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The story gets even stranger—now hundreds of his church members have gathered to protest his suspension. "If there is no place for our pastor in this Church, then there is no place for many of us either," the head of the parish council, Lars Heilesen, said, according the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Another group, which the ABC only identifies as "fighting corruption and abuse of power in Denmark" has filed a police complaint against the Lutheran Church, saying it violated the Danish constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights in suspending Grosboel.

But the saddest news of all comes from a study in the religious newspaper Kristelig Dagbladet, which says that 90 percent of Danish pastors agree that God does not exist. Weblog has its doubts about the research methodology, but given how wacky this story is becoming, it's not wholly out of the question.

Persecution and violence:

• Death toll rises to 15 in northeast religious riots | Violence first broke out in the predominantly Christian town of Numan on Sunday after an itinerant Hausa-speaking Muslim trader with origins in the northwest, stabbed a Christian woman to death over a dispute. Now the violence is spreading (UN Integrated Regional Information Networks)
  
  
• Pastor wanted to find abuses | A St. Paul pastor detained last week in Laos wanted to investigate and draw world attention to religious persecution of his fellow Hmong in their native land (Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.)

Politics and law:

• Evangelical Christians lobby for AIDS funds | Groups endorse Bush's $15 billion program (The Washington Post)
  
  
• Churches lobby White House, Congress on poverty issues | As the Bush administration scrambled to restore to its $350 billion tax cut package a provision whose elimination excluded nearly 12 million low-income children from an increased child tax credit, church leaders gathered in Washington to pressure the president and Congress to do more to help the nation's poorest families (Religion News Service)
  
  
• Candidate's faith not determining factor for voters | President Bush and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman are open about the influence of their religious faith on their politics. But that faith isn't likely to make much of a difference to voters, a new poll found (The Hartford Courant, Conn.)
  
  
• Spam fight unites liberal, conservatives | Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York liberal who supports gay and abortion rights, is teaming up with an unlikely ally as he takes on annoying spam e-mails—the Christian Coalition. (Associated Press)
  
  
• IGC to carry on Christianity debate | The wording of the preamble for the EU's Constitution, has been already changed twice, and is still causing hot debate among several members of the European Convention—mainly due to the question of religion (EU Observer)

First Amendment:

• Woman claims she was booted from bus for distributing Bible | Gail Anderson's attorneys say policy banning distribution of literature on Milwaukee County buses gives drivers unfettered discretion to determine what may be handed out (Associated Press)
  
  
• Antiabortion group, college settle dispute over free-speech policy | University of Houston agrees to pay $93,000 in attorney's fees, rewrite its campus protest guidelines (Associated Press)
  
  
• Federal court weighs religion in public schools | An elementary school teacher in Sioux Falls, S.D., sues the local school district for the right to lead an after-school evangelical club on school grounds. School officials say allowing the move would make it appear that the school district favors a particular religion. The case is now before a federal court (All Things Considered, NPR)
  
  

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47