Author: Gordon Govier

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA (ANS) — In spite of the continuous spate of bad news coming out of Iraq, unprecedented religious freedom has finally come to Iraq because of U.S. military action there, and more Iraqi Muslims are becoming followers of Jesus Christ today than at any other time in the history of the country. Read more.

The telephone call came just after we had finished our evening meal at the Knight’s Palace Hotel in the Old City of Jerusalem in May 2005. The message instructed me to come now to the library of the Greek Orthodox patriarch if I wanted to see the manuscript. I changed my clothes quickly and scurried through the labyrinthine lanes of the Old City. After entering the Greek Orthodox monastery, I made my way to the library. Soon, the librarian delivered what I had waited years to see—a 950-year-old, 200-page manuscript containing, along with a dozen other early writings, a little…

The Rev. John Wille, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Tomah, has been elected president of the South Wisconsin District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod at the district’s 51st Regular Convention, which was held last week at Concordia University Wisconsin in Mequon. The Rev. Jeffrey Meyer, pastor of Christ Memorial Lutheran Church in Fitchburg, was elected third vice president. Read more.

As a single mother and elementary-school music teacher in Alamogordo, N.M., Cheryl Dockray usually umpires all the summer softball games she can to make ends meet.But in early June, she took a rare week off — and worked even harder than usual. With eight other adults and 13 young people from Alamogordo’s Grace United Methodist Church, she helped gut a New Orleans home that had been rotting in floodwaters for nine months. Read more.

Episcopal church leaders on Tuesday rejected a temporary ban against gay bishops, while Presbyterians agreed to let local and regional governing bodies decide whether to ordain gay or lesbian ministers. Read more.

SANTA ANA, CA (ANS) — The sixth annual World Refugee Day is today (June 20, 2006). The United Nations unanimously adopted a resolution in 2000 to remember refugees on a special day each year. There are estimated 15 million refugees and 5 million other displaced people around the world.

Adding another wrinkle to the growing range of housing options at UW-Madison, leaders of the Pres House today will hold a ceremonial ground breaking for a $17 million private dorm aimed at helping students explore their faith. Read more.

Dawn Stefanowicz and children like her are the most important voices in the debate over same-sex adoption. And yet the voices of adult children raised by homosexuals are rarely heard. Stefanowicz recently testified about her life with her biological father before a Massachusetts legislative committee in support of a marriage protection amendment. Read more.

COMMENTARY Sometimes very important elections receive very little attention.When the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group’s president at its meeting this week in Greensboro, N.C., the news appeared on the back pages of most secular newspapers — or it didn’t appear at all. Read more.

7:06 p.m. COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Episcopal Church has elected the world’s first female presiding bishop, spurring a reaction of shock, delight and some dismay among thousands of delegates and bishops gathered here. Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, bishop of the 6,000-member Episcopal Diocese of Nevada, is the church?s new presiding bishop, a post equivalent to that of archbishop. She beat out five men for the post, winning on the fifth ballot this afternoon. Read more.