News
Five years after the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, traditionalists are moving to create a separate and competing North American Anglican church. Today a network of groups from the United States and Canada unveils a draft constitution for a unified entity that they hope will be recognized by Anglicans elsewhere in the world. Read more of this story.Split in Episcopal Church Hits New Level – Los Angeles TimesWhat’s Ahead for the Fractured Episcopal Church – Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
COMMENTARYMy first Sunday back from some time away, I sat in the worship service and wept. It struck me as such a production, so performance driven. In a word, it was shallow. I couldn’t believe this had happened on my watch.On the surface, all was well. I was a megachurch pastor with invitations to speak at conferences, write books, and mingle with dignitaries. Our church had state of the art facilities next to a major freeway. But that was on the surface. Deep down inside, I was mortified at what we’d become.Read more of this commentary.
COMMENTARYFor those of you who remember Watergate, John Dean, the President’s counsel, famously warned President Nixon about Watergate, describing it as, quote, “a cancer on the Presidency.” That is a pretty good phrase to describe our economic mess.Read more of this commentary.
When the officiant tells Claudaniel Fabien he can kiss his bride at the altar Saturday, no one will fault the couple for a little "should I tilt my head this way, or that way?" awkwardness.It will be the couple’s very first kiss.Read more of this story.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Eric Bahme no longer apologizes for being a preacher who keeps his eye on the bottom line. He is both a pastor and a businessman, he says, because that’s how God made him.Dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt, Bahme is hunched over a table in Sacred Grounds, the coffee shop next to two chain motels his church runs near Portland International Airport.Read more of this story.
The folks in Fort Wayne, Ind., know Ace McKay as the co-host of the morning show on Star 88.3, the area’s Christian radio station. But McKay has another calling in addition to waking up at absurd hours of the morning: He is dedicated to saving marriages. Several years ago, God miraculously saved McKay’s marriage, and now he has started a ministry, The Marriage Playbook, to offer that same help to other struggling couples.Read more of this story.
CAIRO, EGYPT (ANS) — Thousands of Muslims who stormed a church in Ain Shams, Cairo, on Sunday and set fire to the building, are seen in two videos on a news agency website. A crowd of Muslims, estimated at 20,000 strong, were enraged by an extension that was added to the church of St. Mary and Anba Abraam, according to Assyrian International News Agency. Read more of this story.
COMMENTARYThe barracks where Corrie ten Boom and her sister Betsy were kept in the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbruck were terribly overcrowded and flea-infested.They had been able to miraculously smuggle a Bible into the camp, and in that Bible they had read that in all things there were to give thanks, and that God can use anything for good.Corrie’s sister Betsy decided that this meant thanking God for the fleas.Read more of this commentary.
Evangelical Christians are adopting — and adapting — the rituals of Advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas that are traditionally celebrated by Catholics, Lutherans, Eastern Orthodox and other liturgical churches.Read more of this story.
MUSKEGON, Mich. — A top-ranking Republican said he will call for a new federal inquiry into an alleged CIA cover-up in the 2001 military attack on a small plane in Peru that killed an American missionary and her infant child.Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said the attack that killed Veronica and Charity Bowers can be traced to a reckless CIA-sponsored drug interception program that had already downed numerous other planes.Read more of this story.