Free Republic

Istanbul (AsiaNews) - On his return from Jerusalem , where he met with Pope Francis at the Holy Sepulchre, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, has revealed an important appointment for unity between Catholics and Orthodox: a gathering at Nicaea in 2025, where the first real ecumenical council of the undivided Church was celebrated. Speaking exclusively with AsiaNews, Bartholomew says that together with Pope Francis "we agreed to leave as a legacy to ourselves and our successors a gathering in Nicaea in 2025, to celebrate together, after 17 centuries , the first truly ecumenical synod, where the Creed was...

This week I write upon returning from a nine day trip with friends to England, where much of my visit centered on an examination the English Reformation. I was fortunate to be exposed to the lessons of history through two groups, Christian Heritage Cambridge and its spinoff, Christian Heritage London. These groups focus on reminding Britons and their guests of the influence of Christianity on Western civilization and inspiring and equipping Christians to demonstrate the reasonableness and transforming power of their faith. Since my wife and I worship in an Anglican Church here in the States, I was particularly interested...

China will be the "world's most Christian nation" in 15 years, according to a report from the London Sunday Telegraph. "It is going to be less than a generation. Not many people are prepared for this dramatic change," Fenggang Yang, a leading expert on religion in China, told the newspaper. There are about 1.3 billion people living in the country, and in 2010, 58 million of them were Protestant Christians. Yang, a professor of sociology at Purdue University and author of Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule, estimated that by 2025, the number of Christians will have...

An Expose of the Men Responsible for the Decline and Fall of Western Civilization People Who Need to Read This Book: People who prefer A.D. to C.E. on their calendar. People who wonder how anybody in their right mind could approve of Nero's legacy of same-sex marriage, let alone 70% of the millennial generation. People who want their grandchildren to be Christians. People who are bothered by the fact that the most liberal part of society is the universities, and the most liberal part of the universities is the liberal arts department, and the most liberal part of the liberal...

Of all the myriad myths spread at light speed by the enemies of Christianity and astonishingly believed without much critical thought by vast numbers of people, one of the most surreal must be the idea that Nazism was Christian. This is part of an email I received fromTony, a supporter of my party Liberty GB, who sent me a long list of sharp attacks against Christianity after watching my video: What Is Uniquely Good about Western Civilisation Derives from Christianity. For example Adolf Hitler was a Catholic and included proclamations of his beliefs in his writings, e.g. "We demand liberty...

If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you'd probably answer "not good." And there'd be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia. But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written. This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance,...

Pope Francis attends a meeting with the patriarchs and major archbishops of the Eastern Catholic churches in Syria, Iraq and and other parts of the Middle East, at the Vatican Nov. 21. (CNS photo/L'Osservatore Romano via Reuters) Pope to Eastern Catholics: Never resign ourselves to a Middle East without Christians - YouTube Video Pope Francis announced this month he will visit the Middle East in May this year. While it has been foreshadowed since the first weeks of his papacy, this event will place the Church’s first South American Pope in the historic homeland of Christian faith, the “Holy Land”,...

A recent Gallup poll refutes the claim made by Barack Obama on March 9, 2008 that “we are no longer a Christian nation.” Gallup found that three quarters of all Americans - a supermajority - identify themselves as Christians, with only five percent saying they are practicing members of a non-Christian faith. “We find, looking at our data, that America does in fact remain a predominantly Christian nation,” Dr. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor in chief, said of the poll released on Christmas Eve. “Now, our overall estimation of what percent of Americans identify with the Christian religion depends a little...

ROME, December 5, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Catholic bishops of the nation that pioneered legalized euthanasia for children, prostitution, and “gay marriage” have come to Rome to tell Pope Francis that he is facing a Church that has “drastically secularized” and hemorrhaging members. One of the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands, who are conducting their official visit with the pope this week, told Vatican Radio they are facing the closure of hundreds of churches and an ongoing exodus of the faithful. In an interview with Vatican Radio, Willem Jacobus Eijk Cardinal, Archbishop of Utrecht and chairman of the Dutch bishops’...

MOSCOW, July 25 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday praised the role of Orthodox Christianity in the country’s history and congratulated the heads of the world’s Orthodox churches on the 1025th anniversary of the Christianization of Kievan Rus, a medieval state comprising parts of modern-day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. “The adoption of Christianity became a turning point in the fate of our fatherland, made it an inseparable part of the Christian civilization and helped it turn into one of the largest world powers,” Putin said in a message addressed to participants of a commemorative celebration on Red...

OSLO, NORWAY: It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country, but in Norway — one of the most secular nations in an increasingly godless Europe — the runaway popularity of the Bible has caught the country by surprise. The Scriptures, in a new Norwegian language version, even outpaced "Fifty Shades of Grey" to become Norway's best-selling book. The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most...

It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country, but in Norway — one of the most secular nations in an increasingly godless Europe — the runaway popularity of the Bible has caught the country by surprise. The Scriptures, in a new Norwegian language version, even outpaced "Fifty Shades of Grey" to become Norway's best-selling book. The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most prominent theaters....

For centuries, Christians thought culture would change if we just had a majority of Christians in the culture. That has proven to be a false assumption. Culture is defined by a relatively small number of change agents who operate at the top of cultural spheres or societal mountains. It takes less than 3-5 percent of those operating at the top of a cultural mountain to actually shift the values represented on that mountain.For example, this is exactly what advocates in the gay rights movement has done through the "mountains" of media and arts and entertainment. They have strategically used these...

A new analysis of the 2011 census shows that a decade of mass immigration helped mask the scale of decline in Christian affiliation among the British-born population – while driving a dramatic increase in Islam, particularly among the young. It suggests that only a minority of people will describe themselves as Christians within the next decade, for first time. Meanwhile almost one in 10 under 25s in Britain is now a Muslim. The proportion of young people who describe themselves as even nominal Christians has dropped below half for the first time. Initial results from the 2011 census published last...

The linear conception of history is so seductive, even antagonistic groups like Enlightenment philosophers and Marxists adopt it. It pervades their attitude toward religion. Both believe society matures as it sheds its religious heritage. Infantile societies practice religion, but progressive societies are secular, they maintain.

A few weeks ago Mitt Romney spoke at a college commencement exercise and encouraged the graduates to marry early and have a lot of children. He used the words “quiver full” taken from the Old Testament.The comment was unremarkable, particularly for a Mormon to make. They are known for marrying early and having quivers full of children. Contra the contraceptive culture, even among Evangelicals, the notion of a quiver full from the Psalms is gathering steam among orthodox believers.Here is what he said, “You only live one life. Don’t spend it in safe, shallow water. Launch into the deep. If...

Protestants with a strong religious identity continue to increase as Catholics with a strong religious identity continue to decline, according to a March study by the Pew Research Center. The proportion of Catholics reporting strong religious affiliation declined by almost twenty percentage points over the last few decades, from 46 percent of Catholics in 1974 to 27 percent in 2012. Protestants reporting strong religious affiliation increased more than ten percentage points during the same period, from 43 percent to 54 percent. The contrast between Protestant and Catholic trends is not as straightforward as the numbers suggest. The data tell us...

Before we talk about comparative birth rates in Muslim and Christian nations, we have to talk about a weakness that 21st Century Christianity faces in its competition with Islam. A Martyr in the Christian religion is one who dies for his faith. A Martyr in the Muslim religion is not just one who dies for his faith, but one who kills for his faith. How is Christianity going to compete with people who are not just willing to die for their religion, but to kill for their religion? Birth rates among almost all Western Christian nations are below replacement, and...

Deep in China’s heartland is a region known as “The Bethlehem of China,” where, more than a thousand years ago, Western missionaries first brought Christianity to the area. It is here, in a series of caves hidden in the hills, where members of China’s underground Christian Church tell FRONTLINE/World and Chicago Tribune reporter Evan Osnos how they have kept the religion alive. For years, they moved from place to place to avoid government detection, until they found safety in these hills. “When we were in an underground state, we would gather here to meet,” Zhang Yinan, a pastor who’s chronicling...

“Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions,” asserts the promise of God from the book of Joel. Yet some of those men reportedly seeing visions and dreams are neither Jews nor Christians … but Muslims. What’s more, Middle East evangelists report the dreamers are coming to Christianity because of their visions of Jesus. According to a CBN report, Christian Middle East evangelist Hazem Farraj’s television program “Reflections” is reaching a large Muslim audience. Farraj told CBN that he hears from Muslims who report having dreams or visions of Jesus. Tom Doyle, an evangelist, pastor...