U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan on Thursday ordered the removal of a steeple and crucifix erected over a remote American base in the Muslim country after a soldier deployed there noted that the symbols violated Army regulations, and could reinforce suspicions that the United States is fighting a holy war.

It is unclear how long ago the Christian symbols at the chapel at Forward Operating Base Orgun-E had been in place. In terms of religious displays, they are hardly ostentatious — a cross on a small rooftop steeple and cross-shaped windows in the doors. But Sgt. Joel Muhlnickel was alarmed by the symbolism at Orgun-E, especially the cross that rises up over the rooftops at the base.

"When I think of an army sporting a Christian cross, I think Crusades," Muhlnickel wrote on Facebook from Orgun — a message that was forwarded to NBC News by a third party. "Neither my country nor my army force me to swear allegiance to Odin, Jesus, Buddha or Horus. Freedom from religious oppression is pretty much the reason why the United States was founded."

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"It is the sort of thing that provides a boundless bonanza of terrorist propaganda for the mujahedeen, the insurrectionists, the Taliban and al-Qaida that we are supposedly fighting to protect our national security," said Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the non-profit Military Religious Freedom Foundation. "The message of the cross on the chapel is basically putting out the message in Pashto, Dari and Arabic to please blow me up because I'm a latter day Christian crusader."

The U.S. military provides chapels for troops around the world and has thousands of chaplains deployed — the majority of them Christian, while there are also Jewish, Muslim and other faith leaders.

Chapels are set up even in outposts as far-flung as Orgun-E.

But Army regulations state that these facilities — usually nondescript temporary structures — are to be neutral gathering spaces, not dedicated to any one faith, except when being used for a specific worship service. Portable symbols, icons or statues can be used during religious services, but then must be removed or covered up for others who use the space.

"In general the chapels have to be ecumenical so they can be converted from one religion to another," said Elizabeth Hillman, professor of law at University of California Hastings College of Law and President of the National Institute of Military Justice. "To create permanent structures that evoke one particular religion — that is problematic.

"I would think that anything that would increase the vulnerability of a forward operating base is a problematic," Hillman added.

Muhlnickel raised his concerns through his chain of command, and then — unconvinced that it would result in action — turned to outside organizations, including the nonprofit American Atheists.

"Chaplains know the regulations very well," said Justin Griffith, an Army sergeant at Fort Bragg, N.C., and military director for American Atheists in his personal time. "Whoever authorized (the steeple and crosses) knew exactly what they were doing. It's intentionally disrespectful to the non-Christians in the U.S. military ... Put it in Afghanistan, the danger is very real, to personnel, even to Christians."

The Army, contacted by NBC on Tuesday morning, responded to queries Wednesday afternoon, saying the cross had been removed and boards had been placed over the cross-shaped windows while the base ordered new doors.

"The local command in Afghanistan is aware of this chapel and has taken appropriate action to ensure that it is changed into a neutral facility," said a statement from an Army Spokesman at the Pentagon.

Hours later, Orgun command sent out a memo throughout the base explaining that the chapel was to be brought into compliance by eliminating the crosses, and assuring soldiers that it would be handled in a respectful manner.

Griffith, an atheist who often calls out practices that he believes cross the line from the free exercise of religion to unconstitutional proselytizing or discrimination, has learned that his views are unpopular with many in the military. He's concerned about Muhlnickel suffering reprisal. 

"Sgt. Muhlnickel’s efforts just put the pin back in the grenade," said Griffith. "The military now needs to protect him from any backlash ... and not punish him for speaking out against the dangerous 'crusader' symbolism."

In similar situations that have come to light, military commanders have ordered the removal of the religious symbols. In April 2012, when a Marine Corps squadron revived the "Crusaders" name with the shield and cross logo for fighter jets, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation challenged the move, citing constitutional and security concerns. The next month, the Marine Corps said that the squadron had converted back to the moniker "Werewolves," replacing the logos from the jets, uniforms, buildings and elsewhere.

A chapel at Camp Marmal, another U.S. base in northern Afghanistan, was ordered to remove a large cross from its chapel after complaints, Politico reported. A spokesman from the Pentagon agreed that the Camp Marmal cross had violated Army regulations.

In Afghanistan, where the population is more than 99 percent Muslim, the tiny Christian population worships in secret, out of fear of attack by extremist Muslims. Christian evangelism is illegal in the country, and foreigners suspected of spreading Christian teachings have been deported by the government, and attacked and kidnapped by extremists.

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The Church of Scientology has strayed from principle and devolved into a cash-hungry enterprise that misuses parishioner donations to protect itself from questions and to intimidate its own members, a California couple charged Wednesday.

The couple said in a federal lawsuit that the church had misused about $400,000 of their money, including donations meant for construction projects and for relief from natural disasters.

They also said that church donations had been used to finance a high-priced lifestyle for its leader, David Miscavige.

The lawsuit, filed in Tampa, Fla., by Luis and Rocio Garcia of Irvine, Calif., accuses the church of fraud and breach of contract.

Read the complaint filed in federal court

The church said in a statement that it had not been served and could not comment on the lawsuit.

It added: “We can unequivocally state all funds solicited are used for the charitable and religious purposes for which they were donated.”

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The Garcias were members of the church for 28 years before leaving in 2010, their lawyer Theodore Babbitt told NBC News.

The church uses “large, high-pressure fundraising drives” as a main source of revenue and has morphed into an organization “whose primary purpose is taking people’s money,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit alleges that the church has used contributions to “stifle inquiries into the Church’s activities and finances, to intimidate members and ex-members” and “to finance the lavish lifestyle of Miscavige.”

Five Scientology organizations are named as defendants.

The lawsuit focuses on a Scientology building in Clearwater, Fla., that Babbitt said remains unopen. The California couple said that the church had accepted more than $200 million in donations in all for the building, known as “Super Power,” and spent less than half on construction.

The lawsuit makes specific charges about how the church misused the Garcias’ money. The couple claimed that they gave $340,000 for the building, in more than a dozen donations between 1998 and 2005, and were made promises that the church did not fulfill.

One of those donations came in August 2005, according to the suit, when the Garcias were asked to give $65,000 for a cross to go on top of the building and were told that contractors were ready to do the work. The cross did not go up for five years, the suit said.

The couple also charged that the church had misspent money meant for eradicating child pornography and helping victims of natural disasters.

The Garcias have spoken out against the church before.

Luis Garcia told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, for a profile published in 2011, that the church had strayed from the teachings of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and had been “corrupted.”

The church said that it had expelled Garcia, while he maintained that he resigned, according to the newspaper. The paper did not quote the church as giving a reason for the claimed expulsion.

Babbitt said it was the first time his law firm had been involved in legal action against the church.

Perhaps the highest-profile defection from the church has been that of Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning writer and director of the 2004 movie “Crash.” He belonged to the church for 34 years before leaving in 2009.

Haggis, in an interview last week with the NBC program “Rock Center with Brian Williams,” described the church as a cult and said he was disturbed by allegations of abuse at its highest levels, including violence and involuntary confinement.

The church said that Haggis is a hypocrite and hasn’t been an active member in years. The church said that “no independent evidence exists” to corroborate claims of abuse.

What is to blame for the Connecticut school attack?

In the wake of catastrophe, people want explanations, and as news spread of the mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, some religious conservatives were ready with an answer: the exclusion of God from public schools and the embrace of liberal social policies.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is ordained as a minister in the Southern Baptist Church, said Friday on Fox News that "we've systematically removed God from our schools."

"Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" he asked.

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Huckabee's comments drew criticism from progressive religious leaders, who accused him of suggesting that God wasn't there with the 26 victims at Sandy Hook.

Martin E. Marty, the prominent religious scholar, wrote Monday for the Center for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago (which is named for him) that Huckabee "wins, hands down, the prize for his absurdist judgment that 'Newtown' should have been no surprise."

Full coverage: Tragedy at Sandy Hook

Steve McSwain, a former Baptist minister who is now a nationally known interfaith activist, addressed Huckabee directly, writing: 

"With such remarks, you not only show little regard for those broken by this tragedy, but you make God into some kind a cosmic psychopath — vengeful, sickeningly repulsive, one who takes out his madness on innocent little children.

"Your reasoning is repulsive: Because we have removed your god from our schools, this is how your god gets even?" he wrote.

The intensity of the rhetoric underscores how quickly discussions of the religious underpinnings of tragedy can turn heated. Little noticed among Huckabee's critics is that he didn't say God turned his back on Newtown; he expressly said God was there in the good works people were doing.

"God wasn't armed. He didn't go to the school," Huckabee continued. "But God will be there in the form of a lot of people with hugs and therapy and a whole lot of ways in which he will be involved in the aftermath."

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Other social conservatives echoed Huckabee's thoughts on the root cause of Friday's attack.

James Dobson, the evangelical founder of the powerful organization Focus on the Family, said on his radio show, "Family Talk," that because "we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty, I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that's what's going on."

Dobson blamed two issues in particular: abortion and gay marriage.

"I mean, millions of people have decided that God doesn't exist or he's irrelevant to me, and we have killed 54 million babies, and the institution of marriage is right on the verge of a complete redefinition. Believe me, that is going to have consequences, too."

Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative news site WND (formerly World Net Daily), wrote Sunday that the U.S. should expect "more Sandy Hooks, not fewer," because of America's "secularism" and restrictions on guns.

Grounding his opposition to gun control in religious terms, Farah likened arguments for gun control to philosophies underpinning "Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union (and) Mao's China," declaring:

"We are reaping the seeds of the whirlwind we ourselves planted. ... It's not that there are too many guns in our hands. It's that there is not enough repentance in our hearts."

For teachers, classroom security concerns come to the fore

The temptation to leap to such judgments is understandable, the Rev. Jenny Warner of First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Ore., said in her sermon Sunday. But she argued that that's the coward's way out.

"How many people are saying, 'Oh, we need more gun control'? How many people are saying, 'If only God was more in our schools'? How many people are blaming it on this politician or that politician?" Warner asked her congregation.

"Another article I read was about how Mike Huckabee was blaming this on our politics, and so from both sides you've got the questions and the blame game happening."

Those are "all ways that make it easier ... to stay a little bit more removed from it, to not have to enter it in such a profound and intimate way," she said. But that's what makes it all the more important for religious people to confront tragedy, not seek to explain it.

Sure, "we need doctors," she said. "We need symposiums on world poverty. We need people to go in and address issues and to help provide a response. ...

"But we need healing, and healing comes with relationships. Healing comes by reaching out to someone and listening. Healing comes by calling and following up.

Healing comes when those four friends grab their friend and say, 'We're in this with you,'" she said, an allusion to Mark 2:1-12, in which four men lower their paralyzed friend through the roof of a crowded building where Jesus is preaching so he can be healed.

Real healing, Warner said, "steps into the pain and is with someone in it."

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Roughly one in six people around the world has no religious affiliation, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life found, making the unaffiliated the third-largest religious group worldwide, behind Christians and Muslims, and about equal in size to the world’s Catholic population.

The religiously unaffiliated population includes atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion in surveys, the study issued Tuesday reads. Many of the religiously unaffiliated, however, hold religious or spiritual beliefs, the study emphasized.

"For example, belief in God or a higher power is shared by 7 percent of Chinese unaffiliated adults, 30 percent of French unaffiliated adults and 68 percent of unaffiliated U.S. adults," it read.

Making up 16.3 percent of the world population, this group comprises a majority of the population in six countries. China's number of religiously unaffiliated is the largest, with a 62 percent share.

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The Pew Forum's study is based on self-identification.

Titled "The Global Religious Landscape," the study analyzed data available as of early 2012 from more than 2,500 national censuses and large-scale surveys, and found that Christians are the world's biggest religious group, with 2.2 billion people or 32 percent of the world’s population. The largest share of all Christians live in the United States, followed by Brazil and Mexico.

About half of all Christians are Catholic, while an estimated 37 percent of Christians are Protestant, the study shows. Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians make up 12 percent of Christians.

With 23 percent of the world's population, Muslims represent the second-largest religious group and are a majority in 49 countries, including 19 of the 20 countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Hindus make up 15 percent of the population, while the nearly 500 million Buddhists add up to 7 percent.

The study also found that the median age of Muslims (23 years) and Hindus (26) is younger than the median age of the world’s overall population (28), and more than 12 years younger than the median age of Jews, which is 36 years old.

"Muslims are going to grow as a share of the world's population, and an important part of that is this young age structure," Pew Forum demographer Conrad Hackett told Reuters.

Judaism has the weakest growth prospects in comparison.

There are about 15 million Jews in the world, or about 0.2 percent of the global population, and about 44 percent of them live in North America, while about 41 percent live mostly in Israel.

The Pew Forum study also shows that an estimated 405 million people practice various folk or traditional religions, including African traditional religions, Chinese folk religions, Native American religions and Australian aboriginal religions. More than 70 percent of the world’s folk religion practitioners live in China.

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A Milwaukee-area Catholic priest was stripped of his priestly duties after he presided over a Mass with a woman priest last month in Georgia.

On Nov. 17, the Rev. Bill Brennan, a 92-year-old Jesuit, performed a liturgy in Columbus, Ga., at which Janice Sevre-Duszynska, an ordained member of Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an advocacy group that is not sanctioned by the Vatican, was a participant.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee and his religious order, the Society of Jesus, ordered Brennan not to perform any priestly duties in public or present himself as a priest publicly.

"I was really angry when I found out ... that his faculties were suspended, too, because for God's sake, he's 92 years old," the Rev. Jerry Zawada, a Franciscan and a friend of Brennan's who has also led liturgies with Sevre-Duszynska and was suspended for it, told NBC News. "But he's so faithful to what needs to happen."

"He's willing to take risks at that level," Zawada, a 75-year-old Franciscan, added.

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The Catholic Church prohibits women's ordination, saying it has no authority to ordain women because Jesus chose only men as his apostles. The church's Canon Law 1024 says only baptized men may receive holy orders. 

Pope urges 'obedience'
Pope John Paul II issued a letter in 1994 saying that the church "has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women," and in 2010 the church included the "attempted ordination of women" among the list of grave crimes against its law, under the same category as the sexual abuse of minors. Grave crimes are punishable by defrocking or excommunication.

Earlier this year, Pope Benedict XVI denounced the priests supporting women's ordination, saying their desire to change the church was a "desperate push" driven by their "own preferences and ideas." Instead, the pope urged for the "radicalism of obedience."

About 59 percent of American Catholics are in favor of women's ordination, according to a 2010 poll by The New York Times and CBS, but the Vatican sees the initiative as having the potential to cause a rift in the church.

Brennan is only the most recent priest to be penalized for his support of women's ordination.

Last month, the Rev. Ray Bourgeois, an American of the Maryknoll religious order, was dismissed by the Vatican's doctrinal watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, for his support of women's ordination.

Last week, the Vatican also stripped an Austrian priest of his right to use the title monsignor for advocating in favor of women priests and married priests. 

'Good stubborn'
Sevre-Duszynska told NBC News she wasn't surprised by the actions taken to penalize Brennan, whom she describes as being "good stubborn" and "full of such fire."

"It was a hope in the back of my heart that these men would walk in solidarity with Bill, stand up for justice and … make it a new world, make it a new day in our church, as Bill has done," she said. "It’s time for the rest of the male priests to find the courage to listen to the workings of the Holy Spirit in their heart and conscience."

Sevre-Duszynska first met Brennan two years ago at a civil disobedience action organized by SOA Watch, an organization that seeks to close a U.S. Army training school at Fort Benning, Ga.

The school used to be known as the School of the Americas, and SOA Watch claims it was involved in human rights abuses in Latin America. For many years, Brennan worked as a missionary in the Central American country of Belize when it was a British colony known as British Honduras.

Brennan, who uses a wheelchair when his legs become tired, and Sevre-Duszynska were among the 29 people arrested at the protest.

"He's very fragile, but he's very strong in his heart," Sevre-Duszynska said of Brennan. "He's living in the heart of God, and he has lots of strength inside."

Not showing off 'for the ladies'
Brennan's "lifetime of service to the poor" and his work with immigrants and those marginalized by society will continue to be honored by the Jesuits, Jeremy Langford, a spokesman for the Jesuits' Chicago-Detroit province, told NBC News.

While Brennan's diocesan faculties have been withdrawn, he remains a Jesuit, Langford said, adding that the Society of Jesus has no intention of taking further actions against Brennan.

The Jesuits are mostly known for their missionary work and support of human rights, social justice and education. The Society of Jesus operates many colleges and universities around the world. 

Brennan, who lives with other retired Jesuits in the Milwaukee area, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he understood the risks when he decided to perform a liturgy alongside a woman priest.

"Sometimes in our lives we have to trust our conscience and bring about the consequences," he told the newspaper. "I wasn't trying to show off for the ladies."

According to Sevre-Duszynska, Brennan compared his support of women's ordination to his support for women's suffrage, remembering that when he was born in 1920, his mother was still not allowed to vote.

Bob Graf, who was a Jesuit and has known Brennan for almost 20 years, spoke to Brennan this week and said he was taking the decision in stride.

"He’s very calm, he’s very peaceful, which is surprising, but he is," Graf told NBC News. "He’s a wise old man," he said, adding that Brennan will continue his life's work. "He just can't wear his robe and collar."

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Updated Dec. 5, 2:25 p.m. ET: Cadet Blake Page has learned from his superiors at West Point that he will be given an honorable discharge and not be required to pay "recoupment" costs for three and a half years at the military academy. He told NBC News that when out-processing is finished, he will move to Minnesota and "continue the work I've started in whatever way I can."

Original Post: A West Point cadet publicly announced his decision to quit the prestigious military academy just months before graduating to protest what he sees as the illegal infusion of military procedures and events with fundamentalist Christian proselytizing.

To call attention to his move, senior Blake Page wrote a scathing commentary on West Point, published Monday in the Huffington Post.

"Countless officers here and throughout the military are guilty of blatantly violating the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution," wrote Page, who was slated to graduate in May. "These men and women are criminals, complicit in light of day defiance of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the non-religious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation."

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A public affairs officer at West Point told NBC News he was seeking a response to Page's commentary and his resignation, but had not arranged an interview or responded to the cadet's assertions by the time of publication.

Page's move was an unusual one, and it could come with a big price tag for the 25-year-old who served in the Army prior to enrolling. He could be required to pay the Army some $200,000-$300,000 in "recoupment" costs for his time at West Point.

"It's a very unusual move," said Elizabeth Hillman, professor of law at University of California Hastings College who specializes in military law. She said that while many cadets struggle with issues of conscience, few leave as a result.

"Cadets will tell you it’s very hard to leave," she said. "It’s much harder to leave than to stay."

"This kid just torched his career in the Army, and his degree at West Point," said Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates for total separation of church and state. He likens Page’s move to those of Rosa Parks in the civil rights movement and monks who light themselves on fire to protest Chinese policies in Tibet. "People should recognize courage when they see it."

While at West Point, Page established a chapter of the Secular Students Alliance to support non-religious cadets at the institution. He has argued against prayer being included in mandatory events. He says he has faced persistent discrimination as a known atheist and has been told by his superiors that he will never be a good leader until he "fills the hole in his heart."

His complaints have won some concessions, with the backing of the non-profit Military Religious Freedom Foundation — which provides legal aid and a channel to the media — and the support of Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.

But Page says that even sympathetic military superiors are reluctant to take action on religious issue because of the sensitivity, and says that applications to leave campus on routine "rest and relaxation" outings were systematically denied him and his fellow secularists. 

"It’s very clear that there is a considerable level of distaste for atheists here," he said.

When he informed superiors of his plan to leave West Point, about a month ago, Page says generals appealed to him to work through official channels to bring change at the academy. 

"My motivation for resigning was first because I didn’t want to be part of it, but also to motivate other people to stand up and be counted. Without something bold that gets attention, I don’t see a way to inspire anybody to stand up and say 'I’m tired of this'," Page told NBC News. "And talking isn’t working, it hasn’t been working. I wanted to do something more."

Long-held traditions are changing at West Point, as elsewhere in the military. Last week West Point held the first same-sex wedding in its chapel.

Page has received a ream of comments congratulating and thanking him for the message he sent with his departure.

But he also got plenty of blow-back from other soldiers.

One comment posted to his Facebook page by a fellow soldier lambasted him for "(doing his best) to drag (West Point) through the mud." 

"I wish you could just pack your bags, slink away, and fade into oblivion, but I guess that's not dramatic enough," the post said. 

Page said he is planning to write a book about his experiences.

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Update at 7.20 a.m. ET on Nov. 24: Milwaukee Archbishop James Harvey and five others were made cardinals by Pope Benedict Saturday, Reuters reports. He reminded them that they wear red vestments because they must be ready to defend the faith "even to the shedding of your blood" in a ceremony in St. Peter's Basilica.

Published on Nov. 23, 2012: ROME — The red, or rather scarlet, carpet will be rolled in St. Peter's Basilica on Saturday for the elevation of six cardinals. The new so-called "princes of the church" will receive their ring, scarlet skullcap and the traditional biretta, a four-cornered hat, in a solemn ceremony presided by Pope Benedict XVI.

"Cardinal Dolan is definitely a candidate and enjoys a lot of name recognition — which helps in a global church," Alessandro Speciale, Vatican correspondent at the Religious News Service, told NBC News.

"But two factors might weaken his chances: coming from the world's only superpower could still be seen as a negative factor in a global church, and he has never held a leadership position in the Roman Curia," he said, referring to the Holy See's administrative body.  

In any case, the choice of non-Europeans to high office in the Vatican is a way for the Holy See to shift the balance of power towards other continents and prove the “universality of the church.” 

"There was considerable criticism of the last group of cardinals being too European, too Italianate, and too Curial. I think it's fair to read this group as a response to that criticism," Weigel said.

Speciale agrees: "The previous Consistory in February had been criticized for being overly skewed towards Italy (and more in general Europe) and, again, the Curia. With this quite unusual second batch of red hats in a year, Benedict wanted to show his attention to the rest of the world."

Whatever the reason for the choice of non-European Cardinals, the selection plays in favor of the American grouping, which will have one more elector in their ranks.

"The power of Americans in the Vatican has grown significantly in the last few years: not just because of the star power of Cardinal Dolan but also thanks to the organization, economic resources and boldness in the defense of Catholic values in front of a perceived hostile society is admired by many in the Vatican," Speciale said.

"But it remains to be seen whether this numerical weight will actually translate into influence at the Conclave: though national links are powerful, many other factors — the strongest being whether one is part on not of the Roman Curia — play into the secret voting in the Sistine Chapel."

When the time comes, all Cardinals-electors from all over the world will "lock" themselves in the Sistine Chapel in order to vote for a new Pope. While it is unclear who will emerge from it as the new leader of the world's Catholics, one thing is certain: that American influence in that choice went up a notch.

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Damon Vix didn't have to go to court to push Christmas out of the city of Santa Monica. He just joined the festivities.

The atheist's anti-God message alongside a life-sized nativity display in a park overlooking the beach ignited a debate that burned brighter than any Christmas candle.

Santa Monica officials snuffed the city's holiday tradition this year rather than referee the religious rumble, prompting churches that have set up a 14-scene Christian diorama for decades to sue over freedom of speech violations. Their attorney will ask a federal judge Monday to resurrect the depiction of Jesus' birth, while the city aims to eject the case.

"It's a sad, sad commentary on the attitudes of the day that a nearly 60-year-old Christmas tradition is now having to hunt for a home, something like our savior had to hunt for a place to be born because the world was not interested," said Hunter Jameson, head of the nonprofit Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee that is suing.

Missing from the courtroom drama will be Vix and his fellow atheists, who are not parties to the case. Their role outside court highlights a tactical shift as atheists evolve into a vocal minority eager to get their non-beliefs into the public square as never before.

National atheist groups earlier this year took out full-page newspaper ads and hundreds of TV spots in response to the Catholic bishops' activism around women's health care issues and are gearing up to battle for their own space alongside public Christmas displays in small towns across America this season.

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"In recent years, the tactic of many in the atheist community has been, if you can't beat them, join them," said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center and director of the Newseum's Religious Freedom Education Project in Washington. "If these church groups insist that these public spaces are going to be dominated by a Christian message, we'll just get in the game — and that changes everything."

In the past, atheists primarily fought to uphold the separation of church and state through the courts. The change underscores the conviction held by many nonbelievers that their views are gaining a foothold, especially among young adults.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a study last month that found 20 percent of Americans say they have no religious affiliation, an increase from 15 percent in the last five years. Atheists took heart from the report, although Pew researchers stressed that the category also encompassed majorities of people who said they believed in God but had no ties with organized religion and people who consider themselves "spiritual" but not "religious."

"We're at the bottom of the totem pole socially, but we have muscle and we're flexing it," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation. "Ignore our numbers at your peril."

The trouble in Santa Monica began three years ago, when Vix applied for and was granted a booth in Palisades Park alongside the story of Jesus Christ's birth, from Mary's visit from the Angel Gabriel to the traditional crèche.

Vix hung a simple sign that quoted Thomas Jefferson: "Religions are all alike -- founded on fables and mythologies." The other side read "Happy Solstice." He repeated the display the following year but then upped the stakes significantly.

In 2011, Vix recruited 10 others to inundate the city with applications for tongue-in-cheek displays such as a homage to the "Pastafarian religion," which would include an artistic representation of the great Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The secular coalition won 18 of 21 spaces. The two others went to the traditional Christmas displays and one to a Hanukkah display.

The atheists used half their spaces, displaying signs such as one that showed pictures of Poseidon, Jesus, Santa Claus and the devil and said: "37 million Americans know myths when they see them. What myths do you see?"

Most of the signs were vandalized and in the ensuing uproar, the city effectively ended a tradition that began in 1953 and earned Santa Monica one of its nicknames, the City of the Christmas Story.

The Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee argues in its lawsuit that atheists have the right to protest, but that freedom doesn't trump the Christians' right to free speech.

"If they want to hold an opposing viewpoint about the celebration of Christmas, they're free to do that — but they can't interfere with our right to engage in religious speech in a traditional public forum," said William Becker, attorney for the committee. "Our goal is to preserve the tradition in Santa Monica and to keep Christmas alive."

The city doesn't prohibit churches from caroling in the park, handing out literature or even staging a play about the birth of Jesus and churches can always set up a nativity on private land, Deputy City Attorney Jeanette Schachtner said in an email.

The decision to ban the displays also saves the city, which had administered the cumbersome lottery process used to award booths, both time and money while preserving the park's aesthetics, she said.

For his part, Vix is surprised — and slightly amused — at the legal battle spawned by his solitary act but doesn't plan anything further.

"That was such a unique and blatant example of the violation of the First Amendment that I felt I had to act," said the 44-year-old set builder. "If I had another goal, it would be to remove the 'under God' phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance — but that's a little too big for me to take on for right now."

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and religion, but also states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." That has been interpreted by courts as providing for separation of church and state, barring government bodies from promoting, endorsing or funding religion or religious institutions. 

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