With God, all things are possible - except using Bible verses for state mottos, or prayer in schools or posting the Ten Commandments in public places.

In the latest legal battle to pit the religious and the secular, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that Ohio’s state motto, a quotation from Jesus, excludes non-Christians and is unlawful.

Coming on the heels of ongoing court battles over prayer and the commandments, response to the ruling Tuesday was intense.

Melissa Rogers, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee in Washington, D.C., supports the court decision.  

It is clearly a religious statement on its face. As a religious person, one of my main objections is when people make the argument that it’s just neutral,”

Ms. Rogers said. “These things do have meaning. To say otherwise is to harm the expression of faith.” Ms. Rogers said it would be better for churches and people of faith to proclaim the motto as their own.

“Religious expression is alive and well, and it’ll continue to be alive and well a lot more successfully if it isn’t meddled with by the government,” she said.

The court ruling assumes a “reasonable observer’ will know that the motto is a biblical quotation from the New Testament.

But John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville, Va., is not so sure. “I don’t think most people have any idea where it comes from,” he said.

If the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, he said, it probably will turn on the “reasonable observer” test.

Whitehead said he’s concerned about what the decision says about the role of religion in American public life. “You can’t cut religion completely out of public life,” he said. ‘What do you tolerate without obliterating religion from the landscape?”

“I wanted it inscribed on the statehouse grounds because we have so many youngsters that visit the state capitol and we’re trying to get them interested in government and instructed that one person can make a difference,” said US. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. ‘We would always point that motto out to them and tell them how it was from a 12-year-old, and that one 12 year-old made a difference.