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A Wisconsin-based group of atheists and agnostics has filed suit against President Bush over the federal law designating a National Day of Prayer. The Freedom from Religion Foundation maintains that the law violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against an official establishment of religion. The suit, filed October 3, charges that the National Day of Prayer Task Force, chaired by Shirley Dobson, has ties to Focus on the Family, a nonprofit evangelical organization led by her husband, James Dobson. The task force rents office space in the ministry’s Colorado Springs headquarters.

Although only 33 churches nationwide signed up to participate in a conservative Christian group’s “pulpit freedom” protest on the last Sunday of September, the planners viewed it as a success.

Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund, which encouraged pastors to endorse political candidates from their pulpits, said the purpose was not to inject politics into worship services. Rather, it was aimed at prompting a legal battle over an Internal Revenue Service restriction which, as a condition of churches’ tax exemption, prohibits them from endorsing political candidates.