Free Republic

Christians are frightened to reveal their religious beliefs to colleagues at work, equality chiefs admit. When they do declare their Christianity, whether in the office or on the shop floor, they are often mocked or treated like bigots—and their children are even ridiculed at school. Christians also think their faith is being pushed out of its role as a cornerstone of life in Britain, according to a major study by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. And ironically, many feel they are being persecuted by the same anti-discrimination and equality laws supported by the equality watchdog. …

The Rev. Franklin Graham gave an ominous warning to Christians living in the United States Sunday, as he expounded on how religious freedoms are being eroded stateside while believers are being persecuted throughout the world. Graham also expressed his concerns about the Obama administration's foreign policy, which has been to rebuke the nation's allies, such as Israel, while countries known to be hostile to the U.S. are attempting to shape policy by gaining influence in the Democratic Party and by giving large donations to entities such as The Clinton Foundation. "I believe we're going to see persecution in this country,"...

DUBLIN, March 4, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The government needs to protect children from the religious views of their own parents, according to popular atheist writer Richard Dawkins.His speaking partner went further, comparing parents instilling their religious views in their children could be compared to denying them medical treatment.In an interview prior to a speech at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, last week, Dawkins told the media that parents have too much influence in their children's education, especially when it comes to religion.“There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children,...

While in 2014 the days of throwing Christians to wild beasts in the arena may be behind us, the persecution of Christians around the world isn't. In fact, the number of our brothers and sisters subjected to imprisonment, torture, and death for their faith in just the last twelve months dwarfs the number who suffered during the entire tenure of Nero. As a new report from a leading ministry to the persecuted church shows, last year was one of the most violent on record for believers worldwide—and 2015 could be worse. Open Doors International released its World Watch List earlier...

"I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish—in their pews, homes and hearts." So says an influential New York Times journalist. In other words, "Keep your religion in the closet." In his Jan. 10 Times editorial, "Your God and My Dignity: Religious Liberty, Bigotry, and Gays," Frank Bruni writes, "I've been called many unpleasant things in my life, and I've deserved no small number of them. But I chafe at this latest label: A threat to your religious liberty." He finds it "absurd" that the simple act of two men or two...

Army commanders Order Removal Of 'God and Country' Recruiting Sign January 18, 2015 An Army recruiting station has been ordered by higher ups to shelve a sidewalk sandwich board with the wording "On a mission for both God and country.” The order went out Friday to a recruiting station in Phoenix that had been displaying the outdoor sign since at least October. The sign board also shows an image of a Special Forces patch and Ranger, Airborne and Special Forces tabs. An inquiry from Army Times to the U.S. Army Recruiting Command prompted the sandwich board’s immediate removal.

his past summer, Toronto comedian Megan MacKay, uploaded a mockery video of Christians she called the, “Hobby Lobby Makeup Tutorial.” “This closely held corporation called Hobby Lobby which is a craft store company,” she begins, “recently went to the Supreme Court and said,’ We don’t want to have to pay for a woman’s contraception because we are Christian and we don’ believe in that and the Supreme County said ‘sure…” We could certainly debate her analysis of the Hobby Lobby case and what it was about another time. For this blog, we are pointing out MacKay’s outright disrespect of Christianity...

The mayor of Atlanta Kasim Reed announced today the firing of the city's fire chief for the crime of being a Christian, according to news reports. It seems the fire chief, Kelvin Cochran, wrote a book for his Bible study group in which he espoused actual Christian beliefs. How dare he? But his firing doesn't infringe on religious freedom at all, so says the mayor. "This is not about religious freedom, this is not about free speech" the mayor reportedly said. "Judgement is the basis of the problem." So there you have it. If you're fired for being a Christian...

Traditional values groups are rallying around an Army chaplain who was rebuked by his commander for distributing information on Christianity during mandatory suicide prevention training. Twenty nonprofit organizations dedicated to religious freedom have signed a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh, urging him to overturn action against Capt. Joseph Lawhorn, an evangelical and onetime infantryman. His commander, Col. David Fivecoat, who heads the brigade at Fort Benning, Georgia, that molds new Rangers, issued a “letter of concern” on Thanksgiving. He took action after one soldier complained to the website MilitaryAtheists.org, which posted an article. The atheist group later said it...

Police in Massachusetts are contacting the FBI after a baby Jesus statue was stolen from a Nativity scene and replaced with a pig's head, saying this vandalism could be a hate crime. ... Bill Lapierre, 77, has attended the Sacred Heart Parish for as long as he can remember.... "We had just finished doing 400 meals to help the poor and about 1,000 gifts to help the poor and to coming to that was really, really bad,"

In October, Jeffrey Tayler wrote in Salon that the Qur’an “backs up jihad, suicide attacks (“martyrdom”), beheadings, even taking captive women as sex slaves.” This was singular for Salon, which usually whitewashes the truth about Islam and jihad and excoriates those who expose it as “racists” and “bigots,” but now it is clear why Tayler was able to get away with it: he is supremely hostile to Christianity. Here, he gives a characteristic Salon Christmas greeting: Jesus likely never existed, but Muhammad’s existence is well established. “Let’s make Bill O’Reilly’s head explode: We desperately need a war on Christmas lies,”...

Silent Night! Endless night! All is dark, there’s no light. Cyclone clouds have blocked out the sky, We’re almost out of our dry-meat supply. Sleep in uneasy peace. We may have to eat Aunt Bernice. What the New Yorker is calling "Climate Change Carols" are a series of Christmas songs whose lyrics have been rewritten to focus on environmental issues, gutting the carols of any relationship to the season of Christ’s birth. Not only that, but the hope and joy characteristic of Christmas has also given way to gloom and doom. Granted, this dechristianization of carols began years ago with...

With Mary Landrieu’s ignominious exit, the Democrats will have lost their last senator in the Deep South. And that’s a good thing. They should write it off—because they don’t need it. I don’t remember a much sadder sight in domestic politics in my lifetime than that of Mary Landrieu schlumpfing around these last few weeks trying to save a Senate seat that was obviously lost. It was like witnessing the last two weeks of the life of a blind and toothless dog you knew the vet was just itching to destroy. I know that sounds mean about her, but I...

This year, your real Christmas tree will be more expensive than it needs to be. That’s because the Department of Agriculture is imposing a fee on each fresh-cut tree sold. A few months ago, the federal government created a national marketing program to advertise the virtues of real Christmas trees. It’s funded by a 15-cent surcharge that will be added to the cost of each tree sold. It’s not a tax, Washington insists -- merely a fee that you have to pay. “The Christmas tree industry requested this initiative to fund Christmas tree research and marketing, the program will be...

Roman Catholic leaders have sent e-mails of warning to dozens of Washington and Maryland priests after protesters with bullhorns yelling anti-Catholic slogans appeared at several parishes and in a couple of cases “stormed the inside of the church just before Mass,” a bishop-administrator wrote in the e-mail. A spokeswoman with the Archdiocese of Washington, which oversees 139 parishes in the District and suburban Maryland, said Wednesday that “really small” groups of protesters have appeared on the property of three or four parishes in the past couple of weeks near Mass time. They were shouting at parishioners going in and out...

High school students in Long Island, N.Y., were recently denied the right to establish a club for Christian students by their school administrators. This marks the second time they’ve run into trouble. Last year, John Raney, a 17-year-old student at Ward Melville High School, created Students United in Faith as an extracurricular club where Christian and non-Christian students could come together to discuss faith and pursue hunger-relief charity projects. “I wanted to start the club because I thought it would provide a safe space for Christians to meet and talk about their faith,” Raney told Fox News. Administrators at Raney’s...

Liberals increasingly want to enforce a comprehensive, uniformly secular vision of the human good. And they see alternative visions of the good as increasingly intolerable. Liberalism seems to have an irrational animus against Christianity.

It’s hard to imagine that any school would have a problem with a book about a Christian family that helped Jews escape the Holocaust. But Springs Charter Schools in Temecula, Calif., not only had a problem with “The Hiding Place,” they also took issue with any other book that was written by a Christian author or included a Christian message. “We do not purchase sectarian educational materials and do not allow sectarian materials on our state-authorized lending shelves,” Superintendent Kathleen Hermsmeyer wrote in a letter to attorneys at the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI). Pacific Justice Institute is representing a parent...

A bakery owner in Oregon broke down in tears while discussing the fallout of her and her husband’s decision not to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple on the basis of their Christian beliefs. Earlier this year, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries found “substantial evidence” that Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, discriminated against the lesbian couple. Oregon bakery owners face a $150,000 discrimination fine for not baking a wedding cake for lesbians. They now face a fine in excess of $150,000. (snip) The ordeal started in February 2013, when Rachel Cryer...

In a book that thoroughly examines the successes and failures of the Tea Party in the age of Obama, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak's chapter on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin shows why Palin unmasked the media's biases against conservatives just like Barack Obama exposed the media's biases for liberals, especially those Obama's mold. (Link) http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/28/Wacko-Birds-Author-Liberals-Media-Hate-Palin-for-Embracing-Faith-Family-Career