Free Republic

Bob Jones University has fired an independent firm hired to investigate sex abuse reports just one month before the group planned to release its 13-month review findings. The university had contracted with Lynchburg, Va.-based GRACE (Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment) in November 2012. “Over the last several months, we grew concerned about how GRACE was pursuing our objectives, and on Jan. 27, 2014, BJU terminated its contract with GRACE,” the university said in a press release. “It is BJU’s intention to resolve its differences with GRACE, and we are disappointed a resolution could not be reached before...

ALEXANDRIA, La. (BP) -- God once used a donkey to alert a wayward prophet that he was on the wrong track. Could it be the Lord is using a bear, a Russian Bear, to do the same with the nations of the West, in particular the United States? "Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values," Russian President Valdimir Putin said in his state of the nation address in mid-December, The Washington Times reported. Putin continued, "Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in...

Prosecutors say a former minister at First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., charged with his wife’s murder, was trying to leave the country prior to his Jan. 1 arrest to marry his boyfriend. The latest twist in a story that has received worldwide media attention came Jan. 16 in a bond hearing for Richard Shahan, 53, who resigned recently as children and families pastor and facilities director at First Baptist, reportedly to head overseas for three years of mission work in Europe and Central Asia. Prosecutors said information gleaned from more than 3,000 of Shahan’s e-mails indicate he was planning...

Prosecutors say a former minister at First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., charged with his wife’s murder, was trying to leave the country prior to his Jan. 1 arrest to marry his boyfriend. The latest twist in a story that has received worldwide media attention came Jan. 16 in a bond hearing for Richard Shahan, 53, who resigned recently as children and families pastor and facilities director at First Baptist, reportedly to head overseas for three years of mission work in Europe and Central Asia. Prosecutors said information gleaned from more than 3,000 of Shahan’s e-mails indicate he was planning...

The collapse of the barrier between popular culture and decadence has released a toxic mudslide of vulgarity into the nation’s family rooms—and just about everywhere else. There is almost no remote corner of this culture that is not marked by the toleration of vulgarity, or the outright celebration of depravity. Lee Siegel has seen this reality, and he doesn’t like it. “When did the culture become so coarse?,” he asks, adding: “It’s a question that quickly gets you branded as either an unsophisticated rube or some angry culture warrior.” Siegel wants us all to know that he is neither unsophisticated...

A former Mormon bishop in Riverside County is expected to serve three years in prison for sexually assaulting two teenage girls who attended a Menifee church, prosecutors said. Todd Mitchell Edwards, 49, pleaded guilty Wednesday to two counts related to the assault of the teens, ages 16 and 18, as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County district attorney's office. The counts were sexual battery and sexual penetration with a foreign object. In addition to the prison time, Edwards will also have to register as a lifetime sex offender as part...

CHAPTER 3 OF GOD’S DECREE Paragraph 1. God hath decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things, whatsoever comes to pass;1 yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein;2 nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established;3 in which appears His wisdom in disposing all things, and power and faithfulness in accomplishing His decree.41 Isa. 46:10; Eph. 1:11; Heb....

Two men claim the San Diego VA religiously persecuted themTwo men claim they were religiously persecuted by the Department of Veterans Affairs San Diego during a class meant for chaplains, according to a lawsuit filed Friday. In its lawsuit, the Conservative Baptist Association of America alleges that two of its members – a retired Army major and a sailor-- were repeatedly told by an instructor not to use Jesus’ name or quote the Bible as they went through the VA-run class, which applicants must take to become a chaplain inside the hospital. "Anytime you tell somebody you can’t pray in...

FOREWORD ‘I have thought it right to reprint in a cheap form this excellent list of doctrines, which were subscribed to by the Baptist Ministers in the year 1689. We need a banner because of the truth; it may be that this small volume may aid the cause of the glorious gospel by testifying plainly what are its leading doctrines . . . May the Lord soon restore unto His Zion a pure language, and may her watchmen see eye to eye.’ So wrote the young C.H. Spurgeon, then in the second year of his ministry at New Park Street...

The president of the Kentucky Baptist Convention's children's services agency has recommended that the organization amend its hiring practices to ban discrimination against homosexuals, according to a PowerPoint presentation posted on the agency's website. "I would rather homosexuals see the love of God through us than be denied employment by us," Bill Smithwick, president of Sunrise Children's Services, said in an Aug. 16 PowerPoint presentation to the agency's trustees. "I would rather see the ministry continue to help kids and share the Gospel than close." Trustees were scheduled to vote on the proposal during their Nov. 8 meeting. One trustee,...

Last month, after being sure to get his caffeine fix at Starbucks, Southern Baptist leader Richard Land went where few evangelicals had dared to go before: the Provo campus of Brigham Young University, the intellectual heart of Mormonism. After lecturing on "family, faith, freedom and America," Land attended a BYU football game with LDS leaders and joined them to hear James Taylor sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Days later, George O. Wood, the general superintendent of the Assemblies of God, also visited BYU, followed by the Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptists’ flagship seminary. Is there...

Lighthouse Trails has watched in dismay over the past few years as Charles Stanley’s In Touch magazine has made the decision to promote contemplative/emergent names. When our editors picked up a copy of the August 2013 issue and saw a feature article written by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, we decided to call In Touch Ministries to find out who was responsible for the content in the magazine. Sadly, the response we received from the editorial department at In Touch left us with a sinking feeling that the evangelical church has been seduced and there was no turning back. We’ll talk about the...

Abortion clinic closings on rise in U.S., 44 tallied year to datePREV The sign outside Planned Parenthood in Bryan, Texas, comes down in late August, marking another of 44 abortion clinic closings so far this year.  Photo courtesy of 40 Days for Life and Coalition for Life. NEXT Posted on Sep 6, 2013 | by Tom Strode  WASHINGTON (BP) -- For Abby Johnson, the closing of a single Planned Parenthood center demonstrated her dramatic reversal from abortion clinic director to leading pro-life advocate. But for pro-lifers throughout the United States, it marked another exhibit in a hopeful trend --...

Charles Spurgeon aka Charles Haddon (C.H.) Spurgeon (19 June 1834 – 31 January 1892) was a British Particular Baptist preacher. Charles Spurgeon remains highly influential among Christians of different denominations, among whom he is known as the “Prince of Preachers”. He was a strong figure in the Reformed Baptist tradition, defending the Church in agreement with the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith understanding, and opposing the liberal and pragmatic theological tendencies in the Church of his day. In his lifetime, Charles Spurgeon preached to around 10,000,000 people, often up to 10 times each week at different places. Spurgeon was...

Can chaplains committed to historic biblical Christianity serve in the United States military? That question, though inconceivable to our nation’s founders, is now front and center. And the answer to that question will answer another, even more important question: Can religious liberty survive under America’s new moral order? The repeal of the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, coupled with the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, set the stage for this crisis. The full normalization of same-sex relationships within the U.S. military is part of the unprecedented moral revolution that is now reshaping American...

The prayer shawl that Myron Slobin received when he was bar mitzvahed in 1955 will have a new home Sept. 8 when Slobin, spiritual leader of the Siouxland International Messianic Fellowship, presents it for dedication to the Rev. Jim Wilson, pastor of the Glendale Baptist Church. The shawl, or tzitzit will replace the runner on the church’s communion table which was accidentally damaged by the Messianic Fellowship which has been meeting on Fridays at the church for about 3 years. “It’s very significant to the Old Testament ties and to the Bible,” Wilson said of the tallit. “It’s something that’s...

BEAUMONT, Texas – As Hispanic populations across the United States, many of which are traditionally Catholic, continue to increase, so do opportunities for Southern Baptist churches to address the spiritual questions of current and former Catholics. Hispanics made up 38.1 percent of the population of Texas in 2011, the U.S. Census reports. This reflects a nearly 10 percent increase since 2006, when Hispanics accounted for 35.7 percent of all Texans, according to the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts’ office. The Southern Baptists of Texas Convention (SBTC) has 193 cooperating churches listing Spanish as their primary or secondary language. Many of...

The state Supreme Court has unanimously upheld the rape and sexual assault convictions against Ernest Willis who is serving a 15-to-30 year prison sentence for forcibly raping his teenage babysitter twice, whom he knew through Trinity Baptist Church in Concord, in 1997. The court issued its ruling this morning. The girl, who became pregnant, was later made to stand before their congregation to apologize by then-pastor Chuck Phelps. A Merrimack County jury convicted Ellis of three counts of rape and one count of felonious sexual assault in 2011. Willis’s attorneys appealed the conviction on several grounds, including the admission of...

A misdemeanor trespassing trial for a gay Baptist minister and his partner who refused to leave a city clerk’s office after being denied a marriage license was postponed Monday when attorneys were unable to come up with an impartial jury. Attorneys for Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard and Dominique James and prosecutors questioned prospective jurors Aug. 6 in Jefferson County District Court in Louisville, Ky. After people were eliminated for various reasons, not enough remained in the jury pool for the trial to proceed. The trial was rescheduled for Nov. 25. Blanchard and James tried to apply for a marriage license in...

WASHINGTON (BP) -- People brought into the United States illegally as children should not be treated in the same way as undocumented immigrants who entered as adults, a Southern Baptist public policy specialist told members of Congress. Barrett Duke of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission also testified that the immigration reform bill approved by the Senate needs some improvement. Duke, the ERLC's vice president for public policy, was one of the witnesses at a July 23 hearing before a House of Representatives subcommittee. The panel considered the status of those whose parents brought them to this country as illegal...