Author: Gordon Govier

The pictures and stories that continue to pour out of Haiti show a nation that will take months and even years to rebuild. For the Duluth’s NewsCenter weekend anchor Julie Pearce, who has spent the last four years of her life telling stories, those pictures were enough to make a life changing decision.“I’d sit there and produce the show and read the headlines and you know download the stories and sit there and read the headlines to the audience and it just broke my heart knowing that there’s something that I can actually do, that I actually have the skills…

(RNS) Having survived a devastating earthquake during a 10-day mission trip to Haiti, Freedom Gassoway now savors every minute she spends at home with her family in Beaverton, Ore. But for this 33-year-old mother of two, some of life has also lost its sweetness. Meals no longer taste good, she said, since she’s always thinking about the thousands of homeless and hungry people in Haiti. Her closet seems to have “too many clothes,” she said, and she feels a duty—by virtue of her survival—to share Haiti’s suffering with other Americans.

If church attendance is one measure of a man’s faith, then President Obama may appear to have lost some of his. The first family, once regular churchgoers, have publicly attended services in Washington just three times in the past year, by ABC News’ count, even bypassing the pews on Christmas Day.But sources familiar with the president’s personal life say Obama remains a faithful Christian while in the White House, practicing his beliefs regularly in private with family and the aid of his BlackBerry.

Human trafficking, also known as modern-day slavery, is the second largest and fastest growing crime industry in the world after drug trafficking. Currently there are 27 million people estimated to be slaves worldwide, including some in Wisconsin. That total is ten times the number of slaves trafficked during the trans-Atlantic slave trade of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. A presentation on human trafficking hosted by Slave Free Madison in partnership with the Sequoya Branch Library, drew over 50 participants last night, from a wide array of Madison-area non-government organizations, concerned citizens and local government.

Most mornings, after the gavel is struck in the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill, a prayer is offered in that most secular body — a practice that goes back to the founding fathers at the Continental Congress in 1774.Chaplain Barry C. Black delivers the prayer, offering up some of the first words heard each day in the chamber.

Vienna, VA. – She is persuasive, influential and does a lot of good, but Christians should be careful when Oprah speaks about spirituality, warned two apologists who recently co-authored a book on the subject.To a crowd of more than 1,500 people at McLean Bible Church outside of Washington, D.C,. on Friday evening, renowned apologist Josh McDowell and up-and-coming apologist Dave Sterrett explained the danger of adopting Oprah’s spiritual teachings from a Christian perspective.

It has become part of the sports landscape. Athletes congregate on the field after a game to pray or offer a sound bite thanking a higher power.It rarely makes the news.Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner understands this. The man who led this organization to its first home playoff game since 1947 knows that discussion about resurrections comes only in the context of career revivals and that tape recorders shut off when faith references start up.

Perhaps everyone by now has at least heard of Max McLean’s production of "Screwtape," the famous play about the letters of a senior devil (Screwtape) to Wormwood, a junior tempter. I am one of 75,000 people who have seen the 90-minute play. In an era when many movie studios are nervous about filming anything too overtly Christian, here’s a stage production that keeps drawing them in.

Makoto Fujimura will bring his lessons on art and the intersection of ideas to Madison in early February at two forums hosted by Geneva Campus Church (1127 University Ave.). Fujimura’s “Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture” was published in February 2009, a collection of essays written between 2001 and 2008 that reflect on his faith and artistic life as a New Yorker living two blocks from Ground Zero.

REVIEWHow do you review the Word of God?Very carefully. And that’s the way everyone who sees the Milwaukee Public Museum’s astonishing new exhibit, "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible," should take in the exhibit, opening Friday.This is the largest temporary exhibit the museum has ever produced itself, with more than 200 artifacts – and, yes, the scope is biblical.