MC News
AS AMERICAN officials fly off to Bali for a meeting on climate change, they will be thinking hard about the people back home who are studying their every move. In contrast to 1997, when the religious right led denunciations of the deal negotiated in Kyoto, many of today’s evangelicals want America to be generous and constructive.Read more of this story.
Scott Southworth, a major in the Wisconsin Army National Guard and the Juneau County district attorney, is one of 10 nominees for Beliefnet.com’s 2007 Most Inspiring Person of the Year Award. But he’s got some tough competition, including actress Angelina Jolie.Southworth, a single father, met a boy with cerebral palsy while volunteering at an orphanage in Iraq. Last year he adopted the boy and has worked to provide medical care for other orphans.Read more of this story.
COMMENTARYAt the end of July, 34 evangelical leaders published a letter to President Bush, commending his attempts to "reinvigorate … Israeli-Palestinian negotiations" and affirming his "clear call for a two-state solution." These leaders represented a wide swath of American evangelicalism, hailing from such institutions as the Christian & Missionary Alliance, World Relief, World Vision, the Vineyard USA, the Evangelical Covenant Church, Fuller Theological Seminary, Bethel University, and this magazine. They also told the Administration that it is "a serious misperception" that American evangelicals are uniformly opposed to a two-state solution and the creation of a new Palestinian state out of…
Global Summit on AIDS & The Church Calls For Public, Private And Parish Sectors To Unite In Response
NEWS RELEASELAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) — The third annual Saddleback Global Summit on AIDS & The Church concluded yesterday (Friday, November 31) with a challenge from Dr. Rick and Kay Warren to the more than 1,700 attendees for the Church to lead with love in the global response to HIV/AIDS. “People with HIV/AIDS need to have the invisible God made visible to them – that is our purpose,” Mrs. Warren said. “There are many things we don’t know about this epidemic, but what we do know is that individuals living with this disease need at least six things: acceptance, hope,…
Although every faith has its bloggers, U.S. Christians may be among the most vociferous of the watchdogs, philosophers and ecclesiastical groupies.Read more of this story.
Pastor Harry R. Jackson Jr. will often exhort his congregation to "stand against" abortion and same-sex marriage. "You are on the battlefield in a culture war," he’ll say, urging his listeners to help serve as the "moral compass of America." In his rhetoric and his political agenda, Jackson has much in common with other evangelical Christians who are part of the conservative wing of the Republican party, except that Jackson is African American and so is his congregation at Hope Christian Church in Prince George’s County. Read more of this story.
John Koessler is at once an Everyman and an anomaly. You might expect the former pastor and now chair of the pastoral studies department at Moody Bible Institute to have been "raised in the church," as the saying goes. Rather, he’s a virtual nobody from nowhere, raised by parents both agnostic and dysfunctional. Thus his memoir, in which he proves himself a graceful writer, is a coming-of-age and coming-to-faith saga A Stranger in the House of God: From Doubt to Faith and Everywhere in Between.Read more of this story.
The Rev. John Splinter has stopped describing himself as “evangelical.”To the guy down the street, Splinter said, the word has come to mean homophobe, anti-women’s rights, pro-death penalty and anti-abortion, and is a stumbling block for what Splinter wants to do: follow Jesus Christ.Read more of this story.
IRVINE, CA (ANS) — The leader of a pioneering HIV/AIDS ministry has called on Christians around the world to “step forward and pray for those with HIV/AIDS on World AIDS Day2007.” Bruce Sonnenberg, president of He Intends Victory, has also asked believers to take seriously the theme of this year’s World AIDS Day 2007 which is: “Take the Lead. Stop AIDS. Keep the Promise.”Read more of this story.
Christianity is currently under a widespread and vociferous attack by militant atheists, radical scholars, popular authors, and others in bestselling books, TV documentaries, and on the internet. One reporter said to me: "It seems like it’s open season on Jesus!" And he’s right.Read more of this story.