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>Tuesday, July 14 probably passes without much fanfare in your home, but the date, Bastille Day, marks the beginning of the greatest organized persecution of Christians since the Emperor Diocletian. This day, the beginning of the French Revolution, also planted the seeds for the murderous ideologies of socialism and nationalism that would poison the next two centuries, murdering millions of believers and other innocent civilians. Between them, those two political movements racked up quite a body count: In Death By Government, scholar R. J. Rummel pointed out thatduring the first 88 years of this century, almost 170,000,000 men, women and...

The five patriarchs of Antioch at their June 8 meeting in Damascus. Credit: Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch via Facebook/Antiochpatriarchate.org Damascus, Syria, Jun 10, 2015 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The five Christian patriarchs of Antioch met in Syria on Monday, calling for peace in the Syrian civil war while reaffirming that Christians have a place in the Middle East. The Christian leaders described themselves as an authentic people of the land, who are “deeply rooted in its earth that was watered by the sweat of our fathers and grandfathers, and we confirm more than ever that we are staying.”...

Why are parts of Germany formerly under the enforced secularism of the Communist party rediscovering charismatic religion? In its story of May 16, 2015, the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel carried a story tiled (on its cover at least) “Are Evangelicals Winning the World?” [That is my translation. The German wording is “Are Evangelicals conquering…” I substituted the less martial-sounding English “winning”. To the best of my knowledge, there is a remarkable scarcity of Evangelical suicide bombers.] The story states that Evangelical congregations are generally growing in Germany. But it concentrates on two congregations: one in Stuttgart, in western Germany, the...

Tear down that cross and toss it in the wood chipper because the American church is toast. So goes conventional wisdom after recent revelations from the Pew Research Center, which found that in just 7 years, the percentage of Christians in the United States dropped nearly 8 points. The news was met with uncontrolled fits of glee from liberal publications like Salon, where author Patricia Miller gloated that the benefits from the decline of Christianity would be, “huge.” No doubt the scores of natural disaster victims around the globe who have profited from all the atheist relief trucks rolling in...

The culture war against Christianity is picking up speed. Last week came word Saint Louis University will remove a heroic-sized statue of Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet S.J. from the front of Fusz Hall, where it has stood for 60 years. The statue depicts Fr. De Smet holding aloft a crucifix as he ministers to two American Indians, one of whom is kneeling. Historically, the statue is accurate. Fr. De Smet, "Blackrobe," as he was known, was a 19th-century missionary to Indian tribes who converted thousands. A friend of Sitting Bull, he spent his last years in St. Louis. And as...

Do you remember the joke about the Irish brewery worker who drowned in a vat of suds? “Poor Sean,” the new widow said upon learning her husband’s fate, “He didn’t stand a chance.” “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, Mrs. Reilly,” replies the foreman. “He did crawl out three times to use the bathroom.”The Republic of Ireland has just voted, by a commanding and unprecedented popular vote, to establish “gay marriage” in its territory. The world, and the Irish themselves, who generally look at themselves from the viewpoint of the foreigner in a sad kind of “double consciousness,” will not fail...

. . . but there is less here than meets the eye. At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big. So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn’t, because that’s not what’s really happened here....

The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region, according to an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center. Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007.

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across the religious landscape, affecting all regions of the country and many demographic groups. While the drop in Christian affiliation is particularly pronounced among young adults, it is occurring among Americans of all ages. The same trends are seen among whites, blacks and Latinos; among both college graduates and adults with only a high school education; and among...

s Islam, to surpass Christianity by 2070, will be only major religion to increase faster than world’s population  By Julio Severo There will be more Muslims than Christians in the world in less than eighty years, according to a Pew Research Center’s report. The report said that while Christians will increase to 2.92 billion adherents by 2050, Muslims will reach 2.76 billion, making those religions about 30 percent of the world population. Muslims will outnumber Jews in the U.S. by 2050. Yet, the report said that by the end of this century, Islam will be the dominant religion in...

Islam to overtake Christianity by 2050.

A shipment of 83,723 Spanish-language Bibles are headed for Cuba and will be distributed to a number of Southern Baptist churches in both Western and Eastern parts of the island nation, SBC's International Mission Board announced this week. IMB, which is an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, announced that the shipment of three 40-foot containers filled with Bibles left from the ports of South Florida and is being distributed this week to various churches throughout Cuba. The announcement added that the Bibles will arrive in the capital of Havana on March 25. The shipment is the third since 1999...

Christianity is a dying relic of an ancient past. The Internet is killing it. Science is killing it. Western sophistication is killing it. Right? [correct] Wrong. [incorrect] In many ways, Christianity is on the rise as never before—worldwide, and in America [disagree]. Here are the ways we can tell: 1. Christianity is growing by leaps and bounds worldwide. The research shows Christian numbers rising, not falling worldwide. "Christianity should enjoy a worldwide boom in the coming decades, but the vast majority of believers will be neither white nor European, nor Euro-American," writes Philip Jenkins of Baylor University, author of "The...

War between Christian Nations and Muslim Nations: A Table Talk between an American Economist and Young Muslims in Indonesia By Julio Severo In the early 1970s, economist John Perkins was in Indonesia and had an interesting table talk with some young Muslims, reported in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [Berrett-Koehler Publishers: 2004], pp. 45-46.” Their talk: Muslim young woman: “Back in the fifties he [Arnold Toynbee] predicted that the real war in the next century would not be between Communists and capitalists, but between Christians and Muslims.” Perkins: “Arnold Toynbee said that?” I was stunned. Muslim...

Americans are becoming increasingly more suspicious struggling to find rhyme or reason for Obama’s latest Middle East policies. Rudy Giuliani seems to attribute Obama’s policies to be influenced through his affiliations with radical socialists like Frank Marshall Davis. But serious questions will prove that Obama’s policies are not different than a Muslim who supports the revival of the Muslim grand caliphate. Was Obama influenced only by a Marxist-Leninist agenda or did he also not grow up Muslim, having learned how to recite the Muslim call to prayer in the classical Arabic tongue as he clearly admits? Can anyone even deny...

Syro-Malabars will take over St Ignatius after it was closed last yearA historic church in Preston that was closed two months ago will re-open after the Bishop of Lancaster offered it to Syro-Malabar Catholics. St Ignatius’ Church, opened in 1836, was due to be merged with the nearby English Martyrs Church because of a shortage of priests. Parishioners said they were stunned by the decision. But on New Year’s Eve Bishop Michael Campbell received a letter from Cardinal George Alencherry requesting a church and presbytery for Syro-Malabar Catholics under the charge of Fr Mathew Jacob Choorapoikayil. There are an estimated...

(CNSNews.com) – Nine of the 10 countries with the worst records for persecution of Christians have populations that are at least 50 percent Muslim, according to the assessment of persecution in the Open Doors USA's World Watch List (WWL) 2015 and population information published by the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. The WWL is an “annual survey of religious liberty conditions for Christians around the world" that was released Wednesday. Communist North Korea topped the list for the 13th consecutive year for the regime’s extreme persecution of Christians. But the other 9 countries among the 10 worst had...

With Reformation Day coming up, this is a good time to recall why the Reformers departed from Roman Catholicism. In our day especially, it seems that many Christians have history-amnesia when it comes to the importance of what God did through the Reformers. During the Reformation, great confusion existed regarding what was, and was not, the true church of Christ. Rome had asserted itself as the true church for centuries, and continues to do so today. However, as the Reformers recognized then, Christians must follow in step today by recalling that joining hands with Rome is a departure from Christ....

Not just fleeing the Middle East: It’s not just the Mideast from which Christians are being driven. “Christians are being driven from the Middle East in suffering,” Pope Francis said in a video message yesterday as French Cardinal Phillipe Barbarin visited the Iraqi city of Irbil, where thousands of Christians have taken refuge. “And from America; and from the military, who need God’s protection, as we do in the USA,” adds Fred Abel of jfredabel@gmail.com. Abel is spot on. The main difference between Christians being driven out of the Middle East and those being driven out of America is that...

In a new video, megachurch leader and author Rick Warren is calling for Christians to unite with Roman Catholics and “Pope Francis,” who Warren recently referred to as the “Holy Father”—a move that is raising concerns among Christians nationwide and is resulting in calls for Warren to repent. Warren made the comments following his visit to the Vatican last month, where he spoke at an interfaith conference on the “Complementarity of Man and Woman.” “We have far more in common than what divides us,” he said in the two-minute video released by the Catholic News Service on Wednesday, described as...