In the News (October 2026)
Michigan city sued over Muslim holiday displays
A federal lawsuit filed Sept. 17 alleges the city of Dearborn, Mich., spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on public displays celebrating Muslim holidays while ignoring a Christian resident’s repeated requests for Easter and Passover recognition.
The lawsuit by Margot Cleveland, a journalist for The Federalist, accused the city and its mayor, Democrat Abdullah Hammoud, of favoring the Muslim faith over other religious beliefs in a city with a population of over 100,000 people that is majority Arab American.
The city responded by saying it “has a longstanding commitment to serving all residents fairly and equitably, regardless of faith or background.”
“Our city has increasingly come under attack precisely because of its welcoming nature and the diversity of the people who proudly call Dearborn home,” the statement said. “That will not change who we are. Dearborn will continue to uphold the rights and dignity of every resident and remain a city where everyone is treated with fairness, respect, and equal protection under the law.”
The lawsuit sought unspecified damages and asked a judge to find that the city had violated the Constitution and order it to comply with the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.
According to the lawsuit, the city of Dearborn last year spent $1,500 of public money on Ramadan banners and $5,000 on a crescent-moon symbol displayed in its Peace Park while its police department sold Ramadan-themed shirts bearing the official department emblem.
Yet, the lawsuit said, the city failed to mark the approach of the Christian holiday of Easter and the Jewish holiday of Passover in similar fashion. When Cleveland complained and asked that other religious holidays be honored, she was repeatedly ignored, the lawsuit said.
LifeWise expands across Northwest public schools
A controversial off-campus Christian education program for public school students, which has sparked conversation about the intersection of church and state, is gaining traction across the Pacific Northwest.
The national program, LifeWise Academy, is growing especially fast in Washington, now offered in 14 schools with teams working to establish the program in 26 other school districts, said LifeWise state director Alise Morrisey. And local community members — 50 local signatures are required as the first step to launch the program — have shown interest in establishing it in 245 of the estimated 295 school districts.
The bible-based curriculum, which officials said is open to all regardless of faith, takes children out of class during the school day for religious education. Critics argue it incentivizes children to recruit others to its classes and has elicited worry about the proper separation between church and state.
Last August, LifeWise estimated it would serve nearly 100,000 students across 1,100 schools in 34 states during the 2025-2026 school year. The program has grown exponentially since it launched its first pilot program in 2019.
Satanic Temple sues Iowa over Capitol ban
The ACLU of Iowa filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of The Satanic Temple Aug. 13 alleging the state has blocked the temple’s rights to free speech, nondiscrimination and religious exercise.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, stems from the state’s repeated refusal to grant permission for the group to stage what the ACLU of Iowa calls “a family-friendly winter holiday event” in the Iowa Capitol rotunda in the manner of other religious and civic groups.
The lawsuit asks the court to declare that state officials’ denials have violated The Satanic Temple’s constitutional rights under the First and 14th Amendments, as well as their rights under the Iowa Civil Rights Act and Iowa Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
It seeks a court order requiring the Iowa Department of Administrative Services specifically to allow The Satanic Temple to host a holiday event at the Capitol this December, as well as unspecified damages for alleged past violations.
The state of Iowa has yet to file a response to the lawsuit.
Texas Lt. Gov.: Punish schools for lewd books
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Aug. 19 vowed to pass legislation punishing public schools that do not remove books with graphic content from their shelves by knocking them down in the state’s annual school performance ratings, which the state uses to seize control of underperforming districts.
Patrick said school boards and administrators have not been following a 2025 law aimed at weeding out lewd books from the shelves in Texas’ more than 9,000 campuses attended by some 5.5 million schoolchildren.
The law from last year, Senate Bill 13, granted school boards the authority to approve and remove books based on complaints they receive, such as those from parents and activist groups. Before, those powers largely belonged to school librarians.
Patrick confirmed that schools could be docked an entire letter grade — going from an “A” to a “B” rating, for example — if they were found to have a single book on their library shelves that should not be there.
Court: Dad can restrict child’s church attendance
The Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled on Sept. 1 that a Portland District Court judge was correct in giving a father the power to decide whether his daughter should not attend an evangelical church following a clash with the girl’s mother over her religious upbringing.
The decision keeps in place the lower court’s ruling on a 2024 dispute between Matthew Bradeen and Emily Bickford regarding the religious upbringing of their daughter, who was then 11 years old. Bickford had been bringing her daughter to multiple services a week at Calvary Chapel Greater Portland.
Bradeen argued the church was a “dangerous and harmful environment” that had caused his daughter to suffer from anxiety. He said she had a panic attack after hearing the church’s teachings on the rapture, a belief that Christians will join God at the end of the world and nonbelievers will be left behind.
The lower court ruled in his favor, saying some of the church’s language was “psychologically damaging the child” because of how it characterized her father, and the state’s high court affirmed this decision.
Court: Pastor can’t block recording about abuse
Recorded statements of a Phoenix pastor admitting to kissing and touching a child can be used as evidence in the pastor’s criminal case, the Arizona Supreme Court has ruled.
On Aug. 12, the high court released its decision regarding a case involving Mario Rodriguez-Ramirez, who was arrested in 2021 for allegedly abusing a child.
Before his arrest, Rodriguez-Ramirez allegedly told another pastor he had secretly watched a child shower, as well as hugged, touched and kissed the girl. The other pastor recorded the conversation without Rodriguez-Ramirez’s knowledge or consent.The other pastor shared the recording with the child’s family and the family subsequently contacted law enforcement, court records show
The unanimous opinion issued rejected Rodriguez-Ramirez’s argument that a recording of him should remain confidential because of Arizona’s “clergy-penitent privilege.” The privilege protects someone who confesses to clergy by allowing the confessor to refuse to disclose confidential information to law enforcement and the courts — and by preventing clergy from disclosing it, too.
The Supreme Court justices disagreed with the defendant’s argument, ruling that the statements made failed to meet the legal requirements for a protected confession.
Thousands of churches in Europe to be abandoned
There are about 20,000 churches across Germany that are expected to be abandoned in the next five to 10 years and thousands more across Western Europe are expected to become vacant in the coming years as their societies’ connection to Christianity wanes.
There is no central plan for what to do with the buildings, but secular cultural organizations, artists, preservationists and city planners are looking for ways to repurpose them for the benefit of their cities and towns — whether as health care centers, bookstores or spaces for the arts.
“Every day, another church is sold,” said Lilian Grootswagers-Theuns, the president of the advisory board for Future for Religious Heritage, a Belgium-based nonprofit network that focuses on empty religious buildings. She told the New York Times that “This is happening everywhere in Europe — in Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy.”
“It’s already going very fast,” she said. “But now we’re going fast-forward. Now, there’s a tsunami coming.”
Churches, once central to European cultural life, are typically situated in the heart of a city and built to last. “Before you even had the nations, you had a European tradition going back to the fourth century of having a church for each city, each village,” said Barbara Welzel, a professor at TU Dortmund University in Germany.
