Free Republic

I wrote last week about how the Obama administration has specifically forbade federal law enforcement officials from spying on Mosques. That news came as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention to how Obama has conducted himself during his first term in office. In one of the comments on that post, it was said that we all know there are evangelical conservatives who are issuing veiled threats against our democratic process when they do not like the majority's decisions. That must be why the IRS, under President Barack Obama, has been targeting churches for investigation. Hat tip to The...

The Obama Internal Revenue Service targeted several Christian groups including a 180 year-old Baptist paper. The Obama IRS targeted Christian groups including Franklin Graham and the 180 year-old Biblical Recorder. The Obama IRS implemented a program to infiltrate and target conservative, evangelical Christian churches. ... The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief organization, were both targeted by the Obama IRS.

On August 1, the one-year “safe harbor” for religious charities objecting to provisions of Obamacare will end. Starting then, these nonprofit employers will be forced to violate their religious beliefs or pay large fines. In charge of collecting the fines will be our recently newsworthy friends at the Internal Revenue Service. To recap how we got here: In 2010 a panel created by the new health care law determined that all health insurance policies provided by employers must cover contraception, sterilization, and abortion drugs free of charge. Employers not complying with this Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate will be...

More details of a massacre in Homs late last month have emerged following the global outcry of a massacre in Deir el-Zour yesterday. The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr. According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square...

Neb. Christian College Expels Lesbian, Charges Tuition [Pics in URL] Danielle Powell, right, and her spouse Michelle Rogers are June 12, 2013. OMAHA, NEB. Danielle Powell was going through a hard time in the spring of 2011, just months away from graduating from a conservative Christian college in Nebraska. She had fallen in love with another woman, a strictly forbidden relationship at a school where even prolonged hugs were banned. Powell said she was working at a civil rights foundation in Mississippi to finish her psychology degree when she was called back to Grace University in Omaha and confronted about...

Disclosure: Clayton Coates is on the ChristianMingle Advisory Board. Five years ago, online dating was still considered taboo, but now online dating has become a societal norm and the Christian community is no exception. Christian singles are flocking to Christian dating sites such as ChristianMingle®.com (which just hit its 10 millionth membermark), to find a potential soul mate who shares the same faith and values. While it's rare nowadays to find a single Christian who isn't open to online dating, church leaders may be slower to adopt the evolution of what has become the dating "norm." Pastors are all about...

After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness. Ship's cook Okene, 29, was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May 26 due to heavy Atlantic ocean swells around 30 km (20 miles) off the coast of Nigeria, while stabilizing an oil tanker filling up at a Chevron platform. SNIP Somehow Okene survived, breathing inside a four foot high bubble of air as it shrunk in the waters slowly...

Breitbart News reported last week that Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) passed an amendment in the House Armed Services Committee protecting religious speech of service members in the military. President Barack Obama has now threatened to veto the bill if it passes the full House and Senate. SNIP In other words, Obama says he will veto any bill that forbids his appointees or officers from telling a soldier that he cannot mention Jesus during prayer or have a Bible on his desk, or that keeps those appointees from telling a chaplain (who is an ordained clergyman) what religious teachings he is...

When I first saw the headline I admit being genuinely curious what sort of monument an atheist group would erect.After all, what is the tie that binds atheism? It seems that by definition “atheists� would reject any attempt to lump them all together with one symbol or phrase that unites and epitomizes an atheist “credo.�That is, after all, the point of religious monuments. Christians in general will erect a cross, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, a statue of Christ, while we Catholics will include statues of the Blessed Mother or other saints, and a crucifix. Jews have the...

In which Bishopess Schori’s “Theo-fantastic” Curacao sermon is reexamined, evaluated, judged, and ditched. Brethren, Peace and good to all of you. I can't listen to this sermon! I’ve been asking myself what (or who) possessed Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishopess of the Episcopal Church, to deliver this sermon in Curacao. As you might remember, I commented on it not long ago on a previous blog post. I think I got the answer after reading a chapter of this book, God or Goddess?: Feminist Theology : What Is It? Where Does It Lead?, by Manfred Hauke....

<p> O O O ——————— GOD'S DEALINGS WITH MAN ——————— O O O DOCTRINE MORALITY RESPONSIBILITY PROMISE LAW – ISRAEL LAW – ISRAEL GRACE– RIGHTEOUSNESS THEOCRACY KINGDOM CHURCH AND PEACE ——————— ——————— ——————— ——————— ——————— ——————— ——————— ————————— 1. COVENANT SPHERE ADAMIC NOACHIC ABRAHAMIC MOSAIC DAVIDIC NEW EVERLASTING Gen. 1:28,29 Gen. 9:1-17; Gen. 12:1-3; Ex. 19 – 30 2 Sam. 7:15-19; Mt. 26:26-28; Jer. 32:37-40 Gen. 2:15-17 Gen. 6:18 Gen. 15:1-16,18 2 Sam. 23:5 Heb. 8:6-13; Ezek. 16:60 Heb. 10:5-10 Heb. 13:20 2. SIN Gen. 3:1-15 Gen. 9:20-25 Gen. 16:1-6 Ex. 32:1-14 1 Kings 10:28 1 Cor. 15:34 NO SIN...

(CNSNews.com) – Seven years after Sunni Islam’s foremost institution severed dialogue with the Vatican over remarks by Pope Benedict XVI, the Cairo-based Al-Azhar wants the new pontiff to open the door to resuming interfaith discourse by declaring Islam to be a peaceful religion. The proposal that Pope Francis make such a public declaration prompted Coptic Christian advocates to suggest that Al-Azhar’s grand imam instead denounce Muslim violence against Copts in Egypt. Established in the 10th century, Al-Azhar is regarded as the top seat of learning in Sunni Islam. The suggestion for a papal gesture came from grand imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb’s...

Q. My co-worker, who is a pastor in a local church, gave me a whole bunch of handouts that he received at a training session. (The session was in preparation for a temple open house in our area.) He gave them to me and asked me to respond, but I don’t know where to start. A. (by Allen L. Wyatt) Thank you for sending the materials so I could look at them. They are the normal “shotgun approach” that we see among many anti-Mormons. They take everything they can, load it into a series of documents, and then fling it...

A veteran member of the U.S. Army Band said he is facing retribution and punishment from the military for having anti-Obama bumper stickers on his car, reading books written by conservative authors like Mark Levin and David Limbaugh, and serving Chick-fil-A sandwiches at his promotion party. Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25-year Army veteran and conservative Christian based at Fort Myer in Washington, believes his outspoken opposition to gay marriage prompted higher-ups to take a closer look at his beliefs. The recipient of an Army Commendation Medal and a soloist at the funeral of former First Lady Betty Ford, Sommers...

Attacks on Christian children, both boys and girls, are on the rise in Egypt. Last week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy named Cyril Yusuf Sa‘ad was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid off the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, he still killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy’s “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy,...

Atheists aren’t limiting their attacks in religion in the military to demonizing Christians. It turns out they’re also agitating for their own chaplains. I find this amusing. I can just imagine the atheist chaplain in different military scenarios. Atheist military chaplain on the eve of battle: “You’re going into battle tomorrow. No one is watching over you; no one is at your side; and you’re not cradled in anyone’s divine love. Have fun and be careful.” Atheist military chaplain in a fox hole: “We’re going to die! We’re going to die! And after that . . . nothing!!!” Atheist military...

Dear Stacey: You have written demanding an apology for my recent characterization of the Mormon religion as "non-Christian." I am happy to write a public letter of apology to you and to the countless Mormon readers who responded negatively to my characterization. I am sorry that so many of my Mormon readers have brazenly accused me of ignorance of their religion and suggested that I read the Book of Mormon. I am sorry that they were unaware that I read the Book of Mormon back in 2006. I am sorry that the science of genetics has refuted claims made in...

MY SOUL IN MANY LAYERS Why this work, that work or many works matter When everything is love, for Love; In trials or joyful bliss I adore Him just the same; In busy daily life, I find the most tranquil peace; In sharpest contrast, love emerges. I love You for all You have arranged, Small, smallest, or large, immense; Into Your hand I commend my loving spirit, my all. Strip of it layer after layer, Lord. Lay it bare to witness how love is throbbing Like a beating heart in the hand of a skillful surgeon. All I ask that...

ASSIUT, Egypt — An Egyptian court has convicted a Coptic Christian lawyer in the southern province of Assiut on charges of blasphemy and sentenced him to one year in prison with hard labor. The verdict against Roman Murad Saad was handed down on Saturday. It’s the latest in a surge of blasphemy cases following Egypt’s 2011 uprising. ... Court officials say Saad was found guilty of ridiculing Islam’s holy book, the Quran, at a lawyers’ union library. No further details were immediately available in the case.

In February, Aaron and Melissa Klein, owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, an Oregon-based bakery, found themselves at the center of a media firestorm after refusing to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple’s ceremony. Nearly four months later, the small business continues to receive threatening and harassing phone calls and e-mails, as they grapple with the ongoing fall-out from their controversial decision. This week, they spoke with TheBlaze about the ongoing drama. It was Jan. 17 when a mother and her daughter showed up at the shop and chatted with Aaron about purchasing a cake; their meeting was...

Christians are targeted—by independent groups or governments—in some 131 countries world-wide. At the height of the Nazi Holocaust, the wretched human cargo spilling out of cattle cars onto the platforms of Auschwitz was immediately subject to a brutal selektion by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, whose flick of a finger to the left meant immediate death in a gas chamber; to the right, slave labor and slow death from starvation or disease. Fast forward to 2012 Nigeria, where a latter-day incarnation of selektion has been used—this time not against Jews, but against Christians. Nigeria is the most populous black nation...

A top Vatican official has said around 100,000 Christians are killed every year for reasons linked to their faith and pointed to the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the biggest problem areas. Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi was quoted by Vatican radio on Tuesday as saying that the figures were "shocking" and "incredible".

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Attorneys for Christian-owned craft store Hobby Lobby took on the Obama administration in court yesterday in its attempt to stop massive fines against it for not complying with the HHS mandate. The company has filed a lawsuit over whether or not the HHS Department can force it to comply with the mandate that compels it to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represented Hobby Lobby Stores before the an en banc hearing of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. World Magazine has more on how the hearing went: Although Hobby...

Under the direction of Lois Lerner, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. She harassed the Christian Coalition for three election cycles. She lost her case. Lerner even asked one conservative during the case if Pat Robertson prayed over him. (Sound familiar?) These actions landed her at the IRS where she used the same tactics against conservatives and Christians – only on a much larger scale. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS during her tenure. For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt...

Interesting article on the website of Middle East and Islam scholar Raymond Ibrahim, written by Ralph H. Sidway, Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, author of the book Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad. The piece is important because it examines, among other things, the Orthodox Church clergy's little-discussed role in the liberation of Greece from Ottoman rule, and because it may help to reduce the gap among the different Christian Churches and denominations that can be an obstacle to a unified Christian response to persecution and common enemies. The article, alliteratively entitled Assassination Plot Points...

[ . . .] Perhaps because the Obama speech to Planned Parenthood coincided with Gosnell’s homicide trial, the president did not utter the word “abortion” once. But the timing notwithstanding, that omission was hardly surprising in an address that may have set a new standard for deliberate misrepresentation of reality. For it requires willful moral blindness about reality to say that “what Planned Parenthood is about” is helping “a woman from Chicago named Courtney” make sure she could start a family, by providing “access to affordable contraceptive care to keep her healthy” in the face of a fertility-threatening disease. Today,...

Don't tell me the left doesn't survive primarily on luck. On Friday, April 12, the legacy media was on the ropes. A spectacular uproar, of a type never before seen, had erupted over media refusal to cover the trial of Kermit Gosnell, the serial killer lucky enough to own an abortion mill. The story they were attempting to bury involved his trial for a homicide by medical malpractice (one of several such), the murder of four healthy infants (out of hundreds of similar killings), the abuse of human remains, and assorted associated felonies. Gosnell had been enabled by official malfeasance...

USBC News Wire- According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “the flight of Christians out of the region is unprecedented and it’s increasing year by year,” and warned that it was possible that within a generation, “Christians might disappear altogether from Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt.” One of the clearest examples of this trend, is the fact that nearly 60% of Iraqi Christians have left country after the removal of Saddam Hussein resulted in a power vacuum in which Christians were left vulnerable in the predominantly Muslim nation. The trend has only increased in speed and size since the...

Common Core is an educational curriculum being forced upon the states by the Obama administration, which is scheduled to be mostly implemented this year in the 45 states that have adopted it. Common Core eliminates local control over K-12 curriculum in math and English, instead imposing a one-size-fits-all, top-down curriculum that will also apply to private schools and homeschoolers. Common Core was has been promoted in a manner that sounds good and commendable – “States working together to create national standards for education… standards that are designed to be robust and relevant in the real world.” Common Core describes itself...

In early April, Army Reserve soldiers in Pennsylvania were told in a redeployment briefing that evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics were "extremists," the same category as al Qaeda. Later that month, the Southern Baptist Convention's website was blocked on Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps bases due to what the military's software filter told Web users was "hostile content." And in early May, news reports said that an anti-Christian crusader had proposed new rules for the Pentagon so that military-service members could be court-martialed for sharing their faith. But the initial reports on these matters were exaggerated, taken out...

HOUSTON, TX (Catholic Online) - Finding that there is no law against what they were doing, a judge ruled that the cheerleaders violated no laws by holding banners during football games that made references to God. Koutnze Middle School cheerleaders say they have a tradition of making biblical and religious references on the banners which they hold at the end of halftime and the players run through when they return to the field. It's a widespread tradition practiced at schools across the nation. However, when the "Freedom from Religion Foundation" a litigious atheist organization whose purpose is to destroy any...

A Letter to a congregation I Have Two Moms May 10, 2013 Many of you know that I was a foster child. When I was a kid, I had never met my father and then my mother died when I was five years old. My two sisters and I were passed around a bit in the “system.” It wasn’t so fun. For that story see this blog: http://www.westsideinfo.com/rwt-blog-24708 Then, just before I turned eight, a family with 5 kids of their own took my two sisters and me into their home. My new mother’s name was Gerrie. She is my...

As a journalist who has consistently experienced the wrath of Tebow Nation — mostly for passing along the slings and arrows voiced by various NFL players, coaches and talent-evaluators — I'm well aware that many devotees of the world's most celebrated unemployed quarterback carry a heavy persecution complex. Yet as Tim Tebow's career wheezes to an underwhelming halt, with less apparent interest in his services than Massachusetts funeral parlors have in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's remains, something strange is happening. Against all odds, I'm starting to wonder whether the man who helped the Denver Broncos become one of the league's most stunning...

MY OFFERING: I offer You Lord my heart which is full of You. It belongs to You because it contains nothing but You. I offer You my mind because on which You have imprinted Your facial Image. May I now worship the sacred relic day and night painted on my soul. May the world no longer see me but the Christ crucified in me for the only thing I truly long for is being crucified with the Lord to be able to love Him to the fullest. I offer You Lord my eyes which no longer capable of seeing any...

Members of a boys 4 X 100 meter relay high school track team in Texas were left in tears last weekend after the University Interscholastic League of Texas disqualified them from competing in the state championships because the team's anchor runner made a "religious gesture" as he crossed the finish line to win their regional title. The runner, Derrick Hayes reportedly lifted a finger to the sky in celebration, as he wrapped up the win for Columbus High School. According to his father, K.C. Hayes, he was simply pointing to God. But UIL officials disagreed and slapped the team with...

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out. BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible. CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.” >Snip< “All of that...

A California megachurch pastor involved in the National Day of Prayer who has recently come under fire for his views on homosexuality has declared that he will not be intimidated. At a prayer event held Wednesday morning at the Washington, D.C., office of the Family Research Council, Pastor Greg Laurie told those gathered, "I won't back down." "They do not want me to pray. They describe me as 'homophobic' and so forth. How can you deal with such a situation? We're in a time in our country now where I'm attacked because I believe what the Bible teaches," said Laurie,...

An American tour operator has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in North Korea for alleged “hostile acts” against the repressive regime, according to its official state news agency.

According to Obama’s advisor on religious tolerance within the U.S. military, Christians sharing their faith, including chaplains, present “… a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs is to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.” “Criminalize Christianity” as an official policy of the federal government pertaining to military personnel? It is a short distance from that to jailing pastors, as they already do in Iran. Once the government grossly violates the 1st Amendment, preferring one group over another, it can prosecute anyone deemed...

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”. The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith. (From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military...

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer Graham tells me something that I hadn’t heard about Boston Marathon bombing. As dozens of victims were sprawled across Boylston Street, many of them in danger of death, Catholic priests came running to the scene—and were turned away. Doctors and nurses were welcome at the bombing scene. Firefighters and police officers were welcome. But Catholic priests, who might have offered the solace of the sacraments, were not. ”Catholics need not apply.” That slogan was familiar in Boston years ago, before Irish and Italian immigrants took over control of the city. Now, after decades...

Religious liberty groups have grave concerns after they learned the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to “rape” and advocated that military personnel who proselytize should be court martialed. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is calling on the Air Force to enforce a regulation that they believe calls for the court martial of any service member caught proselytizing. President Mikey Weinstein and others from his organization met privately with Pentagon officials on April 23. He said U.S. troops who proselytize are guilty of sedition and treason and should be punished –...

One of the things that’s frustrating for non-liberals and non-Progressives is Leftists’ refusal to look Islam in the face (so to speak). Yes, there are crazy people who are Christians and there are entire Christian sects that are crazy (such as the Westboro Baptists or Warren Jeffs’ polygamist Mormon cult). The fact remains, however, that Christians as a whole, whether they belong to big churches or small ones, do not embrace or practice terrorism to achieve their political or religious goals.Muslims, by contrast, routinely practice terrorism to achieve goals that are simultaneously religious and political, owing to Islam’s fusion of...

Two sports stories made headlines yesterday: The New York Jets released openly Christian quarterback Tim Tebow, and NBA player Jason Collins came out of the closet, making him the first active, openly gay professional athlete in the four major U.S. sports (basketball, football, baseball and hockey). It's not surprising to hear of Tebow's release; he rarely played for the Jets, was seldom used at all, and ended up being their third-string quarterback. I'm certainly no sports analyst, but it seems to me that he really wasn't given much of a chance in New York, especially considering that starting quarterback Mark...

The American pastor jailed in Iran for his faith has been placed in solitary confinement and may now be suffering organ failure, according to family members in Iran who are increasingly alarmed at his deteriorating health. Saeed Abedini, the 32-year-old Christian and American citizen who is serving an eight-year prison term in Iran, was put in solitary confinement following a “peaceful, silent protest” in an outside courtyard at Iran’s notoriously brutal Evin prison, according to family members. Conditions at the prison prompted Abedini and other prisoners to sign a petition decrying the lack of medical care and the threats and...

Authorities in New Jersey allege a Muslim man beheaded two Coptic Christians, burying their bodies and heads and hands in separate graves near Philadelphia, bringing the horror of the persecution of Christians in Islamic nations to the United States. According to New York’s WABC-TV, the Muslim was identified as Yusuf Ibrahim, 28. He was taken into custody after the bodies were found. The report said investigators alleged Ibrahim killed the victims then severed their heads and hands, and buried the remains in the back yard of a home in Buena Vista, N.J. The report said the victims were from the...

Syrian Christians Told Convert, Leave, or Die Religious Freedom Coalition Apr 26th, 2013 Christians remaining in Syria have been given three choices by the American supported Free Syrian Army (FSA): convert to Islam, flee their homeland, or die. It is widely believed that this Islamic ideology will be enacted nationwide if President Assad is overthrown. Many Westerners falsely assume that since the FSA opposes a dictatorship, they must be democratic, secular, and tolerant. In reality, however, the FSA seeks to establish a totally Islamic state governed by Sharia law. Although many have suffered as a result of the civil war,...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Even with modern scientific technology, the Shroud of Turin continues to baffle researchers. Barrie Schwortz was the documenting photographer for the Shroud of Turin research project in 1978, an in-depth examination of what many people believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, "it took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I'm a Jew and involved with probably the most important relic of Christianity," Schwortz told Catholic News Service. "Isn't it funny how God always picks a Jew to be the messenger," he said....

Doctors and nurses were welcome at the bombing scene. Firefighters and police officers were welcome. But Catholic priests, who might have offered the solace of the sacraments, were not. ”Catholics need not apply.” That slogan was familiar in Boston years ago, before Irish and Italian immigrants took over control of the city. Now, after decades of decline in Catholic influence , the attitude has returned. One priest who was barred from Boylston Street remarked that in the past a priest was admitted anywhere. “That’s changed,” he said. “Priests are no longer considered to be emergency responders.”