By DAVID YONKE, Toledo Blade

Author John Eldredge just can't take it anymore. He's heard enough descriptions of Jesus Christ as "loving" and "compassionate."

Fine qualities, indeed, and certainly true of Jesus, he said. But what about the rest of his personality?

The Rev. Stephen Sprinkle, an openly gay Baptist minister from Dallas, said it's not enough for churches to be "tolerant" of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people. They need to "move from tolerance through understanding to appreciation and celebration."

WINDSOR, Ont. - A Virgin Mary statue is drawing scores of people to an ethnic Roman Catholic church with reports that she smiles during the day and weeps tears of healing oil at night.

Two veteran investigators of religious and paranormal phenomenon cautioned, however, that the weeping Madonna figure is more likely a case of "pious deception."

Picture John Mellencamp in rumpled jeans and a black T-shirt, cigarette dangling from his lips, strumming a well-worn acoustic guitar on a breezy back porch.

That's not literally how the Indiana rocker recorded his new album, "No Better Than This," but the disc has that simple, earthy, earnest feel of a bygone era.

Nobody mixes feedback, flaming arrows, patriotism and political incorrectness like Ted Nugent.

The Motor City Madman has been doing it for more than four decades in his inimitable and indefatigable style, and his current tour is more of the same -- named the "Trample the Weak, Hurdle the Dead" tour.

When the author of "The Shack" travels the world to talk about his mega-selling novel, the emotional and spiritual depths of responses he gets from audiences make him feel as though he were listening to God.

Tom Weschler was a 15-year-old musician and band manager in Detroit when he first ran into Ed "Punch" Andrews, a local entertainment mogul, in 1965. Andrews was managing up-and-coming Detroit rocker Bob Seger, and Weschler, who had saved his money from a car-wash job to buy a Nikon camera, asked if his band could play at a local club Andrews owned.

DEARBORN, Mich. -- It's no surprise that the Henry Ford Museum has enough cars to fill a Motown freeway, but its vast collection of automobiles -- a stunning variety of makes, models, eras and designs -- is just one part of a more general tribute to American know-how.

Actor-attorney Ben Stein is turning up the heat on one of society's hot-button issues with "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," a documentary film that claims scholars are being fired, demoted, ostracized, ridiculed or otherwise punished merely for questioning evolution.