The original design of the new $621 million visitors center on Capitol Hill had a simple policy regarding religion: Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell.

But a group of more than 100 Congressmen objected to the removal of religion from the American story. They raised a racket and now — roughly a year later — changes have finally come.

Rep. Forbes of Virginia has the details.

AP’s Dylan T. Lovan has written a fascinating story about a convicted child molester who has just been ordained as a minister in Kentucky.

Lovan was smart to describe the gay-friendly congregation as a “self-described Pentecostal church.” Just as most Jews reject Jews for Jesus, most Pentecostals would argue that no authentically Pentecostal church would teach that homosexual sex is acceptable to God.
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The cheerleaders were waving banners bearing Scripture verses. Then somebody complained. And school officials, fearful of lawsuits, stepped in.

For more, click here.

This is the constitutional amendment, by the way, that unambiguously guarantees freedom of speech. To see the constitutional amendment that unambiguously prohibits cheerleaders from sharing their faith, click here.

I received a nice letter from Col. Daniel B. McElwain of Culpepper, Va. A few years ago, he wrote a book proposing 13 new amendments to the United States Constitution. Now he’s come up with a 14th amendment — but this one would need to be ratified by a higher power than Congress.

It’s titled: “A Proposed Amendment to the Lord’s Prayer.”
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I am a procrastinator. For the last ten years, I’ve been drafting a letter in my head to William Safire, the former Nixon speech writer, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, author and wordsmith. I was working on the letter again today. It involves a tombstone at Mount Vernon.
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The Episcopal Church is offering supporters an opportunity “to support the Church’s unity” — by footing some of the denomination’s multi-million-dollar lawsuit tab against breakaway parishes and dioceses. According to this description on the church’s Web site:
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Apparently, some Catholic bigwigs are second-guessing the decision to give U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy a Catholic funeral. David Gibson at PoliticsDaily.com has all the details.

Apparently, the Beatles truly are more popular than Jesus — at least on Google.

The number of people searching for the Fab Four is higher than the number of people seeking the Messiah, according to this report.

A top Capitol Hill staffer is warning that heterosexual pornography may cause homosexual orientation.
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In their first head-to-head matchup of the 2012 presidential election, former Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee easily defeated former Latter-day Saint bishop Mitt Romney in a straw poll Saturday at the Values Voter Summit in Washington.
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It’s a beautiful fall day in the nation’s capital, and I’ve spent the morning at the Values Voters Summit, a gathering of leading Christian Right political activists.

They’re holding the first big “straw poll” of the 2012 presidential election today and tomorrow and I wanted to hear Arkansas’ native son speak.

Gov. Mike Huckabee, who was described by the emcee as a “statesman and big-time TV celebrity” got a rousing welcome and gave a speech full of biblical allusions: Joshua, David, Goliath, Saul, Elijah and the prophets of Baal were all mentioned.
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There’s a strange little story that just moved on the wire from the Los Angeles Times. It’s about Southern California universities acquiring rare sacred texts. It begins:

“LOS ANGELES — The words of gods have appeared in many forms over the centuries, as scribes and printers have transmitted holy writings by hand and machine. Now two Southern California universities are preserving some of this history with separate sets of rare religious texts that originated 1,500 years apart but share a common biblical thread.”

So guess which “gods” are mentioned in these rare texts that originated 1,500 years apart? Gilgamesh? Baal? Marduk? Ishtar? Quetzlcoatl? Shango? Bumba? Jupiter?

Nope. The rare texts are all about a little-known deity. English-speakers refer to Him as god God.
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Remember Evie Tornquist Karlsson? The biggest star in Christian music in the mid-to-late 1970s? She retired in 1981 and dropped off the radar for nearly a quarter-century, walking away from fame and celebrity to be a devoted wife and mother.

Now, she’s back, touring with Rebecca St. James, singing songs that have been out of print for decades, and Evie’s voice is still heavenly.

I interviewed Evie and Rebecca on Sep. 14 in Cabot, Arkansas and I’ll be writing articles about each of them.

A Florida girl says she doesn’t need a vaccine that protects against a type of virus that is spread through sexual contact because she has pledged to refrain from having sex until marriage. Plus she worries about the drug’s potential side effects. If the girl objected to all vaccines on religious grounds, she could get a waiver. However, because she only objects to one shot on sort-of religious grounds, no waiver is available.
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Orange County school officials hired an explicitly Christian company to provide cafeteria services for at least one school. And nobody grumbled, apparently.

But then journalists at the Orange County High School of the Arts wrote a story about the new cafeteria vendor and included the following factual information:

Alegre Foods identifies itself as “a Christian-based company” on its Web site and displays the Bible verse Matthew 6:25 on its homepage (the words “Matthew 6:25″ also appear on the pepper in Alegre’s logo).
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