New York City buses will soon carry advertisements that oppose the construction of the mosque near ground zero and depict a plane flying toward a World Trade Center engulfed in flames.

The group behind the advertisement, American Freedom Defense Initiative, also created those “Leaving Islam?” bus ads that have created controversy at a host of American cities. Their line of reasoning seems to be that Islam poses a religious, political, economic and military danger to the U.S.

Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice wants the State Department to remove the imam behind Cordoba House from a taxpayer-funded trip to fellow Muslims overseas. The ACLJ also explains why they are suing to stop the mosque despite their self-professed dedication to religious freedom.

The Christian charity whose 10 workers were murdered in Afghanistan last week said they have no plans to leave, and Pa.-based Mennonite Central Committee, where one of the men worked, denied that he was in the country to convert Muslims. A Somali militant group with links to al-Qaida has banned three Christian aid agencies from its territories.

Three men who sued the Vatican over sexual abuse in Kentucky have dropped their case. The Belgian bishop who resigned last April after admitting abusing his nephew paid “substantial” sums to his victim’s family, according to a spokesman.

The stock market rises in Muslim countries during Ramadan, according to a new study. The Council on American-Islamic Relations is suing for more information about the FBI killing of a Detroit imam.

Americans aged 36-50 are more loyal to religion than Baby Boomers (but really, who isn’t?) according to a new study. Younger Latinos are becoming less Catholic, and Catholic Latinos are less religious than Protestant ones, according to a different study.

The Church of God, the one based in Cleveland, Tenn., will permit women to serve on church councils but not to become bishops. An Ohio church protested strippers, so strippers are now protesting the church. (A photo from the protest, taken from a discreet distance, is top left.) Police arrested a Georgia pastor for protesting against a high school’s demon mascot. Thousand of Poles want a cross moved from the presidential palace.

The Christian Science Monitor looks at Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to restore church authority. Mel Gibson’s father called Benedict a homosexual. Mentally ill people in India go to a Hindu temple rather than doctors for help. A Christian school in California fired Catholic teachers for not being Protestant.

Roshi Robert Aitken, the dean of American Zen, died last Thursday.