Author: Gordon Govier

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict linked the Catholic Church’s opposition to gay marriage to concern about the environment, suggesting that laws undermining "the differences between the sexes" were threats to creation.He issued the admonition in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, an annual appointment during which the pontiff reflects on issues the Vatican wants to highlight to the diplomatic corps. The main theme of the address was the environment and the protection of creation.

A half century ago, Dr. Pat Robertson took a leap of faith to follow God’s call to spread His Word like never before. Since then, the Christian Broadcasting Network has grown into one of the largest television ministries in the world. But it was no easy feat getting there.

The liberal tide in The United Methodist Church has been receding and the evangelical and orthodox influence is steadily increasing, observes one retired pastor.

CommentaryOn Fox News this week, Brit Hume, respected journalist and one-time Fox anchor, was asked whether Tiger Woods would recover from the scandal that has cost him several lucrative endorsements. Brit Hume replied, “Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer.”But he didn’t stop there—and in the process ignited a controversy that says more about his critics than it does about Hume or what he had to say.

COMMENTARY“How much life insurance do you have?” According to a recent blog by Seth Godin, Zig Ziglar liked to say that, with that one question, you could tell if someone was a successful life insurance agent. “If they’re not willing to buy it with their own money, how can they honestly persuade someone else to do so?” Godin went on to note that if you are in the music business, but you never buy tickets or downloads, can you really empathize with the people you’re selling to? His favorite: If you work for a non-profit and you don’t give money to charity, what exactly are…

Despite what many might believe, a vast majority of home-schooled children say they have plenty of opportunities for socialization with other children and, as adults, come to excel in all measured areas of adult life, according to a new study.The study, released this month by the Canadian Centre for Home Education (CCHE), surveyed young adults in Canada whose parents responded to a 1994 study on home education. Ranging in age from 15 to 34, the study’s participants answered questions on a variety of topics with comparable data from Statistics Canada.The results, according to CCHE, were “astounding.”

One Sunday last fall, Bill Hybels, founder and senior pastor at the Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, was preaching on the logic and power of Jesus’ words "Love thine enemy." As is his custom, Hybels was working a small semicircle of easels arrayed behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels’ preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-boy blond but now white. Indeed, if there is a whiter preacher currently running a megachurch, that man must glow.Yet neither…

A decision to ordain actively gay clergy has caused deep fissures in the nation’s largest Lutheran church group, with some traditional Lutherans saying they have been subjected to threats and retaliation as they consider breaking away. Several disaffected members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) say the decision made at the church’s national convention in Minneapolis in August could prompt a major exodus from one of America’s biggest Protestant denominations.

ST. LOUIS — Three hundred evangelical Christian college students sat in a dark, packed downtown hotel ballroom Monday, the projected glow of a movie the only source of light.At least that’s the way it looked to an observer. The students in the room would have argued that the real sources of light were the movies’ subjects: missionaries bringing the Gospel to what they believe to be the darkest corners of the world for Christians — China, Burma, India, Africa.In watching examples of such films, these missionaries-to-be were participating in an artistic renaissance of sorts within the Christian community.

Four cardinals and dozens of bishops from Wisconsin and across the country will join local Catholics in two days of solemn prayer beginning Sunday as the Most Rev. Jerome E. Listecki is ushered in as the 11th archbishop of Milwaukee.