A looming constitutional crisis now hangs over the Mojave National Preserve in California, and the stage is set for a constitutional battle at the U.S. Supreme Court. The story is a bit convoluted, but the issue at stake is a cross erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars at Sunrise Rock in the Mojave Desert.  The VFW erected the cross in 1934 as a memorial to the dead of World War I.  Sixty years later, that piece of property became part of the Mojave National Preserve, which is under the supervision of the National Park Service.  That sets up a legal battle that arrives at the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Ready for a day to honor blasphemy?  According to press reports, September 30 is set as the observance of the first-ever International Blasphemy Day. This could be interesting.

John T. Elson’s most famous article for TIME magazine appeared over 40 years ago, and it largely defined his journalistic career.  His April 8, 1966 cover story, “Is God Dead?,” became an icon of the rebellious and increasingly secular sixties.

As expected, the inaugural ceremonies for President George W. Bush opened and closed with prayer. Unexpectedly, the prayers have ignited controversy and unleashed a firestorm of histrionics from the secular left.

“The greatest question of our time,” offered historian Will Durant, “is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even East versus the West; it is whether men can live without God.” That question, it now appears, will be answered in our own time.

On November 3, 1921, J. Gresham Machen presented an address entitled, “Liberalism or Christianity?” In that famous address, later expanded into the book, Christianity & Liberalism, Machen argued that evangelical Christianity and its liberal rival were, in effect, two very different religions.