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A Muslim groupsaid it wants to see Ohio retain its state motto—"With God all things arepossible"—even though a federal court has ruled it is an unconstitutionalgovernment endorse-ment of Christianity. The Council on American-Islamic Relations saidthe motto does not endorse only one religion, but advances a moral truth common to most.

The group noted the Koran teaches, "Know you not that God is able to do allthings?" (Sura 2:106). The council said the US is facing a decline in moral valuesand respect for religion. "These problems will not be solved by eliminatingreferences to God from public discourse."

Hong Kong is considered one of the least religious cities in the world—with 64percent of more than 500 local people polled in an international survey saying they do notbelieve in any sort of religion, compared with the world’s average of 13 percent.

In Hong Kong, only 23 percent of the respondents said they regarded God as of"high importance," compared with 63 percent of those surveyed in other parts ofthe globe.

The survey said that more than half of the Hong Kong people interviewed did not thinkthere is any God, or did not know what to answer when asked whether God was a kind ofspirit or a person.

Worldwide, 87 percent of the respondents said they believed in some form of religion,be they Roman Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists.

"This century is known as 'The martyrs' century' because more people have losttheir lives for their Christianity since 1900 than in all the previous centuriestogether," writes the mission agency Open Doors, founded in 1955 by a Dutchman knownas Brother Andrew, whose 1967 bookGod's Smuggler has sold 14 million copies aroundthe globe.

Negotiations between 10 Downing Street (office of the prime minister), Lambeth Palace(office of the Archbishop of Canterbury) and the New Millennium Experience Company(responsible for the Millennium Dome going up in London) have broken down over …prayer. Before he died, the country's Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Basil Hume, hadsuggested that Britain's third millennium be ushered in at the new Dome with a prayer ledby his Anglican counterpart, Dr. George Carey. But Dome organizers and Blair officialsdisagree, saying a prayer at midnight would be too much of a downer in the midst of whatthey want to be a party atmosphere.

During Christianity's first four centuries, leaders of the faith collected the writingsthat would authoritatively describe Christ and His church while rejecting others writtenat the same time. The 27 chosen books, beginning with the Gospel of Matthew and concludingwith Revelation, comprise the New Testament.

"In these alone is proclaimed the doctrine of godliness," declaredAthanasius, Bishop of Alexandria in 367, a man credited with first using the word canon todescribe the Bible's contents.

But these days, mass market publishing is bringing to the public ancient texts thatAthanasius and other early church leaders excluded. Some are works of popular piety (suchas the Infancy Gospel of James, which relates a life of the Virgin Mary); others are bookscondemned as heretical (such as the gnostic Gospel of Thomas, containing 114 sayingsattributed to Jesus).

Unlike the biblical gospels, The gospel of Thomas contains no narrative, only sayingsattributed to Jesus, some familiar, others decidedly not. Its origins lie withsecond-century Christian gnostics, who taught that matter was evil, God utterly remote andsalvation available only to the few who could attain hidden spiritual knowledge. The earlychurch condemned these beliefs as heretical.

Most [British] adults have a copy of the Bible at home, but nearly all say they neverread it. Research commissioned by the Bible Society indicates that more than 30 million[Britons] have a Bible in their home, and six out of ten adults claim personally to ownone. The findings indicate that 3 percent of the adult population--1.3 millionpeople--reads something from the Bible every day, with 2 percent reading it several timesa week and 13 percent reading it once in the past year. More than 60 per cent of adultswould seem not to have read anything from the Bible in the past year. "We aredelighted that so many people own so many Bibles," Peter Kimber, the union's chiefexecutive, said. "But what is the point of keeping it on the shelf when it isprobably the most important book anyone should read?"