Free Republic

Are atheism and promoting atheism consistent with American -- let alone conservative -- values and principles? The operational policy of the American Conservative Union now appears to contradict Ronald Reagan's view on this. Reagan believed atheism was not merely wrong, but the enemy of freedom. The ACU has functionally adopted the position that groups promoting atheism can be featured at its annual Conservative Political Action Conference -- so long as they promote godlessness with civility. In the same 1983 speech in which he declared the Soviet Union an "evil empire," Reagan unapologetically spelt out the "ideals and principles" that...

Brady Williams and his five wives are the stars of a new reality series on TLC. The six Williams family members decided to go public with their story in order to dispel myths about polygamy, including about sexual relations between Brady and his wives. "All of America is having sex," Brady told HuffPost Live. "It's no big deal to answer [questions]. We're not perverted, we're not twisted. We're normal – we're just normal times five." However, Dean Gregory Alan Thornbury of the school of theology at Union University in Tennessee has been quick to point out that polygamy, even within...

If I had told you ten years ago that a family seeking asylum from religious persecution would be turned away from the US, you would have thought I was nuts. But, it’s finally happened—and no surprise to a Christian family. Uwe and Hannelore Romeike came to the United States in 2008 seeking political asylum. They fled their German homeland in the face of religious persecution for homeschooling their children. They wanted to live in a country where they could raise their children in accordance with their Christian beliefs. Too bad they picked the United States, huh? I expected this sort...

"The Greatest Story Ever Told,” is not the greatest movie ever made, but the 1965 epic about the life of Christ at least understood the nature of its sour;ce material. The Bible, Old and New Testaments alike, as a rich vein of subject matter – and profits – for the movie industry. Then in the late 1960s, Hollywood made it’s hard left turn and God and the Bible were all but forgotten in Tinsel Town. But this year, the movie industry seems to have rediscovered the Bible as a very marketable/lucrative subject. Three major movies will be released based on...

Would a loving Jesus really teach about hell? Yes, and so does every New Testament author. Let’s consider what they teach.Hell in MatthewIn the Sermon on the Mount, often known for its emphasis on love and the kingdom, Jesus teaches the reality and nature of hell (5:20–30; 7:13–27). In Matthew 5:20–30, Jesus contrasts hell with the kingdom of heaven and warns that hell is a real danger to unrepentant sinners. The fire of hell, the justice of hell, and the extreme suffering in hell are particularly stressed. The unrepentant are warned to use extreme measures to avoid being cast into it by God.As...

God willing, the new evangelization will happen, but let us not imagine that this time will be like the first time. The old evangelization proclaimed the Good News among pagan, pre-Christian peoples to whom it came as something new. Nothing like that had been done before. But nothing like our task has been done before either. Re-evangelizing is not evangelizing as though for the first time again; the very fact of past proclamation makes re-proclamation different. For we proclaim the Gospel to a neo-pagan, post-Christian people to whom it does not come as new. The old world had not yet...

For a free society to function, a wide range of speech and behavior has to be tolerated, but that doesn't mean everyone has to approve of it. So, for example, although I don't drink, I have many friends who do. While I think Justin Bieber's music is appalling, I don't think it should be illegal. While I would like to see abortion banned except in the case of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother, I have friends who've admitted to me that they've had abortions. Unfortunately, when it comes to gay marriage, we have people who...

I have been pondering the question posed in the title of this post for quite some time. I believe the main source of this pondering is the furor that is ongoing in America over the rights of individual business owners, who happen to be Christians and hold certain religious values, to refuse to service certain segments of our population. I was informed last year in a discussion on this blog that these Christian business owners had no such right, that if they did not want to serve a certain group of people, that constituted discrimination, and they should shut their...

In December of 1865, the several American states ratified the 13th amendment, constitutionally ending involuntary servitude in the United States. In the 21st century, Americans are coming full circle. In a number of states, a black man can again be forced by the government to work involuntarily for a white man. Not since the nation eliminated Jim Crow laws during the civil rights era have we seen such a bizarre conundrum. But if the black man is a Christian and the white man is gay, a court can forcibly order the black man to serve the white man or...

Gallup publishes in February of each year a survey of the extent of self-described religiosity in each state; and they report that religiosity is rising throughout the country. Gallup headlined this year’s survey on February 3rd, “Mississippi Maintains Hold as Most Religious U.S. State; Vermont is the least religious.” Last year, it was “Mississippi Most Religious State, Vermont Least Religious.” No change there: in fact, the rank-orders of the 50 states (plus D.C.) are almost unchanged during the past 12 months. What’s notable is instead that the percentages of people saying that they are “Very religious” have increased in almost...

First published on American Thinker. By Enza Ferreri Of all the myriad myths spread at light speed by the enemies of Christianity and astonishingly believed without much critical thought by vast numbers of people, one of the most surreal must be the idea that Nazism was Christian. This is part of an email I received from Tony, a supporter of my party Liberty GB, who sent me a long list of sharp attacks against Christianity after watching my video What Is Uniquely Good about Western Civilisation Derives from Christianity: For example Adolf Hitler was a Catholic and included proclamations...

Would Jesus bake a cake for a gay wedding? It’s a weird question, but we do live in interesting times. And believe it or not, this has become one of the most heated debates of the week. That’s because, this week, liberal Christians pushed the argument that legislation allowing Christian florists and bakers to decline to work for same-sex weddings is tantamount to Jim Crow laws. The analogy is a stretch. Sexual orientation is not race — and permitting what would most definitely be a very small number of observant Christians to exercise their right of conscience is vastly different...

Many skeptics assert that Paul of Tarsus (the apostle Paul) hijacked the early Christian religion, changing the theology from what Jesus originally taught. Usually offered as proof for this claim are the doctrines found in Paul's great theological work, his letter to the Romans. Without a doubt, the book of Romans contains the most complete exposition of orthodox Christian doctrines. Are these doctrines contrary to what Jesus taught? Do they conflict with the teachings of the Old Testament from which they were purportedly derived? If Paul really "invented" Christianity, then one would expect that his teachings would be different from...

A hard-fought effort to move one of Houston's iconic Christian churches from its long-standing denomination to a new, more conservative group narrowly failed Sunday, with the congregation voting heavily in favor of the move but falling short of the supermajority needed for approval. The leadership of First Presbyterian Church, which was established shortly after Houston's founding, had unanimously endorsed the move from Presbyterian Church USA to the breakaway denomination called ECO, A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. The senior pastor, his staff, and the elected leaders from the congregation argued that PCUSA, the nation's largest Presbyterian body, had become too...

Conservative Christian groups in Arizona cheered the passage Thursday of legislation that would allow individuals and businesses in the state to deny service to same-sex couples due to religious beliefs. All eyes have shifted to Governor Jan Brewer, who must now decide whether to sign the bill. Similar legislation died in Kansas last week, but has also been introduced in Ohio, Mississippi, Idaho, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. The Arizona law seems to apply to services beyond those tied to weddings, but same-sex weddings are the impetus for these bills. Specifically, they are in response to lawsuits against three different...

On Friday, the Washington Post predictably depicted a Catholic hospital chaplain as the aggressor, after the priest denied an ailing, openly-homosexual patient Communion and the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. The liberal newspaper's Metro-section report on the controversy came less than a week after the section's former editor blasted a Virginia Catholic priest for dissolving his parish's Boy Scout troop over their new pro-LGBT membership policy. Reporter Michelle Boorstein picked up on the scoop from "America's Leading Gay News Source," the Washington Blade, and hyped how "a Catholic chaplain at MedStar Washington Hospital Center stopped delivering a 63-year-old...

WASHINGTON — Young Evangelicals argued that Christianity and libertarianism are compatible, and some even claimed that Christians should advocate for libertarian causes. "Christians actually ought to feel outraged that the redemptive power of charity has been taken from us and given to an unfeeling, coercive state," Leah Stiles Hughey declared at a Saturday panel at The International Students for Liberty Conference. She claimed that when government gets involved in giving to the poor it denies the God-given human dignity of both giver and receiver. Hughey's husband Jason explained that "the Bible is not a book of political theory." Nevertheless, "there...

Churches — both legal and illegal — are booming in China. Some view them as a welcome counterpoint to rampant materialism. Others see ghosts of a colonial past. It was my last Sunday morning in China, my last chance to experience church in a Communist country where, as far as I could tell, Christianity was basically forbidden. It was 2011, and I had been in Beijing for five weeks to study Mandarin. In that time, I hadn’t seen a single cross, church or Bible. In fact, I read at customs that you couldn’t bring in more than four Bibles from...

Being Christian in America increasingly means something very different from what it has meant previously in our nation’s history. As the culture and its values change, so too does the position once held by the teachings of traditional, Bible-based Christianity. Simply put, the Christian values once applauded by this society are increasingly being attacked by this society, and that growing antagonism extends not just to the values, but to the people who ascribe to them. Bible-based Christians should be aware of that attitudinal shift, and of the adversity and persecution which will accompany it. American society and traditional Christianity have...

Annihilationism is the view that lost people in hell will be exterminated after they have paid the penalty for their sins. Its proponents offer six main arguments. First is an argument based on the Bible’s use of fire imagery to describe hell. We are told that fire consumes what is thrown into it, and so it will be for the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20; 20:10, 14, 15; 21:8)—it will burn up the wicked so that they no longer exist. Second is an argument based on texts that speak of the lost perishing or being destroyed. Examples include unbelievers perishing...