, accurate study about religions and beliefs in the classroom.

Howard Dean, the erstwhile current leader of the Democratic Party, and who seems to have lost his penchant for "screaming," may have instigated the message this year, but there is no way to be certain. It's the same every time. First, the gambit is to criticize any candidate who purports to have interest in religion. The ploy is designed to denigrate, subvert, diminish and ridicule any political aspirant who openly declares an ongoing interest in spiritual matters. The media, as usual, pick this hot coal from the furnace of eastern seaboard gravitas and concentrate on dismembering those offensive candidates who actually have the gall to talk about God and their relationship together.

Dear Editor: The recent pictures of the mistreatment of prisoners coming out of Iraq by our own fellow countrymen leaves us dumbfounded and confused. We ask how our young people could do such a thing. They were raised in America, went to our schools and were trained by our military personnel. They should have known better, we say. Let me say that I think that certain cultures and norms in some countries do make it easier for this kind of thing to happen. But let's not kid ourselves: There is good and evil in every one of us. We are all capable of the very worst acts.

One of the great ironies of American life is that for all our religiosity, we don't know much about religion. Just how little we know about religion is in the media spotlight thanks to a new book by Boston University professor Stephen Prothero, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - and Doesn't. " As Prothero points out, evidence of our religious illiteracy isn't hard to find. Polls reveal that not only are Americans ignorant of other faiths, they don't even know much about their own. So how did a nation steeped in religion at the founding become a place where most people can't name the first book of the Bible?