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Meanwhile, halfway across the country, yet another former Supreme Court decision on religion and schools is in the news again. In 1990, Ron Rosenberger sued the University of Virginia because other student publications received funds that were denied to the Christian newspaper he published. He eventually won the case at the Supreme Court in 1995, opening an equal-access door for student religious groups on university campuses and setting a major precedent for church-state relations. But apparently the university has been extremely slow in reading that decision. It is only now opening the door to groups like the Orthodox Christian Fellowship and the University Christian Fellowship to apply for money from the Student Activities Fund. But unlike the system at Wisconsin, students who object to funding groups they don't like will be able to have a portion of their student fees refunded.

More on religion and schools around the world:

• Parent's conflict with school officials leads to lawsuit | Dad wrote Bible passages on son's homework (The News & Observer, Raleigh, North Carolina)
• Bad faith | The U.K. government has no business promoting religion in our schools, and deserves to be sued by parents (Joan Smith, The Guardian, London)
• India court rules that Christian colleges cannot discriminate between Catholics and Protestants | Justice says because status granted to the college was that of a "Christian minority," there could not be further classification of a Christian into Roman Catholic and Protestant. (The Times of India)

Mystery woman revealed
Last week, Weblog ran the text of an exchange between President Bush and an unnamed reporter on Bush's faith-based initiative. The dialogue, you'll recall, was not exactly a model of unbiased reporting. "The mixing of religion and government for centuries has led to slaughter," the reporter scolded. "You are a secular official, not a missionary." It turns out that the reporter was none other than Helen Thomas, "dean of the White House press corps." The New York Post, in turn, criticized the former UPI (now Hearst) White House correspondent who has covered nine presidential administrations. "Thomas saves her venom only for Republicans like Bush," said the paper's Media Watch column. "Liberals, on the other hand, can do no wrong." Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, meanwhile, issued a press release praising her comments.

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February (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45