Free Republic

Last May, one of the most influential conservative and religious intellectual leader in America gave a somber speech in Washington, declaring it to be “Good Friday in America for Christians.” In this exclusive two part video interview, Princeton’s Robert P. George admitted, “that was a hard speech to give.” “Christians, and those rejecting the me-generation liberal dogma of ‘if it feels good do it,’ are no longer tolerable by the intellectual and cultural elite,” says George, 59, director of the James Madison program at Princeton University. Citing the political witch hunt....

Interview with Don Hank: Interpreting What is Happening in the U.S., Europe and Russia today By Julio Severo As an American conservative evangelical who speaks and reads Russian and several European and Asian languages, Don Hank is uniquely able to explain the major challenges and dangers to the U.S., Europe and Russia. In this interview, he will help international and especially Brazilian readers to understand what is happening to these cultures that have Christian traditions. Don has a special concern for Christians being persecuted, raped and slaughtered as a result of misguided and malevolent geopolitical policies from the Western...

A disturbing story came and went, barely noticed a few weeks ago. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is being unceremoniously booted off the campuses of California's 23 state universities. This begins with a process of "derecognizing" these as legitimate campus groups. Why? Though everyone is welcome at their ministry events, ICVF reserves leadership only for those committed to their goals and creed, just as a homosexual group would presumably reserve leadership for gays or those who affirm its pro-gay agenda. Or a Muslim group for Muslims. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship is a network of campus ministries. It is evangelical in orientation and has...

THE CARPENTER'S SHOP: Persecution of Christians affects millions worldwide By Dr. Barry K. Carpenter Published: Friday, September 19, 2014 at 11:03 AM. Christians around the world are experiencing unprecedented persecution. Reporter and news analyst Kirsten Powers, interviewed in the Daily Beast, said, “Christians in the Middle East and Africa are being slaughtered, tortured, raped, kidnapped, beheaded, and forced to flee the birthplace of Christianity. The silence has been nearly deafening.” It seems open season on Christians. It is more pronounced, more bold, more contagious, and in more numbers than at any other time in history. It may appear to...

US air raids fundamental. The Islamist militants mined many houses before fleeing. Syriac Christians return to the city of Alqosh, liberated days ago, and celebrate the feast of the patron saint. Erbil (AsiaNews / Agencies) - At least seven Christian villages in northern Iraq have been freed after a series of clashes between Kurdish Peshmerga and Islamic State jihadists.The seven villages are located west of Erbil, on the Nineveh plain. The Kurdish military commanders emphasize the fundamental contribution of the air raids carried out by the United States and report that the jihadists mined many houses before fleeing. Since early...

Dr. Mark Christian is the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute (GFI), a Christian organization based in Omaha, Nebraska dedicated to “the proclamation and pursuit of truth as it relates Middle Eastern history and current happenings.” Dr. Christian, an Egyptian-born Christian convert from Islam related to high-ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, is now engaged in a battle to root out the Brotherhood influence in what is called the Tri-Faith Initiative, a building project in Omaha.

Mariam Ibraheem, a Sudanese woman sentenced to death for converting to Christianity reported that officials at the US Embassy in Sudan initially “refused to deal with” her, while thanking the current US Charge D’Affairs to Sudan, Ambassador Jerry Lanier for his work on her behalf, through a translator on Monday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.

When Armenian-Americans voiced their anger over Turkey’s role in the incursion into Kessab last spring, US authorities merely expressed “concern” about the well-being of Armenians and Christian minorities. Despite the community’s insistence that Turkey was directly involved in allowing the al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra rebels to freely enter Kessab, the US State Department was reticent in fingering its NATO ally. Fast forward to today when the Obama Administration is leading a fragile coalition against the Islamic State for Iraq and Syria, an off shoot of Al Nusra known as ISIS, and Turkey is, once again, rejecting American access to its...

Islamist police in Saudi Arabia have stormed a Christian prayer meeting and arrested its entire congregation, including women and children, and confiscated their bibles, it has been reported. The raid was the latest incident of a swingeing crackdown on religious minorities in Saudi Arabia by the country's hard-line Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The 28 Christians were said to be worshipping at the home of an Indian national in the eastern city of Khafji, when the police entered the building and took them into custody. They have not been seen or heard from since,...

"The Maronite leader said the meeting with Obama was productive, according to the Daily Star.” Productive for whom and in what manner? It seems Iran has found a way to influence American foreign policy even while they denounce America and build a nuclear capability. There can be no doubt that this whole episode was devised by the Ayatollahs, Hasan Rouhani, their best proxy army Hezbollah, and its leader Hasan Nasrallah. How better to infiltrate D.C. at this time than to masquerade as holding a conference on defending Christians — interestingly enough there was no support from the major Christian conservative...

...We learn of a Maronite Christian seeking a liaison with Hezbollah and it sounds horrifically bad until you realize the purpose is to work together to fight ISIS, for instance. Her descriptive language for the various Christian leaders...suggests a lack of intimacy with the topic.... ...When Cruz was supposed to give the keynote address and discuss the deadly serious topic of persecution of Christians, he instead insulted a largely immigrant and foreign crowd as a group that didn’t understand their own political situation and stomped out of the room after calling them a bunch of haters.... The fact is, as...

What I discovered the next day is that Cruz had known exactly what he was doing.  Indeed, he had read the article that had been published about the event just that day and which essentially repeated Frank Ghadry’s allegation that the conference organizers were close to Hezbollah.   Whether Cruz ever contemplated withdrawing from the event is not certain, but what is clear is that he was keenly aware of the alleged links between the organizers of the event and Hezbollah, and he was not going to let that go untested.  Many have criticized Cruz since the event, saying he should have...

LOS ANGELES — Tim Tebow is taking the field for "Good Morning America." ABC said Thursday that the Heisman Trophy winner is joining the program as a contributor starting Monday. Tebow will be part of the show's new "Motivate Me Monday" segment that highlights people and their stories of triumph. ABC says he'll appear in the studio and from locations across America. Tebow is an analyst for ESPN and the SEC Network. He led the Denver Broncos to the playoffs in 2012, followed by short stints with the New York Jets and New England Patriots. When he was hired as...

Already ingrained in the Disney-ABC family as an ESPN analyst, Tebow officially makes his debut on the current No. 1 morning talk show as the newest contributor on Sept. 15. In his new role, Tebow is expected to appear in the GMA studio and in cities across the U.S. as he launches GMA's "Motivate Me Monday" series, which spotlights individuals and their stories of triumph.

A group of Middle Eastern Christians booed Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, off the stage after speaking in support of Israel at an event in Washington, D.C. The event, sponsored by the group In Defense of Christians, was billed as a gathering of Middle Eastern Christian leaders. They were trying to raise awareness about the threat to Arab minorities by the Islamic terrorists. Cruz spoke about Christian solidarity with Israel and standing against terrorist groups like ISIS. But some in the crowd were Palestinian Christian supporters of the Syrian government and even the terrorist group Hezbollah. "Those who hate Israel hate...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: Whoever lives beneath the cross of Jesus, and has discerned in the cross of Jesus the utter ungodliness of all people and of their own hearts, will find there is no sin that can ever be unfamiliar. Whoever has once been appalled by the horror of their own sin, which nailed Jesus to the cross, will no longer be appalled by even the most serious sin of another Christian; rather they know the human heart from the cross of Jesus. Such persons know how totally lost is the human heart in sin and weakness, how it...

In the spring of 2000, Zogby International asked more than a thousand U.S. adults whether they had ever visited a sexually-oriented web site. Only one in five had done so. Among born-again Christians, 18 percent had gone to such sites, just three percentage points less than the general public. Well, fast forward to today. A group called Proven Men Ministries commissioned the Barna Group to examine current pornography use. You might want to sit down for this—Barna found that 64 percent of American men and 20 percent of women view pornography at least monthly. And for Christian men, that number...

I love warriors. I love being with warriors. I don’t care how badly injured you are. I don’t care if you’re blind. I don’t care if you are missing limbs. You’ve got a warrior’s heart. You’re a warrior, and you need to continue being a warrior. Exodus 15:3 says: “The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name” (NIV). Exodus is pretty early in the Bible. And then in the last book of the Bible, in Revelation 19, it says He’s coming back. As what? As a warrior. It says He’s coming back riding a white horse and...

Whenever prophetic voices rise to explain world events from a non-secular perspective, those voices are minimized as “fringe” and “lunatic.” But that is simply an occupational hazard of offering a prophetic voice. They will be beaten to a pulp by competing godless voices until they give in or give up. For example, consider today’s voices in the wilderness that connect this country’s moral collapse to the twin scourges of terrorism and financial indebtedness. Anyone that connects our current struggles to our own spiritual and moral vacuum will be labeled a “nut.” I mean, who wants to hear about such things,...

MANCHESTER, England (CNS) -- An Iraqi Christian woman has described how her 3-year-old daughter was abducted by Islamist terrorists. Christina Khider Abada was seated beside her mother, Ayda Abada, on a bus when captors from the Islamic State snatched her and took her away. Ayda and Khider Abada discuss with residents of Ankawa, Iraq, how their daughter was kidnapped by Islamic State militants. (CNS/Sahar Mansour) According to an account by the mother, who followed her daughter off the bus, the crying child was passed from one militant to another while Ayda Abada begged for her to be returned. Finally, the...