Free Republic

<p>A baseball star, Billy Sunday played for the Chicago White Stockings in the 1880's and later the Philadelphia Phillies.</p> <p>Born during the Civil War in a log cabin in Iowa, his father, who was a Union Army soldier, died of pneumonia when Billy was a month old. At age 15, Billy Sunday struck out on his own, working several jobs before playing baseball.</p>

I realize that as an evangelical Christian I have a dog in this fight, but I want to say a few words about evangelicals and the unfortunate effort afoot to make them the political boogeyman. There are so many misconceptions about "evangelicals" -- from the definition of the word to the intentions of the people themselves -- but the most damaging myth is that we evangelicals seek a theocracy for the United States of America, which couldn't be further from the truth. I'll get back to that, but first a little background. Recently I've had several people ask me what...

The political elites hate him and are spending millions to try and stop him. I will be honest, when Trump first said he was running I really didn't care and hardly followed it. But now in my 7th year of writing for NTEB, I have become quite adept at looking for the "story within the story" to try and get at the truth. When I saw the hatred for Trump, not just from the loony Left but from the Republicans and Conservatives, I have to tell you my ears perked up. "Why did they hate him so much?", I wondered....

Conventional wisdom among many of my peers in the "pro-Israel" community is that Rubio & Cruz are indistinguishable as it relates to support for Israel, and on Foreign Policy as a whole. Is that indeed true?...

During the first three centuries of Christianity, there were ten major persecutions in which the government threw Christians to the lions, boiled them alive, had their tongues cut out, and worse. Christian writings, scriptures and historical records were destroyed. Because so many records were destroyed, details of Saint Valentine's life are scant. What little is know was passed down and finally printed in the year 1260 in Legenda Sanctorum by Jacobus de Voragine, and in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493. Saint Valentine was either a priest in Rome or a bishop in Terni, central Italy. He risked the Emperor's wrath by...

The problem with America is that our universities teach worldview and our churches don't. As a consequence, students usually enter college with a limited capacity to answer simple moral questions. By the time they graduate, that capacity is further impaired if not lost altogether. Such substantial moral impairment was on full display in a recent Q&A following a debate on the topic of abortion at Oregon State University (OSU). I participated in that debate and one of the questions I was asked by a student has been reproduced below: "Dr. Adams, you mentioned that dead things do not grow. But...

A political science professor from Wheaton College, a small Christian school outside of Chicago, who wore a hijab to proclaim her "solidarity" with Muslims, has "found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation" with the school and the two will part ways. Larycia Hawkins also said that her gesture was an acknowledgment that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. After recommending that she be fired, the college's Provost withdrew his request and turned the matter over to the college president who reached the confidential agreement with Hawkins that has led to her leaving the school without being fired. CLTV:...

Thursday on his radio show, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh reacted to President Barack Obama’s address to a mosque in Baltimore a day earlier. According to Limbaugh, it raised a larger question about Obama, which pertained to Obama “routinely” touting Islam and why he chose Christianity over other religions.

U.S. Military Denies ISIS Targets Christians "We've seen no specific evidence of a specific targeting towards Christians." - Col. Steve Warren. February 3, 2016 Raymond Ibrahim Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. When a 1,400-year-old Iraqi Christian monastery was destroyed by the Islamic State (ISIS) most of the world condemned the demolition -- except for spokesman for the U.S. military's Operation Inherent Resolve, Col. Steve Warren. "Thousands [of Iraqi Christians] have been killed, hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee," noted CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview...

Why he continues to exist despite Islam's continued slaugher of Christians. The phenomenon of the Islamo-Christian” deserves wider attention, and the word wider use. An “Islamo-Christian” is, in its strictest sense, a Christian Arab who identifies with and works to advance the Islamic agenda, out of fear or out of a belief that his “Arabness” requires loyalty to Islam. Islamization by the Arab Muslim conquerors of Mesopotamia, Syria, and North Africa was a vehicle for Arab imperialism. This imperialism, the most successful in human history, convinced those who accepted Islam to also forget their own pre-Islamic or non-Islamic pasts. It...

November 18, 2007 By Jack Voelkel GLADYS AYLWARD Small Woman, Big Heart, Great Faith The half-starved Chinese prisoners in Yangcheng were rioting. In the center was a man with a large bloody kitchen meat cleaver. All were shouting. Several men had already collapsed on the ground, mortally wounded. The warden called to A-Weh-Deh, “Go in and stop them!” The woman known to foreigners by her English name, Gladys Aylward, stood trembling at the entrance. “Why me?” she gasped. The warden challenged, “You tell us your God is all powerful. Is He or is He not?” “He is,” she declared, seeking...

How any female in America could support Donald Trump, the American version of former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, is beyond me. Call me old school, but I have a real problem electing a man to public office who the Washington Post reported has a "Twitter feed and history of public comments" describing women as a "dog," "fat" and "disgusting." Even still, some conservatives give him a pass. I know. We're electing a president, not a pastor. Or at least that's what we hear from certain evangelical leaders who think it's okay to endorse a "Biblically-illiterate strip club owner" who trades...

Although Barack Obama spent 20 years in a radical, racialist church with a pastor who asks God to damn America; although Obama is a supporter of the infanticide known as partial-birth abortion, bashes Christianity, and uses ObamaCare as a means to persecute Christians through the power of the state, Obama’s longtime supporters at the Washington Post still write gushing articles about Obama’s Christianity and lash out harshly at those who don’t vouch for the president’s questionable faith.

Franklin D. Roosevelt warned at Madison Square Garden, October 28, 1940:"WE GUARD AGAINST the forces of anti-Christian aggression, which may attack us from without." FDR said in a Fireside Chat, April 28, 1942: "THIS GREAT WAR effort must be carried through... It shall not be imperiled by the handful of noisy traitors - betrayers of America, betrayers of Christianity itself." FDR stated at a Campaign event in Brooklyn, New York, November 1, 1940:"THOSE FORCES HATE democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy." Franklin...

"I really appreciate the support given to me by the evangelicals. They've been incredible. Every poll shows how well I'm doing with them," Trump says in the ad, filmed from what appears to be his office in Trump Tower. "And, you know, my mother gave me this Bible, this very Bible, many years ago," he added, holding up the holy book to the camera. "In fact, it's her writing, right here. She wrote the name and the address, and it's just very special to me." The billionaire businessman closed the 30-second spot by vowing he would never let the evangelical...

Well a busy morning of sorts for me, so this will be one of those shows in which I went back to an old reliable, Newsforchristians.com, and saw what some of their featured articles were and I'll run with, share, and comment on some of those. What stands out, unsurprisingly, is presidential politics and elections. They'll be a lot of Donald Trump talk as well as a lot of talk about faith in politics, pastors and politics, and at least one court case about the so called separation of church and state in North Carolina. Faith and politics often collide...

The parents of a Maryland teenager have launched a lawsuit against their daughter's public high school, claiming the district forced the 16-year-old to take classes that promote Islam over Christianity and Judaism. John Wood, a former Marine, and his wife Melissa Wood, have filed a civil rights complaint against La Plata High School, alleging their daughter - identified only as C.W. - spent one day in a modern history class studying Christianity, followed by two weeks immersed in Islam. According to court documents obtained by The Daily Mail Online, the 11th grader 'had to profess the Shahada by claiming ''There...

CV cannot remain on the sidelines any longer. As Iowans prepare to cast the first votes in the 2016 nomination process, we owe you our thoughts. While we are not officially endorsing a candidate at this time, we believe it is important to share some critical thoughts on the race, or at least on one candidate in particular. As Catholics, we are called to participate in the democratic process. The Church does not endorse candidates for public office. That job rests with us, the laity. No candidate is perfect, and no simple checklist is sufficient. Prudence is a necessity. Some...

This week, John looks at Europe in 2030, the issue of factions of the United Methodist Church moving away from Biblical Truth, signs of a severe worldwide downturn in the economy and the growing anti-zionism sweeping the Middle East and Europe. Spanning the Atlantic and spearheaded by American leadership, while the US has historically been a staunch ally of Israel, the recent political shift against the only Middle Eastern democracy comes at a steep price. Is God gradually removing His hand of providence from our country due to her leadership's meddling in the peace and safety of Israel? Is it...

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump suggested on Saturday that he would have had "less difficulty" if he had proposed barring Christians from entering the US instead of Muslims. Last December, the Republican presidential front-runner ignited a national firestorm by proposing to suspend all Muslim immigration and tourist travel into the US. "If I said that about Christians, and if I said 'banned,' I'm telling you I would have had less difficulty," Trump said Saturday. "And that's pretty sad, because we're Christians. I'm Protestant. I'm Presbyterian." Some of Trump's critics have questioned the sincerity of his faith, noting that the real-estate mogul...