Free Republic

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz began his 2016 presidential bid with an impassioned appeal to the religious right on Monday, exhorting a cheering crowd at the world's largest Christian college to "join a grassroots army across this nation coming together and standing for liberty." "God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn't done with America yet," he said. "I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today, I'm announcing that I'm running for...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Senator Ted Cruz has made his presidential wishes official, with Cruz’s speech streaming live on ABC News and other news outlets as of this writing, with Senator Ted reaching deep into the belief system that he says changed his life and included his parents’ belief in Christ. During the speech, Cruz related how his father and mother were drinking way too much alcohol when he was a young boy, and at one point, his dad decided he would leave the family — deserting his young son and wife. However, being invited to a Bible study changed Cruz’s father’s life,...

You wouldn’t think that anyone would fight about Ash Wednesday and Lent. For Catholics it’s part of what we do. For others it’s something they can use or not as they find it helpful, and increasing numbers do. Down-the-line Evangelical churches have started to hold special services for Ash Wednesday complete with ashes and to treat the Sundays after it as Sundays in Lent. Rather severely anti-sacramental Evangelicals now speak of giving things up and fasting on Fridays. I find this cheering, but my friend Carl Trueman doesn’t. Carl teaches Church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In an unusual video message, recorded on an iPhone by a Pentecostal pastor Pope Francis knew in Argentina, the pope says all Christians share blame for their divisions, speaks of his "longing" for their unity and insists that God will bring the miracle of Christian unity to completion. "Pray to the Lord that he will unite us all," the pope tells a group of Pentecostals meeting in the United States. "Let's move forward, we are brothers; let us give each other that spiritual embrace and allow the Lord to complete the work he has begun. Because...

It Wasn't Just (Or Even Mostly) the 'Religious Right' New Beliefnet Analysis: Catholics and moderately religious voters were just as important as very religious 'Born Agains' By Steven Waldman and John Green The congealing conventional wisdom is that super-religious, born-again Protestants—a.k.a. the religious right—carried President Bush to victory in 2004. A new Beliefnet analysis of the election data reveals this is only half right. There was indeed a flood of evangelicals to the polls-—but it now appears that the shift in the Catholic vote was just as important and, in crucial states, probably more so. In addition, Bush also made...