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Phil Stacey is a man of many perspectives. A preacher’s kid and product of a Bible college, he joined the Navy after 9/11, made it to the Top Five of American Idol, signed with a secular label, made a country record, and is now reintroducing himself to the Christian music world via Reunion Records. A new album is planned for later this summer.Read more of this story.Read about Phil Stacey’s upcoming appearance in Janesville.
More than 700 volunteers representing Door Creek Church, an Evangelical Free Church congregation on the eastern edge of Madison, fanned out across Madison and surrounding communities May 16th-17th, for Serve09. They volunteered their assistance for 51 different projects, benefitting organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, the YMCA, Schenck School, Aldo Leopold Nature Center, Lake Waubesa Bible Camp, CareNet, Karmenta Nursing Home, Second Harvest, Salvation Army, Ronald McDonald House, Sun Prairie Head Start and Columbus Kindred Kids.
(UNDATED) At Prime Outlets in Huntley, Ill., a former Mikasa fine china store will soon become the home of Christian Life Church. “This provided an opportunity, from moving from being kind of a homeless church, if you will, to find a home,” said Pastor Daryl Merrill, whose church had been renting space weekly at a local hotel as it started an off-shoot of the main congregation based in Mount Prospect, Ill. Read more of this story.
President Dwight Eisenhower’s Civil Rights Commission faced high hurdles as it searched for common ground in the tense years after the U.S. Supreme Court began attacking the walls of segregation inside America’s schools.After several years of struggle, Father Theodore Hesburgh discovered a bond between his commission colleagues that transcended race and regional differences, noted President Barack Obama, in his historic commencement address at the University of Notre Dame.All of them liked to fish. Thus, the president of America’s most famous Catholic institution — he served for 35 years — arranged for a twilight cruise on the lake at Notre Dame’s…
When the clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) hopes you’ll be ringing in “the Year of the Bible.” It’s probably just wishful thinking. Broun’s simple congressional resolution aimed at honoring the Good Book has produced a push-back of biblical proportion in the blogosphere, with critics dismissing it as either unconstitutional or a waste of time. Jews in Congress and atheist activists are dismissing the resolution, while none of the many Democrats in Congress who are Christian have bothered to sign on as co-sponsors. Read more of this story.
PASADENA, CA (ANS) — Evangelist Billy Graham once told Dr. Ralph D. Winter, who died this week at his Pasadena, California home at the age of 84 from complications of cancer, that he had influenced and challenged many young people to “give their lives to preaching the gospel overseas.”Graham went on to say, “The U.S. Center which you founded years ago is known around the world as a fountain of missionary information and motivation for those who have seen the vision of a lost world.” Read more of this story. More from David Neff of Christianity Today.
This story hasn’t received much attention but it caught the eye of The Brody File. The Pentagon has confiscated a stack of Bibles sent to an Evangelical soldier in Afghanistan. The Bibles were printed in the local Pashto and Dari languages. Military rules forbid proselytizing. By the way, the Bibles were burned because the rules on the base say that all garbage is burned at the end of the day. But just asking here; if the U.S. Military seized a stack full of Korans, would they be burned? You think that might cause a little outrage in the Muslim world?Read…
Should your doctor prescribe prayer as part of your treatment? According to a study of 1,134 physicians this past December by Health Care Direct Research, the majority of doctors (70 percent) believe miracles are possible today. Yet fewer than 29 percent believe that the outcomes of medical treatments are related to "supernatural forces" or "acts of God."Studies on prayer in medicine have a way of demarcating the battle lines between saints and skeptics: Christians long for scientific proof of the efficacy of prayer. Critics, waiting for the opposite, hope to undermine religious faith.Read more of this story.
COMMENTARYFrom the outside looking in, an intelligent observer can see the signs of a once-great civilization in decline: rising corruption, sexual licentiousness, and the abandonment of once-cherished moral principles.The once-great civilization is Western Christendom. And the outside observer is Indian scholar Vishal Mangalwadi. His new book, Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations shows how dearly the West is paying for abandoning the Christian worldview—the very worldview that made its greatness and prosperity possible. Read more of this commentary.
(UNDATED) First, the silver lining: people of faith are better citizens and better neighbors, and America is “amazingly” religious compared to other countries, says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam. Now, the cloud: young Americans are “vastly more secular” than their older counterparts, according to Putnam. Read more of this story.