Free Republic

Some church leaders in Kentucky say guns can be an effective way to beef up the flock. Organizers of a Baptist church convention said it will use guns giveaways across the state to attract nonbelievers who are more prone to go duck hunting than sit in a church pew, The Courier-Journal reported. The goal of the Kentucky Baptist Convention's "Second Amendment Celebrations" is to "point people to Christ," the report said.

Questions about the morality of birth control increasingly appear in columns and blogs by SBC ethicists and ministers.On the surface, Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists might seem unlikely bedfellows in opposing mandated coverage of contraceptives under Obamacare, but observers say it points to ongoing reconsideration of the morality of birth control among the Southern Baptist Convention’s leading thinkers. “Evangelical leaders are tripping over themselves in the rush to stand with Roman Catholic bishops against this perceived governmental overreach,” Jacob Lupfer, a doctoral candidate in political science at Georgetown University, said in a Religion News Service commentary in December. “At the...

On Tuesday, the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) announced a drastic turnaround on the part of the federal government: The German Romeike family, which sought asylum in the United States to home-school their children, will now be allowed to stay in America. “The Romeikes can stay!!!” the HSLDA announced on its Facebook page. Just one day ago, the Romeikes thought they would be forced to return to Germany, where the state could take custody of their children because of their decision to home-school. At a minimum, they would face increasingly harsh fines for violating Germany’s compulsory attendance law....

Oleksandr Turchynov, a well-known Baptist pastor and top opposition politician in Ukraine, took office on Sunday, Feb. 23, as acting president after the Parliament voted to oust President Yanukovych.... ...... Monday night in Kiev, Turchynov, 49, spoke publicly for the first time since taking office as acting president. According to an unofficial translation, he said, "Unprecedented cruelty and brutality of the dictatorial regime did not stop citizens. They selflessly gave their lives to defend their rights—and won.... "Our first task today is to stop the confrontation, to regain control … to ensure peace and tranquility, to prevent new victims, local...

When First Baptist's Robert Jeffress proclaimed a couple of weeks back that President Obama is "paving the way for the antichrist," we dismissed it as a publicity stunt designed to sell copies of his new book on the end times. Not everyone was so quick to call Jeffress' claim empty bombast. Take this Christian Post piece from over the weekend in which a reporter, apparently keeping a straight face, asks two Baptist biblical scholars -- or rather as the headline suggests "experts" on the Obama-antichrist link -- to weigh in on the controversy. Darrell Bock, a professor at Dallas Theological...

HUNTINGTON, WV - Powerful winds and heavy rain blew through the area Friday. In West Huntington, the winds were so strong, they ripped off a roof and steeple at Open Door Baptist Church on Madison Avenue. Dan Houdyschell said he heard the storm roll through. "Just a lot of wind around 2 a.m.; garbage cans flying and stuff like that," he said. Steve Wayne is a pastor at Celebration Church, which is just across the street from the damage. "I couldn't believe when I saw that their roof is in the road and the steeple; I can't imagine the damage...

The Southern Baptist Convention’s top spokesman for moral and public policy concerns says Russian President Vladimir Putin lacks moral authority to criticize Western countries for abandoning Christian values. “It really kind of makes my blood boil when I hear Vladimir Putin claiming to be pro-family values,” Russell Moore, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission said in a Feb. 19 podcast titled, “Is Russia really a ‘pro-family values’ nation?

Bojangles Blanchard, an ordained Baptist minister in Louisville, Ky., says denying same-sex couples the benefits of marriage treats them as second-class citizens. A Kentucky Baptist minister and gay-rights activist filed a lawsuit Feb. 14 claiming the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Maurice “Bojangles” Blanchard — who with his partner, Dominique James, was fined 1 cent for trespassing in November for refusing to leave a county clerk’s office after being told they could not apply for a marriage license — asked U.S. District Judge John Heyburn to build on his finding two days earlier that Kentucky must recognize same-sex...

EyeOn College Basketball Missouri students block Westboro Baptist protest of Michael Sam By Chip Patterson | College Writer February 15, 2014 4:46 pm ET The Missouri community has shown overwhelming support for Michael Sam since the Tigers' football star announced that he was gay earlier this month. On Saturday a group of students united to drown out the protest efforts of the Westboro Baptist Church. The group was in town for the Tigers' home basketball game against Tennessee, protesting Missouri's support of Sam outside Mizzou Arena. Students blocked the Westboro Baptist protesters from view with a human wall, turned their...

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...