Free Republic

Religiously unaffiliated Americans are, unsurprisingly, less likely than their Christian countrymen to attend church regularly or say religion is important in their lives. However, on several common measures, “nones” in the United States exhibit nearly equal levels of spirituality as self-identifying Christians in Western Europe. A new study by the Pew Research Center, surveying more than 24,000 individuals across 15 countries in Western Europe on their religious beliefs and practices, reveal striking disconnects between Western Christians across the Atlantic. Equally striking is how similarly religious nones in the United States and Christians in Western Europe match up: * Only 27...

Professor Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the divinity school at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that during the early years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) some Christians became disappointed with church institutions. They thought God had taken away the power of Christianity to save humanity, so they joined the CCP as secret, or underground, members. He cited Yan Baohang, who was baptized when studying at the Fengtian (now Shenyang) Normal School and served as a trainee student secretary in the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). He was later sent to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for further...

...Instead of its pasta, Red Hen restaurants are now famous for partisanship—and, like most every liberal these days, “panic, ignorance, and malice.” Instead of angry politics, the Virginia location that turned away Sarah Sanders claimed they were doing so based on “moral convictions.” How absurd. Of course, as most now well know, the “moral convictions” of modern liberalism allow for the killing of the most innocent and helpless among us, the legal redefinition of the oldest institution in the history of humanity, the attempted redefinition of gender, the embracing of virtually every sexual perversion imaginable, and so on. In other...

Burning fake money and other paper effigies on certain days of the Chinese lunar calendar is a tradition many Chinese families, including Wang’s, keep in the hope that their ancestors will receive and enjoy gifts in the other world and be protected in this one. Wang had followed this practice since he was a child. But two months before leaving London after two years of study, Wang had been baptized against his parents’ wishes. Since the early 2010s, increasing numbers of Chinese students have studied abroad, mostly in English-speaking countries. Among them, as many as tens of thousands who converted...

As globalization blurs boundaries (both national and sexual), and as social media and American-style consumerism flatten cultural differences, the thinking goes, Russia and her church stand for sovereignty, authenticity and Christian vigor. No thanks. Even if you, like me, concur in the underlying diagnosis—that the West has becomeunmoored from its Judeo-Christian foundations, that liberalism has gone too far in eroding traditional authority and moral precepts—the Putin Option is no cure. And it entails hazards that could prove ruinous to the cause of reversing the West’s spiritual fortunes. Despair over the cultural left’s stridency and triumphalism in recent years should not...

Prince William arrived in Jordan on Sunday on the first stop of a five-day Middle East tour that will make him the first British royal to pay an official visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. The Duke of Cambridge was greeted by Crown Prince Hussein, the son of Jordan's King Abdullah II, at the airport in Jordan's capital, Amman. The Jordanian prince then drove William to a technology-focused event for young people linked to the Crown Prince Foundation. Kensington Palace tweeted that Prince William was "looking forward to building a real and enduring relationship with the people of the...

The Rapture is an event many Christians believe marks the return of the son of God – and all the believers will disappear from Earth up to Heaven in the "twinkling of an eye". But this happens after a tribulation period – seven years that are first of peace and unity around the world and then three and a half years of war and global pandemics. And Steve Fletcher, who monitors events that could signal the end of mankind, believes the Rapture starts today. He said: “Time is up and all hell breaks loose after June 21, 2018.” He explained...

June 18, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Jim Obergefell, the man whose name will be forever associated with the institution of genderless marriage in the United States, said he “was heartbroken and devastated,” by the Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision.   But more than that, Obergefell is frightened.  Very frightened. It’s not the actuality of the ruling that scares him; it’s the boogeymen he has concocted in order to shoo away any second guessing about the high court’s judgement in his favor three years ago.   “After deciding in favor of marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges,” asked Obergefell in a commentary...

Andy Stanley’s sermon series called "Aftermath" makes many foundational errors regarding the historical, Catholic Christian faith. Since Andy wants the end of the story without the beginning, we too started at the end and will go back to the beginning. We begin our 3 part response with his sermon "Not Difficult,” where Andy seeks to make the case that Christianity needs to be “unhitched” from the Old Testament.

Why Paul Is Important to Christianity By Philip Cottraux Skeptics often ask what makes Christianity right and all other religions wrong. The implication is that various contradicting faiths renders none of them right. But the Christian’s best answer is to point out how well Christianity holds up under historical scrutiny. The ministry, death, and aftermath of Christ is the most well-documented event of the ancient world. The time span between His life and the first historical mentions of Him is the shortest in history; and even when we don’t include the sheer volumes of ancient copies of the four gospels,...

Are you a Trump-supporting Christian? Frank Schaeffer calls you a “Jesus-hating,” child-abuse condoning, “pimp of evil.” A guest on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show today, Schaeffer unleashed an angry jeremiad against Christians who support President Trump and his immigration policies: “Christians who still support Trump, who is separating mothers from babies, are now condoning a form of child abuse . . . I can’t think of anything that would be more Jesus-hating . . . There are going to be repercussions for the Republican party that has gone along like pimps of evil with this President.” Get the rest of the...

“North Korea has been threatening South Korea two or three times a year. They say, ‘We want to make Seoul a city of fire.’ They make weapons. They shoot our navy boat down. They shoot cannonballs into South Korean islands..." But this aggressive behavior hasn’t kept South Korean churches from praying for their Northern neighbors.Instead, South Korean Christians pray frequently for “freedom, for evangelism, for the transformation of the North Korean leaders, that God will be merciful to them and to us so our nation will be unified so we can go up there and evangelize in North Korea and...

Pedro Sanchez aims to remove Catholicism from public lifePolitical changes in the West mostly occur through the ballot box. A week ago, however, one exception to that rule took place in the Kingdom of Spain. On June 1, the governing People's Party lost a motion of censure which amounts to a vote of no confidence without an election, forcing Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to resign and the main opposition leader Pedro Sanchez to assume the post and form a government. The People's Party, which had won the last three elections in Spain, lost the vote to a coalition of opposition...

The recent suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have renewed a national conversation about suicide and its causes. As a homicide detective, I saw an increase in our local suicide rate first-hand over a fifteen year period, and a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms nationally what I observed locally: suicide rates in the United States have risen nearly 30% since 1999.While many researchers have studied the connection between mental illness and suicide, it’s important to note that more than half the people who commit suicide are not identified as mentally ill. So, what...

A unique monastery--Russia's own Holy Land, founded by the controversial Patriarch Nikon in 1656--has finally been rebuilt in MoscowThe breathtakingly beautiful, architecturally unique and historically significant New Jerusalem monastery has occupied a place of unique veneration among Russians during its 350-year history. A few years before the Revolution, it was visited by about 35,000 people annually. It was originally founded in 1656 by Patriarch Nikon, who built it to imitate structurally and thematically the Church of Christ’s Tomb in Jerusalem. This was done so that Russians who could not make the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem could get a taste of...

Despite being sexually active for over two decades,—I know, “TMI,” but you can hardly discuss sex and not have a little “TMI”—my wife and I have never spent even five seconds worrying about, or one dime preventing or treating an STD. This is chiefly due to the fact that our sexual activity exactly corresponds to our marriage years. We’re teaching our four children—ages 9, 12, 14, and 16—that if they conduct themselves similarly, they too will never have to ponder preventing or treating an STD. For us, “conducting themselves similarly” means adhering to what God has said about sexual behavior....

KENOSHA, Wis. — Jill Gilmore is one of those voters who have confounded both Democrats and Never Trump Republicans the most. She is a college-educated, gun-owning female conservative Republican who voted for Donald Trump. But here’s the real kicker: She is also a devout Evangelical Christian. “In the list of what is most important to myself and my family, faith is always first,” said the striking 34-year-old mother of seven, small business owner, and community volunteer who says she and her husband teach their children daily that behavior and respect towards others is not an option, but a requirement. Contrast...

New longitudinal research provides evidence that converting to Christianity is associated with some psychological changes. “Religious conversion is a major life event that some people claim would bring big psychological changes,” said C. Harry Hui of The University of Hong Kong. “However, no research has systematically looked at it with a rigorous, longitudinal research design.” The study, which was published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, tracked 711 Chinese individuals from 2009 to 2012. At the beginning of the study, there were 455 participants who were not Christians. But by the end, 46 of these non-Christians had converted to Christianity....

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division of the High Court of Justice for England and Wales, has said society should “welcome and applaud” the collapse traditional nuclear family life. “What is the family?” asked the wealthy 69-year-old at in a lecture at the University of Liverpool. “Time was when most people probably thought the answer was not merely clear but obvious. Today it is more complex,” he suggested...

In yet another unhinged rant, Mr. Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, founder and president of the inaptly named Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), has once again claimed that the sky is falling in the U.S. military. And, once again, he has moronically equated sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the military to violent Islamic jihadism. Mr. Weinstein has characterized sharing one’s faith in Christ in uniform as part of a plot aiming at “a systemic hostile takeover of the U.S. military by lunatic, fundamentalist Christians.” He has labelled Christian Service Members who simply wish to obey the Great Commission as...