The WATCHMAN Informs

By EMILY FRIEDMAN
Yesterday at 3:16 PM

(Lisa Miller and her daughter Isabella haven’t been heard from since November.)

A mother and her 7-year-old daughter who is supposed to be handed over to the woman’s former lesbian partner on New Year’s Day have not been seen or heard from in more than a month, according to the judge in the case.

Lisa Miller, who now lives in Winchester, Va., was ordered by a family court judge in Vermont to hand over Isabella on Jan. 1 to Janet Jenkins, Miller’s former partner.

But now, just two days before the handover is supposed to occur, nobody knows where Miller or her daughter is.

“She does not know where her daughter is and she is trying to find her,” Sarah Star, an attorney representing Jenkins, told ABCNews.com.

Star says Jenkins last saw her daughter in January 2009 and spoke with her in March 2009. In his custody ruling, Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen said nobody has “seen or heard from” Miller and Isabella since Nov. 20.

The judge ordered custody to be switched from Miller to Jenkins after Miller repeatedly failed to allow visitation for her former partner.

An assistant to the lawyers representing Miller, Mathew Staver and Stephen Crampton, told ABCNews.com that the lawyers were “on vacation and unavailable for comment on the matter.”

A Facebook page seemingly set up by Miller appears to show the last posting from the mother being on Dec. 4.

The custody of Isabella has been a point of contention since the couple — who were married in a civil union in Vermont in 2000 — split in 2003, after which Miller denounced homosexuality and became an evangelical Christian.

Miller, who became pregnant with Isabella in 2002 through artificial insemination, said in court documents filed by her attorney on Dec. 16 in an attempt to prevent Jenkins from being awarded full custody, that her daughter would undergo “trauma” because of the “different religious beliefs” she would be exposed to living with Jenkins.

“[Isabella] knows that Ms. Jenkins’ choice to continue to live a homosexual lifestyle is a sin,” says Miller in the court documents. “Ms. Jenkins does not share these beliefs.”

Lisa Miller Fought for Custody of Daughter Before Disappearing

Miller also argues that Jenkins has testified that she would not attend church and would not take Isabella to any church that “taught hatred and bigotry.”

While Jenkins was not made available for an interview with ABCNews.com – her lawyer Star said that she was not speaking the press as to not cause “undue pressure” on her daughter – Star did respond to Miller’s allegations.

“Jenkins has testified repeatedly that she’d leave religious decisions to Ms. Miller to the greatest extent possible,” said Star. “Meaning that the obvious stumbling block is Ms. Jenkins is gay and she won’t personally teach her daughter that she’s going to hell.”

“However, she would allow her to go to a church that even she was not welcome at,” said Star.

Star said that Jenkins filed a missing person’s report today in Vermont in hopes of getting police help to locate Isabella.

“No law has been broken yet, and we’re not accusing Miller of anything, but the reality is that Janet is a parent and she doesn’t know where her daughter is,” said Star.

Asked whether Jenkins believes Isabella could be in danger, Star said, “I know that my client has some concerns about Isabella’s safety and she has concerns about Lisa Miller’s mental stability.”

According to Cheryl Hanna, a professor of constitutional law at Vermont Law School who spoke with the Associated Press, if Miller does not hand over Isabella, the court will likely issue a warrant for her arrest.

Jenkins vows to allow “as liberal contact as possible between Isabella and her other mother,” said Star.

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN 12-29-2009, 12:57 PM EST (ABC News)

Southern states top list of most religious states, New England least religious.
Folks in the warm southern states are the most God-fearing people in the country, while people in cold and flinty New England are least likely to believe in God or attend worship services.

Mississippi was named the most religious state in the country, ranking first in four categories: importance of religion; frequency of prayer; the attendance at worship services and the certainty of a belief in God.

Some 82 percent of Mississippians say religion “is very important in their lives,” according to a recently released list compiled by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Mississippi was followed by Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee to round out the top five states in which residents said religion was very important.

“Southern states tend to rank near the top of religious commitment,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew who compiled the list.

If southern climes make for fiery parishioners, the chill of New England and Alaska seems to have the reverse effect.

New Hampshire and Vermont tied for last place of states whose residents who believed religion was important. Less than 4 in 10 residents or 36 percent of residents said religion was very important.

On average, 56 percent of Americans said religion was very important to them.

Alaska, Massachusetts, Maine and a tie between Rhode Island and Connecticut round out the least religious states.

Southern states typically made up the top five in the other categories, excluding a list that ranked states by how often residents attended religious services.

“In most southern states, frequency of worship attendance meets or exceeds the national average,” Pew found.

Church Attendance Highest in the South

Only Utah broke into the top five, ranking second behind Mississippi, in which 60 percent of residents said they attended worship services at least once a week.

Utah was considered the 12th most religious state overall, but some 57 percent of respondents said they attended services regularly.

Utah’s placement in the overall rankings, Smith said, was a function of the sample size and that statistically it ranked similarly to the Southern states at the top of the list.

“Two thirds of people in Utah said religion is very important. That’s not significantly different from other states that ranked above it,” he said.

South Carolina (54 percent), Louisiana (53 percent), and Alabama (52 percent), ranked third, fourth and fifth for at least weekly church attendance.

Alaskans attend church least of all. Just 22 percent of residents said they went to services at least once a week.

The top 10 states in which residents professed certainty about their belief in God were again almost all Southern, with Mississippi in the No.1 spot and Utah closing out the list at No. 10.

Ninety-one percent of Mississippians said they believed in God.

New Hampshire and Vermont again tied at the bottom of the list, with the fewest residents who believe in God. Just 54 percent of residents there were certain God existed.

On average 71 percent of Americans said they were “absolutely certain” of their belief in God.

At least 85 percent of residents in Mississippi, South Carolina and Alabama were certain of God’s existence, versus less than 6 in 10 respondents in Maine, Connecticut/Rhode Island and Vermont/New Hampshire.

The list was compiled from data in Pew’s 2007 Religious Landscape Survey. More 35,000 people across the country were polled for the survey.

 A southern California megachurch pastor has teamed up with popular comic book artist Rob Liefeld to create a graphic novel series on the end times.