Bringing the Church to the Courtroom

The day McCaleb said this, lawyers were preparing to intervene in the dispute over the Mount Soledad cross, a war memorial erected in 1954 in La Jolla, Calif., and challenged by an atheist veteran. Federal judges ordered the cross to be removed from government land, but Justice Anthony M. Kennedy granted a temporary stay on July 3.

"For private citizens to be told they can't memorialize their dead is an outrage," said McCaleb, noting similar cases elsewhere. "It's not a matter of these crosses radiating secret Christian rays that will convert people."

Federal courts have said in the Mount Soledad case and other disputes that private land, including church property, is the appropriate place for such religious displays. They cite the Establishment Clause in the Constitution, which prohibits the government from sanctioning or favoring one religion over another.

What motivated D. James Kennedy and other conservatives -- including James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family and William Bright of the Campus Crusade for Christ -- to form the ADF was the impression that Christians were losing too many such battles.

"It was just years of seeing the ACLU and its cronies attacking religious organizations or religious exercise," Kennedy said. "And, very frequently, there was nobody that even showed up to defend the Christian position."

To change the equation, the alliance hired Reagan-era prosecutor Alan Sears. He later brought in corporate lawyer Jeffery Ventrella. Mostly under Ventrella's watch, the ADF has schooled more than 800 outside lawyers, each promising to donate 450 hours to the cause.

Ventrella runs an annual summer seminar, which this year brought 100 law students to Scottsdale. The idea, according to ADF documents, is to train them in "a distinctly Christian worldview of law" before they head to clerkships and other influential posts, "perhaps even Supreme Court justices."

Some of them met recently at a training session in Chicago. Lawyers and preachers jotted tips as ADF speakers explained that prayer is not always enough: Protecting the faith sometimes demands lawsuits and clamor.

"I was looking for a way to reconcile my faith and my professional life. The ADF helped me be not a Christian and a lawyer but a Christian lawyer," said Chicago litigator Melanie Jo Triebel, who says that the "Christian side of the debate" has not been effective enough.

The ADF's rising profile in churches and the media attracts an average of 300 inquiries a month. One recent day, a call came from a government employee disappointed by a diversity training video because it did not portray homosexuality negatively. A graduating high school senior called to say he had been told not to use Jesus's name in a speech.

"It's definitely an affirmation of our fallen state as humans," Renee Bergmen said of her work evaluating such complaints. "But it's a blessing to provide an answer, and that answer being faith in Jesus Christ."

Every December, the ADF monitors the expression of Christmas, fearful that the encouragement of greetings such as "Happy Holidays" and other steps taken in the name of cultural sensitivity are costing the day its religious identity. Last year, the organization received 434 calls.