The church had been negotiating a repayment plan with vendors, but several filed lawsuits seeking quicker payment, which prompted a coalition formed by creditors to fall apart.

"Tough times never last, every storm comes to an end. Right now, people need to hear that message more than ever," Sheila Schuller Coleman, the Cathedral's senior pastor and daughter of the founder, told reporters outside the worship hall decked with a soaring glass spire.

Lincoln closed by urging, "With malice towards none, with charity for all...let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have bourne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Yet six weeks later, on Good Friday, he was assassinated.

While some came of age in atheistic homes, the vast majority of atheists -- four out of five in one survey -- were raised as Baptists, Catholics, Jews or in some other faith, he said. Then they changed their minds, usually after intensely personal experiences, years of reading or both.

"When you say you're an 'atheist' that usually means that you've made a choice," said Smith.

Like the Danish cartoon uproar in 2005 when Muslims took to the streets in outrage because the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a series of twelve cartoons about the prophet Muhammad, the Spaniards now find themselves being threatened and sued by Islamic organizations. Moreover, this incident has sparked a diplomatic confrontation and has created an international uproar within the Muslim world.