Mealtime prayers may cease at U.S. Naval Academy

Mealtime prayers at the U.S. Naval Academy might cease if the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., upholds a lower court’s ban on saying grace at Virginia Military Institute.

In light of the VMI case, Naval Academy officials in Annapolis, Md., are reviewing the legality of traditional prayers at lunch, which probably date from the school’s founding 157 years ago.

The 4,000 midshipmen are required to be present at mealtime but praying is up to them, Navy officials said.

“It is made available as an option,” said Cmdr. Bill Spann, academy spokesman. “The chaplain says, ‘Let us pray,’ and you do if you want to and don’t if you don’t.”

A judge ruled in January that grace before meals at VMI is unconstitutional, supporting an American Civil Liberties Union claim based on separation of church and state.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed a lower court’s decision that blocked academies from requiring students to attend chapel.

Reconstruction of historic temple nearly complete

Mormon hotelier and farmer William H. Walker heeded the call more than 150 years ago, devoting one day in every 10 to building a grand temple envisioned as the spiritual home of his fledgling religion.

Less than a decade later, that temple in Nauvoo, Ill., lay in ruins  ravaged by fire and storm after persecution forced the Mormons to abandon the city they carved in the Mississippi River wilderness.

Today, great-grandson and hotelier Kay Walker spends one morning a week on the same high river bluff, helping rebuild the temple. The work is almost complete. The temple is due to be dedicated at the end of June, following a six-week-long open house.

Architect Steve Goodwin, above left, says the reconstruction project has been a balancing act between authenticity and the inevitable touch of today’s technology.

Mormons fleeing persecution in Missouri arrived at this bend of the Mississippi River in 1839. It was here that church founder Joseph Smith Jr. announced many of the holy revelations that became cornerstones of the faith.

In 1841, he declared a temple should be built. It was  and the big, stone house of worship was the site where Smith originated some of the unique and secret rites Mormons practice to this day.

Nebraska Supreme Court to define a church

The Nebraska Supreme Court is being asked to decide what defines a church in a case stemming from a liquor license granted to an Omaha convenience store that was challenged by a nearby church.

The city denied the Kum & Go store a liquor license because it is within 150 feet of the House of Faith. The store then got the state Liquor Control Commission to grant the license on grounds that the House of Faith doesn’t meet criteria for a church.

The commission says a church is “a building owned by a religious organization used primarily for religious purposes,” but House of Faith rents space in its building.

Backing the church and city, the American Civil Liberties Union called the commission’s ruling “nonsensical, discriminatory and unconstitutional.”