Americans increasingly reject religion as politicians in Pennsylvania reject atheists and agnostics
Religious leaders seeking state support for their faiths should look to Europe, where government protection hasn't fixed declining participation rates.
When the obituary is written for Christianity in America, Fields v. Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives will merit at least a footnote.
In this verdict, a federal court ruled that the Pennsylvania Legislature could invite guest chaplains to offer opening prayers while barring atheists from giving secular invocations. It's clear that the intent and effect is to favor Christianity: Although the statehouse has had a few token representatives of other religions, the overwhelming majority of legislative prayers — over 90 percent — have been given by Christian clergy.
This is a disastrous decision. It consigns Pennsylvania's atheist and agnostic citizens to second-class status, denying them equal opportunity before the law and shutting them out from the elected officials who are supposed to represent them.
It's the definition of a religious test, something the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids. The court's ruling sidestepped these arguments and asserted that legislative prayer passes muster merely because of "historical tradition," an absurd argument that implies that constitutional violations become OK if they've been going on for long enough.
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make us wear a cross with an X thru it? 
