Free Republic

An atheist, Buckner believes that no religious literature should be provided in government-owned lodging, and he presented that concern to management at the Amicalola Falls State Park. Officials told Buckner they would remove the Bibles from all state park resorts while the state attorney general looked into the matter. Not long afterward, however, the AG issued a ruling saying the state was on firm legal ground because it hadn’t paid for the books. On Wednesday, Gov. Nathan Deal ordered the Bibles returned. Deal argued that if the state didn’t pay for them, it can’t be seen as endorsing them. He...

The Inspector General released a report this week and found that 63% of scrutinized IRS applications were withdrawn or were still unresolved. Conservative, Tea Party, pro-Israel and Christian groups were targeted by the IRS. (GRAPHIC-AT-LINK) The Obama IRS refused to grant tax exempt status to Christian and pro-life groups on behalf of the abortion group Planned Parenthood. “In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa. In a phone call to Coalition for Life of Iowa leaders on June 6, 2009, the IRS agent ‘Ms. Richards’ told the group...

The 2011 census puts the Muslim population of the UK at around 5 per cent, a total that has been boosted by around 600,000 Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the UK over the past decade. Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said to UK daily the Telegraph that the decline of Christianity is “inevitable.” “In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” he said.

"If you believe Islam is the truth, why don't you believe Islam can compete in the marketplace of ideas?"

Raymond Ibrahim, a scholar of Islam and Islamic history who has a particular focus on Muslim persecution of Christians, has on his website - for which I also write - a new article, Islamic Forced Conversions — Past and Present, highlighting the astonishing similarities of past atrocities, which many people in the West believe to have been consigned to distant history (belief largely due to the mainstream media's "carpet non-coverage" and total neglect of these everyday slaughters, massacres, beheadings, torture and discrimination), to current ones. His piece was inspired by last Sunday’s canonization by Pope Francis I of the 813...

Full Title: “Gay Marriage” Shows Us Why Theology Matters. Three ways Biblically sound theology will help in the same-sex marriage debate To invite homosexuals to embrace themselves so that they are no longer lonely is agreeing with those on the left that God was wrong in ordaining the family as one man and one woman together in marriage. It is agreeing with those whom God is pouring out His wrath. It is agreeing with those who have cast off any notions of holiness, purity and piety in the church. It is, as I have said, theological suicide. Over the weekend...

It’s an Obama world… The IRS told a pro-life group that it had to promote abortion or they wouldn’t qualify for nonprofit status. World Net Daily reported: The Internal Revenue Service already has confessed to targeting and trying to injure tea party, Constitution and patriot organizations, by demanding answers to arbitrary questions and delaying their applications for a tax status so they could operate. Now WND has learned that the IRS also put an organization in its bull’s-eye that wanted to do nothing more than share its pro-life message with churches. Cherish Life Ministries was created to be a non-profit...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the Obama Administration’s denial of asylum granted to the Romeike family. The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 when they were subjected to criminal prosecution for homeschooling. They were granted asylum in 2010 by Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, but that grant was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit heard the Romeikes’ appeal on April 23 in Cincinnati, and issued today’s unanimous decision against the family.

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

In 640 AD Christianity is spread over all of North Africa. Egypt, Syria are centers of Christianity. Iraq is nearly completely Christian, there are Christians all over the Persian Empire. Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan etc. are Christian, 100% Christian. Egypt is a font of Christian knowledge as is Edessa, as is SyriaEurope is missionary terriroty with the Picts, Germanics etc. either pagan or Arians...the Pentarchy, the 5 Churches: Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and Rome --> only 1 is in EuropeLoss 1: Then Chalcedon occurs and Egypt, Syria etc. has most of the people alienated from the Chalcedonian government. Net result, when...

Obama is clearly in the process of making our military forces a “faithless” total entity by decreeing the removal of any expression or manifestation of faith within the ranks of the U.S. militaryOn Wednesday, May 01, 2013, a national event was held in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. It probably did not get your attention as these events intended for nationwide consumption as designed initially to do, but because of its subject there seems to be an enormous effort to act effortless and downplay the whole program. Why? Well, it’s all about religion and...

I’ve read with interest Francis (Frank) Beckwith’s book, Return to Rome, because like him, I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic, attending parochial schools through my primary grades and a preparatory school run by a Benedictine monastery throughout my high school years. And, like Dr. Beckwith, in my teens I turned away from the Roman Catholic Church and Christianity altogether but was converted in my early twenties and began attending a Protestant Evangelical church. And for the past thirty seven years I have been a committed Evangelical Protestant. I was also quite interested in reading Dr. Beckwith’s book because he...

I'm afraid that Raymond Ibrahim might in the not-so-distant future have more work to do when compiling his monthly statistics of persecution of Christians. European countries may have to be added to his list. Persecution of Christians in Europe takes mainly two forms. The first is the age-old type that we already know from what happens in Asia and Africa as Muslim (mostly illegal) immigrants spread across the globe. The second is the brand-new, "liberal" kind, deriving from European elites' efforts to marginalize Christianity in its own historical home. I'll focus in this post on a few examples of the...

A random thought that came to me during the media feeding frenzy over Jason Collins, who is now going to be fundraising with Michelle Obama for the DNC.

Are you saved? Have you ever been asked this question? Has anyone ever told you that Catholics think they can work their way into Heaven? The Catholic Church does not now, nor has it ever, taught a doctrine of salvation by works - that we can “work� our way into Heaven. And, the Bible does not teach that we are saved by “faith alone.� The only place in all of Scripture where the phrase “Faith Alone� appears, is in James 2:24, where it says that we are not justified (or saved) by faith alone. However, if works have nothing to...

Christ opening the gates of Dachau In 1945, a Paschal Liturgy like no other was performed. Just days after their liberation by the US military on April 29, 1945, hundreds of Orthodox Christian prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp gathered to celebrate the Resurrection service and to give thanks. The Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933 in a former gunpowder factory. The first prisoners interred there were political opponents of Adolf Hitler, who had become German chancellor that same year. During the twelve years of the camp's existence, over 200,000 prisoners were brought there. The majority of prisoners at...

Urban II, the 159th Pope of the Catholic Church, was one of the great Popes in history, and was beatified in 1881 by Pope Leo XIII. The most famous son of Châtillon-sur-Marne, in Champagne, France, he was Pope from 1088 until his death in 1099.We have to thank Pope Blessed Urban II for many things, including the internal reforms he made and his declarations against simony, the Medieval practice of selling church offices; but especially we have to be grateful to him for having saved Europe from subjugation to Islamic forces.Since the time of Islam's prophet Muhammad and after...

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,...

The United States Department of Defense is waging another war, but not against another country.  Their target?  Christians in our own military. Obama appointees at the Pentagon have jumped into bed with Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religions Freedom Foundation, who will be a consultant in developing new policies on religious tolerance in the military.  The new policies will include a court-martial for military chaplains who share the Gospel during spiritual counseling of American servicemen and women. Weinstein wrote an angry column for the Huffington Post in which he said, “Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters...

Did the Pentagon bar Christians from talking about their faith while serving in the military? Not exactly, but a new push to aggressively stop proselytizing has chaplains nervous, according to the Deseret News: The latest salvo came this week when conservative blogger Todd Starnes wrote on Fox News and the Christian Post that the Pentagon confirmed that “religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense.�The regulation is not new. In August, the Air Force issued a policy telling its chaplains that they must balance an airman’s right to religious exercise with a prohibition against government establishment of religion....

Before we talk about comparative birth rates in Muslim and Christian nations, we have to talk about a weakness that 21st Century Christianity faces in its competition with Islam. A Martyr in the Christian religion is one who dies for his faith. A Martyr in the Muslim religion is not just one who dies for his faith, but one who kills for his faith. How is Christianity going to compete with people who are not just willing to die for their religion, but to kill for their religion? Birth rates among almost all Western Christian nations are below replacement, and...

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...

America's political and cultural left is, step by step, demonizing and marginalizing Christians and Christian values, to the point that even the congenitally apathetic should be concerned. Fox News' Todd Starnes reports that the U.S. military has blocked access to the Southern Baptist Convention's website on an undetermined number of military bases because it supposedly includes "hostile content." Just a few weeks before, as noted in this space, an Army briefing labeled evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics as religious extremists. The information about the Southern Baptist Convention's website surfaced when an Air Force officer reported that he was unable to...

Many Muslims and websites claim that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. As proof, they usually present us with unverifiable claims and baseless media quotes. Apparently ABC News had claimed "Already more than a billion-people strong, Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion", a quote which cannot be traced to its source. Also CNN World News stated "Fast-growing Islam winning converts in Western world", a statement which they fail to back up with any evidence. Here we examine the actual data available for Islam to see if any of these claims are based on fact. ccording to "The...

Christians are to launch a landmark legal case arguing their religion is being treated as a “thought crime” by government and courts.Campaigners will submit papers to the European Court of Human Rights in a final attempt to overturn rulings they say have restricted religious freedom for Christians and effectively persecuted those wanting to publicly practise their religion Campaigners will submit papers to the European Court of Human Rights in a final attempt to overturn rulings they say have restricted religious freedom for Christians and effectively persecuted those wanting to publicly practise their religion. The move comes in the case of...

Deep in China’s heartland is a region known as “The Bethlehem of China,” where, more than a thousand years ago, Western missionaries first brought Christianity to the area. It is here, in a series of caves hidden in the hills, where members of China’s underground Christian Church tell FRONTLINE/World and Chicago Tribune reporter Evan Osnos how they have kept the religion alive. For years, they moved from place to place to avoid government detection, until they found safety in these hills. “When we were in an underground state, we would gather here to meet,” Zhang Yinan, a pastor who’s chronicling...

Putin said last Friday, "The Russian Orthodox Church together with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad are on a very special mission in Russia and across the world." A "special mission" in the West means KGB, nuclear strikes or Cold War. In reality, last February 1st, Putin met with the Church in this video to say:(Link to Video at this point) It 's certain as the sun rises that Friday's meeting between Russian Christians leaders and Putin will be ignored by the Western media. Putin has real world power, which causes the liberal media to fearfully ignore or warp his image....

Bill Maher on HBO's Real Time Friday made a statement that will make the Right cheer as the left predictably cringes. After his guest Brian Levin - the director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino - said of the Boston bombings and how it relates to radical Islam, "We have hypocrites across faiths, Jewish, Christian who say they're out for God and end up doing not so nice things," Maher marvelously responded, "That’s liberal bulls--t right there" (video follows with transcript and commentary): Maher to Guest Defending Islam in the...

Thought this would be more relevant now. This is a compilation of interviews of sincere Boston Street evangelists, reduced to 9 minutes from 3 hours. Asa shown below, Boston and MA in general is one of most resistant (and antagonistic to) the gospel, being liberal and mostly institutionalized religion (except for many recent immigrants). Video: http://youtu.be/AO6SIDZ4RNM

KABOOM. I had just started in on writing my weekly column yesterday afternoon when the news broke onto the TV screen: Explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The weird part about it has to do with what I had intended as the subject of my column — that is, until the news of the terrorist attack came on. Not kidding; I was going to title my piece for this week “Learning to Love the Left,” and I was all set to expound on Jesus’ sometimes seemingly impossible teaching about loving our enemies, not resisting evil, turning the...

The Rise of a Counterfeit Christianity Christ gave an ominous warning—that many would come in His name, teaching a different message that would deceive many. They would create a counterfeit of true Christianity, starting a religion that would largely supplant the true Church. "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name . . . and will deceive many" (Matthew 24:4-5). Jesus Christ told His apostles to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in His name. Most people who are familiar with the Bible realize that those apostles zealously embarked on that mission. Their...

The phenomenon of Christians worshipping at home concerns the regime and the number of arrests for converting from Islam to Christianity has increased. The government of Tehran is launching a new offensive against the so-called home churches, small groups of Christians who meet in private houses to celebrate their faith because they cannon join the Churches officially recognised (and controlled) by the State, Iranian Christian news agency Mohabat reports. Khorasan, a government journal has published a long statement by Bahman Amiri Moghaddam, chief of police for the Khorasa-Ravi province, in which he says security forces “had taken care of a...

Is the Pentagon discriminating against Christians? Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) said he’s been monitoring a steady stream of religious discrimination complaints over the past four years from Christian soldiers. “It’s been a steady attack on faith and religious freedom that we’ve seen in our military like we’ve never seen before,” Forbes told Fox News. “We are getting a lot of calls from soldiers saying ‘we’re afraid of going to church, we’re afraid to be seen praying, we’re afraid that would hurt our careers, our promotions.’” Forbes grilled Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel about religious liberty issues during a House Armed Services...

Thank you, everyone in my previous post, who gave well thought out, articulate answers to these important questions of life (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2998030/posts )! Now, in philosophy class, we are exploring these questions in even more detail, and with an additional assignment of follow-up questions: What do you believe, regarding ultimate reality? God? Matter? Something else? Do you believe in God? If so, why? Why are you here on earth, and where are you going, for eternity? If you believe in God, what is the most convincing evidence, for you personally? Is there any possibility that you may be wrong about the...

Can Latino evangelicals help Republicans take a bite out of the Democratic advantage with Hispanic voters? Maybe. As my cover story “The Latino Reformation“ this week suggests, Latino evangelicals are a group that has strong conservative social values—meaning the Republican Party should find them very attractive. They prize the nuclear family. They are largely against abortion and gay marriage. They also tend to be wealthier than Latino Catholics, and they are more likely to have been born in the United States.

The leader of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church on Tuesday blasted the country’s Islamist president over his handling of recent deadly sectarian violence, including an attack on the main cathedral in Cairo. The remarks by Pope Tawadros II underscore rising Muslim-Christian tensions in Egypt. They were his first direct criticism of President Mohammed Morsi since he was enthroned in November as the spiritual leader of Egypt’s Orthodox Christians. They are also likely to fuel political turmoil that has been roiling the country since the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak two years ago. Egypt is already divided between two camps, with Morsi...

She was never a politician. At least not in the understanding of the famous American preacher James Freeman Clarke, who in the nineteenth century had noticed that politicians think of the next election, a statesman, of the next generation. (...) Gorbachev never understood the value and the sense of democracy. For him democracy equals with the people’s democracy, Soviet tautology that had been used by Communist regimes as a smokescreen. Although some public figures understood it, not many had courage to admit and even less wanted to correct Mr. Gorbachev in public. Margaret Thatcher did. She understood that alleged Gorbachev’s...

Defense: As the Army removes crosses from an Army chapel in Afghanistan that offends Muslims, a training instructor lists evangelical Christianity and Catholicism as examples of religious extremism. It has been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, but like so many things askew in our politically correct modern-day universe, there are apparently some. An atheist U.S. soldier made a formal complaint about the steeple and crosses on a chapel located at Forward Operation Base Orgun-E. "We can confirm that those items were removed from the chapel," said a spokesman for the ISAF Joint Command. "These items were removed...

1. The Didache “You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not commit pederasty, you shall not commit fornication, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic, you shall not practice witchcraft, you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill one that has been born” (Didache 2:2 [A.D. 70]).1... 2. Justin Martyr “[W]e have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do anyone harm and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all...

Homosexuality: A Biblical Overview Jim Denison, Denison Forum on Truth and CultureThursday, March 28, 2013 Homosexuality is one of the most divisive issues in American culture. Should same-sex marriages be legalized? Should practicing homosexuals be ordained into Christian ministry? What does the Bible say on this controversial and emotional issue? On such a controversial and emotional issue, we need to know whose word we are going to trust. We can find scholars who support any of the variety of positions which are advocated on the subject. It is not my intention to treat fully the multitude of interpretive comments which...

There are ugly stains in our past such as the Democrat Party formed KKK and the Democrat supported murderous Planned Parenthood founded by eugenicist Margaret Sanger. As a black woman, I loathe both of these organizations and wish that neither one ever existed. After all, they both aimed to target and destroy people with my skin color...

Dr. Prager provides a brief summary of his longer article: “The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity. This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women."

This is our heritage. This is what they want us to toss into the garbage.

In early January 2013, a United Nations special envoy reported that the civil war in Syria had reached "unprecedented levels of horror" with an estimated death toll of more than 60,000 people. In the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, the situation for Christians in Syria, and in many parts of the Middle East and North Africa, continues to deteriorate. The Russian Orthodox Church has been among the most active witnesses against Christian persecution in Syria and other countries around the world. In a statement about the Middle East, the Russian Bishops' Council warned of "the vanishing of Christianity in...

A respected pro-family organization announced a boycott of Starbucks coffee. The group, which supports legal protection for traditional marriage, launched the "Dump Starbucks" campaign after a national board meeting in which the Seattle-based coffee company mentioned support for same-sex marriage as a core value of the company. Some Christians are wondering whether we ought to join in the boycott. I say no. It's not that I'm saying a boycott in and of itself is always evil or wrong. It's just that, in this case (and in many like it) a boycott exposes us to all of our worst tendencies. Christians...

Question: I understand that at some time around 1930 G.K. debated Clarence Darrow in New York City and did quite well. Where is this reported at any length? Is a transcript available? What else is known of this debate? How can I find more information about it? Thank You for your response. - Duane Answer: In January of 1931, during his second trip to America, Chesterton did indeed debate with Clarence Darrow, at New York City’s Mecca Temple. The topic was “Will the World Return to Religion?” There is no known transcript of the proceedings, but perhaps the following clippings...

My unfavorite new Facebook meme is this bit of sillyness which has apparently been spotted everywhere from the feeds of my college friends to (allegedly) that of Richard Dawkins' Foundation for Reason and Science:

With Easter approaching and the Astroturf groundswell for same-sex marriage at its apex, I thought I'd put in a plug for the Bible, whose integrity and timeless principles are under increasing assault in our culture. In fact, what sparked this column was a warning by a nationally prominent Republican to his party that it ought not go "Old Testament" and oppose same-sex marriage. I don't want to turn this column into a rant about same-sex marriage, but I cite this example to illustrate a common tendency to bifurcate the Old Testament and the New Testament and to paint Jesus...

"If Jesus were alive today, he would be more inclined to say, 'you know, I didn't know it all...'" - Rev. Oliver White, Sean Hannity Show, March 27, 2013 In general, most news outlets have provided awful coverage of the Supreme Court proceedings on same-sex marriage. Covering the proceedings like they cover a political campaign or a sporting event, most of the analysis and commentary has been about political "wins" for one side or the other and the ramifications of the pending decision on homosexuals in our society, rather than the wide-ranging ramifications for society itself. Filling the void of...