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Today's top articles:

1. Military chaplain groups debate need for executive order

Two groups that represent military chaplains disagree on whether President Bush should issue an executive order requiring the military to allow Christian chaplains to pray in Jesus' name.

Some chaplains have complained their commanders have ordered them to use only nonsectarian prayers during mandatory military ceremonies. International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers executive director Billy Baugham told ct the concerned chaplains may need to issue a class-action lawsuit. These complaints prompted 74 members of Congress to sign a letter to President Bush that was sent October 25, 2005, encouraging him to issue the order.

But the leader of the group that represents most evangelical chaplains says such an order is unnecessary. The Rev. Herman Keizer Jr., chairman of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces, told The Washington Post the order "would just precipitate more litigation." Keizer's association represents more than 70 percent of the 7,620 chaplains in the military.

Keizer said the military is "now effectively addressing the current religious concerns." As long as a chaplain can decline to participate, the association sees nothing wrong with a commander asking a chaplain to pray nonsectarian prayers at mandatory ceremonies. However, the article does not make clear whether chaplains can indeed beg off these ceremonies. Military spokesman have repeatedly said chaplains can pray however they want in their own non-mandatory services.

2. Gays can't come to Mass. to marry

The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled this week that residents of states in which same-sex marriage is banned cannot come to Massachusetts to marry. The Boston Globe writes, "Opponents of same-sex marriage said they will now focus on prohibiting gay marriage in the six states that lack so-called Defense of Marriage statutes or constitutional amendments against gay marriage."

''What this means is that anyone who travels to Massachusetts and back to their home states and initiates litigation in those states, that litigation has now come to a screeching halt," said Mathew D. Staver, president of Liberty Counsel.

3. Prayer Has No Power to Heal

If you're sick, and people are praying for you, try not to find out about it. That's (kind of) the finding of the largest scientific study on the results of prayer on the recovery of people who have had cardiac bypass surgery. The study found that the prayer of strangers had no effect on patients' recovery, and that patients who knew people were praying for them fared a tad worse.

"There have now been two big studies, with hundreds and hundreds of patients, that show no effect," Dr. Harold G. Koenig, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, told the Los Angeles Times. "Let's move on now and direct our money somewhere else."

Two Catholic monasteries and a Protestant group prayed for the heart patients. They were given a list with patients' first name and last initial. Prayers were conducted starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks. Prayers asked for "a successful surgery and a quick, healthy recovery and no complications."

Researchers didn't ask that patients not pray for themselves, and they didn't ask family members to stop praying. So, there is no way to tell who in the 1,800 person study actually got the most prayer. Obviously, the study didn't measure the effect of prayers offered by people who knew the patients or if prayers were answered in unexpected ways. So what, exactly, did the study find? Weblog just experienced déjà vu.

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March (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50