Author: Gordon Govier

The United States calls itself one nation under God, but Americans don’t all have the same image of the Almighty in mind. A new survey of religion in the USA finds four very different images of God — from a wrathful deity thundering at sinful humanity to a distant power uninvolved in mankind’s affairs. Forget denominational brands or doctrines or even once-salient terms like "Religious Right." Even the oft-used "Evangelical" appears to be losing ground. Read more.————————————————CHICAGO TRIBUNE: In what has been called the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s faith since a seminal study in 1968, Baylor University sociologists…

The nation’s most powerful voice against same-sex marriage is entering the battleground in Wisconsin, where voters in November will decide the fate of a proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage. Focus on the Family, the conservative Colorado Springs-based group led by James Dobson, filed papers with the state Elections Board last week to create a referendum committee. The group has spent more than $1 million passing anti-gay marriage legislation in other states and the stakes here are high: Wisconsin has been pegged by analysts as perhaps the first state that stands a chance of defeating a same-sex marriage ban.Read more.

Some proclaimed themselves to be bikers for Jesus, while others evoked the spit and shine of the Marine Corps. Some sat stoic while others wept openly. And many jumped up and down as though they were at a football game. But on this it can be agreed: There was no larger group of kindred souls singing wildly off key on Saturday than the men and boys who filled the Bradley Center for the first Promise Keepers rally in Milwaukee in six years. Read more.

The church page has become the front page. Since the 1880s, newspapers have relegated coverage of church news to the back pages. Then came 9/11. "In the 1990s I was covering foreign policy around the world for CNN, and almost every foreign policy issue was explained in political and socioeconomic terms," said Jody Hassett Sanchez, who left "ABC World News Tonight" in 2005 to make long-form documentaries about religion and culture. "But nobody was looking at religion as a motivating factor. Of course, that all changed with 9/11." Read more.

Clara Maria Goldstein says she created the Rabbi Jesus paintings to promote love, understanding and acceptance. But Goldstein admitted her 10 oil paintings are causing just the opposite reaction from some people after Gundersen Lutheran officials asked her to remove her paintings hanging in the hospital entryway because they could be controversial. Read more.

NEW YORK (ANS) — As a nine-year-old boy tending his family’s goats he witnessed his village burned by the Sudanese Army and many killed. Abducted and enslaved in northern Sudan less than a year later, he endured nightmarish treatment by his captors that made him feel like an animal. Read more.

Bishop Robert Morlino has a vision for a new cathedral for the Diocese of Madison that combines spiritual, charitable and philosophical missions in a new building on the site of the fire-ravaged St. Raphael. Read more.

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND (ANS) — I drove to Cambridge, England, on May 7 [1963] to interview Mr. Clive Staples Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters and one of the world’s most brilliant and widely read Christian authors. I hoped to learn from him how young men and women could be encouraged to take up the defense of the faith through the written word. More, read part one. Read part two of this story.

More than 10,000 men and teenage boys are expected to gather at Milwaukee’s Bradley Center next weekend to cheer, clap, sing and pray at the first Promise Keepers rally to be held in the city since 2000. Read more.

THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (ANS) — The Middle East and North Africa are in a state of transformation. The Church has existed in this part of the world since the time of Christ. Around 20 million Arab Christians live in this region. 11 million are Orthodox Christians, 5.4 million are Catholic and 3.6 million are Protestants. But the Church in many Middle Eastern countries is shrinking. In 1900 Christians represented around 20% of the population of the Middle East. That number has fallen to less than 5% today. These numbers are even more striking in the Holy Land.…