Free Republic

Ohio Governor John Kasich is comparing candidates like Donald Trump to the “Prince of Darkness” while declaring himself as the “Prince of Light and Hope.” “Look, we have a lot of candidates who are like the ‘Prince of Darkness,’” Kasich, who reminds voters frequently that his father was a mailman, said in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I consider myself the ‘Prince of Light and Hope’ and I don’t spend all my time getting people riled up about how bad everything is.” Kasich, who struggled in the polls after he repeatedly attacked and lectured Donald Trump’s approach to...

SNIP Shabbir ​Ahmed was delivering a sermon at a village in the east of Punjab province when he asked the gathering if anyone did not love the Prophet Mohammad. Mishearing the question, the 15-year old boy raised his hand. Ahmed quickly singled him out and called him a "blasphemer" in front of the congregation, Nosher Ali, the head of the local police station, told Reuters on Sunday. After returning home, the boy cut his hand off, an act welcomed by the boy's father who told police he was proud of his son and did not want the cleric arrested. SNIP

Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan ban Christmas In yet another sign of increasing Islamist intolerance around the world, the celebration of Christmas has come under attack in at least three countries this year: Following in the footsteps of the English Puritans who banned Christmas in the Middle Ages, Brunei, Somalia and Tajikistan are now clamping down on the Christian festival. Now, the announcement from Somalia, which is struggling to get back on its feet after decades of civil war, is possibly the least surprising. The country is officially under sharia'h law; it has almost no native Christians; and Islamist militants still...

A Muslim scholar whose group supports Hamas, who has urged the U.N. to criminalize blasphemy and who is the deputy of an Egyptian cleric banned from the U.S. over his radical statements was able to secure a visit at the White House earlier this month. A report from The Investigative Project on Terrorism uncovered a statement on the website of Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah claiming he met June 13 with Obama administration officials in Washington. Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, a group founded by Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi -- a Muslim Brotherhood leader...

(CNSNews.com) While lighting the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, President Barack Obama said that the "lessons of Jesus Christ" are in not just the lessons of the Christian faith but are in fact “the bedrock values of all faiths.” "Thats the message of the child whose birth families like mine celebrate on Christmas--a prince born in a stable who taught us that we should love our neighbors as ourselves; and that we are our brothers keeper and our sisters keepers; that we should feed the hungry, visit the sick, welcome the stranger," Obama said. “These are the...

Video footage of Muslim missionaries preaching and converting Africans in the Christian-majority states of Malawi and Uganda, show the Islamic leaders teaching the people to "bear witness" that Allah is god, his messenger is Muhammed, and "Jesus is the slave of Allah and his Messenger." Many of the people repeating the Islamic instructions are young but there are also many middle-aged and older people and, in one case, an apparently former Christian teen who is ordered to tear a crucifix from around his neck and "bear witness" to Allah. ...

A visibly frustrated President Obama offered condolences to the victims of the mass shooting at an Oregon college on Thursday, but he added that "our thoughts and prayers are not enough" to stem an epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. Having now spoken after 15 such senseless killings during his administration, Obama again called for "common sense" legislation aimed at preventing gun violence, and he mocked opponents of past initiatives he has pushed. "Each time this happens, I'm going to bring this up," Obama said during emotional remarks in the White House press room. Obama said he has...

“Wake Up!”: Muslim Persecution of Christians Abetted by the West Mideast Christians beg Western governments to stop aiding the slaughter. September 23, 2015 Raymond Ibrahim    Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Not only is the Islamic State (IS) persecuting Christians but so are the U.S.-supported “rebel” forces, which the Obama administration assures are “moderate.”  According to a recent NPR report, “With backing from U.S. allies, like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, this [U.S. supported] rebel coalition fights both the Syrian regime and the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS....

Hillary Clinton’s campaign needs a resurrection in New Hampshire, but this is a strange way to go about it. The Democrat invited the “alternative” women’s chorus Voices From the Heart to sing at a campaign event in Portsmouth, N.H. on Saturday. And the group did so, distorting the African-American spiritual “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus)”: Woke up this mornin’ with my mind, stayin’ on HillaryWoke up this mornin’ with my mind, stayin’ on HillaryHallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah! Voices From the Heart, which consists of 200 members, didn’t just decide to praise Clinton on its own....

That’s the message from Saudi Arabia. Do not meddle in their internal affairs. If they want to lop off heads, leave them alone. If they want to flog their apostates, what’s that to you? And if they want to shred the hands of people reading the Bible, at least they’re not your hands. So shut up. Canadian officials heard that message loudly when they decided to criticize Saudi Arabia for torturing a blogger, Raif Badawi, with 1,000 lashes for criticizing the kingdom’s religious clerics. The Saudi ambassador told Canada’s National Assembly that his country “does not accept any form of...

A church marquee that displayed a message disagreeing with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on same-sex marriage was spray-painted with graffiti this weekend. But the sign at Bisbee Baptist Church was quickly cleaned up to keep showing the message: “Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right.” Pastor Freddie Matthews said he would like to talk to the person who spray-painted the sign early on July 4 with the phrase, “F--- 2 Your God We Love Gays!”

A crucifix sculpted in the shape of a hammer and sickle presented to Pope Francis in Bolivia has caused a stir among Catholic commentators. The Pope was given the item, combining Catholic and communist symbols, by left-wing Bolivian President Evo Morales. One Catholic bishop suggested that Mr Morales had sought to "manipulate God". But while some reports said the Pope was taken aback by the present, the Vatican has played down any row. The crucifix was based on a design by Luis Espinal, a Jesuit Priest assassinated in 1980 by right-wing militia to whom Pope Francis paid tribute during his...

snip “I believe Jesus would,” Carter said when asked whether Jesus would approve of gay marriage. “I don’t have any verse in scripture ... I believe that Jesus would approve gay marriage, but that's just my own personal belief. I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere and was not damaging to anyone else, and I don't see that gay marriage damages anyone else." Carter, a born-again Christian and Baptist, said he still teaches Sunday school whenever he attends his home church. He. said he has never ran across “any really serious conflicts” between...

The comfortable, suburban Christians who are sitting in their armchairs and tut-tutting at us for being so uncharitable as to hold a Muhammad cartoon contest should take careful note of this. Islamic law asserts authority over non-Muslims. To send the signal that we will submit to Sharia blasphemy laws regarding drawing Muhammad, even if we are doing so out of a misguided sense of “respect,” will only embolden Islamic supremacists to make more demands. The endpoint of these demands is shown in this incident in Egypt. These comfortable, suburban Christians in the West are ensuring a future of harassment, persecution,...

Wednesday on the House floor, Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) criticized Texas for its conspiracy theories and then said God must understand Spanish because he named his son Jesus.

Bishop Juan Vicente Córdoba says 'no one chooses to be gay or straight'ROME — A Colombian bishop, insisting that being homosexual is not a sin, said Thursday it’s possible that one of the twelve apostles of Jesus was gay or that Mary Magdalene, another key New Testament figure, was a lesbian. Bishop Juan Vicente Córdoba of Fontibón, Colombia, also said the Catholic Church does not oppose same-sex couples making a life together, but does not consider such arrangements to be a marriage or a family. “No one chooses to be gay or straight,” Córdoba said. “One simply feels, loves, experiments,...

Toronto's Catholic Register is parrotting this story from RNS referring to a front-page article at L'Osservatore Romano calling the cartoons of Mohomet "blasphemous." This is quite incredible really. One can blaspheme God. One cannot blaspheme a man. If Mahomet ever really existed can be debated. If he did, he was a warlord; a murderer, a child-molester and a Jew-hating Christ denier -- and antichrist. He was no prophet. I'm not suggesting that we should engage in mocking anyone; but I won't call the mocking of a man, blasphemy because it is not. Shame on those Catholics who would use such...

The Vatican’s semiofficial newspaper blasted a series of cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as “blasphemous” but also condemned the “mad and bloodthirsty” extremists who opened fire at a Texas exhibit of the cartoons. The front-page article in L’Osservatore Romano likened the exhibit in Garland, Texas, to pouring “gasoline on the fire” of religious sensitivities and was critical of its sponsors, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and professional provocateur Pamela Geller. Police on Sunday (May 3) shot and killed two gunmen who opened fire outside the exhibit that was designed to provoke Muslim sensitivities; the so-called Islamic State has since claimed...

Question: A friend of mine has been reading the Left Behind books that have all of this stuff about the “Rapture” in them. Is there really going to be a “Rapture” like these books talk about?   Answer: No.The “Rapture” refers to a passage in First Thessalonians 4, where Christians are “caught up” in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” Many Christians believe, and the Left Behind books promote, that this being “caught up” to meet the Lord will occur before the Great Tribulation sometime in the near future. Christians will simply vanish, meet Jesus somewhere in the...

The tide has turned for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples seeking to be married in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). Following years of debate and introspection, America’s largest Presbyterian denomination has announced a change to its constitution that allows for a more inclusive definition of marriage. Officially called Amendment 14-F, the new wording in the denomination’s Book of Order will describe marriage as being “between two people.”