Lab technicians in Texas are sorting the DNA of 437 children removed from their polygamous families earlier this month, but bloodlines are not the only lines blurred in the case. It’s also raising questions about the government’s power over religious belief.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) face the charge of blending religious belief with child abuse. Investigators are determining whether the children from the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) ranch - including 41 with broken bones or previous fractures - exhibit evidence of mistreatment.

Those testifying in the case have already employed strong language against the FLDS sect, saying it is an abusive belief system in which girls marry young because they are “ruthlessly indoctrinated from birth to believe disobedience will lead to their damnation.”

It is because of this ruthless indoctrination that some claim the authoritarian teachings of the FLDS church are abusive in and of themselves. One Child Protective Services investigator explained her view to the Texas district judge saying, “This is a population of women who appear to have a problem making a decision on their own.”

Such blanket statements have raised fears among religious watchdog groups that – amid a rightful campaign against child abuse – we’re setting a dangerous precedent against religious freedom. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission, says that the very real need to protect children “does not give government officials a blank check to use children’s “welfare” as a subterfuge to justify governmental intrusion or to disrupt any practice it finds vaguely weird.”

Some fear the FLDS case presages a time when children will be removed from their homes – not on proof of abuse – but because of their parents’ staunchly religious views. According to Land, however, the mixed blessing of the recent scandal in Texas is that the actions taken there were well-founded: “The potential for governmental abuse of religious freedom is just that — potential. The evidence for sexual abuse of children in this case is substantial.”

The parents of a high school sophomore in the always-litigious state of California are suing their son’s history teacher for his bizarre rants against Christianity.

The student, 16-year-old Chad Farnan, snuck a recorder into his class and taped this diatribe from his teacher, James Corbett: “What country has the highest murder rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rape rate? The South! What part of the country has the highest rate of church attendance? The South!” The teacher also talked about the “Jesus glasses,” which he says hide the truth from believers, and said Christians are more likely to commit heinous crimes like murder and rape.

Farnan’s parents say Corbett’s remarks violate the First Amendment. They filed a federal lawsuit (aided by the nonprofit Christian legal firm Advocates for Faith and Freedom) against the school district after it dismissed the Farnans for demanding that Corbett be fired. Corbett’s attorney told Fox News the purpose was never “to indoctrinate, but simply to provide a basic starting point to provoke discussion.”

The Farnans’ suit joins a recent mini-spate of lawsuits by Christian parents indignant at their school’s treatment of religion. Among others right now, the most prominent is in Wisconsin, where parents are suing their son’s school after he got a zero on an art project that incorporated a cross and John 3:16. (The school, they claim, has a Buddha and Hindu figurines placed prominently in a classroom, as well as “a being with a horned head and protruding tongue” in the art room.)

These lawsuits, which vary in the egregiousness of the offenses for which they seek redress, go to the heart of a matter many Christians have never considered. Are they right to run to the courts, in a manner not too different from the ACLU’s when it sues a teacher for displaying the Ten Commandments in class?

“Even though it is tempting to say that turnabout is fair play, I don’t think Christians should react to being offended in the same litigious way as the politically correct elite,” writes Renaissance Guy on his blog, Significant Pursuit. “I think the teacher overstepped his bounds, and I think his logic is questionable, but I don’t think a lawsuit is necessary.”

At The Corner, Jonah Goldberg adds that, while he more or less agrees “the lawsuit probably goes too far,” it is nonetheless “interesting to ponder what the bureaucracy would have done to this guy if he’d employed a similar argument against blacks or Mexicans.”

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is calling for a respectful dialogue between monotheistic “brothers in faith.” He warned against atheism and the disintegration of the family, the loss of morals and decline of religion: “If God wills it, we will then meet with our brothers from other religions, including those of the Torah and the Gospel… to come up with ways to safeguard humanity.”

He says the country’s top clerics have given their permission to the plan. Coming from a country that bans non-Muslim religious services and executes Muslim apostates, this is encouraging news that Muslims, Jews and Christians all welcome.

AP says quotes Michael Cromartie, chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religions Freedom: “It’s a courageous thing for the king to do. … It’s a start to have an open and free dialogue in a country with a reputation for religious oppression.” The Jerusalem Post interviewed Rabbi Yona Metzger, who also expressed optimism: “If an imam in Saudi Arabia sends out a message of restraint and peace, that could save the life of a Jew in Paris.”

Saudi newspaper al-Jazirah welcomed the dialogue too: “The dialogue could clear up some facts about our religion, far from the distortions that extremists and fanatics have caused.”

But Jihad Watch is still suspicious: “Islamic law is reciprocity-impaired when it comes to respect. It is not “respect” in the general sense; rather, Islam is to be respected, and will deal with other faiths according to what it believes is the divinely-ordained order of things.” Reuters quotes others expressing skepticism that the dialogue will actually take place.

Still, the announcement may have mollified some during a week when religious tensions ran high. Geert Wilder released his anti-Islam short film this week. In the Netherlands, Muslims are rioting over anti-Islam cartoons, and there’s a heated debate over the wisdom of Magdi Allam’s public and defiant Easter baptism.

An Army soldier has claimed, in a white-hot lawsuit filed Wednesday with a defendant list including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, that the Army violated his right to be an atheist and is a breeding ground for Christian fundamentalists who routinely engage in this sort of behavior.

The suit, brought by Spc. Jeremy Hall, has been pending since September. Attorneys dropped it in February so they could bolster Hall’s case with a new claim that Army officials blocked Hall’s promotion after he sued. Media have been mostly quiet on the re-file, but in September a spate of news pieces (by MSNBC, The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor, among others) asked if soldiers were “being force-fed Christianity.” (Join the debate on WMB.)

According to an Associated Press account, Hall “alleges that Gates permits a military culture in which officers are encouraged to pressure soldiers to adopt and espouse fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and in which activities by Christian organizations are sanctioned.”

There are reports that the Army improperly allowed baptisms in one of Saddam Hussein’s swimming pools and that some of its senior officers participated in a fund-raising video for a Christian group while at the Pentagon. The military refuses to comment on a pending legal affair, prompting the Army’s backers to contend that press coverage, for now, is de facto one sided.

Hall, formerly Baptist, says his troubles began when he tried to convene a meeting of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. He says a superior officer broke up the meeting, told Hall he was a “problem,” then added, “Problems get removed.” Hall later filed suit, raising his profile to that of atheist martyr. AP says afterwards, a platoon sergeant told Hall that the military denied his promotion because he would be “unable to put aside his personal convictions and pray with his troops” and couldn’t bond with them.

Hall had to return from Iraq six weeks shy of completing his tour because his battalion commander believed he was in danger. The media reported that several Christian bloggers began saying Hall should be “fragged”—killed by friendly fire.

Michael Weinstein, a former Reagan administration lawyer who runs the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has taken up Hall’s case. He says he has received about 6,000 complaints like Hall’s since 2006. MRFF says these Christian “dominionists”—the kind who see the Iraq war as a modern-day crusade —make up 20 to 30 percent of the armed forces and rule the rank and file through intimidation and connections that go all the way to the top.

The January/February issue of Details ran an in-depth piece by Ben Paynter called “The New Holy War,” chronicling a deliberate, evangelical-fundamentalist “religious crusade against nonbeliever servicemen.” A full-page shot of Hall’s dog tags, erroneously reading “ATHEIST,” underscores the idea that nonbelievers may frequently be marginalized.

Yet, as critics point out, Paynter taints good reporting with his own confusions about Christianity—misusing the word “dominionists” to describe this type of militaristic Christian, then pronouncing in shock that “many in the movement believe in the literal truth of the King James Bible.”

Here’s a twist on the usual: a law firm is challenging the Internal Revenue Service to investigate its client.

The law firm is the Becket Fund – a non-profit, interfaith firm devoted to protecting religious expression – and the client is Kenneth Taylor, pastor of Calvary Assembly of God in Algoma, Wis. An open letter invites the IRS to investigate a political sermon Taylor delivered during the last election. Pastors often shy away from political sermons to avoid IRS investigations and loss of tax-exempt status. (Watch the sermon, censored in case of an investigation, here.)

Taylor challenges the IRS: “What government does and says often has profound moral consequences. As a preacher, I am obliged to say something about it, and I shouldn’t have to worry about how the government might retaliate.”

Tax regulations prohibit church “intervention” in a campaign but IRS enforcement is ambiguous because the IRS sees the tax code as a living, ever-changing document. “This provides the maximum flexibility for the IRS and minimum flexibility for houses of worship,” said Roger Severino, legal counsel for the Becket Fund.” Severino said the ambiguity intimidates pastors and the Becket Fund is seeking to clarify the code.

Severino said that a pastor speaking to his congregation is protected religious speech. It is not an intervention in a campaign because the forum is private, not public: “There’s a very big difference between a full page ad condemning a candidate running for political office and a religious organization speaking to itself.” The Becket Fund maintains that a pastor should even be able to endorse or condemn certain candidates from the pulpit, as long as he is speaking privately to his congregation.

Severino and Taylor point to a long tradition of political sermonizers, including John Witherspoon and Martin Luther King, Jr. The regulation about campaign intervention has only existed since 1954, Severino said: “For a hundred and seventy odd years of our history, people were allowed to speak freely without fear of losing any teax exemption and our country was not turned into a theocracy because of it, not even close.”

Nina Shea of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute and a member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom reports (”A Creche without Christians“) on the findings of a new survey, which finds that Middle Eastern Christianity is being squeezed hard in the global struggle between Islamic totalitarianism and Western freedom and democracy. The survey findings aren’t encouraging for Christians living under Muslim rule:

The new religious survey, Freedom in the World, produced by the Center for Religious Freedom shows that while some Muslim governments do respect religious freedom, none are to be found in the Middle East. Israel is the only “free” country, and their Christian numbers are increasing.

The survey ranks Jordan, Oman, Morocco, and Lebanon as “partly free.” Here the Christian populations are either miniscule and largely foreign, or, in the case of Lebanon, shrinking precipitously from majority to about a third of the population in recent decades.

The rest of the region is further down the freedom scale. In Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, and Tunisia there are virtually no indigenous Christian communities left, though some converts there carry out religious lives in the catacombs and expats quietly hold services. In Saudi Arabia, religious intolerance is official state policy.

After 14 centuries living under Islamic occupation, Christianity in the region is near extinct.

Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, won a stocking full of coal this Christmas for providing “the silliest affront to the Christmas and Hannukah holidays.”

Lynn received the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s Annual Ebenezer Award for his attack on a church-run program that provided socks and shoes for 1,000 needy children in South Carolina. Lynn’s gripe with the privately-funded Laces4Love: It “subjects disadvantaged students to ritual foot-washing as part of a shoe giveaway.”

Volunteers asked children if they would like to have their feet wiped off before they put on clean socks and new shoes. As Kevin “Seamus” Hasson, president of the Becket Fund (a nonpartisan, interfaith law firm), told WoW, “They’re little kids, so you treat them with a certain amount of maternal kindness and you don’t just hand them the shoebox and say, ‘Here kid, here are your shoes.’” Lynn called the foot-washing “an attempt to evangelize public schools students” and a violation of the Constitution. Both school officials and volunteers said the foot-washing was hygienic, not religious.

Past Ebenezer Award recipients include Sparkle, a large, six-foot tall sparkly star that replaced Pittsburgh’s religious holiday symbols. Kensington, Maryland, took the award for disinviting Santa Claus from its tree lighting ceremony. A high school in Kirkland, Washington, won the lump of coal for canceling a performance of A Christmas Carol.

Hasson said attacks on Christmas and Hannukah are getting “less silly,” but “while Christmas nonsense is down, holiday nonsense is up.” Politically correct police are now targeting Valentine’s Day because it is named for a saint, along with Easter. Students are sending Special Friends cards, and the Easter bunny may have to change his name to the Special Bunny.

Fortunately, as the schools get sillier the Supreme Court gets saner, Hasson said: “By and large, there’s a better atmosphere for religious freedom in the Supreme Court than there has been.”

The Chinese government announced that it will encourage select Christian groups to distribute Bibles to athletes and visitors at the Olympics next year. The Christian groups will also be asked to act as volunteers to assist foreigners of the same religion while they are in China — this in a nation where smuggling in Bibles is still illegal.

The atheist government’s actions are in response to allegations by some foreign religious and human rights groups that said visitors would not be allowed to bring copies of the Bible or other religious items into the Olympic venue. The government said the only stipulation they set was that only one Bible be allowed per traveler.

Ye Xiaowen, head of China’s state administration for religious affairs, said China “respects and protects the religious freedom of all people.” He pointed to the Amity Foundation, an organization that has printed over 50 million Bibles, as proof that the government allows the distribution of religious texts. Amity Foundation will open the world’s largest Bible-printing factory in a few months.

An American who has worked with Christian ministries in China told WoW, “The whole thing in China is about control. … This way they can say they are meeting a need but still not allow Bibles to spread to the Chinese public.” She said since the Bibles will be given only to foreigners, the government is able to “save face” among religious groups while keeping Bibles out of the hands of their own people.

In regards to the Amity Foundation, she said they do print lots of Bibles and have increased the number of Bibles in the nation greatly, but the number per capita is still “quite low.” She also suspects the opening of the factory in the same year as the Olympics is a government publicity act as well.

According to reports (here, here, and here), organizers of next year’s Olympics in Beijing have put together a list of items that athletes will not be allowed to bring into the Olympic village, and that list reportedly includes Bibles. Video cameras and cups will also be banned.

Seven years after convicted murderer Wesley Spratt started preaching in the chapel of his maximum-security prison, Warden James Weeden made a new rule: Prisoners couldn’t preach.

Weeden said the preaching compromised prison security: “People behind a pulpit are in a position of power. … And people behind a pulpit, of all faiths, have abused that power.” Spratt sued Weeden for violating his religious freedom, and the American Civil Liberties Union helped him win the case this summer.

Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, told WoW he disagrees with Weeden: “It’s important not only to have volunteers coming in from the outside to lead inmates, but it’s also important to have leaders who are inmates.” These inmates may not have official titles (he notes that Spratt does not), but “they lead by their life example and their love for the other inmates.”

Rev. James Turnipseed leads the chapel services and said that Spratt is the most zealous inmate he has ever met. But Michael Naylor, the victim’s brother and a former prison guard, is cynical about Spratt’s sincerity: “Everyone finds God in prison. They seem to lose it as soon as they walk out the door.” (In 2019, Spratt will be eligible for parole.)

Earley said some conversions are sincere. Prison Fellowship’s InnerChange Freedom Initiative includes a 6-12 month aftercare program that provides mentoring and requires ex-inmates to work and attend church to qualify for graduation. A University of Pennsylvania study found evidence of change: Inmates who graduated from IFI had an 8% recidivism rate compared to a 20% recidivism rate in a similar group.

Earley said every place has natural leaders. In prison, there can be leaders of violence, “or there can be leaders for Jesus who serve, care and love the other inmates.” Earley said he would encourage Spratt to “let his life demonstrate the love of Jesus.”