One of the largest rescue missions in the U.S. has already served 3,100 people living on the streets of Los Angeles Thanksgiving dinner last Saturday. Its staff plans to serve hundreds more today at its shelter where an average of 800 people sleep every night. The scene is being repeated all week at the more than 300 Union Rescue Missions for the hundreds and sometimes thousands of homeless throughout the country.

However, perhaps nowhere is the homeless population more evident than when the multitudes are seen in long lines during the week at various homeless shelters who stage their biggest Thanksgiving events on days other than Thursday.

The Union Rescue Mission says that homelessness is devastating communities across the nation, but nowhere as much as in Los Angeles. "The City of Angels is now called 'The Homeless Capital of America,'" says the Christian-based organization. more >>

The nearly 60-year tradition of a Nativity scene displayed at a park and hosted by a coalition of churches in Santa Monica, Calif., has ended after a federal judge ruled on Monday that the city can ban such displays. A controversy over the display about the birth of Jesus at Palisades Park erupted last Christmas season when an atheist group "manipulated" the city's lottery system for spaces, according to a nonprofit, resulting in only two booths for the Christian group that normally uses 14 booths for the various Nativity-related scenes.

"It's a very sad day when a small number of people with an axe to grind, people who do not like Christianity, and who do not like God, are able to prevail by manipulating rules to censor our message from the public place where it has been displayed for the enjoyment of millions of people for nearly 60 years," Hunter Jameson, head of the nonprofit Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee, told The Christian Post Monday.

"It's even sadder that a city government would allow itself to go along with this effort to try to snuff out a message that a small group of people did not agree with," Jameson added. more >>

Churches are going to federal court to reclaim their freedom of speech after the city of Santa Monica, Calif., decided to end a nearly 60-year tradition of having Christian displays of the nativity in a public park due to an uproar caused by atheists' anti-God signs.

"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," The Associated Press quoted Hunter Jameson, head of the nonprofit Santa Monica Nativity Scene Committee, as saying.

The committee, comprising churches that are behind the nativity display, is suing in federal court, claiming the city violated their freedom of speech by stopping the holiday tradition. A court hearing is scheduled for Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. more >>

A hilltop war memorial cross in California that was deemed an unconstitutional endorsement of Christianity and ordered removed was resurrected on Veterans Day in the Mojave National Preserve.

"Judges and lawyers may have played their roles, but it was the veterans who earned this memorial, and it is for them it rises once more," The Associated Press quoted attorney Hiram Sasser of the Texas-based Liberty Institute as saying.

Henry Sandoz was taking care of the original 1930s cross as part of a promise to a dying World War I veteran, Riley Bembry. more >>

SAN DIEGO, Calif. – For movies with Christian themes that previously were considered un-buzzworthy inside the Hollywood film industry, it is controversy that often makes them box office successes, says an award-winning film and music producer.

Speaking to fledgling movie industry types attending a workshop at the San Diego Christian Film Festival, Mark Joseph told part of the story of how "Facing the Giants" became a box office success.

The film about an underdog high school football team, and issues of faith in God, was made for $100,000. Volunteers from Sherwood Baptist Church were cast in supporting roles. Joseph helped market the film, but said one of the keys to the movie's $11 million in sales was letting a reporter know that there was a controversy over the film's initial PG-13 rating. more >>

Mark Basseley Youssef, the man behind the controversial anti-Islam video that some say was the fuel to the riots in the Middle East and elsewhere earlier this year, has been jailed for one year by a U.S. District Court Judge in California.

Youssef's sentencing is not related to the video itself, but he admitted to four out of eight violations, including obtaining a fraudulent California driver's license and violating his probation stemming from a 2010 bank fraud conviction.

U.S. District Court Judge Christina Snyder sentenced the 55-year old movie-maker to one year in prison. He currently remains jailed without bail. Youssef was arrested in September after he went into hiding following the deadly attacks on Western embassies in the Middle East, which caused the deaths of four Americans, including the ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. more >>