A federal appeals court pointed to precedent and the Founding Fathers in ruling Friday that atheists can be barred from delivering official invocations.

The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, upheld the policy of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, which requires that the person who prays must be “a member of a regularly established church or religious organization.” The policy further says the prayer’s purpose is “to seek divine intervention” in the work and lives of House members.

It was the second such decision this year by an appeals court. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in April ruled the chaplain of the U.S. House of Representatives could bar atheists from praying.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit was brought on behalf of a group of secular humanists, Unitarian Universalists and freethinkers who don’t believe in a higher power and wanted the opportunity to pray before the Pennsylvania House. Most, if not all, could be labeled as “atheists.”

The plaintiffs argued the policy of excluding atheists and nontheists violates the Establishment, Free Speech, Free Exercise, and Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution. The Third Circuit overturned a lower court decision that had sided with the atheists.

Judge Thomas L. Ambro wrote Friday’s majority opinion, ruling that “only theistic prayer can satisfy all the…

The Disciples of Christ is on track to lose about half their membershipwithin a decade, according to a report from the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

The report says the Disciples of Christ, also known as the Christian Church, had a membership decline by 7 percent. 

The church had 411,000 members in 2017. In 2018, that number dropped to 382,000.

A spokesperson for the Disciples of Christ Church was unavailable to comment on the report.

The report said that worship attendance for the church also fell. In 2017, there were about 139,000 counted attending worship. That number was 124,000 in 2018. 

The report also showed that the number of baptisms also fell, going from 4,300 in 2017 to 3,700 in 2018.

“At the current rate, the denomination will shrink by another 50 percent within a decade,” said Jeff Walton, author of the group’s report. “This annual rate of decline exceeds that of the Presbyterian Church (USA) which reported a nearly 5 percent membership drop for the year 2018 and held the distinction of ‘fastest declining’ for much of the decade.”

“The denomination is aging out, shown in a steep decline in baptisms,” he added. “A universalist theology appears to be sapping the evangelistic vigor of clergy.”

More Disciples of Christ members say they want more than just sermons from church leadership, Walton said.

“On a more anecdotal level,…