Washington

Jefferson Bethke, the online evangelist whose recent video "Why I Hate Religion" saw over 17 million views in just one week, has created a new spoken word poem – this time tackling love, sex and marriage.

Bethke, 22, says that his hope for "Sex, Marriage & Fairytales" is to highlight the most common and problematic issues plaguing marriages today, while emphasizing Jesus as the "ultimate healer, redeemer, and restorer of every marriage."

"My intention would be that this poem would allow you to look more deeply to Jesus to either better your current marriage, or prepare for your future marriage," he writes below the YouTube clip. more >>

Washington is poised to become the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage as Sen. Margaret Haugen announced Monday that she would support the measure.

Her support marks a majority for gay marriage supporters in the state's senate.

"I know this announcement makes me the so-called 25th vote, the vote that ensures passage," Haugen said in a statement on Monday. The 49-member Senate now holds 23 Democrats and two Republicans in favor of the bill. more >>

Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Seattle, Wash., has hit back at critics who claim his new book penned with his wife, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, goes too far, or doesn't go far enough, in its discussion of marriage and sex. 

"You try to write a book on marriage and sex with your wife and next thing you know there are a lot of ants crashing your picnic," he wrote Tuesday in a post for CNN's Belief blog.

In Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together Driscoll and his wife, Grace, describe their marriage in a "brutally honest" way, exposing their relationship struggles and sharing "the lessons we learned along the way." They also talk frankly about sex. more >>

Jefferson Bethke’s “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” YouTube sensation has garnered over 15 million views and thousands of comments since its Jan. 10 release. In a tell-all interview with The Christian Post, Bethke shares his views on religion, the controversy surrounding his video, and changes he wish he could make to his message, now gone viral.

The 22-year-old shared that this video was “not as big as it looked” – that it was the collaborative product of his poetry and a friend’s video production skills. However, the emotion behind “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” was Scripture-based, he told CP.

“My heart behind the video and the lyrics really has to do with just reading the Scripture and seeing a staunch juxtaposition that Jesus would always do in regards to highlighting people who are only about the external not the internal,” Bethke said. more >>

A young online evangelist is hoping to epitomize the message that Jesus does not equal "religion" in a YouTube video that has attracted over 6 million views and incited hundreds of comments on the true meaning of faith.

The video, titled "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus," was uploaded Jan. 10 and has since become YouTube's most-watched video. The popular, and apparently controversial video, showcases what Jefferson Bethke says was his "journey to discover this truth – the difference between Jesus and false religion."

"What if I told you, Jesus came to abolish religion?" the poet asks. "If religion is so great, why has it started so many wars? Why does it build huge churches, but fails to feed the poor?" more >>

Tens of thousands gathered Friday night to listen to televangelist and preacher Joel Osteen at his “Night of Hope” event in Seattle, Wash., the first in 2012 and part of his 15-city tour across the United States.

Fans of Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, flooded Twitter and Facebook with posts concerning the event at KeyArena at Seattle Center.

“It’s a packed house at Key Arena,” tweeted Ryan Brien, media director at The Rock Church in Monroe, Wash. For concerts and staged events, KeyArena accommodates about 17,000 people. more >>