MC News
LANSDOWNE, VIRGINIA / SAULT STE. MARIE, MICHIGAN (ANS) — Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson has received the Presidential Citizens Medal from outgoing US President George W. Bush in an Oval Office ceremony at the White House.The award was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to recognize U.S. citizens “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.” Read more of this story.
JERUSALEM — Once a year, usually just before Hanukkah and Christmas, a handful of Jerusalem postal workers leave their dreary letter-sorting station for a few hours and head to the Western Wall.Boxes in hand, they haul the thousands of letters addressed to "God, Jerusalem Israel," "the Almighty," or "the Wailing Wall," among others. At the wall, the second-holiest in Judaism after the adjoining Temple Mount, the workers separate by gender, going either to the men’s or women’s prayer sections. An arm’s length from the wall’s ancient stones, where dozens of people are deep in prayer, they carefully open the envelopes,…
Eight Christian fellowships on the campus of Harvard University are affiliated with (Madison-based) InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, three chapters for undergraduate students and five chapters for graduate students. Those chapters sponsored a campus mission with Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright in mid-November in order to invite the broader campus to a dialogue on the issues of faith, hope and changing the world for the better.Read more of this story.
COMMENTARYNewsweek magazine, one of the most influential news magazines in America, has decided to come out for same-sex marriage in a big way, and to do so by means of a biblical and theological argument. In its cover story for this week, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller offers a revisionist argument for the acceptance of same-sex marriage. It is fair to say that Newsweek has gone for broke on this question.Read more of this commentary.MORE VIEWS:GetReligion.orgChristianity Today
LONDON — A top Roman Catholic cleric in England has accused Disney of corrupting children, encouraging greed and turning its make-believe world into a latter-day pilgrimage site.Christopher Jamison, the abbot of Worth Abbey, in southern England, charges Disney with "exploiting spirituality" and helping to generate a culture of materialism while pretending to provide movie, book and theme park stories with a moral message.Read more of this story.
Two new Bibles targeting a young, hip — even secular — audience are hitting bookstores. One is a slick, illustrated version of the New Testament; the other is an environmentally friendly edition that takes advantage of the popularity of the green movement.Read more of this story.
A Salvation Army leader is likely to be terminated after he announced his engagement to a woman who is not affiliated with the organization. Capt. Johnny Harsh, a leader for the Oshkosh Salvation Army in Wisconisn, was suspended this week for violating a rule that requires officers to marry only from within The Salvation Army. Read more of this story.
They’re delaying their purchase of a new car. They’re thinking twice before dining out. But you know the economy is tough when consumers are even reducing their purchases of that Christmas staple: the fruitcake.Read more of this story.
Five years after the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, traditionalists are moving to create a separate and competing North American Anglican church. Today a network of groups from the United States and Canada unveils a draft constitution for a unified entity that they hope will be recognized by Anglicans elsewhere in the world. Read more of this story.Split in Episcopal Church Hits New Level – Los Angeles TimesWhat’s Ahead for the Fractured Episcopal Church – Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
COMMENTARYMy first Sunday back from some time away, I sat in the worship service and wept. It struck me as such a production, so performance driven. In a word, it was shallow. I couldn’t believe this had happened on my watch.On the surface, all was well. I was a megachurch pastor with invitations to speak at conferences, write books, and mingle with dignitaries. Our church had state of the art facilities next to a major freeway. But that was on the surface. Deep down inside, I was mortified at what we’d become.Read more of this commentary.