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A decision to ordain actively gay clergy has caused deep fissures in the nation’s largest Lutheran church group, with some traditional Lutherans saying they have been subjected to threats and retaliation as they consider breaking away. Several disaffected members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) say the decision made at the church’s national convention in Minneapolis in August could prompt a major exodus from one of America’s biggest Protestant denominations.

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ST. LOUIS — Three hundred evangelical Christian college students sat in a dark, packed downtown hotel ballroom Monday, the projected glow of a movie the only source of light.At least that’s the way it looked to an observer. The students in the room would have argued that the real sources of light were the movies’ subjects: missionaries bringing the Gospel to what they believe to be the darkest corners of the world for Christians — China, Burma, India, Africa.In watching examples of such films, these missionaries-to-be were participating in an artistic renaissance of sorts within the Christian community.

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More than 7500 participants committed themselves to long term or short-term missions involvement, by filling out commitment cards at InterVarsity’s Urbana 09 Student Missions Conference. The conference was held December 27-31 at the Edward Jones Dome and The America’s Center in St. Louis.

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Participants at Urbana 09 were challenged to be counter-cultural followers of Jesus by the speakers at Tuesday night’s general session in the Edward Jones dome in St. Louis. The challenge set the stage for Wednesday’s call to commitment to the 16,000 participants at InterVarsity’s student missions conference.

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ARIEL, West Bank (RNS) After their teenage son was nearly killed last year by a bomb disguised as a holiday gift basket, few people were as eager for Ya’acov Teitel to see justice as Leah and David Ortiz. Teitel, an Orthodox Jewish loner who confessed to placing the package in the family’s stairwell said he targeted the Ortiz family because they are Messianic Jews—Jews who believe in Jesus as the Messiah. “We want justice, not revenge,” said Leah Ortiz, who has lived in this religiously mixed city of 30,000 since the late 1980s. “This happened because Teitel had hate in…

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Lauren Green was third runner up in the 1985 Miss America contest and a winner of the talent competition for playing immaculately a Chopin etude, "Opus #4 in C Sharp." She continued her music while working as a television journalist in Minnesota, Chicago, and New York: She entered the Van Cliburn Competition and has written a fascinating theoretical essay about the connection of music, physics, and faith. Green grew up going to church and Sunday school. Today she goes to Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York and is a FOX News religious correspondent.

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COMMENTARYI have a Christmas story to tell you, but not one you’d expect. And certainly not from where you would expect. At Christmastime, we’re reminded that our God is the God of great reversals. As we set out humble nativity scenes, we may forget how unthinkable it is that the King of Kings lowered himself not just to be born in human flesh, but in a lowly stable amidst the braying of animals and the smell of manure.

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