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1. A soldier gets his star
A year after his death in Afghanistan, Sgt. Patrick Stewart's memorial plaque will be inscribed with a Wiccan pentacle (a five-point star inside a circle). His widow had lobbied for the emblem, but was turned down by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA allows for more than 30 symbols for other religions and denominations, but has no approved Wiccan symbol. The VA has not backed down, but Nevada officials say they'll grant the symbol in a state veteran's cemetery.

"The VA still has not determined yet if a Wiccan symbol can go on the headstone," Tim Tetz, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services, told the Associated Press. "But we have determined we control the state cemetery and that we therefore have the ability to recognize him for his service to his country."

In a June op-ed for Christianity Today Online, John Whitehead had argued that "by refusing to place the Wiccan symbol on Sgt. Stewart's memorial plaque, while permitting symbols of other religions and non-religions, the government is clearly engaging in viewpoint discrimination."

2. Did repealing blue laws encourage sinfulness?
The Washington Post's Richard Morin today highlights a National Bureau of Economic Research study that suggests that the people who argued against Sunday shopping may have been right. MIT's Jonathan Gruber and Notre Dame's Daniel M. Hungerman looked at states that repealed its blue laws and found that it really did seem to lead to less church attendance and greater wickedness. Morin writes:

Before the shopping ban was lifted, about 37 percent of people in a state on average attended religious services at least weekly, Hungerman said. "After the laws are repealed it falls to 32 percent"—a drop "not driven by declines in religiosity prior to the law change."

Instead of going to church, many of the faithful apparently were going astray. Marijuana use increased by 11 percentage points among church attendees, compared with those who never went to services, after the shopping ban was lifted. Cocaine use increased by nearly 4 percentage points, and heavy drinking increased by about 5 1/2 percentage points among churchgoers compared with those who never went to services, with frequent attendees even more likely to go on benders.

The abstract itself notes, that the increase in drinking and drug use "is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws. The effect is economically significant; for example, the gap in heavy drinking between religious and non religious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed."

"Why would the elimination of blue laws suddenly provoke such an outburst of sinning among the religious?" Morin asks. "After all, there are six other days of the week to shop (or drink) until you drop. And it's not legal to buy cocaine or marijuana on any day of the week." Hungerman replies, "That's the million-dollar question," and offers some guesses. But we're guessing that he won't be the only one seeking to explain this somewhat surprising data.

3. PCUSA, ECUSA "gay fights" continue
Okay, okay, so conservatives in churches hate it when we call them fights over homosexuality, and they're always telling us how homosexuality is just the "presenting issue," and that the fights are really more over the authority of Scripture, the nature of the church, and much more important issues. Yes, they are. And yet homosexuality is still the presenting issue..

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September (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50