Religion

Americans are becoming less religious, increasingly turning away from many denominations that once served as their spiritual homes, according to a major national survey released Monday. The percentage of people who do not claim a religious identity has nearly doubled since 1990, growing to 15% of Americans last year, researchers with the American Religious Identification Survey found. Mainline Christian denominations, once bulwarks of the religious landscape, have suffered most from the drift.

One passage plucked from the New Testament's Epistle to the Ephesians instructs believers to "put on the full armor of God." An excerpt from the Old Testament's Isaiah directs them to "open the gates that the righteous nation may enter." As American troops fought in Iraq in 2003, these biblical verses and others reportedly prefaced intelligence reports approved by then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The winter assault on the Gaza Strip was officially portrayed in Israel as an attempt to quell rocket fire by militants of Hamas. But some soldiers say they also were lectured about a more ambitious aim: to banish non-Jews from the biblical land of Israel. "This rabbi comes to us and says the fight is between the children of light and the children of darkness," a reserve sergeant said, recalling a training camp encounter.

Indonesia's most powerful Islamic scholars weren't looking for a debate when they handed down their latest fatwas on how to be a good Muslim. But they still got an argument and, perhaps worse, a chorus of "Who cares?" after decreeing that it is haram, or forbidden, to smoke in public, or for children and pregnant women to have a puff of tobacco anywhere. It didn't matter that the clerics were providing sound health guidance.

Tom Bates stands in his pantry, grinning like a boy on Christmas morning with his loot spread out in front of him. There's a vase half full of used rubber bands destined for return to the newspaper carrier. A pile of hangers will go back to the cleaners. A bin of scraped and dried coffee filters awaits the artist down the street, who incorporates them into her work. Used coffee grounds fill a plastic bag on the kitchen counter. Bates collects them for the compost-making worms in his garage.

Although Erla Feinberg's final act might have disappointed most of her grandchildren, it carried out her late husband's dying wish in a way that held up in court. In a unanimous decision, the Illinois Supreme Court this week ruled that Max Feinberg and his wife could legally disinherit any grandchildren who married outside the Jewish faith as long as the method of doing so did not encourage divorce. "Although those plans might be offensive to individual family members or to outside observers, Max and Erla were free to distribute their bounty as they saw fit and to favor grandchildren of whose life choices they approved," Justice Rita Garman wrote.

In the midst of a global recession, religious leaders are looking beyond the recent regulatory fixes and bailouts aimed at repairing an ailing financial system. They are questioning the underlying assumptions of a market economy that they say has lost its moral bearings. Last week, Pope Benedict XVI issued an encyclical, a papal pronouncement, that decries the divide between rich and poor.

The Vatican stood firm Tuesday on a decision to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop, even as Jewish leaders warned that the move will set back decades of Roman Catholic overtures to mend strained relations between the two faiths. The Vatican joined Jews and fellow Catholics in condemning the British bishop's assertions that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers.

It's a big deal when the pope agrees to speak at an event that isn't church-related. It's an even bigger deal when public protest forces him to cancel. Veteran Vatican-watchers said they'd never seen anything quite like it. Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday abruptly called off plans to speak at Rome's prestigious La Sapienza university, after students and professors rallied to proclaim him pontiff non grata.

.-- The Christian heart of the Republican Party beats fiercely on the broad boulevard where one finds both the gated entrance to Bob Jones University and the headquarters of His Radio network, home to an AM Christian station and a sister music station, "FM With Love From Jesus." But the two bastions of Southern evangelism mirrored the split in the ranks of conservative voters before the state's Republican primary Saturday.