Free Republic

"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...

Sitting in front of the family Christmas tree dressed in military fatigues, Amir Shalayan seemed in no doubt about his identity. “When you go back back in religion, I consider myself a real Jew,” he said, unabashed by the non-Jewish festive decorations in his living room. “Jesus was Jewish and he was observing the Shabbat (Jewish sabbath).” Mr Shalayan is in fact an Arab Christian, a category he refers to as “Aramean”, but his strong identification with the Jewish faith is offered as explanation for his keen army service. It also accounts for his vocal support of legislation that envisages...

Alice Cooper, the shock-rock megastar who makes Marilyn Manson look like a choir boy, stopped his hard-partying ways and returned to his Bible Christian roots in the late 1980s and today, still hugely popular and touring, says he isn’t shy about discussing his faith, says his early songs always warned against choosing evil, and contends that the world we live in “doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to Satan.” “The world doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to Satan,” said Alice Cooper. “We’re living with that. We’re bombarded with that every day.” “[A]lmost everything I wrote was good and evil,”...

Britain remains the world's leading recruiting ground for al-Qaeda. ... British school teachers are afraid to teach their students about Christianity out of fear of offending Muslims. — Roger Bolton, BBC Radio 4's Feedback program. Rather than taking steps to protect British children, police, social workers, teachers... and the media deliberately played down the severity of the crimes [of Muslim sexual grooming gangs] in order to avoid being accused of "Islamophobia" or racism. — From the report "Easy Meat: Multiculturalism, Islam and Child Sex Slavery." ... The problem of honor-based violence and forced marriages in England is "worse than people...

First things first: the reviews and social media claims arguing that director Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken” somehow short shrifts the Christian faith or the Christianity of its subject are not just untrue, they are preposterous. This cinematic adaptation of the true story of Olympian and WWII Veteran Louis Zamperini has its flaws, but respect and reverence for the Zamperini’s Christian faith is not one of them. Quite the opposite. [...] “Unbroken” is the second devoutly Christian WWII film to enjoy a wide studio release in 2014. The first was “Fury,” an even better movie  starring Brad Pitt — Jolie’s husband.  “Fury” and...

Planned Parenthood abortionist Timothy Liveright, a former abortionist at Planned Parenthood of Delaware, has been hired by a new Planned Parenthood affiliate to do abortions. Liveright is the abortionist who, last year, reached a consent agreement with the Delaware Board of Licensure and Discipline to avoid losing his medical license over medical misconduct and filthy conditions at his abortion clinic. LifeNews previously reported on Liveright, who sang to one patient during her abortion, “Jesus, Ohhhhh Jesus, take the sinners down the river, Ohhhh Jesus.” Several medical emergencies at the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic he ran prompted three former clinic employees...

FULL TITLE: Dallas Pastor Urges Black Megachurches to Fight Sprawling Planned Parenthood Complex With 8 Foot Concrete Wall Stephen Broden, pro-life activist and pastor of the Fair Park Bible Fellowship Church in Dallas, Texas, is urging black megachurches to join him in protesting a sprawling 17,000 square-foot Planned Parenthood abortion center with an 8-foot concrete wall he believes was intentionally placed in their predominantly black neighborhood. "Planned Parenthood has built a wall to shield their clients from the presence of God's prayer warriors who pray to end abortion at one of Texas' largest abortion facilities. This death trap is located...

When he’s not mocking Americans for being Bible-toting, bitter gun-clingers, every chance he gets Barack Obama loves to throw Bible verses around. The problem is that the verses he quotes are usually out of context, woefully misinterpreted, cherry-picked and distorted to support a socialist worldview, and occasionally completely made-up. Listening to the president play the reverend on more than one occasion would lead one to believe Jesus Christ was a Marxist whose only objective was to further Obama’s Gospel of Collectivism. Moreover, for the Scripture enthusiast the president portrays himself to be, it’s amazing how he manages to avoid the...

Pro-aborts periodically take time off from hating religion to remind those of us nutty enough to think God values the children He creates that they’ve got believers on their side, too. ThinkProgress’s Tara Culp-Ressler provided a refresher course on “the religious abortion advocates that history forgot,” casting these clergy for child-butchering as selfless underdogs on a vital divine mission. Yes, really: The New York legislature had just failed to pass an incremental reform to the state’s strict anti-abortion law, leaving the status quo in place. At that time, deaths resulting from illegal abortions accounted for 42 percent of New York...

Iranian pastor Behnam Irani is being held in solitary confinement and is facing 18 new charges, including "spreading corruption on Earth," which is a capital crime. This is similar to "Moharabeh," or "warring against God," which was recently charged to another Christian, Pastor Matthias Haghnejad. Pastor Irani was arrested in December 2006, and sentenced in 2011 to six years imprisonment for "action against the state" and "action against the order." The fresh charges appear to be part of a surge in repression under the Rouhani presidency targeting religious and ethnic minorities. In June, Pastor Irani was removed from prison and...

Atrocities by the Islamic State (ISIS) are softening the hearts of Muslims to Christianity, and evangelistic techniques and technologies are proving effective, but locally-based missionaries say the main reason for the spike in conversions in the Middle East is simply that former Muslims are finding God is real. In war-torn areas of Syria and Iraq where ISIS is fighting to establish a caliphate, Muslim refugees to neighboring countries, Internally Displaced People and people remaining at home are learning about Christ from native aid workers, podcasts and broadcasts. Tent churches among refugees are sprouting like mushrooms. For people who have suffered...

Holiday outreach groups like the Salvation Army are in their final stretch of collecting money this season, which is why one Kentucky woman has gotten creative to help boost donations. Judy trained her Dalmation Brandy to ring the bell that goes with the traditional red kettle. She says when she brings her dog along to her spot at the local grocery store, donations nearly double. She hopes to be doing this for many years to come since Brandy is just two years old. Map My News

Testimony of Diana for Jesus Christ (Young woman named Diana who has Cerebral palsy wishes to give you her testimony about Jesus)

A video of pro-choice abortion advocates outside an abortion clinic in Cleveland where a woman was killed after her abortion is going viral. It shows mean reproductive rights advocates harassing peaceful praying pro-lifers. VIDEO ON LINK warning offensive language.

Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin (U.S. Army-Ret.) says the Army violated its own regulations by punishing Chaplain Joseph Lawhorn for “using Christian scripture and solutions” in a mandatory suicide prevention training session. Boykin, chair of the Restore Military Religious Freedom Coalition (RMRFC), also said that the treatment of Lawhorn violated the chaplain’s constitutional rights. “First of all, his case is important because it is an infringement on his First Amendment rights,” Boykin told CNSNews.com. “Secondly, he is a chaplain. By definition, chaplains deal with spiritual issues, and all he was doing was explaining how his faith helped him. The third thing,...

James Pendergraft is a late term abortionist, who performs abortions up to 28 weeks. He works in Florida. From an article about him: “Pendergraft also isn’t bashful about making money in his line of work. He says he went into a profession he believes in, and it happens to be profitable… He will not reveal annual revenues, but he says his clinics are “very economically viable.” “His in-your-face salesmanship leaves many – including other clinic operators – uncomfortable. They wonder how much of his professed altruism is just a marketing pitch. Maggie Gifford, a spokeswoman for the Florida coalition of...

Background: On Nov 5th, 2014, Dr. Gregory Fiebig, a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University (a Christian university), presented his pro-abortion views at the "Life vs Choice" public forum. His statements included, "I’m very strongly supportive of pro-choice, and I have a very theological reason for that." Days later, Dr. Fiebig gave a more detailed defense of legal abortion in a letter to IWU's student newspaper, The Sojourn. In a letter to the IWU community, President Dr. David Wright offered no evidence to change the perception that Dr. Fiebig supports legal abortion. This is why we are calling for Dr. Fiebig...

Truthfully, abortion and God don’t go too well together. But apparently, according to a new article on the pro-abortion website Think Progress titled, “God Loves Women Who Have Abortions': The Religious Abortion Advocates That History Forgot” more religious leaders should support “reproductive freedom.” The article presents three main points: God loves women who’ve had abortions, religious clergy joined the pro-abortion movement because too many women were dying from back alley abortions and historically the religious community has failed to love post-abortive women. First of all, of course God loves women who have had abortions, that’s NEVER been in question. Yet,...

High in the catalogue of social pathologies afflicting marriage and the family in America stands our system of family law, the central purpose of which is to enforce no-fault divorce. In a letter to the Holy Father and the recent Extraordinary Synod on the Family, almost fifty international scholars and religious leaders joined us in urging the Church to consider the effects of no-fault divorce, along with other barriers to faithful, lifelong marriage. State laws on divorce began to be implemented in the late 1960s, but today have been absorbed into the legal and cultural mainstream nationwide. The logic of...

A clinic worker described one of the women who came to her clinic for an abortion: “Another [woman coming in for an abortion] who identified herself as Christian, was very active in her church. Before the abortion she said, “I’m in church six days a week, yet here I am.” She said that her religion forbids abortion, but after a good conversation she said that maybe her church was “too comfortable” in its position against abortion. She thought maybe they needed to examine the aspects of the issue that they were comfortable with. Even though she was steeped in her...

I wrote in my book, “unPlanned,” about a church that kicked me out when they found out that I worked for Planned Parenthood. I often get questioned about that, whether I still think they made the wrong decision. My answer is a resounding YES. I try not to go down the “what if” road very often. It isn’t fruitful and just makes you feel crummy. But, just for the sake of this article, let’s go there. What if I had been ministered to instead of shunned by that church? How could my life be different? Well, maybe I would have...

A pastor in England faced a hearing in court in which he is accused of keeping a woman as a sex slave and forcing her to have an abortion. While abortion is legalized in many nations under the auspices of a “right to choose,” the reality is that a large percentage of women who get abortions are forced, pressured or coerced into getting them. In this case, Gilbert Deya, 61, who runs a ministry outfit named after himself, is charged with four counts of rape, one of attempted rape, two of sexual assault and one of battery. His church reportedly...

Four Christian children in Iraq were beheaded by Islamic State terrorists after refusing to recite the Muslim declaration of faith. ... It's always impressive when when someone chooses to keep faith with his or her beliefs rather than submit. But the notion that children would have that kind of courage is humbling. It makes you ask yourself: would I be as strong in my faith as a 15-year-old boy facing a horrible death? Christian martyrs are supposed to inspire us. These children's deaths go beyond inspiration and motivate us to examine the strength of our faith when placed against their...

I’ve heard a lot of pro-abortion arguments in my day, but every now and then I run across one that just seems so completely nonsensical, it takes me aback. One such convoluted argument comes from Beverly Wildung Harrison, formerly a professor of Christian ethics at the Union Theological Seminary. Harrison, who died a few years ago, wrote the book Our Right to Choose in which she used Christian theology to justify abortion. The book Abortion: My Choice, God’s Grace by another pro-choice Christian, Anne Eggebroten, puts forth the following quote by Harrison: Presidents, members of Congress, and other leaders have...

From pro-life Christian Dr. La Verne Tolbert: “So, who is having these abortions? We are. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood: The highest proportion (43%) identify themselves as Protestant. 27% of women having an abortion identify themselves as Catholic, and 8% as members of another religion. 22% reported no religious affiliation. 13% identified themselves as “born again” or evangelical….. Those who claim to know Jesus and who protest against abortion the most account for nearly 80% of all abortions.” Dr. La Verne Tolbert “Abortion: the Sin of Idolatry”, Doctor Alveda King and Dr.La Verne...

Pro-choice Pastor Roger Paynter, in a sermon to his congregation: “… Abortion is not the automatic breaking of God’s will… In general, we should say that God is against the ending of all life, but that in some tragic circumstances, he understands – even allows – and certainly forgives the choices we have to make.” Robert M Baird and Stuart E Rosenbaum, editors The Ethics of Abortion, 3rd edition (Amherst, New York: Prometheus books, 2001) 236

A Christian pro-choice activist said the following: This is a picture of what abortion looks like at nine weeks “More than anything else, being able to choose and being affirmed in that choice gives a woman peace. Knowing that God is with her in the abortion decision and that the church upholds her moral authority to make the decision brings a woman into deeper communion with the One from whom all life springs. It becomes a part of that list of things that cannot separate us from the love of God.” Bunnie Riebel, Founding Director, Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights,...

LANSING, MI — Michigan’s Republican-led House on Thursday approved a proposed "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," which supporters say is intended to limit government laws that may burden an individual's free exercise of religion. The fast-tracked bill, sponsored by House Speaker Jase Bolger, was introduced last month and advanced out of committee earlier Thursday. It now heads the Senate for consideration. The 59-50 party-line House vote occurred just one day after competing proposals to add gay rights protections to Michigan’s anti-discrimination law stalled in committee due to a dispute over including transgender residents. Bolger, who had indicated he would only support...

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist turned pro-life advocate, recalls these incidents from his time as a legal abortionist: “I also recall being cornered by the wife of one [abortionist] at the cocktail party we gave when the Sixty-Second Street Clinic opened. She drew me aside and talked in a decidedly agitated manner of the increasingly frequent nightmares her husband had been having. He had confessed to her that the dreams were filled with blood and children, and that he had latterly become obsessed with the notion that some terrible justice would soon be inflicted upon his own children in...

In a dispute that could have greater legal implications, a local pro-life organization filed suit Wednesday against a landlord, whose Vacaville office building houses Planned Parenthood, alleging religious discrimination after the owner first agreed to lease space to the group and then reneged, saying only that their pro-life clinic was “not a good fit.” Pacific Justice Institute, a nonprofit legal defense organization, filed the complaint on behalf of Alpha Pregnancy Clinics of Northern California in Solano County Superior Court, alleging breach of contract and violation of the organization’s civil rights. Alpha, a licensed medical clinic in the state of California,...

The Christian holy day of Christmas, the birthday of Jesus, has taken on worldwide dimensions, celebrated in some fashion by Christian and non-Christian alike I receive Free Inquiry magazine monthly even though I never subscribed to it. The magazine is read by atheists who prefer to be called “humanists.” The Council for Secular Humanism that publishes the magazine has “Affirmations of Humanism” that begin with the assertion that they are “committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.” I try to apply reason to everything I write...

Carol Everett with the administrator of four abortion clinics and the owner of two. After becoming pro-life and leaving the abortion business, she speaks about her experiences. This is the testimony she gave at the Meet the Abortion Providers Conference in 1993 sponsored by the Pro-Life Action League “Thank you all for coming. In 1973, when abortion was legalized, I was married, had an 8 year-old daughter and a 10 year-old son. Two weeks later, with abortion very much in the news and everywhere we turned we were still talking about abortion, I found myself pregnant. When I told my...

A woman who was raped and had an abortion now regrets it and wants people to stop using rape as an argument to keep abortion legal. She spoke in a pro-life rally in Mississippi. “I was raped a month before I turned 18. And because of that rape I was so fearful and so shameful that I chose abortion, out of fear. My rape was nothing compared to what I did to my child. What my rapist did to me does not compare to what I chose to do to my baby. My rapist didn’t kill me, I’m standing here...

A man who drove his wife for an abortion told a pro-life sidewalk counselor that he was a Christian and his dad was a preacher. Allura Lightfoot regularly side-walk counsels outside abortion clinics in Central Florida. She speaks to a variety of people seeking child killing services at the All Women’s Health Center in Orlando, but recently she had a conversation with a self-proclaimed Christian who said he had to abort his child. Allura told Life Dynamics that she was outside the abortion clinic when she spotted a couple driving in. After the woman entered the abortion clinic, Allura noticed...

PORTLAND, Ore. – Kristen K. Waggoner, lead counsel representing a pharmacy owner and two pharmacists opposed to Washington state regulations that would force them to dispense drugs that can terminate human life after conception, will be available for media interviews Thursday following oral arguments at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. “No one should be forced to choose between their religious convictions and their family-owned businesses and livelihoods. This choice is neither necessary nor constitutional,” said Waggoner, senior vice president of legal services for Alliance Defending Freedom and counsel with Seattle-based Ellis, Li & McKinstry PLLC. “The...

CBN.com -“The first time you open your parachute, it’s pretty amazing. It’s so peaceful. The panorama—you’re hanging a half a mile above the earth. So it wasn’t about the adrenaline; it was about the pleasure. It was about the pleasure of being in free fall. Feeling like you could fly.�Mickey Robinson was a professional skydiver; he loved falling from the heavens and drifting safely to earth. But one day just after takeoff for a practice jump, the plane’s engine stalled, hurling Mickey and his companions toward the ground at over 100 miles an hour. “The motor just quit and we...

About 120 international Christian students attending a Bible college in Ohio could possibly face deportation after their school was recently denied recertification with the U.S. immigration exchange student program. Although President Barack Obama plans to announce Thursday night an immigration overhaul that could allow nearly 5 million illegal immigrants to remain in the country, the 120 foreign Christian students at Marietta Bible College are in a bind after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to issue the school recertification into the the agency's Student and Exchange Visitor Program. In doing so, the school's international students must either find a new...

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The first Christian governor of Indonesia's capital in 50 years was sworn in Wednesday despite loud protests from Islamic hard-liners who insisted Jakarta's top political job should go to a Muslim. Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, a Protestant who is also the first ethnic Chinese to become an Indonesian governor, gained a reputation as deputy governor of being outspoken and combating corruption and cutting red tape. He is better known by Chinese nickname "Ahok." Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation, and 87 percent of its 250 million people are Muslim. Christians make up about 10 percent.

The Washington National Cathedral will host a Muslim prayer service on Friday -- for the first time in American history. Why is National Cathedral hosting a prayer service for a religion that opposes the teachings of Christianity? I asked Erwin Lutzer, the pastor of Moody Church, about the significance of this moment. What he told me should be shared! Pastor Lutzer: "The National Cathedral was dedicated to be a house of worship for Christians. Although tolerance is a commendable virtue, we might well wonder why this Cathedral will be used to host a prayer service for a religion which opposes...