Free Republic

Walker's views disturb Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation."It is frightening that the highest executive in our state suffers from the delusion that God dictates his every move," she says. "Consider the personal and historic devastation inflicted by fanatics who think they are acting in the name of their deity."The dogmatic unwillingness of Wis. Gov. Scott Walker to negotiate or to compromise with Democrats or unions has surprised many people in the state. One explanation for his attitude may be found in his religious convictions. In a talk to the Christian Businessmen's Committee in Madison on...

***Update***: The man in the video appears to be Pastor Eric Dammann of Bible Baptist Church in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey. I’ve sent him an email requesting more information about why he punched a child. (Via Christian Nightmares and @StickyPkls) … In this clip from a sermon, a Christian pastor explains how he walked up to a smart-aleck kid who wasn’t “taking the Lord serious”… and punched him in the chest. Because that’s how you’re supposed to win converts for Jesus. VIDEO ON LINK

Pro-choice Pastor Roger Paynter, in a sermon to his congregation: “… Abortion is not the automatic breaking of God’s will… In general, we should say that God is against the ending of all life, but that in some tragic circumstances, he understands – even allows – and certainly forgives the choices we have to make.” Robert M Baird and Stuart E Rosenbaum, editors The Ethics of Abortion, 3rd edition (Amherst, New York: Prometheus books, 2001) 236

It was the day after Ash Wednesday in 2012 when I called my mom from my dorm room at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and told her I thought I was going to become Catholic. “You’re not going to become Catholic, you just know you’re not Southern Baptist,” she said. “No, I don’t think so.” A pause. “Oh boy,” she sighed. I started crying. I cannot stress enough how much I hated the idea of becoming Catholic. I was bargaining to the last moment. I submitted a sermon for a competition days before withdrawing from school. I was memorizing Psalm 119...

Abortionist Curtis Boyd, who has been committing abortions since before they were legalized in 1973, was featured Friday by UK-based publication The Guardian in a piece on American abortionists. The tone of the piece is one of shock and dismay that America has grown more pro-life, rather than more accepting of the tenets of Roe v. Wade, since 1973. To drive this point home, the piece includes this startling infographic from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute displaying the radical pro-life shift in opinion as evidenced by legislative restrictions on abortion. For The Guardian and for abortionists like Boyd America’s lack of...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore denounced reparative therapy at a conference here, saying the controversial treatment that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation has been “severely counterproductive.” Moore, who serves as president of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, spoke to a group of journalists Tuesday (Oct. 28) covering the group’s national conference. “The utopian idea if you come to Christ and if you go through our program, you’re going to be immediately set free from attraction or anything you’re struggling with, I don’t think that’s a Christian idea,” Moore told journalists. “Faithfulness to...

CHICAGO (STMW) – A federal judge has shot down former First Baptist Church of Hammond Pastor Jack Schaap’s motion to cut his 12-year prison sentence. U.S. District Judge Rudy Lozano also denied Schaap’s request for a hearing on his motions and denied him a certificate to appeal to the 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Schaap pleaded guilty in September 2012 to taking a 16-year-old parishioner, who was also a student at the church’s school and under Schaap’s care for counseling, across state lines for sex three times. Lozano sentenced him in March 2013 to 12 years in prison, two...

CONCORD, N.C. — A former Concord youth pastor was sentenced to at least 16 months in prison after pleading guilty to molesting young boys in his care. WECT-TV reported that Robert Price pleaded guilty to three counts of indecent liberties with a child.

Contractors have taken on the huge task of sheltering thousands of unaccompanied child migrants In the late afternoon of July 9, Air Force One touched down at Love Field in Dallas. President Barack Obama ducked into a private room at the airport for a discussion about the crisis of undocumented children crossing the southwest border. Assembled around a wooden table were top Texas officials, including Governor Rick Perry and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, as well as the leaders of several faith-based charities. One of them was a man so anonymous, the White House pool report misspelled his name. Kevin Dinnin...

President Barack Obama is replaying his turnout-boosting 2012 contraception fight against Christian groups by staging a pre-election fight over religion and new legal rights for gays.He’s expected to sign a regulation on July 21 that would force religious contractors to give up federal funding if they don’t submit to progressive claims that homosexuality and heterosexuality are morally equivalent, and that there’s no connection between biology and good sexual behavior.The regulation creates that fight by banning grants to groups that are reluctant to hire gay, lesbian and cross-dressing or transgender people who contradict the groups’ religious beliefs about sex.The regulation doesn’t...

The beautiful Palm Aire resort and hotel has an indoor Olympic sized pool and an outdoor pool.  Free Wi-Fi and cable TV are included in the simply decorated guest rooms.The Palm Aire Hotel and Suites is set to be sold to Baptist Child & Family Services (BCFS) operating under a federal contract, pending local government approval, according to reports from Weslaco, Texas where the hotel is located. Weslaco is a few miles north of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County.The resort hotel for illegal alien children is reportedly the ‘first in the nation’.Now this…Due to backlash the charity received after...

The story behind a case that made headlines a few months back, from The New York Times: Father and son had always been close, from the moment Tim Schaefer was born, six weeks premature, with blood poisoning, a weak heart and lungs, and a doctor who thought he would not make it through the night.His father, the Rev. Frank Schaefer, a United Methodist minister, thought of his eldest son as a miracle child, saved by some combination of medicine and prayer, saved for something special.“We couldn’t even touch him; he was in an incubator, and we had to reach in...

Via Pewsitter I learned of this from Liberty News. My emphases. EXCLUSIVE: HHS Bankrolled Catholic and Baptist Church from 2010 to 2013 to Prepare for ObamaÂ’s 2014 Invasion!A month or two ago news broke that ObamaÂ’s HHS was calling for private contractors to help transport illegal aliens throughout the interior United States. What made this already big news even bigger is the fact that the original call for proposals came out in January, long before the bulk of the illegal alien surge began. The breaking news youÂ’re about to read is ten times bigger, because the following proves the Obama...

Unaccompanied children are crossing at an alarming rate, and now many will be heading to Dallas. "We cannot turn our back on these children that are already here," Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said. Judge Jenkins announced that Dallas County would be the first county in the state to offer housing. Terry Henderson is in charge of disaster relief for the Texas Baptist Men. He's been waiting an announcement like this for more than a month. "I kind of had a heads up no matter where it was going to happen in Texas that we were going to be involved...

On June 30 the United States Supreme Court, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, ruled that the religious beliefs of employers trump the free conscience and civil rights of employees.For traditional Baptists, the decision hearkens to earlier centuries when kings and popes mandated religious dogma, denying religious liberty and freedom of conscience to their subjects. Similar to that earlier era, the religious dogma of the Green family (the Southern Baptist owners of Hobby Lobby) is now legally binding upon employees.Baptists in Europe and America of the 17th to 19th centuries were routinely denied religious liberty and freedom of conscience by establishment...

I can't cut and paste right now, but the story says the "pastor" is invited to a reception with Obama on June 30.

President Obama designated Fort Sill, Okla., as one of the military installations that would house the surge of young illegal immigrants coming to the United States, and the decision could be a factor in the homestretch of another Republican primary, just two weeks after immigration helped sink House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, (R., Va.). Former House Speaker T.W. Shannon has primarily faulted Representative James Lankford for voting to raise the debt-ceiling, but the recent spate of border crossings by minors has given him another weapon to use against his campaign to replace retiring Senator Tom Coburn.

BALTIMORE, Md. – Southern Baptists elected Arkansas Pastor Ronnie Floyd on Tuesday to be the new president of the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Floyd was elected by messengers during the Southern Baptist Convention's 2014 Annual Meeting, beating out SBC presidential nominees Dennis Manpoong Kim of Maryland and Jared Moore of Kentucky. Over 3,000 messengers voted and Floyd won on the first ballot, receiving 51.6 percent of the votes. Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological seminary, had praised the Arkansas pastor, whom he nominated, as "dependable" and "faithful" and someone who will "lead all Southern Baptists...

I believe that the show "19 Kids and Counting" is a very wholesome show, and more than worthy of watching. This said, after the book, "Growing Up Duggar" came out, and after perusing it, I do believe that parts that talk abut hair lengths, clothing choices, etc, do perhaps need some discussion, given that there are some scriptural references stated within the book. And in reply: 1.) 1 Peter 3: 3-13 says: "Whose adorning let it no be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel. But let it be...

Southern Baptists will be heading for Baltimore in just a few days, and the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention is to be held in a city that has not hosted the convention since 1940. This time, Baptists attending the meeting will face an issue that would not have been imaginable just a few years ago, much less in 1940 — a congregation that affirms same-sex relationships.Just days before the convention, news broke that a congregation in suburban Los Angeles has decided to affirm same-sex sexuality and relationships. In an hour-long video posted on the Internet, Pastor Danny Cortez...