PENTAGON REPORTS NO LONGER BIBLE QUOTE ON THE COVER PAGE OF DAILY INTELLIGENCE

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House as was practice during the Bush administration.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he did not know how long the Worldwide Intelligence Update cover sheets quoted from the Bible. Air Force Maj. Gen. Glen Shaffer, who was responsible for including them, retired in August 2003, according to his biography.
For a period in 2003, at least, the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the epistles of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq.
The Bible quotes apparently aimed to support Bush at a time when soldiers' deaths in Iraq were on the rise, according to the June issue of GQ magazine. But they offended at least one Muslim analyst at the Pentagon and worried other employees that the passages were inappropriate.
On Thursday, April 10, 2003, for example, the report quoted the book of Psalms — "Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him. ... To deliver their soul from death." — and featured pictures of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down and celebrating crowds in Baghdad.

"Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand," read the cover quote two weeks earlier, on March 31, above a picture of a U.S. tank driving through the desert, according to the magazine, which obtained copies of the documents.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, on Monday said U.S. soldiers "are not Christian crusaders, and they ought not be depicted as such."
"Depicting the Iraq conflict as some sort of holy war is completely outrageous," Lynn said in a statement. "It's contrary to the constitutional separation of religion and government, and it's tremendously damaging to America's reputation in the world."

KRIS ALLEN'S " AMERICAN IDOL " VICTORY MARKS THE RETURN OF PEOPLE OF FAITH TO AMERICAN POPULAR MUSIC

Apparently it took the Allen-Lambert showdown for Newsweek to figure out what has been happening all along with “American Idol” — the return of people of faith into the mainstream of American popular music, both as voters and performers. I’ve written about the trend in two books, The Rock & Roll Rebellion and Faith, God & Rock ‘n’ Roll, and I look closely at how religion has affected “American Idol” in my next one, “Rock Gets Religion.”
“…Most of his groupies have overlooked a possible roadblock to the title,” Newsweek observed about Lambert’s chances of winning. “Idol is the No. 1 show on TV at least in part because it’s so family-friendly, and it also appeals to a large demographic of Christian viewers….Many of Idol’s previous winners–Jordin Sparks, Carrie Underwood, Ruben Studdard–are devout Christians. Coincidence? Perhaps. But we don’t know much about Lambert’s faith, and that might hurt him with Christian voters. He could be extremely religious, but he’s kept his religious beliefs quiet.”
If my Facebook wall is any indication, Christians did indeed vote in large numbers for the “Christian” AI contestant for yesterday alone I saw several Facebookers urging fellow Christians to vote for the “worship leader” Allen.

Not that there’s anything wrong with affinity voting — after all 96% of African-Americans voted for Obama. Still, the voting patterns of “Idol” viewers and the large presence of Christian performers heralds a new era of integration into mainstream culture by people of faith which, I think, is a welcome one, but which is already producing radically different pop icons from those of a generation ago.
Beginning in the late 1960’s as many devout artists left mainstream music to join the “Christian music” sub-culture — often never to be heard from again — their influence on pop culture waned. But for the last decade the trend of Christian artists leaving the subculture behind and singing for mainstream record labels — and talent contests has been unmistakable. To be sure there have been attempts to create faux “Christianized” versions of ” American Idol” like this one, called Gifted, but they flopped and the net result means that, a strong presence by the most devout segments of our culture, both as performers and voters, will result in “American Idol” winners who go on to become pop icons of a radically kind different kind compared to those who were created in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s when the music business was run by highly secularized record executives who picked future stars instead of fans from the heartland as with “American Idol.”
For those who like their rock and religion served separately, the future of rock music may be bleak as more and more people of faith step up to the microphone and the “Idol” voting booth. But they can also take heart from at least one outcome of the Allen-Lambert showdown, the fact that the allegedly-gay guy and the Christian guy have been the best of friends throughout the competition, even rooming together at one point. If more Americans can hold to their strongly held beliefs and still build bridges of friendship as Allen and Lambert apparently have, it may portend well for the country and the red-blue divide.

SIX CABINET MINISTERS OF INDIA ARE ' NON-BELIEVERS' ; THEY DOESN'T BELIEVE IN GOD

NEW DELHI: Six cabinet ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's new team are 'non-believers'. These ministers "solemnly affirmed" that they would bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution while taking oath today.

The Prime Minister and 13 of his ministers took the oath in the name of God.

This who didn’t, are A K Antony, P Chidambaram, Sushilkumar Shinde, M Veerappa Moily, S Jaipal Reddy and C P Joshi, a first-timer in the cabinet. The other ministers who took oath in the name of God include Pranab Mukherjee, Sharad Pawar, Mamata Banerjee, Vayalar Ravi, S M Krishna, Ghulam Nabi Azad, Kamal Nath, Meira Kumar, Murli Deora, Kapil Sibal, Ambika Soni, B K Handique and Anand Sharma.