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"Islamic State murders 15 Christian hostages, beheads woman; 35 Christian villages now entirely uninhabited" The Islamic State (ISIS) has killed 15 of the Christians it took hostage in northeastern Syria earlier this week. The news was given by Archimandrite Emanuel Youkhana to the Catholic organization Aid to the Church in Need on Thursday. ”Many of them,” he said, ”were defending their villages and their families.” One woman was beheaded in the village Tel Hormidz and two men were shot to death. There is no information at the moment on how the other 12 were killed. Youkhana added that the number...

Assyrian Church in Beirut Islamic State militants have reportedly executed 15 Christians who have been captured in villages in northeastern Syria since Monday. A priest who has been feeding reports to Christian aid agencies around the world, including Aleteia partner Aid to the Church in Need, said today that a Christian Assyrian lawyer in the city of Hassakah told him that about 15 young Assyrians "are martyred. Many of them were fighting to defend and protect the villages and families." Archimandrite Emanuel Youkhana of CAPNI, the Christian Aid Program in Iraq, said that in the Christian village of Tel Hormizd: 14...

Suspected Israeli nationalists set fire to a Christian seminary in Jerusalem and vandalized an elementary school in Nablus on Thursday, officials said. The attacks, which came a day after a similar group burned a mosque near Bethlehem, have been characterized as hate crimes by Israeli officials and "terrorism" by Palestinians. According to local media reports, the assailants poured flammable liquid into a bathroom window of the Greek Orthodox seminary and ignited it. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said "anti-Christian" slogans were scribbled in Hebrew on the seminary's walls — including “Jesus is a son of a whore” and “the redemption of...

ISIS has reportedly murdered 15 of the Assyrian Christians it captured earlier this week. Aid to the Church in Need reported that the Islamist group murdered a number of Assyrians it took from Hassake governorate in Syria. Abbot Emanuel Youkhana passed on the news to various Catholic agencies working in the area, and said the number still being held totalled 350. Abbot Youkhana said: “Around 15 young Assyrians are martyred. Many of them were fighting to defend and protect the villages and families.” The captured came from a number of villages in the area: 14 people from Tel Hormizd, 81...

Activists monitoring the conflict in Syria said Thursday that the number of Christians kidnapped by ISIS terrorists in their most recent offensive has risen to at least 220. ... SIS began abducting the Assyrians on Monday, when militants attacked a cluster of villages along the Khabur River, sending thousands of people fleeing to safer areas. The Syriac National Council, a Syrian Christian group, told Reuters that hundreds of Christians have fled to the province's two main cities, Al-Hassakeh and Al-Qamishli, which are held by the Kurds. Younan Talia, a senior official with the Assyrian Democratic Organization, said IS had raided...

Hanna Asaad, a network engineer in Fairfax, Va., grew up in the village of Aloor in southern Egypt. He was able to immigrate to the United States several years ago, but his best friend and cousin, Samuel Alham, sought work as a laborer in nearby Libya, like many other Coptic Christians in the impoverished region. Shortly after Christmas, Alham and 20 of his fellow Coptic laborers were kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Libya. In mid-February, they were marched to a Mediterranean beach in handcuffs and orange prison jumpsuits. Then they were beheaded with knives as a video camera recorded...

In reading and hearing how the lib media is trying to trip up Governor Walker and other Republicans concerning Obama and his alleged love of country and whether or not he is a Christian, I thought of a simple solution. At least to Obama being a Christian. Just have someone, anyone, ask him if Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior. A simple enough question that I can answer - yes, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. How do you think Obama would answer?

States are caving into homosexual demands and asking their residents to abandon the reality that marriage is intended solely for a man and a woman Something very unpleasant is occurring in America. Those who have a strong religious faith are being denied the right to say “no” based on its teachings and values. This is particularly true these days as homosexuals, barely three percent of the population, demand that they be accommodated when their demand runs counter to thousands of years of what has been deemed moral behavior and, for many, still is. When it comes to marriage. Gays insist...

It has been called the most contested plot of land in the world — the fissure at which three major faiths come together, and break apart. There have been holy wars fought over it and holy writ foretelling of battles yet to come. It’s Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. But what if history got it wrong? What if the spot where Solomon built the first Jewish Temple, and Herod built the second, was actually about 600 feet to the south, in a place known as the ancient City of David? Enter Robert Cornuke. He travels the world solving Bible mysteries: Noah’s Ark,...

On Sunday, Pope Francis spoke about the Christian season of lent, the period of prayer and penance leading up to Holy Week and Easter. “Lent,” said the Pope, “is a time of combat” and “a time of spiritual battle against the spirit of evil.”

They routinely lament on twitter that there surely must be more important things than conservatives focused on Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS scandal, the Libyan disaster, the Syrian disaster, the growth of ISIS, the resurgence of Al Quaeda, etc., etc., etc. They lament that we are a frivolous society easily distracted from important things. They give awards to deep thinkers who write 20,000 word pieces on subjects no one cares about outside of the Circle of Jerks who make up the political press.

A week after former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said he wasn't sure whether President Obama loves his country, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, said he doesn't know whether Obama is a Christian after The Washington Post asked him the "gotcha" question about which religion President Obama adheres to. "I don't know. I've actually never talked about it or I haven't read about that. I've never asked him that," Walker, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, told The Washington Post, when asked what he thinks of Obama's faith. "You've asked me to make statements about people that I haven't...

David Barton critics beware: There’s now a price to pay if you want to defame the popular historian, author and speaker with false and outlandish charges. Barton won a $1 million defamation judgment in August against two left-leaning candidates for the Texas State Board of Education. The pair, Rebecca Bell-Metereau and Judy Jennings, charged in a 2010 campaign video that Barton, a consultant to the Board, was “known for speaking at white-supremacist rallies.” That highly charged claim stems from two 1991 speeches Barton gave to groups linked to the racist and anti-Semitic “Christian Identity” movement. Barton, recognized as a strong...

The Patriarch of Moscow laid the intellectual groundwork for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. But now he is paying an exceedingly heavy price Russia has done shocking things in Ukraine – but, with a display of nerve that should surprise no one, it presents its designs on that country as the legitimate resurgence of an Orthodox Christian civilisation.

Michelle Obama took time out from Monday’s Easter Egg Roll to talk about the first family’s holiday and why the Obamas don’t usually attend church. The first lady’s visit with “Live with Kelly and Michael” co-host Michael Strahan got off to an awkward start, when shejoined in the audience applause after she was introduced. “You don’t have to clap for yourself,” Strahan said, before asking about the first family’s Easter. The healthy eating proponent, who was pushing her “Let’s Move!” campaign at the egg roll, described what the family did after church on Easter. “We sat around really full because...

Reports Patrick Howley at the Daily Caller: State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf wrote her college honors thesis on “how conservative evangelical support for Israel complicates U.S. foreign policy,” according to Indiana University records. This doesn’t appear to be a stretch of the source material by any means. Howley precisely quotes the article “College ‘Luminary’ Marie Harf followed father to IU, political science” which was published on November 10 last year on an Indiana University website: She credits her IU professors — and especially her undergraduate honors advisors, political science professors Mike McGinnis and Marjorie Hershey, and English and Jewish studies...

Here is how Russell Moore, the Southern Baptist pastor who heads the church’s Washington office, responded to the murder of the 21 Coptic Christians by ISIS: These are my brothers, faithful to Christ even unto death. King Jesus puts heads back on, and puts… http://t.co/0Dps0Lvtxy— Russell Moore (@drmoore) February 15, 2015 A number of Southern Baptists had similar responses. The Southern Baptist bloggers at Pulpit & Pen will have you know that this is a betrayal: Do Southern Baptist leaders and other evangelicals really not know what a Christian is or how you become one? Is it being born into an ethnic group...

Athra Kado had never shot a gun before, let alone seen a battlefield. Until recently Kado, 25, spent his young career in a classroom, teaching high school students how to speak Syriac, his native language. But Kado is one of hundreds of Assyrian Christian men—many with no military experience—taking up arms to protect their towns from ISIS terrorists who invaded this part of Iraq early last year. “If we don’t have land to live, what’s the purpose of teaching a language?” Kado tells The Daily Signal in a Skype interview from a former U.S. military facility outside the city of...

Our country is in danger. Our President is asleep at his Post. Our Military is restrained. What can we do? I am being encouraged to ask the FReeper Community to direct their Church's Ministorial Staff to direct the total Congregation to solicit our Federal Government to act quickly and decisively against the ISIS Islamic Terrorists. I believe we need to act as the Christian Crusaders did against Islamic Terrorists hundreds of years ago. The ISIS Islamic Terrorists must be totally eliminated for the good of Christianity and the World.

Says state, same-sex couple can demand home, savings as damages A judge in Washington on Wednesday authorized the “personal ruin” of a florist whose Christian faith prevented her from promoting a same-sex wedding and who was sued by both the state and the homosexual couple. Officials with the Alliance Defending Freedom confirmed that Benton County Superior Court Judge Alex Ekstrom granted a summary judgment in the case against Barronelle Stutzman, so the case won’t proceed to trial now. It had been scheduled for March 23. It was Ekstrom who said last month that Stutzman personally was liable for the claims...

Mr Tawfiq said: "It's not that I went looking for Islam. Islam came looking for me. "I loved my former life and my work, but now I've found a peace that I never knew before." Mr Tawfiq explained that he made the decision to leave the priesthood when he realised how lonely he was. "I left my job, but not the Catholic religion," he said. "I had no intention of changing my faith. That wasn't part of the plan at all." "My Christian faith slid away slowly and Islam became more and more important. "I play down my Catholic priesthood,...

There is no “right to food”. Food never was any sort of fundamental “right”. Saint Paul already warned us that to those who do not want to work, we shall give no food. You can’t find any clearer evidence that food is not a fundamental right of the person. Of course, charity demands that we feed the hungry. But this is not a subjective right of the hungry, merely the result of the charitable help of those who feed them because – let us say this once again – consider them, in their charity, worthy of being fed. Charity is...

The former chief financial officer of Trinity Broadcasting, the nation’s largest Christian broadcasting network, has filed a lawsuit against her former company and its top bosses for allegedly threatening her with a loaded gun when she objected to “unlawful distributions” of $100 million to themselves and others. The lawsuit was filed Jan. 29 by Brittany Koper, the granddaughter of TBN founder Paul Crouch Sr., who died last year, and her husband, Michael Koper, against Trinity Christian Center, International Christian Broadcasting, Matthew Crouch, Janice Crouch and John Casoria. Brittany Koper was TBN’s CFO and treasurer until she was fired in 2011,...

"A steady patriot of the world alone, "The friend of every country -- but his own." George Canning's couplet about the Englishmen who professed love for all the world except their own native land comes to mind on reading Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. After listing the horrors of ISIS, al-Qaida and Boko Haram, the president decided his recital of crimes committed in the name of Islam would be unbalanced, if he did not backhand those smug Christians sitting right in front of him. "And lest we get on our high horse ... remember that during the Crusades...

Distortion of Christian history in an attempt to downplay the real threat of worldwide Islamic extremism Now we are seeing how, on President Obama’s cue, the Left is dredging up every bad thing done by Christian Crusaders nearly 1000 years ago and done by a very small number of white racists 50 years ago and more, all things that are no longer done or allowed. Whatever the reasoning for this compulsion to make America out to be as evil as ISIS, it becomes a defense the actions of ISIS. Equating the bloodthirsty methodology of ISIS with what? With a few...

“I perform abortions‬ because of my religious belief. I would feel I wasn’t living up to my Christian responsibility if I saw the need to not offer an answer to that need. We have a saying among Presbyterians that God alone is Lord of the conscience.” Abortionist James Armstrong, in the 1990′s film Whose Choice?

People who wonder why the president does not talk more about race would do well to examine the recent blow-up over his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Inveighing against the barbarism of ISIS, the president pointed out that it would be foolish to blame Islam, at large, for its atrocities. To make this point he noted that using religion to brutalize other people is neither a Muslim invention nor, in America, a foreign one: Lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition,...

n his radio show Thursday, Rush Limbaugh unloaded on President Obama for his “high horse” remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier that day in which the president drew a moral equivalence between radical Islamic terror and dark episodes in the history of Christianity. The president’s choice to attack Christianity at an event designed to unite, Limbaugh argued, revealed just how much he resents this country and how actively he is seeking to humble the West. Not only was the speech insulting, suggested Limbaugh, it's dangerous. Saying the president's Prayer Breakfast speech “dots the I, crosses the T” on his...

1 John 2:16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. When you are on a rocking horse everyone else seems on a high one. For someone who has reached new lows as the worst leader in the world’s history, he has the gall to pretend he is a preacher. To accuse Christians of being prideful by their outrage of a religion that is at the heart of fanatical cultists; burning someone alive is an accusation that encapsulates liberalism. Christians today...

The world looks away as a genocide against a people continues apace Despite the current focus on ISIS, the ongoing barbarity inflicted against the Yazidis, a group of people who have inhabited Iraq’s mountainous northwestern region for centuries, remains largely below the radar. And while this estimated population of approximately 500,000 has been the target of hatred by Muslims who see them as heretical devil-worshipers, ISIS has upped the ante. While the world largely looks away, a genocidal level of extermination proceeds apace. “Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth,” warned Yazidi leader Vian Dakhil—last...

Darrell Waltrip National Prayer Breakfast

Earlier today a federal appeals court handed down an important ruling that protects the liberties of religious organizations. . . . . According to the court opinion, Alyce Conlon worked at InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (IVCF) in Michigan as a spiritual director, involved in providing religious counsel and prayer. She informed IVCF that she was contemplating divorce, . . . When Conlon’s marital situation continued to worsen despite counseling efforts, IVCF terminated her employment. Although IVCF is not a church, the court recognized that as a Christian organization, whose purpose is to advance the understanding and practice of Christianity in colleges...

Christian owners of a bakery in Gresham, Oregon, who were forced to close their business in 2013 due to backlash over their refusal to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding based on religious objections, were found guilty of discrimination Monday and now have to pay the couple up to $150,000 in fines. The Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries announced that the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa bakery, Aaron and Melissa Klein, will have to pay the sapphic couple. Whether or not they pay the maximum $150,000 fine will be determined at a hearing on March 10 BOLI...

ISIS has opened a special market to sell property it looted from Assyrian homes and churches in Mosul. The market, called "Spoils Of The Nazarenes," sells televisions, refrigerators, microwave ovens and other electronic devices, as well as furniture and artwork. Prices range from 50,000 to 75,000 Iraqi Dinars ($42 to $63). ISIS captured the city of Mosul on June 10. Almost immediately thereafter it began to drive Assyrians out of Mosul and destroy Christian and non-Sunni institutions. It imposed a poll tax (jizya) on Assyrians, ordered unmarried women to 'Jihad by sex', destroyed the statue of the Virgin Mary at...

WHEN Theresa Bixby, 63, learned that she had breast cancer four years ago, she reacted as many Americans do. “One of my first thoughts was, ‘will they pay?’ ” she said. But she wasn’t talking about conventional insurance plan. She lost hers when she left her full-time position for part-time work at her church in Greenville, S.C. She was worried about the program that she had joined six months earlier: Christian Healthcare Ministries. Christian Healthcare Ministries is not an insurance company. It is a nonprofit “health care sharing ministry” based in Barberton, Ohio. The cost of membership is far lower...

Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson said at the Super Bowl media day on Tuesday that though he loves playing football, his "faith is everything". Wilson, 26, said that while he wanted to be recognised as a successful football player – a "winner" – he also wanted to leave a legacy as a Christian man who serves others. "In terms of my legacy off the field, I want to be a Christian man that helps lead and helps change lives and helps serve other people. It's not about me, you know," Wilson said. "It's not about me and it's about just...

Close to 300 Muslim students armed with iron bars and sticks attacked a Christian boys' school in northern Pakistan, reportedly in retaliation to French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo's controversial drawings of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. The attack left four Christians injured. "It is very sad that Islamic radicals attack Pakistani Christians because of Charlie Hebdo. Christians condemn the blasphemous cartoons. It is a shame that even after 67 years since the birth of Pakistan, Christians have not yet been considered Pakistani citizens, but are seen as 'Western allies,'" Nasir Saeed, director of the NGO Center for Legal Aid Assistance &...

FULL TITLE: Democrats in Congress Urged to Be 'Bold' Like Republicans With God Talk; Assert Christian Faith Supports Gov't Funding for Planned Parenthood, Welfare WASHINGTON — The progressive, New York-based Union Theological Seminary hosted the first-ever Congressional Faith Orientation on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, which was attended by five Democratic Congress members who addressed the role religion and faith play in determining how they vote on public policies. While it is a widely-held notion that the Republican Party is more beholden to faith and religion when it comes to integrating them in federal public policy decisions, the Democratic panel members discussed...

"Since Slovakia is a Christian country, we cannot tolerate an influx of 300,000-400,000 Muslim immigrants who would like to start building mosques all over our land and trying to change the nature, culture and values ​​of the state," said Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Slovakia is the country that had its commemorative Euro coin depicting two Christian saints, Cyril and Methodius, at first rejected by the European Commission, which told Bratislava it would need to re-design the coins and remove Christian symbols, including halos and a cross-adorned stole. Eventually the Slovakia Euro was issued with halos and crosses. This...

In the Gospel of John, we read a story where a group of Jewish Torah teachers and Pharisees (members of a legalistic sect of Judaism) bring to Jesus a woman whom they caught in adultery, asking Him what punishment He thinks the woman deserves. Masterfully — as He always did — Jesus answers the scholars with a simple, yet profound statement: “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her� (John 8:7, NIV).Recently, Newsweek featured a cover article on the Bible in which author Kurt Eichenwald — not a Biblical scholar...

A text that may be the oldest copy of a gospel known to exist — a fragment of the Gospel of Mark that was written during the first century, before the year 90 — is set to be published. At present, the oldest surviving copies of the gospel texts date to the second century (the years 101 to 200). This first-century gospel fragment was written on a sheet of papyrus that was later reused to create a mask that was worn by a mummy. Although the mummies of Egyptian pharaohs wore masks made of gold, ordinary people had to settle...

"I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish—in their pews, homes and hearts." So says an influential New York Times journalist. In other words, "Keep your religion in the closet." In his Jan. 10 Times editorial, "Your God and My Dignity: Religious Liberty, Bigotry, and Gays," Frank Bruni writes, "I've been called many unpleasant things in my life, and I've deserved no small number of them. But I chafe at this latest label: A threat to your religious liberty." He finds it "absurd" that the simple act of two men or two...

Today we remember the great civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr. Nearly universally respected, King is particularly commended by secular liberals. This is highly ironic because King, a baptist minister, embodied many of the things that secular liberals today dislike the most about “conservative” Christians. If you actually read what King wrote and said, you might be surprised (or not surprised) to find that he regularly appeals to God, the Bible, and even the natural law. Put any of these words in the mouth of a conservative Christian today and liberals would probably label the person a “fundamentalist,” sound...

Much of America is excited about the MLK movie titled “Selma”; however, there is discussion, debate, and some say distortion, if not dishonesty, about the role Lyndon Johnson played in some of King’s activities, especially the 54-mile march from Selma to the Alabama capital of Montgomery that led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Let me state clearly that I have little to no respect for Johnson or King and I’ve made that judgment based on their lives, not because Johnson was a Democrat and King was a Black. One’s political party or one’s race is...

If evangelical Christianity is famous for anything in contemporary American politics, it is for its complete opposition to gay marriage. Now, slowly yet undeniably, evangelicals are changing their minds. Every day, evangelical communities across the country are arriving at new crossroads over marriage. My magazine story for TIME this week, “A Change of Heart,” is a deep dive into the changing allegiances and divides in evangelical churches and communities over homosexuality. In public, so many churches and pastors are afraid to talk about the generational and societal shifts happening. But behind the scenes, it’s a whole different game. Support for...

***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

“Why didn’t someone do something?” Those five words still haunt my thoughts today. Sometime ago, I sat speechless as I listened to a man recount his trip to a holocaust museum with his young daughter. As they walked by photos of the death camps and gas chambers, his daughter silently contemplated the horrors that were unfolding before her eyes. When the tour ended, they drove home without saying a word. The father wondered if she truly understood the significance of the event. Was she too young to view such depravity? Was she too fragile to cope with the truth of...

A youtube video has been uploaded which shows that a Nevada church is only steps away from an abortion clinic. According to the video, West End Medical Clinic abortion clinic in Reno Nevada is thirty-three steps away from The Potter´s House Christian Fellowship. The church’s website address is Reno for Jesus, where they state that they are a, “Bible based, Spirit Filled, Nondenominational Family of Believers.” Saynsumthn has no knowledge of the church’s position on abortion or whether they or their members protest this abortion clinic. The blog has sent an e-mail to the pastors to find out. As of...

Petition demands ‘public retraction’ of prof’s view that people have ‘right to choose’ abortion Following pressure on his Christian college from a pro-life group, a professor has apparently recanted the muddled views on abortion he articulated in a campus forum. That’s not good enough for Created Equal, which started a petition campaign against Indiana Wesleyan University demanding that the school “not tolerate pro-abortion professors.” As The College Fix previously reported, IWU professor Greg Fiebig called himself “equally pro-choice and pro-life” in the “Life vs. Choice” forum in November, which provoked Created Equal’s social-media campaign against him. Fiebig said he had...

FULL TITLE: Christian parents accused of 'cruelty' in their 17-year-old transgender daughter's suicide note REFUSE to accept her female identity - but insist they loved 'him' The mother of a transgender teen who killed herself over the holiday season is speaking out, and making it clear she did not and does not approve of what she believes was her daughter's choice to be transgender. Carla Alcorn of Kings Mills, Ohio said in an interview that she and her husband did not 'support' their daughter Leelah Alcorn, while also refusing to acknowledge her daughter's sex, using male pronouns and referring to...