The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday sued an Arizona sheriff for refusing to cooperate with its investigation into allegations the sheriff discriminates against Hispanics in his program to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has regularly conducted arrest sweeps to try to round up illegal immigrants and smugglers in the state that has borne the brunt of people trying to sneak into the United States illegally from Mexico.

Arpaio's crackdown on illegal immigrants has helped thrust the issue to the forefront nationally. The Obama administration is in a legal wrangle with Arizona over a strict new law against illegal immigration that the state passed in April.

The Justice Department had been in negotiations with Arpaio to obtain documents related to the crackdown as well as access to the county's jails, but those talks broke down and the agency filed a lawsuit to compel his cooperation with the investigation.

Faith leaders from New York City and across the nation expressed support for the Park51 project, the Muslim community center and mosque planned for a few blocks from Ground Zero. The mosque's supporters said Park51 would help deprive terrorists of a tool for recruitment, and cautioned that a rising tide of anti-Muslim bigotry undermines our nation's historic commitment to religious freedom, pluralism and interfaith cooperation.

"Park51 would be a powerful symbol of U.S. tolerance and freedom that will stand in direct contradiction to al Qaeda's narrative that Americans hate Muslims," said Matthew Alexander, who won a Bronze Star for leading an interrogations team that located Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "As a symbol, its construction demonstrates that the U.S. is not at war with Islam and that Muslims are welcome in America. It communicates a message of moderation that stands in stark contrast to al Qaeda's bankrupt ideology. Symbols like this matter."

Some leaders took politicians to task for their fear-mongering and partisan maneuvering.

"I feel compelled to stand against political leaders who are using this controversy to score political points. They are dishonoring the men and women, including the 59 Muslim Americans, who died on 9/11 at the hands of extremists," said Lisa Sharon Harper, executive director of New York Faith & Justice. "If we allow fear and twisted truth to reign in this situation we allow the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center to also dismantle our Constitution."

Arrayed on the steps of City Hall, New York Muslim leaders Wednesday condemned the ugly rhetorical attacks aimed at Islam and its followers amid a national furor over a planned Islamic center two blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks.

During a news conference, the Muslim leaders labeled the verbal attacks un-American, and a New York congressman described the vitriol as beneath New Yorkers.

"This nation was founded on the values of religious freedom and tolerance and fairness and justice and pluralism," said Imam Al-Amin Abdul Latif, president New York's Islamic leadership council, which includes 55 major mosques and groups. "We're going backwards."

U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel, a 20-term Harlem Democrat who is facing a primary challenge this month, said opposition to the center should be particularly problematic for New Yorkers, who traditionally have prided themselves on embracing every immigrant and religious group, and their right to live and pray where they want. But he said politicians seeking election this fall have stirred up public opinion against the center.

"Candidates running for reelection are not rational people," Rangel said with a note self-irony.

Polls are showing that most New Yorkers and Americans oppose locating the center close to the site of the attack. Opponents call it "the ground zero mosque," although it would not be at the site of the fallen World Trade Center towers. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been its most vehement elected defender. Its critics include Rudolph W. Giuliani, mayor at the time of the 2001 attacks.

As they listened under the broiling sun to the speakers Wednesday, imams from across the city held aloft signs declaring Muslims' support for peace and justice. They also brandished photographs of a special Muslim prayer service held days after Sept. 11 in memory of 300 Muslims who were among the nearly 3,000 people killed that day. The service was at a mosque blocks from the smoking wreckage; that mosque remains in the area.

"We do not believe that we are good enough to die, that we are good enough to minister to others, that we are good enough to respond to tragedy, but we are not good enough to build a place where we can pray right where we worked and died," said Imam Talib Abdur Rashid. Muslims were among the police, firemen and chaplains who worked around the clock in the days and months after Al Qaeda terrorists brought down the World Trade Center, he said.

Last week two disturbing incidents occurred that I hope and pray are not the start of a new trend.

As tensions continue to rise and tempers boil over the proposed creation of an Islamic Cultural Center near the former site of the World Trade Center, I was appalled to hear that a 21-year old New York City resident brutally stabbed a Muslim taxi driver without provocation while another man desecrated a city mosque by urinating on its prayer rugs.

I cannot help but wonder if the rise in temperature over a proposed building of an Islamic house of worship is to blame for these disturbing and despicable acts. Regardless of the roots of the incidents, violence and hatred are never excusable and it is past time that our country's leaders engage in a national conversation on how we as Americans give voice to our views.

The Jewish Council of Public Affairs is the consensus voice of the organized American Jewish community. We consist of 125 Jewish community relations councils and 14 national organizations, including the four organizational bodies making up each of the Jewish community's religious streams. Our membership is diverse and spans the political spectrum - liberal, moderate and conservative.

As the president of JCPA, I am dismayed to see the recent incidents of stereotyping, scapegoating and bigotry directed at Muslim Americans for no reason other than their religious identity, and I deplore such incidents and the attitudes that give rise to them.

As a rabbi, I am especially sensitive to these immoral acts and recognize their corrupting influence on our society.

There is no doubt that a proposal to build a mosque and Muslim community center in lower Manhattan has stirred up a great deal of passion and controversy, but perhaps the intense feelings on all sides of the issue will allow us to have, in the vernacular of today, a teachable moment.

Regardless of what one thinks about the placement of the proposed Cordoba House, there is no room in American society for the daily bigotry that Muslim Americans endure. A small, but vocal, minority of those opposed to the mosque has exhibited some reprehensible bigotry. The demonization and demagoguery we have all witnessed tear at the heart of our pluralistic society. Jewish groups across the board have condemned such rhetoric and actions as unfair and wrong. We must find ways to treat one another with greater care and to debate issues with more civility.

Freedom of religion is a cornerstone of American democracy. While some have expressed concern about the lack of sensitivity demonstrated by the placement of the center, all of the major institutions of the Jewish community emphatically believe that it is the legal right of all Americans - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other faiths - to build community centers and houses of worship wherever they choose in accordance with the law.

And we must do a better job of listening to one another and not just assuming the worst of those with whom we disagree. Both sides should refrain from finger pointing and name calling.

Mark West believes in freedom of religion.

That belief brought West out Monday night to a candle light vigil in support of local Muslims in front of the Rutherford County Courthouse.

It also inspired the lifelong Baptist to make a donation to the building fund for a new mosque near Murfreesboro.

"I'm going down to Islamic Center of Nashville tomorrow and make a $100 donation," West said Monday night. "One hundred bucks is hard to come by these days, but it's a statement."

West was among about 150 people who attended Monday's night's vigil, organized in response to the recent fire at the construction site for the new mosque. Many in the crowd held candles or signs proclaiming such messages as "We're all in this together" and "My God is not a bigot." They also joined in singing "We Shall Overcome."

The gathering came two days after a fire of suspicious origin damaged construction equipment at the site of the planned mosque. Federal investigators are still looking into the cause.

Organizers said the vigil was intended to encourage mosque supporters and opponents to demonstrate for a community free of violence, arson and other such activities.

On the outskirts a small but vocal group of mosque opponents made their presence known.

The leader of the Roman Catholic church in New York City is trying to establish a regular meeting between Catholics and Muslim leaders, aiming to discuss and defuse contentious issues such as those raised by plans to build a mosque near Ground Zero.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan said the church was not trying to tell or suggest to Muslims that they move the proposed mosque and Islamic community center, slated to be built two blocks from the former World Trade Center site.

Rather, he said the idea is to set up habitual meetings similar to those that have taken place for decades between Catholic clerics and rabbinical leaders, during which they hash out differences and try to build understanding between the two faiths.

"I'm afraid we have maybe not been as energetic with fostering relations with our Islamic brothers and sisters,'' the archbishop said during an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday in his private office at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers. "Our coming together is not to say we can settle the mosque site issue,'' he said, but "the wider issue of Church, Jewish, Islamic tensions.''

...The issue of erecting an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has divided the country, with some defending its placement as a religious-freedom matter and others decrying the plans as a sign of disrespect toward 9/11 victims and their families.

The archbishop made his comments less than two weeks after he offered to mediate in the dispute between proponents and critics of the Islamic center. At the time, he suggested that the developers consider moving the location, an aside that invited criticism from some who said the cleric was being indecisive.

On Wednesday he said he was "irritated" with himself for muddying the waters during that impromptu news conference.

The emotion that grips me this morning, after watching President Obama's speech last night and listening to the commentary about the "end of our combat mission in Iraq," is a deep sadness. Even in the Oval Office speech last night, the mission of the war in Iraq still wasn't made clear -- and it never was.

This was a war started on a false pretext -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them or hand them off to terrorists. At the time there were other ways to determine that and respond accordingly (international inspections were underway), but we went to war instead. The Bush Administration's fearful predictions of "mushroom clouds" went along with insinuations that Iraq was somehow involved in 9/11 despite the fact that it was not. That Saddam Hussein was a terrible and brutal dictator was well known, but bombing his cities and people wasn't the only way to deal with him, as many church leaders pointed out at the time. And, of course, the U.S. hadn't made war on the countries of every other dictator who was as bad, or worse, than Saddam. But those dictators weren't sitting on deserts full of oil -- always the unspoken reality of our foreign policy and wars in the Middle Eastern region.

Of course the "shock and awe" of America's military might easily defeated the army of Saddam Hussein, but the post-invasion strategy was horribly botched, a complete misunderstanding of Iraq's religious and ethnic conflicts was soon revealed, incidents of prisoner abuse and torture shamed America's image around the world, and the impact of the U.S. deciding to fight an unnecessary war in Iraq served to inflame global opinion about the United States, and caused us to lose the moral high ground we had around the world after the vicious attacks of 9/11 (remember that?). And the strategic consequences of neglecting Afghanistan and inadvertently strengthening Iran because of the U.S. war in Iraq are now being discussed by the political talking heads.

But that's all history now, and the president asked the nation to "turn the page" last night. But what makes me so sad this morning is the enormous human cost of the war in Iraq; and how a massive number of people and families -- in America and Iraq -- have had their lives ended or changed forever because of this war and will have a hard time turning the page.

It is precisely because of the terrible human cost of war that Christian leaders and churches are supposed to ask the hardest questions about it. And many did about the war in Iraq. Let's remember the fact today that most Christian leaders and churches around the world rejected the arguments for America going to war against Iraq and opposed the U.S. invasion and occupation. They applied the peace-making ministry of Jesus and the rigorous historical criteria for what constitutes a "just war" and found the Iraq war painfully lacking adequate moral justification. But the United States government didn't heed the warnings and the objections of the international faith community, even in America, where political opinion was split about 50-50. The global church was right in rejecting this war from the outset, and the government of the United States was wrong for fighting it.

As President Obama announced the end of American troops' combat role in Iraq Aug. 31, an international Christian peace group issued a report questioning the United States' projection of a bright future for the war-torn Middle Eastern country.

"[T]onight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended," Obama said, in a televised evening address from the Oval Office. "Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country."

Since the draw-down of U.S. combat forces in Iraq began last year, almost 100,000 troops have been pulled from the country and U.S. bases have closed or been transferred to the control of Iraqi forces. Obama said that leaves behind only troops who will train and advise Iraqi security forces, participate with them in targeted anti-terrorism operations and protect U.S. civilians working in Iraq.

American officials have generally credited a "surge" -- an infusion of 20,000 new U.S. troops that began in 2007 and was targeted toward pacifying, block by block, the sectarian conflict and militants across Iraq -- with reducing violence significantly and enabling national elections to take place in March with little incident.

But the pre-election government is still in place because the newly elected parties have been unable, so far, to negotiate a workable governing coalition in Iraq's Parliament -- and some observers have questioned whether Iraq's future is as sanguine as Obama's speech suggested.

Shortly before the address, the international group Christian Peacemaker Teams issued a report based on interviews with Iraqis. It said they are profoundly uneasy about their country's future prospects.

Even if the "New START" nuclear arms reduction treaty is ratified by the Senate (and that is uncertain after Senate sponsors postponed debate this week until fall, at the earliest), the United States and Russia will still maintain large arsenals of missiles on hair-trigger alert. Meanwhile, other nations are tempted to join the nuclear-weapons club, seeing that as a way to boost both their influence and their security. Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, who heads the Two Futures Project, is a leader in an antinuclear movement among young evangelicals who view those weapons as both morally unjustifiable and actually dangerous to national security. He discussed the issues with U.S. News. Excerpts:
Click here to find out more!

Arms control isn't a particularly hot-button issue. Why now?

For two decades, there hasn't been a robust public discussion about the future of nuclear security and about what we are supposed to do with this legacy of the Cold War. Among members of the evangelical community, there was a reflexive Cold War-era, anti-Communist attitude that led them to be much more cautious in opposing nuclear weapons than folks who were further to the left on the political spectrum. But all the political rationales that prevented evangelicals from opposing a reduction in nuclear weapons are no longer in play. There are quite legitimate questions about the credibility of the goal of nuclear disarmament: Is it possible? How can we pursue the goal of zero? How can we secure Israel? But what isn't responsible is a knee-jerk, unreconstructed Cold War mentality that you hear frequently from people around the country.

Why should religious people care?

We're talking about a massive loss of life, massive destruction of the environment, and massive financial damage that would disproportionately impact the poor and would be an almost unimaginable blow to the rule of law and justice. All of these are things that evangelicals care passionately about. You don't need to be an evangelical to believe in the horrors of a nuclear attack, but these dangers are all things that are near and dear to the heart of the evangelical community. I've found an astonishing welcome to ideas about nuclear disarmament from national evangelical leaders.

For six years, I regularly spent an hour talking and listening through a small slot in a metal door. On the other side was the only woman on death row in Virginia, an inmate who pleaded guilty to hiring two men to kill her husband and stepson, allegedly in exchange for a cut of the insurance money. Sometimes I was allowed to sit in a chair as I stooped down to hear her, give her communion, or just hold her hand; usually I alternated between half-squatting or kneeling on the concrete floor. As chaplain at Virginia's only maximum-security prison for women, I expected to minister under challenging circumstances. These visits were unbearable, however, and not because of the physical conditions. It was my feeling--at first fleeting, now certain--that this woman doesn't deserve to die.

On Sept. 23, barring the governor's unlikely pardon or the Supreme Court taking her case, Teresa Lewis will die in the electric chair or by lethal injection (she hasn't chosen). She lost a federal appeal earlier this summer, putting her in line to be the first woman the state has killed in 98 years--and the 12th nationally since the high court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. She'll be the first of at least 16 executions scheduled across the country in the next six months, and the latest in a long, sad list of mentally handicapped people to receive a punishment they don't deserve. I'm not advocating for her release or making excuses for her crime. She isn't, either. But I am calling for clemency. The death penalty is too blunt and final for a world about which we can never be certain. More than 130 death-row inmates have been released for wrongful convictions in recent years. Even when someone pleads guilty, as Teresa did, there's almost always more to the story.

The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.

This sharp decline has contributed to an overall reduction of 8% in the number of unauthorized immigrants currently living in the U.S.-to 11.1 million in March 2009 from a peak of 12 million in March 2007, according to the estimates. The decrease represents the first significant reversal in the growth of this population over the past two decades.

These new Pew Hispanic Center estimates rely on data mainly from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and decennial census. The unauthorized immigrant population is estimated using the widely accepted residual method, in which a demographic estimate of the legal foreign-born population is subtracted from the total foreign-born population. The difference provides the basis for estimating the size and characteristics of the unauthorized immigrant population.

The Pew Hispanic Center's analysis also finds that the most marked decline in the population of unauthorized immigrants has been among those who come from Latin American countries other than Mexico. From 2007 to 2009, the size of this group from the Caribbean, Central America and South America decreased 22%.

It's the conundrum Protestant denominations with declining memberships and shrinking budgets are desperate to solve: How to stem the decades-long losses and attract new worshippers.

The United Methodist Church, the third largest denomination in the country, thinks it could be closer to finding the answer. It commissioned an ambitious survey of nearly all its 33,000 U.S. churches to find out what its growing memberships are doing to keep congregations thriving.

Of those churches, the four key factors of vitality stood out as "crystal clear findings that are actionable," according to the survey:

One of the successful churches is St. Luke's United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, which has seen its membership steadily grow over the years to nearly 6,200.

The church's senior pastor, the Rev. Kent Millard, said it has offered both traditional and contemporary worship services for years. At a contemporary service, congregants kick back with doughnuts and coffee, a live band plays music and clips from Hollywood movies are shown to illustrate Gospel messages.

"Worship is like going to a mall," Millard said. "There are all kinds of stores. Some people like specialty shops. Some like department stores. When you have variety, people can go where they like."

Religious scholars say the exhaustive survey is likely the first of its kind to try solving problems that for years have plagued mainline Protestant denominations like the Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians.

The U.S. membership of the United Methodist Church, which has most of its offices and operations in Nashville, dropped by nearly 1 percent last year, to 7.9 million members, according to Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, released by the National Council of Churches.

The Methodists' survey, conducted by consulting firm Towers Watson and sent out to churches in May, found that about 5,500 Methodist churches were considered vital, with high attendance, growth and congregation engagement. The project cost about $200,000.

Churches and pastors were asked survey questions like, "Approximately, what percent of your church's children participate in programs other than worship?" and to rate the "general effectiveness of the lay leadership in motivating and inspiring vitality in the life of the congregation."

"The most important outcome of the research is that there are clearly drivers that are absolutely understandable and actionable," said Neil Alexander, president and publisher of the United Methodist Publishing House and co-chair of the steering committee that commissioned the survey.

We know well what it means for people to be dissatisfied with Christianity, or to blurt out "I'm finished!" and publicly walk away. I've even heard people proclaim that the term "Christian" has been so torn apart in the battle-to-the-death between liberals and conservatives that there's no longer any point in using the term at all. Should we all be post-Christian now?

Yet some of us are still hanging in there. In fact, in the midst of the increasing skepticism, a number of good things are happening. For one, more people are speaking up about what's wrong with the institutional church, making bolder calls for it to change and adapt. This is good. Don't forget that Christianity has its heritage in the Jewish prophets, who took the religious institutions of their day to task for a multitude of sins. And the first-century rabbi whom Christians follow modeled himself on the great prophets of the Hebrew Bible. It's high time for a more prophetic, more counter-cultural Christian faith.

Knowing the Doubts from the Inside...

Perhaps the best thing that's happening is that those of us who remain are beginning to get it. We realize that "cultural Christianity" -- religious belief and practice that's "just obvious" because it's been inherited from one's parents and culture -- is largely a thing of the past. The burden is now on believers to show why their tradition is still relevant in today's world. As we know, many of our friends and critics doubt that it still is.

The ones who are best at speaking to a generation grown skeptical about religion are the ones who have felt the force of the criticisms, up close and personal. They are producing courageous (and widely read) manifestos for the future -- books like Tony Jones' The New Christians, Peter Rollins' How (Not) to Speak of God, Diana Butler Bass's Christianity for the Rest of Us, and Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change.

The sad thing is: much of the institutional church is going to turn its back on this new generation of spiritual seekers. It will declare them too heretical, or it will find their questions too troubling. It will ask them to shut up and sing the old hymns.

In some ways, these new Christians expected that. They are meeting in homes, in office buildings, in pubs ... and even in churches, when they are welcome there. They are finding what it means to form deep communities, to practice deep discipleship ... and then to sort out the beliefs as they go. Soon, I predict, this new movement will begin to dwarf some of the more traditional forms of religious expression.

Michael Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said that opinion on Beck is just as divided among Mormons as it is elsewhere.

"Views on Glenn Beck would be right across the spectrum," Otterson said. "It depends on where individual Latter-day Saints are. Some would embrace him completely and others would, no doubt, be at odds."

Otterson also noted that there are more than 6 million Mormons in the United States and that prominent Mormons in the political arena run the ideological gamut from Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D) to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R).

"It really underscores that members of the church are free to have their separate political views and express them whatever way they like," Otterson said, adding that Beck "would be the very first person to say that he does not speak for the church."

Philip Barlow, the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, said that Beck is "something of a polarizing figure" among the Mormon community.

Barlow noted that Beck's statement that the Constitution is an "inspired document," his calls for limited government and his emphasis on not exiling God from the public sphere "have considerable sympathy in Mormonism."

But Barlow added that Beck's claim that social justice is "a code word for Nazism and fascism" as well as his some of his more inflammatory remarks about his political adversaries have turned off some members of the church.

Building an Islamic community center near the site of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York will "deprive al Qaeda of its number-one recruiting tool," a former United States military interrogator in Iraq said Wednesday.

"The number-one reason foreign fighters came to Iraq was Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo," said Matthew Alexander, the author of "How to Break a Terrorist," referring to the notorious U.S.-run prison in Iraq and the detention center for foreign fighters at the U.S. military base in Cuba.

"Symbols do matter," Alexander said, arguing: "What's going to end the conflict is defeating al Qaeda's ability to recruit."

Alexander was speaking to reporters on a conference call in defense of the controversial project that has been labeled the "ground zero mosque."

Liberal Christian and Jewish leaders also participated in the call, organized by a group called Faith in Public Life.

Opponents of the plan to build the community center say it is too close to the site of the 9/11 terror attacks, and is an affront to the memory of those who died in the al Qaeda strike.