ATLANTA, Ga — The battle for Jesus played itself out Saturday as it does every year during Atlanta’s largest event for gay people.

Outside the gates of Piedmont Park, where much of the Atlanta Pride Festival takes place, a handful of conservative Christians carried Bibles and signs, warning arriving gays of impending eternal doom unless they change.

For the past two years, local churches who affirm gays have mounted a counteroffensive. Their members stand near the conservatives, holding signs saying that God accepts gays just as they are.

“We are letting people know that there is an alternative message,” said Lisa Costen of Atlanta.

She attends Trinity United Methodist Church, which affirms gays though the United Methodist denomination has not taken that step.

The battling groups reflect much of what is happening inside American Christianity, as churches grapple with how to treat gay members. Some reject them. Some welcome them with open arms. Others are trying to find a balance.

Inside the park, local churches, from a born-again, charismatic gay congregation to mainline churches, such as the Episcopal Church, have taken vendors’ booths and invite...

A blue, cross-like design emblazoned on T-shirts at Penn State University has some critics seeing red.

The shirts — intended to foster school spirit — sport a vertical blue line down the center with the words “Penn State White Out” emblazoned across the chest, forming a design that some say resembles a cross. The back of the shirt depicts the same blue line obscured by the words, “Don’t be intimated … It’s just me and 110,000 of my friends.” Roughly 30,000 of the shirts have been sold.

Penn State says it has received six complaints about the shirt, including one from the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia branch, from people who say it connotes a Christian cross. The logo design also has become the focus of controversy in the student newspaper, “The Daily Collegian,” which has received several letters to the editor on both sides of the issue.

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HEMINGWAY, S.C. —Rehobeth Pentecostal Holiness Church near Hemingway, observed their centennial recently. The committee prepared a pictorial souvenir book that chronicles the founder and the founding of the church, its progress and its present day activities.

In 1909 William James (Uncle Billy) Cox and his wife Sarah Jane Stone Cox started having church services in the home of their daughter and son-in-law, Ethel and John Briley Altman, in the Vox Community. This was approximately four miles from the church’s present location. John Briley served as song leader and according to records, secretary and treasurer. It is said that he would sit on his front porch and practice the songs he planned for the next service.

It is also reported that Uncle Billy, who was very religious and left a wonderful Christian heritage for his family to follow, was in his favorite chair on his porch when a little bird lit on the porches edge. He prayed, “Dear Lord, if I’m living a life pleasing in your sight, let that bird light on my head.” The bird did just that and if you listen closely, his praises can be heard even today!

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FORT OGLETHORPE, Ga. — Despite a large public outcry over its decision to censor Bible verse banners held by high school football cheerleaders on the playing field, a Georgia school board is refusing to change its mind. However, the controversial policy has compelled many students to passionately defend their free-speech rights and proclaim their Christian beliefs.

The Catoosa County Board of Education in Georgia decided last night that it will continue to ban Bible-verse banners held by cheerleaders on the Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School football field. The ban was put in place after one woman complained the on-field banners violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Many Christian parents and students in the community have voiced their disapproval of the ban by wearing “Warriors for Christ” T-shirts to football games and displaying scores of posters with Bible verses. And the Board’s decision on Tuesday night came despite another round of pleas from Christian parents who attended the meeting.

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CANTON, N.C. (AP)— A North Carolina pastor says his church plans to burn Bibles and books by Christian authors on Halloween to light a fire under true believers.

Pastor Marc Grizzard told Asheville TV station WLOS that the King James version of the Bible is the only one his small western North Carolina church follows. He says all other versions, such as the Living Bible, are “satanic” and “perversions” of God’s word.

On Halloween night, Grizzard and the 14 members of the Amazing Grace Baptist Church also will burn music and books by Christian authors, such as Billy Graham and Rick Warren.

Telephone calls to the Amazing Grace Baptist Church and Grizzard’s home were not immediately returned Wednesday.