Free Republic

Those struggling with same-sex attraction or hoping to walk away from a homosexual lifestyle may find some encouragement from Liz Flaherty and Elizabeth Woning, who both once lived a lesbian lifestyle. While leading their own organizations to help individuals transition out of homosexuality, Flaherty and Woning are also a part of a growing movement called Changed—a supportive and loving community of those who once identified as LGBTQ+. In today’s episode, we sit down with Flaherty and Woning to hear their stories and discuss some of the current legislation being advocated that could have detrimental effects on organizations that offer counseling...

Every Christian and their dog apparently has an opinion about Kanye West, and it's been a bit depressing and somewhat amusing to see some of the discussion. For those who have landed from a holiday on Mars, Kanye West is a controversial rapper whose latest album is entitled Jesus is King, and who has made a very public profession of faith in Christ.I think my favourite negative comment was the fundamentalist pastor attacking Reformed (Calvinist) Baptists who welcomed Kanye as "Lordship salvation, heresy preaching, drunken tattoo, ESVfests" and who announced he was preaching a whole sermon against Kanye –...

In Obama's first year in office, 68% of white Democrats described themselves as Christians, 7% claimed to be members of other faiths, and 24% said that they had no religious affiliation. A decade later, only 47% of white Democrats call themselves Christians. 10% are members of other faiths, and 42% have no religion. A majority of white Democrats have ceased to be Christian. The Obama era transformed the country and the party. It’s often observed that the Democrats of the JFK era are not the Democrats of today. But forget 1961, an era that is receding into the shadows of...

The United Nations Human Rights Council and U.N. member states have been told that they have a “legal obligation” to confront China over its practice of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong adherents. Addressing the council in Geneva on Sept. 24, London-based lawyer Hamid Sabi presented the findings from a report released in June by the China Tribunal, or the Independent Tribunal Into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China. The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who previously led the prosecution of former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal, concluded beyond reasonable doubt...

There is talk of a new American civil war. Indeed, the vitriol of opposing parties is reaching levels heretofore unseen. It is especially vicious now over the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. There is nothing civil about this coming war. For now, it is still a culture battle, but it might be better labeled as an uncivil war. This new uncivil war is different from America’s last fratricidal conflict. At least back then there were social units involved that united against other social units. Everything was defined leaving no room for doubt one way or the other. It was territorial....

Constantine's great victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge took place on October 28, AD 312. The day before — October 27 — is the date traditionally given for the miraculous vision and dream which Constantine experienced prior to the battle. This vision has been the subject of debate in both scholarly and popular imagination for hundreds of years. But what really happened on that day 1,705 years ago that changed forever the course of human history? As a prelude to the famous accounts of this vision, it should be noted that Constantine also seems to have had pagan...

Earlier this week, Truett Foster McKeehan — who performed as Shiloh, truDog, and TRU — died suddenly of cardiac arrest at the age of 21. Kevin Michael McKeehan, better known as TobyMac, shared a heart-wrenching statement after the sudden death of his son, along with the moving last text messages between them. TobyMac stood by his faith in God despite this tragedy.

Do recent polls really tell the full story here in America? Is it true that Christianity is experiencing a serious, ongoing, numerical decline? Those polls could well be accurate, speaking of a major spiritual crisis in our nation. But there may be a different way to understand what is happening, one that points to separation and refining more than to backsliding and apostasy.First, let’s look at the results of the most recent Pew Research Center poll.As reported on October 19, “The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys...

October 23, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Millions of men have been impacted by abortion. But not every one of them takes his experience and turns it into his life’s mission. Jason Jones, producer of the pro-life movie Bella, told Jonathon van Maren on LifeSite's The Van Maren Show this week about the heartbreaking tragedy of losing his first daughter to abortion. His high school girlfriend’s father froced her to get an abortion while Jones was away at basic training, even though he fully intended support the child. “I exploded!” Jones shares. He goes on to say he didn’t even know that...

The time for sideline Christianity is over. A public school teacher in Chandler, Arizona is a prime example of the sort of treatment conservative, Bible-believing Christians should come to expect—and be prepared to fight. According to the East Valley Tribune, the Chandler Unified School District (CUSD) fired Annella Krom, an art teacher, for allegedly discriminating against a transgender student and bringing a box of Bibles to her classroom. The Tribune reports:

New Pew Religion Research: Rising ‘Nones’, Collapsing Middle, Growing Polarization Pew Research Center has just released a new survey:“In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.” It looks bad. Over the past decade, the number of people who identify as Christians has dropped from 77% to 65%. The “nones,” those who claim no religious affiliation, have increased from 12% to 17% in that time.What’s really declining here, though? What’s continuing to drop, in particular? Pew’s been talking about the “rise of the nones” since at least 2009 — but is Christianity going away? No. Just nominal Christianity.Research in 2015...

The left is becoming more unapologetically totalitarian every day. Every freedom-loving American should be alarmed. From hounding conservatives out of restaurants to spitting on Trump supporters at rallies, from firing employees for politically incorrect statements to fining people for "misgendering" a person, the left is on a path toward absolutism. Even some former and current leftists have recognized this intolerant trend and broken from their colleagues, lamenting their intolerance of opposing ideas and disturbing mission to suppress dissenting opinion. Just the other day, three incidents typifying the left's authoritarianism popped out at me as I was surveying the morning news....

An update on America's changing religious landscapeThe religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify...

A few months ago, the good folks at the ​Center for the Study of Global Christianity released the 2019 ​edition​ of their “Status of Global Christianity” report. There’s a lot of fascinating info in there. Some of the more significant stats are detailed in the LifeWay ​article​, 7 SURPRISING TRENDS IN GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY IN 2019, like the fact that Christianity is growing faster than the population is, or that the percentage of unevangelized individuals in the world has shrunk, from 54.3% in 1900 to 28.4% today.Perhaps most fascinating, though, is the projected decrease in atheism worldwide. According to the report,...

A miraculous 17th-century icon of Christ has finally returned home after being lost during communist times. The revered “Savior of Moskvoretesky” (Pantocrator) Icon was believed lost after 1927, but returned to the Holy Protection Cathedral on Red Square, commonly known as St. Basil’s, yesterday, reports TASS. Lost more than 90 years ago, the miraculous icon was discovered in an antique market and bought by collector Stanislav Nikolaev last year, and was restored over the summer. “The icon has found its place, I hope for many years, and perhaps, forever. The icon came to me, as I said, quite by accident,...

FULL TITLE: 'I think we're very close': Freed pastor Andrew Brunson urges young American Christians to prepare for persecution The American pastor whose two-year imprisonment plunged Turkey into a diplomatic feud with the United States urged young Christians in his home country to prepare for the persecution he sees gathering for them on the horizon. Pastor Andrew Brunson, 51, told the Washington Examiner how troubled he has been by the ominous trends he has observed in American culture during the year since his dramatic, high-stakes release from a Turkish prison. Drawing on the ordeal he recounts in God's Hostage, his...

IT’S a first holy communion year for us. In preparation, I’ve rooted out the ‘Children’s Bible’ I was given around this age. It’s a heavy hardback with colourful and vivid illustrations. I know some people work themselves up about religious indoctrination, but the ‘Bible’ is in the air we breathe and the ground on which we walk. To know nothing of Eden and Exodus is ignorance. For example, there’s an online translator many people use called Babelfish. The name comes from the science fiction book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams. In the book, the babel fish...

Kyle Harper’s From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (Harvard, 2013) is an impressively learned and important book. Still a youngish man (which means younger than me), Harper is already a professor of classics and letters and senior vice president and provost at the University of Oklahoma. As an expert in the history of the late Roman world, Harper explores in this volume how the Christian sexual ethic, so despised and seemingly inconsequential in the first century, came to be codified in law by the sixth century. Harper does not take sides in this...

At the end of the Second World War, the revered crown of St. Stephen, the first Christian monarch of Hungary, was smuggled out of Austria by the U.S. Army to prevent its falling into Soviet hands. It remained at Fort Knox in the United States until it was handed over to the communist government of Hungary in 1978. The return of the crown was opposed by many in the Hungarian diaspora, especially by those who had fled the country after the brutal Soviet suppression of the uprising in 1956. The reason for the opposition was explained to me by a...

On Tuesday, a British court ruled that belief in the Bible was “incompatible with human dignity.” That statement came in a case involving Dr. David Mackereth, a devout Christian who had worked as an emergency doctor for the National Health Service for 26 years. He said he was fired from his job because he refused to call a biological man a woman. The court’s ruling stated: “Belief in Genesis 1:27, lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others, specifically here, transgender individuals.”...