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COMMENTARYWillow Creek Community Church, one of America’s biggest and most prominent churches, recently released a short book called Reveal: Where Are You? The book contains the results of a comprehensive study that Willow Creek conducted among their own members and among members of other churches that use their model. Pastor Bill Hybels has said that the results of that study are “earth-shaking,” “ground-breaking.”In a nutshell, the survey results showed that heavy involvement in the church programs and activities of Willow Creek did not necessarily translate to spiritual growth and maturity. Findings like these have caused the church leaders to stand…

WASHINGTON (BP)–Both sides of a church-state legal battle found something to celebrate in a federal appeals court’s opinion on a Christian ministry in an Iowa prison.The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis, ruled Dec. 3 that a federal judge was correct in deciding the state’s support of the InnerChange Freedom Initiative operated by Prison Fellowship violated the bans on government establishment of religion in both the U.S. and Iowa constitutions. The court, however, reversed the part of Judge Robert Pratt’s 2006 decision that ordered Prison Fellowship to shut down the program and return to the state $1.5…

AS AMERICAN officials fly off to Bali for a meeting on climate change, they will be thinking hard about the people back home who are studying their every move. In contrast to 1997, when the religious right led denunciations of the deal negotiated in Kyoto, many of today’s evangelicals want America to be generous and constructive.Read more of this story.

Scott Southworth, a major in the Wisconsin Army National Guard and the Juneau County district attorney, is one of 10 nominees for Beliefnet.com’s 2007 Most Inspiring Person of the Year Award. But he’s got some tough competition, including actress Angelina Jolie.Southworth, a single father, met a boy with cerebral palsy while volunteering at an orphanage in Iraq. Last year he adopted the boy and has worked to provide medical care for other orphans.Read more of this story.

COMMENTARYAt the end of July, 34 evangelical leaders published a letter to President Bush, commending his attempts to "reinvigorate … Israeli-Palestinian negotiations" and affirming his "clear call for a two-state solution." These leaders represented a wide swath of American evangelicalism, hailing from such institutions as the Christian & Missionary Alliance, World Relief, World Vision, the Vineyard USA, the Evangelical Covenant Church, Fuller Theological Seminary, Bethel University, and this magazine. They also told the Administration that it is "a serious misperception" that American evangelicals are uniformly opposed to a two-state solution and the creation of a new Palestinian state out of…

NEWS RELEASELAKE FOREST, CA (ANS) — The third annual Saddleback Global Summit on AIDS & The Church concluded yesterday (Friday, November 31) with a challenge from Dr. Rick and Kay Warren to the more than 1,700 attendees for the Church to lead with love in the global response to HIV/AIDS. “People with HIV/AIDS need to have the invisible God made visible to them – that is our purpose,” Mrs. Warren said. “There are many things we don’t know about this epidemic, but what we do know is that individuals living with this disease need at least six things: acceptance, hope,…

Although every faith has its bloggers, U.S. Christians may be among the most vociferous of the watchdogs, philosophers and ecclesiastical groupies.Read more of this story.

Pastor Harry R. Jackson Jr. will often exhort his congregation to "stand against" abortion and same-sex marriage. "You are on the battlefield in a culture war," he’ll say, urging his listeners to help serve as the "moral compass of America." In his rhetoric and his political agenda, Jackson has much in common with other evangelical Christians who are part of the conservative wing of the Republican party, except that Jackson is African American and so is his congregation at Hope Christian Church in Prince George’s County. Read more of this story.

John Koessler is at once an Everyman and an anomaly. You might expect the former pastor and now chair of the pastoral studies department at Moody Bible Institute to have been "raised in the church," as the saying goes. Rather, he’s a virtual nobody from nowhere, raised by parents both agnostic and dysfunctional. Thus his memoir, in which he proves himself a graceful writer, is a coming-of-age and coming-to-faith saga A Stranger in the House of God: From Doubt to Faith and Everywhere in Between.Read more of this story.

The Rev. John Splinter has stopped describing himself as “evangelical.”To the guy down the street, Splinter said, the word has come to mean homophobe, anti-women’s rights, pro-death penalty and anti-abortion, and is a stumbling block for what Splinter wants to do: follow Jesus Christ.Read more of this story.