Culture

Super Bowl XLVI is the most-watched television program in U.S. history, according to NBC Sports. The network revealed Monday that more viewers tuned in for the Giants-Patriots game than they have for any other Super Bowl match. 

Citing "fast national data" from The Nielsen Company, NBC announced that 111.3 million viewers tuned in to watch the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots 21-17. Last year's figure was 111 million viewers, who tuned in on Fox to watch the quarterback Aaron Rodgers lead the Greenbay Packers in a victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers. 

According to the network, the list of most-watched programs in U.S. television history are: more >>

NewSpring Church, a five campus megachurch in Anderson, S.C., is canceling its Sunday night services due to the Super Bowl this weekend.

Lead Pastor Perry Noble explained the reason in his blog. "I've been in church work for over 20 years and the one thing I can say is that attendance on Super Bowl Sunday night in church has always been awful! (and…the people who are there are pretending to be looking at youversion on their phone…but they are really checking the score of the game!)," he wrote.

Noble said the church has always tried to compete with the Super Bowl with poor results, so NewSpring made the decision to change its worship times from Sunday night to Saturday night. The megachurch's two Sunday morning worship services are still being held. more >>

Conservative and liberal Christians say their own views on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage would differ greatly from Jesus if he were walking among them today, according to a recent survey. In addition, respondents believe that Jesus would be more compassionate than they are toward undocumented immigrants and the poor. 

In a survey published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 787 respondents who identify as Christian were asked to use a 100-point scale ranging from liberal to conservative and to identify where on the scale they believe "a contemporary Jesus" would fall on certain issues. 

The study, authored by Lee D. Ross, a professor of psychology at Stanford University for more than 30 years, apparently shows how people's political views are often separated from the teachings of their faith.  more >>

While many churches will be observing Super Bowl Sunday with watch parties, one Florida congregation will doing something considerably different.

Church of Hope, a recently established nondenominational church in Ocala, will be canceling service and doing charitable work on Feb. 5 in an event titled "3G Sunday," the G's standing for "Gather, Go, Give."

"When we trust God no matter what's happening around us, we can love anyone inside the church and in our community," said Emily Cummins, communications assistant for Church of Hope and daughter of Hope's Pastor Mark Cummins, in an interview with The Christian Post. more >>

Good church leadership begins at home, the first speaker of this year's annual pastors conference hosted by the Desiring God ministry at the Minneapolis Convention Center said Monday.

"The apostle Paul considers the fruit of a man's behavior in his home as one of the central qualifications for pastoral office," Pastor Doug Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, told those in attendance and an online viewing audience.

"He says that if a man does not know how to manage his household well, then how will he know how to care for the church of God as he says in 1 Timothy 3-5? From this we learn that fatherhood in the home and pastoral care in the church are analogous activities." more >>

An official from the Roman Catholic Church says that it is "impossible" to undergo "de-baptism" as a growing number of people in Western Europe and the United States request such a process.

Jeannine Marino, program specialist for evangelization & catechesis at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, told CP that atheists who seek to be "de-baptized" or "un-baptized" cannot technically do so.

"From the Church's perspective, it is impossible to 'un-baptize' or 'de-baptize' someone because we believe that baptism permanently seals the person to Christ and the Church," said Marino. more >>