Free Republic

Johnson’s political muzzling silenced the primary moral and religious voices that Founder John Adams said were essential to the life of the Republic.. In 1954, then freshman U.S. senator Lyndon B. Johnson was running for re-election in a hotly-contested Democratic primary against fellow-Democrat State Representative Dudley T. Dougherty. THE NEW DEAL WITH THE DEVIL IN 1954: GIVE UP YOUR MORAL AND FREE SPEECH RIGHTS IN EXCHANGE FOR TAX WRITE-OFFS In the heat of that 1954 Texas primary campaign, Johnson introduced his now infamous “Johnson Amendment” in the U.S. Senate. His revisions further restricted the free speech of churches and religious...

Will the church view the culture war through the gospel, or will it view the gospel through the culture war? One approach is biblical. The other is deadly.Thanks to a communion controversy being clarified by the U.S. Catholic bishops and a continued insistence by President Joe Biden that his public actions are actually deeply personal matters, abortion is the issue of the day — and with it, questions of religious faithfulness.Corporate media are teaming up with nominal Catholics to smear the faithful as bad-faith political actors, while traditional Catholics work to convince an unconvinceable political class that their deeply held...

This means they can exceed capacity restrictions.. COLORADO SPRINGS — Worship leaders across the state are preparing to be able to do things a bit differently after a new public health order from the governor will allow places of worship to exceed mandated capacity limits. The order redefines worship services as essential, meaning they’re allowed to go over mandated capacity limits if they can’t perform their essential service without doing so. “I grew up in church and sensed that this is what I wanted to do,” said Vista Grande Baptist Church Pastor Chris Moore. “After college I felt that seminary...

JAG 5000 Writes: I wrote this piece to make ONLY one major point, namely that the Christian Church is now and will forever be HUGE-ENORMOUS in numbers. This makes me happy. Every word in this post will encourage Christians. Its all good news. Bright. Cheerful. Hopeful. Optimistic. Packed with Faith and Hope for the Furure. I am GLAD that the Church of the Lord Jesus is now HUGE in numbers and will grow EVEN LARGER as time goes on. I hope you are GLAD too. Why would you NOT be glad? Do you want the Christian Church to be small,...

You’ve heard this question. Since I write a lot about Christianity and economics, I’ve been asked it dozens of times. Was the early Church communist?It’s not a crazy query. In the book of Acts, just after Pentecost, members of the new Church sold their belongings and shared their wealth. That sounds like communism to some folks. And if Christians are to live up to their origins, the argument goes, then they should be communists too.Makes perfect sense, as long as you misread the text, ignore the details, and forget the meaning of words.Still, lots of people have that impression. So...

The “seeker-friendly,” or “seeker-sensitive,” movement currently taking a host of evangelical churches by storm is an approach to evangelizing through application of the latest marketing techniques. Typically, it begins with a survey of the lost (referred to by a leading church in this trend as the “unchurched,” or “unchurched Harry and Mary”). This survey questions the unchurched about the things their nearby place of worship might offer that would motivate them to attend. Results of the questionnaire indicate areas of potential changes in the church’s operations and services that would be effective in order to attract the unchurched, keep them...

Saudi Arabia reportedly agreed to a historic deal with the Vatican to build Christian churches in the Kingdom, a potentially stunning development for the country that's home to Islam’s holiest site, Middle Eastern media is reporting. The move would continue the nation’s effort to transition to a “moderate Islam.” Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdel Karim Al-Issa of the Muslim World League and Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, allegedly signed the agreement April 14, according to the Egyptian Independent. Under the agreement, a joint committee with representatives from both parties will also be established to...

Translator’s note: The following article has been translated from the German original as it had been originally published in December of 2014 by the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) (29 December 2014). We consider this article to be an excellent description, in the longer light of history, of the decline of Christianity in Germany. We believe it might also be of special interest to our readers in the current discussions concerning the role of German prelates in Rome. The Church in Crisis Diaspora in Germany by Markus GüntherIs Germany a Christian country? It depends. On paper, the churches are still binding...

A German pastor has decided to hold a Muslim funeral for a 17-year-old who died fighting for Islamic State in Syria, leaving many outraged. Pastor Sieghard Wilm of the protestant St. Pauli Church in Hamburg is stirring strong emotions after he made the choice to hold a Muslim funeral in his church for 17-year-old ‘Florent’, who died fighting for the Islamic state in Syria in July. The funeral will take place today.

"Midtown Manhattan cathedral engulfed in flames: 'Irreplaceable' 160-year-old Orthodox Christian church is consumed by fire" A 160-year-old Orthodox Christian cathedral in New York has been completely destroyed after a huge fire tore through it on Sunday The blaze broke out at the Serbian Cathedral of Saint Sava on 25th Street in Manhattan's Flatiron district at around 7pm. It is not known how the fire started, though it is believed to have broken out on the first floor of the building before consuming the interior and roof. An FDNY spokesman said that nobody was believed to be inside the building at...

Islamic supremacists regard the pre-Islamic past of any Muslim country as worthless trash, jahiliyya, not to be preserved for its archaeological value, but effaced as an insult to Islam. This is the same impulse that led to the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan. "Mosque conversion raises alarm: Christian art in Byzantine church-turned-museum is at risk after controversial court ruling," by Andrew Finkel in The Art Newspaper, April 11 (thanks to Twostellas): One of the most important monuments of late Byzantium, the 13th-century Church of Hagia Sophia in the Black Sea city of Trabzon, which is now a museum,...

Indonesian city officials destroyed a Christian church in front of its weeping congregation. Muslims stood around and egged on the destruction. ... Muslim protesters egged on workers and branded the Christians “infidels”. Dozens in the 100-strong congregation wailed as a digger tore down the brick walls, with worshippers accusing the government of “criminalising our religion”, in a sign of increasing intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. “My heart is aching and I feel numb watching my church collapse. I went to this church for 11 years,” worshipper Megarenta Sihite, 46, told AFP, wiping away tears as fellow worshippers, dressed...

If those who assembled on the Day of Pentecost (the 120 who assembled together before they spake with tongues on the Day of Pentecost, and before Peter preached his sermon) were already saved, were believers, had seen him ascend to heaven, etc, and the Body of Christ (the church) then must already have been in existence before the Day of Pentecost. Would someone please explain, then, how the church wasn't formed or "born" until the day of Pentecost? Was the church just halfway outside the womb pre-Day of Pentecost? Did it have to wait until the Day of Pentecost to...

Have you ever come across one of those Protestant sectarians who, finding heretics on all sides, has reduced authentic Christianity to just himself? Everyone else has it wrong—certainly the historic churches but just as certainly the denominations he used to be part of. One by one he became disenchanted with them, serially leaving one church for an even smaller church, until at length it was just himself and another fellow, whom he discovered to be as foul a heretic as he had ever met.That left our sectarian alone but confident that he had settled in the true religion—confident, but...

Lego has been accused of racism by the Turkish community over a Star Wars model that supposedly resembles one of Istanbul’s most revered mosques. tria’s Turkish community said the model was based on Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul and that the accompanying figures depicted Asians and Orientals as people with “deceitful and criminal personalities.” The Turkish Cultural Community of Austria released a statement calling for Lego to apologise for affronting religious and cultural feelings. The anger was provoked by “Jabba’s Palace”, a model of the home of Jabba the Hutt from Lego’s Star Wars product range based on the blockbusting...

Has modern Christianity formed a new Church? I'll keep the journey into history simple. In the last 2000 years the churches large enough to survive the attacks by larger established churches could survive. They were not civil nor peaceful. They conducted massive wars against each other. However, over the last several decades, something different has happened, a new church has formed. All these churches that used to slaughter each other now accept the baptisms and membership performed by their one time rivals. Individual doctrines no longer matter. Their adherents now claim everyone is "saved" in the body of Christ. Modern...

Reprinted by permission from Mormonism and Early Christianity, vol. 4 in The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1987),168—208. ...By its very definition church history requires unquestioning acceptance of the basic proposition that the church did survive. ...the normal reaction to the question—did the church remain on earth?—has not been serious inquiry in a richly documented field, but shocked recoil from the edge of an abyss into which few can look without a shudder. Yet today that question is being asked again... ...The purpose of this paper is to list briefly the principal arguments supporting the...

As a Jewish convert to Christ via evangelical Protestantism, I naturally wanted to know God better through the reading of the Scriptures. In fact, it had been through reading the Gospels in the "forbidden book" called the New Testament, at age sixteen, that I had come to believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and our promised Messiah. In my early years as a Christian, much of my religious education came from private Bible reading. By the time I entered college, I had a pocket-sized version of the whole Bible that was my constant companion. I would commit...

A congregation in South Asia cannot meet for worship this weekend because their church was vandalized by local anti-Christian fanatics, who also locked them out of the church building. The trouble started on August 17 when a group of local anti-Christian fanatics confronted Gospel for Asia-supported missionary Jank Nayak at the church where he serves as pastor. “We will kill you if you don’t leave this place,” the leader bluntly told Jank. Then they forced him into a room at the church. While Jank was locked up, he called his GFA leader, who contacted the police. The officers said they...

Beloved, while I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 3–4). I will never forget what one of my church history professors told us one day in class in the late 1970s...