New White House Petition Website Attracts Many Church-State Issues

At the beginning of this month, the White House announced its new We the People website. As reported by Politico, the site allows anyone to post a petition to the Administration to take action on an issue of concern.  If a petition garners 5000 signatures in 30 days, a working group of policy officials in the White House will respond to it.  So far, a number of the most popular petitions raise church-state issues.  A report in yesterday's Christian Post calls some of the petitions "anti-God." A petition to remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance has now attracted over 13,000 signatures, and one to remove "In God We Trust" from currency has 9100.  A petition to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act has attracted 8900 signatures. A petition to "repeal the tax exemption for churches and allow them to apply like a non-profit organization" has 7300 signatures.  The petition that appears to have attracted the most signatures-- over 19,000-- calls for an investigation into allegations of prosecutorial and judicial misconduct in the case of Sholom Rubashkin. A number of other petitions on religion and church-state issues have not yet reached the 5000 signature mark. All petitions are available here.