Church Service

Vice President Dick Cheney has agreed not to attend today's Sept. 11 anniversary commemorations at New York's World Trade Center site and instead will join mourners at a church service to remember Port Authority employees who died in the terrorist attacks two years ago. New York Mayor Michael R.

Re "Baptist Body Says Gays Can Turn Straight," June 18: I am the 35-year-old son of an Assembly of God preacher. When I was 11, I realized that I had homosexual tendencies. I faced it head-on. I went to God. I went to the altar at every church service. For the next seven years I cried and prayed for hours at church. I cried and prayed for hours at home, begging God to change me. Why did he not? I had accepted Jesus as my savior. I was baptized in water and the Holy Spirit. At 18 I had enough anguish.

A retired Mormon educator who wrote a book questioning whether the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints misrepresented his authority as a prophet was suspended from the church Sunday. Grant Palmer, 64, who wrote "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins," could have been excommunicated.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon figured he was stepping into the lion's den, but he didn't expect this. The ubiquitous leader of the Orange County-based Traditional Values Coalition was preparing to deliver a talk one evening last September at a Baptist church in San Francisco when more than 100 gay rights activists descended on the scene. It quickly got ugly. The protesters, incensed by Sheldon's well-publicized attacks on the gay lifestyle, drowned out the service with shouts.

The Rev. Wayne Teuerle had worked in the rescue missions of downtown Los Angeles. He knew their image: smelly places with ragged furniture, gray linoleum and pale green walls. He wanted his Long Beach Rescue Mission to look more like a well-maintained apartment building than a shelter for the homeless. The result of that ambition is readily apparent at the earth- toned, two-story mission buildings on either side of Pacific Avenue north of Anaheim Street. Both the two-story Samaritan House, a men's 100-bed facility with a chapel and dining hall, and Lydia House, a 33-bed temporary home for women and children, were built specifically as mission buildings.

Handing more ammunition to detractors who say Rep. Michele Bachmann has an aggressive anti-gay agenda, the GOP presidential candidate attended a church service in Iowa on Sunday in which the pastor labeled homosexuality "immoral" and "unnatural. " According to NBC News, Bachmann attended a non-denominational church near Des Moines along with her husband Marcus. She was holding her personal copy of the Bible. Bachmann read to the congregation from the book of Philippians, NBC reported, saying, "Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, think well of these things.

WASHINGTON -- Democratic and Republican campaign operatives sniped over Medicare and taxes on the TV talk shows Sunday, while President Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney attended church services with their families. Kevin Madden, a Romney campaign senior advisor, defended Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan's charge that the president "raided" $716 billion from Medicare to help pay for the 2010 healthcare overhaul. “What President Obama did actually weakens Medicare," Madden said on ABC's "This Week.

Mitt Romney, who rarely spotlights his Mormon faith, took reporters along to a church service Sunday morning near his family's lakefront vacation home in Wolfeboro, N.H. No news cameras were allowed inside, but a small pool of journalists was invited to attend and report their observations, offering a window into a private, but important facet of Romney's life. Accompanied by his wife, Ann, and eight other family members, the Republican presidential candidate was greeted outside by an elderly couple.

After he was ordained in 1950, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller set out to preach the Gospel. Along the way, he revolutionized religious outreach--and created the fourth-longest-running TV show in history. Sunday marks the taping of the 1,500th "Hour of Power" show, an occasion that has the Crystal Cathedral founder looking back with wonder on his 28 years on the air. "No one had any idea back then that it would turn into this," he said in an interview Thursday.