News
WAKE FOREST, NC (ANS) — With divorce rates among Christians comparable to those within the culture generally, churches across the nation are reaching out and helping children whose parents are separated or divorced.The Barna Group found in its latest study (2008) that born again Christians who are not evangelical were indistinguishable from the national average on the matter of divorce with 33 percent having married and divorced at least once. The Barna report states that among all born again Christians, which includes evangelicals, the divorce figure is 32 percent, which is statistically identical to the 33 percent figure among non-born…
LONDON (BP)–A shocking video has emerged showing a Baptist street preacher in the United Kingdom being arrested for calling homosexuality a sin.Newspaper stories about 42-year-old Dale Mcalpine have received attention in the United Kingdom and the United States, but the video — which Mcalpine recorded with a hidden camera — did not surface publicly until May 14. It lasts just under two minutes and makes it clear that he was arrested for expressing a biblical view of homosexuality.
There are times to be competitive. Moments when all you want to do is humiliate your opponent as you defeat him. It’s the nature of sports, and what our internal competition meters usually read.That, we all know, is how athletes feel most of the time. But, at times, and these are few and far between, we see acts that defy wins and losses.
RNS) After a decade-long clergy shortage in America’s pulpits, Christian denominations are now experiencing a clergy glut—with some denominations reporting two ministers for every vacant pulpit. “We have a serious surplus of ministers and candidates seeking calls,” said Marcia Myers, director of the vocation office for the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has four ministers for every opening. The cause of the sudden turnaround: blame the bad economy.
POTOSI, Mo. (RNS) About 50 teenagers and their parents gathered at the YMCA Trout Lodge near here recently, in the middle of the Mark Twain National Forest, to praise Jesus Christ. “We pray that this weekend our hearts are touched, Lord,” one of the group leaders, Mark Patterson said, “and that we grow closer to you.” But this was not one of the many church retreats that meet here, and Patterson is not a pastor. He’s the program director of the South City Y in St. Louis, and the group he prayed with was there for FaithFest, the most public…
Not long ago, a team of researchers watched a 1-year-old boy take justice into his own hands. The boy had just seen a puppet show in which one puppet played with a ball while interacting with two other puppets. The center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the right, who would pass it back. And the center puppet would slide the ball to the puppet on the left . . . who would run away with it. Then the two puppets on the ends were brought down from the stage and set before the toddler. Each was…
With Mother’s Day looming this weekend, I’ve found an unlikely advocate for single moms, a neglected population in the world of religion. She is Ann Kiemel Anderson, whose popular titles like "I’m Out to Change My World" (1974) and "I Love the Word Impossible" (1976) were meditations about Jesus in freestyle verse.
As I type this, I am looking out at the Gulf of Mexico. You could have seen a similar sight out the window of the hospital where I was born, just a few miles down the road here on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Now, though, those waters I grew up with, gently lapping against the sand, are threatening to bring with them millions of gallons of oil spewing up from an exploded rig out in the Gulf. Five years after Hurricane Katrina leveled this hometown of mine, it is bracing for the worst environmental disaster in the history of…
TURIN, Italy — Pope Benedict XVI all but gave an outright endorsement of the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin on Sunday, calling the cloth that some believe is Christ’s burial shroud an icon "written with the blood" of a crucified man.On a visit to the shroud in the northern Italian city of Turin, Benedict didn’t raise the scientific questions that surround the linen and whether it might be a medieval production. Instead, he delivered a powerful meditation on the faith that holds that the shroud is indeed Christ’s burial cloth.
Come join us this Thursday, May 6, from 12-1 p.m. at the King Street entrance of the State Capitol for the National Day of Prayer! Wisconsin Family Council is working with the National Day of Prayer Task Force state coordinator to facilitate a time for Christians to gather in Madison to pray for our state, nation, families, churches, communities, culture and military.