News
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.
One Sunday in late March, Lynette Sparks stood at the altar of a Presbyterian church in upstate New York to sermonize about seven verses from Romans and the notion of transitions. Ms. Sparks talked about the early Christians waiting for divine revelation. She talked about the construction project under way near the sanctuary. She talked, as preachers sometimes do, indirectly about herself.Read more of this story.
WASHINGTON (BP)–A majority in the United States describes itself as pro-life on the abortion issue, marking a substantial change in public opinion in the last year, according to a new Gallup Poll.The survey results released May 15 showed 51 percent of adults said they are pro-life, while 42 percent identified themselves as pro-choice. It is the first time a majority of Americans have called themselves pro-life since Gallup began asking the question in 1995. Until now, no poll had shown more than 46 percent saying they are pro-life.
At 26, Joshua Dubois has already rubbed shoulders with more religious leaders than most religious leaders will in their lifetime. And he’s starting to do a lot more of the same as President Obama’s director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.Read more of this story.
The entire population of evangelical Christians in the West Bank and Gaza could fit into one large church in the United States, one pastor from Jerusalem realized after a recent visit to the U.S.Read more of this story. Mideast’s Christians Declining in Influence – New York Times