News
There were tears, laughter and praise Thursday as "The Fish" Christian radio station broadcast its last morning show and prepared to enter the airwaves at midnight with a new identity.WFZH-FM (105.3) will still offer contemporary Christian music under its new ownership, but the national "K-LOVE" format it will use does not include local disc jockeys.Read more >>
Evangelicals make up the nation’s single-largest tradition, followed by Catholics. The survey also notes many Americans have changed religious affiliations or dropped ties to a specific faith.America remains an overwhelmingly Christian country, but the nation’s religious life also shows great fluidity, with many adults switching religious affiliations or abandoning ties to organized denominations altogether, according to a new survey released today. The study also suggests that, in the near future, Protestants may no longer make up a majority of Americans.Read more >>
It’s always intriguing to see which churches have grown and which denominations have faded in the past year. According to the 2008 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches (a Bible of sorts for us religion writers), the fastest-growing religious body in 2007 was the Jehovah’s Witnesses at 2.25 percent. Following them were the Mormons at 1.56 percent and the Roman Catholics at .87 percent. Compare this to last year’s states that had the Catholics out front at 1.94 percent, followed by the Assemblies of God at 1.86 and the Mormons at 1.63.Read more >>
WAUKESHA – Most Americans believe nanotechnology is morally unacceptable because of strong ties to faith that may skew perception about the basis of the minuscule science, a recent study by the University of Wisconsin-Madison said. Dietram Scheufele, a UW-Madison professor of life sciences communication who helped conduct the study, said deeply-rooted religious views are dictating peoples’ views on nanotechnology. The results of the study show an urgent need to better explain the scientific practice to the public, he said.Read more >>
Is it a medical mystery or a miracle? A South Florida man pronounced dead from a massive heart attack and then brought back to life. His doctor says the man was raised from the dead by a simple prayer. Seven’s Louis Aguirre has the story. WSVN — Dr. Chauncey Crandall isn’t your usual doctor. The world-renowned cardiologist is a man of medicine and science, but he’s also a man of faith. Dr. Chauncey Crandall: "If you come in with a problem into our service, we are definitely going to treat you with conventional medicine, but we are going to believe…
In a study conducted by Arizona State University, only 29.5 percent of the respondents thought nanotechnology was morally acceptable. That compares to 54.1 percent in the United Kingdom, 62.7 percent in Germany and 72.1 percent in France. Nanotechnology is a branch of science that focuses on developing, designing and producing materials, structures, devices and circuits at the smallest possible scale. There are dozens of products that make use of this kind of technology already on the market. Read more >>
A prayer movement has broken out in a handful of churches along Interstate 35. Participants say that if people pray hard enough, God will touch communities along the highway, which stretches from Texas to Minnesota.The prayer movement — part of a Pentecostal, evangelical branch of conservative Christianity — began with Cindy Jacobs, a petite and intense woman who heads a prayer ministry called Generals International. Read more >>
LA CROSSE, WIS. — People musing about what keeps Mike Huckabee in the race for the presidency have wondered if he’s sowing the ground for future television deals, angling for a vice presidential nod or getting ready to run for the White House again in 2012.If those are his goals, the former Arkansas governor isn’t admitting it. He told half a dozen audiences over the last three days in Wisconsin that he can still win or, at the very least, give voice to conservative voters not yet sold on the presumptive Republican Party nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.Read more…
Last spring, something was stirring under the white steeple of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.A motley group of young and clean-cut, goateed and pierced, white-haired and bespectacled filled the center’s Barrows Auditorium. They joined their voices to sing of "the saints who nobly fought of old" and "mystic communion with those whose rest is won." A speaker walked an attentive crowd through prayers from the 5th-century Gelasian Sacramentary, recommending its forms as templates for worship in today’s Protestant churches. Another speaker highlighted the pastoral strengths of the medieval fourfold hermeneutic. Yet another gleefully passed on the news that…
Ajinbayo Akinsiku wants the world to know Jesus Christ, just not the gentle, blue-eyed Christ of old Hollywood movies and illustrated Bibles. Mr. Akinsiku says his Son of God is “a samurai stranger who’s come to town, in silhouette,” here to shake things up in a new, much-abridged version of the Bible rooted in manga, the Japanese form of graphic novels.Read more of this story.