Author: Gordon Govier

At a small service in a local church, the leaders of InterVarsity Link this month commissioned seven new Link staff members to overseas duty with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. “We’re going to pray for you to be like Jesus in the places where He’s sending you,” said Link director Becky Stephen. Read more.

When Ed Brown left Madison for Islamabad last November, he knew he would have to juggle temporary concerns with permanent solutions, earthquake aftershocks, a long hard winter and an uncertain Pakistani bureaucracy. Read more. Shelter for Life websiteCare of Creation website

A new book, "American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation," explores our religious heritage. Its author, Jon Meacham, managing editor of Newsweek magazine, follows the path from the compromises and decisions made more than 200 years ago to the divide between the Christian right and liberal secularism today. Read More.

The St. Benedict Center, a Benedictine ecumenical community serving Madison for the past 40 years, has ended its ties to the Roman Catholic Church. Read more.

On sabbatical last summer in central Mexico, Pastor Patrick Raymond had his eyes, and eventually, his soul, drawn to the pervasive carnival-colored displays of saints that mark home and public altars. Read more.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans. Read more. Read the whole speech.Obama Critiqued – by Peter Wood

MADISON — Wisconsin’s Roman Catholic Bishops have written pastoral letters on the death penalty and marriage, both topics of referendum questions on the November ballot. The letters are directed to Catholics across the five dioceses of Wisconsin. Read more.

WASHINGTON (BP)–The connection between religious persecution and support for terrorism demonstrates why freedom of belief should be significant to the foreign policy of the United States and the work of the United Nations, Ambassador John Bolton said recently at Religious Freedom Day on Capitol Hill. Read more.

Like a lot of new InterVarsity staff members who arrived in Madison on June 19th for Orientation of New Staff (ONS), Amy Schoepf was fresh from her college graduation. Unlike most, though, Amy had been a speaker at her graduation at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. In fact, she was the only student on the graduation platform, sitting among school officials and other dignitaries. Read more.

COMMENTARY Among the many signs of summer are fireflies, fireworks and national church conventions riling up the concerns of the faithful. Read more.