Free Republic

ISIS’ barbarism in Syria and Iraq has gotten so bad that even the Vatican has signaled that military action may be necessary. And Down Under, Bishop Anba Suriel, head of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the diocese of Melbourne, denounced the terrorist group in no uncertain terms and urged Australia, and the world, to act before “such fundamentalisms infects the entire world.” “The world watches in silence as the last Christians are expelled from Mosul, Iraq in one of the most merciless and barbaric acts of genocide we have seen in the 21st Century,” Suriel, who was born in Egypt,...

A bakery in Pennsylvania has come under scrutiny after the owner declined to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple who were planning to renew their vows. “It was hard to do,” Lorraine Fleming, the owner of The Cake Pros bakery in Schuylkill Haven, Pa., told WBRE-TV on Tuesday. “We have homosexuality in our family, and it was a hard decision to make, but in the end, when I die and I’m one on one with God I have to stand true to him.” …

The Vatican has found its voice. Pope Francis wrote a letter to Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, asking him to "do everything you can to stop the violence against Christians in Iraq". The letter, received by Ban Ki-Moon on 13 August, is the latest of the PopeÂ’s interventions to stop the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in Iraq. He writes: It is with a heavy and anguished heart that I have been following the dramatic events of these past few days in Northern Iraq where Christians and other religious minorities have been forced to flee from their...

WILSON, N.C. (BP) -- When news broke that legendary comedian and actor Robin Williams had died of an apparent suicide, people were saddened that someone who had brought so much joy to the lives of others had taken his own life. Immediately some began to speculate about his ongoing battle with alcohol addiction and depression as the cause of his desperate act. Others began to comfort themselves with the thought that Williams was now at peace from such battles. And a few observed that suicide is the ultimate selfish act. There is little doubt that suicide is a fierce goodbye....

A Newfoundland homosexual group filed a hate crimes complaint under the Criminal Code with the police last week after a local magazine published an opinion piece urging Christians to promote the Scriptural teachings on the sinfulness of homosexuality, abortion, and other acts against a secularist establishment. The Newfoundland Herald published the piece by US columnist and constitutional lawyer Matt Barber as a letter to the editor in its August 3-9 issue. Western Pride NL activist Kyle Curley, who filed the complaint, alleged in an interview with CBC that the piece was “a rallying call for people to stand against LGBT...

Amor vincit Omnia; Love conquers all. Except when it doesn’t, because it’s counterfeit. Counterfeit love is no match for the most genuine hatred of all. The heart-rending drama involving Christians being played out across much of the Islamic world has exposed something deeply disturbing about the human race. Something in the lumber room is moving and is scratching at the door. The nations should at present be absorbed with two or three matters, one of these is certainly the plight of Christians fleeing the gory sword of Islam, and of the other two candidates, the Israel/Hamas war doesn’t come even...

Iyad Ameen Madani, the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, “officially denounced the ‘forced deportation under the threat of execution’ of Christians, calling it a ‘crime that cannot be tolerated.’ The Secretary General also distanced Islam from the actions of the militant group known as ISIS, saying they ‘have nothing to do with Islam and its principles that call for justice, kindness, fairness, freedom of faith and coexistence.’”

Religious colleges and universities, often derided by academic elites, got a surprising shout-out recently from an Ivy League insider. harvard hoodie “Elite schools like to boast that they teach their students how to think, but all they mean is that they train them in the analytic and rhetorical skills that are necessary for success in business and the professions,” William Deresiewicz wrote in the July 21, 2014 issue of The New Republic. “Everything is technocratic—the development of expertise—and everything is ultimately justified in technocratic terms.” “Religious colleges—even obscure, regional schools that no one has ever heard of on the coasts—often...

Churchgoing Christians who support same-sex marriage are more likely to think pornography, cohabitation, hook-ups, adultery, polyamory, and abortion are acceptable. And it’s reasonable to expect continued change in more permissive directions. As mainline Protestant denominations increasingly accept the ordination of gay clergy and publicly affirm same-sex unions, the sociologist in me wishes to understand what this development means for people in those denominations. I’m not talking about subtle linguistic shifts. While the difference between speaking of marriage as a “civil contract between a woman and a man” and as “a unique commitment between two people” is obvious to those who...

“I think I speak for all of the writers on this website when I say that her piece is distasteful, ridiculous, and just plain wrong,” Live Action’s Murray Vasser writes of Ann Coulter’s latest column, in which the provocatively prolific conservative commentator criticizes Dr. Kent Brantly for an Ebola-treating mission trip to Liberia, when she would rather see him treat cultural decay here in the United States. Well, I can only go along with one of those adjectives. I agree with Murray that it’s distasteful to question the motives of anyone who goes out of their way to help those...

Do Christians Have a Duty to Remove Bad Officials From Office? In the previous article we asked, “Do Americans have a right to oppose unjust authority?” Such a right was obviously assumed by the Founders. We likewise examined whether Christians have such a right, as well. In answer, we found the earliest theories regarding what became Resistance Theory resulted from the assumptions of the Protestant Reformation being applied to society during various crises involving early Protestant communities. Therefore, whether such a right truly exists, the entire theory was proposed by Protestants, using biblical, historic and classical arguments, ostensibly to achieve...

Islamic State militants have killed at least 500 members of Iraq's Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, burying some of their victims alive and kidnapping hundreds of women, a Baghdad government minister said on Sunday. Iraq's human rights minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters that he had evidence that the Sunni militants had thrown the Yazidi dead into mass graves, adding that some of those buried alive were women and children. About 300 women had been forced into slavery, he said.

What Do Muslims Plan To Do To Christians? “Beheadings, amputations, gunshots and crucifixions.” That is what one analyst has elucidated recently, writing a very revealing statement describing what ISIS is doing to the Christians in Iraq: If you flee, you leave your home, your possessions, your community and your culture. What little you carry is soon stripped and looted from greedy militia men. You leave with your lives and the clothes on your back. But what if you can’t or don’t leave? What awaits you? Beheadings, amputations, gunshots and crucifixions. Unbending Sharia law including women and girls forced to undergo...

Kirsten Powers and other panelists on the FOX News program “Outnumbered” were discussing Obama’s newly discovered concern for Christians in the middle east and things got a little heated. Powers, who is a liberal and frequent defender of Obama, was one of the most vocal critics. Tim Cavanaugh of National Review has the details: …Kirsten Powers, usually the most liberal of the panelists, tore the president a new one: “He has not uttered the word ‘Christian,’ and now suddenly he throws it in with the Yazidis,” Powers said. “We’re not doing any airdrops to the Christians, who are refugees in...

The dramatic evidence pointing to the extermination of Christians and Christian culture in Iraq by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham’s (ISIS) is impossible to ignore. This past week, upset Iraqis rallied outside the White House. A few days ago, an administration official finally met with Iraqi Christians. But the leader of the free world has yet to forcefully condemn one of the clearest cases of genocide since World War II. President Obama has previously addressed humanitarian issues by appealing to the Responsibility to Protect – a relatively recent doctrine not clearly established or grounded in international law. While...

At night, the children's channel called Cartoon Network transforms into the badly named Adult Swim channel, a parade of juvenile "satirical" sludge such as repeats of Seth MacFarlane's "Family Guy" and "American Dad" cartoons. How many parents know this? Or know these shows rarely miss an opportunity to sock it to "organized religion" -- especially if that religion is Christianity? Sadly, in the second quarter of 2014, the juvenilia on Adult Swim made it the No. 1 television network on basic cable for adults 18-24, 18-34 and 18-49, and also for males in those age brackets. Its mockery has...

A North Carolina diner that offered a 15 percent for those who prayed before their meal has stopped issuing the price cut due to a lawsuit threat. Mary’s Gourmet Diner has been quietly offering the 15 percent “praying in public” discount for four years and said that it was given to people from all religions.

There have been Christians in Mosul for just shy of two millennia, since the first century. There are none today. The Yazidi are practitioners of Kurdistan's oldest religion, fire-worshippers whose presence in the region predates Islam. They're either being executed or starved to death on a mountain: We are being slaughtered. Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth.ISIS are fast-track Nazis. No messing about with a few property restrictions and intermarriage laws as a little light warm-up: They're only in the business of "final solutions", and they start on Day One and don't quit until...

Is the West waking up, or is it hoping too much? And is it too late anyway, when the genocide is accomplished? The Archbishop of Canterbury, Most Rev Justin Welby, has called on the UK government to offer asylum to thousands of Iraqi Christians driven from their homes by jihadists. He backed similar calls by several bishops. The vicar of Baghdad's Anglican church, Canon Andrew White, said the believers' flight is bringing "the end of Christianity very near" in Iraq. France has already done what the Archbishop proposes. Last week the country declared itself ready to give asylum to...

If people are willing to pay up for niche channels, Palin might be online video’s next guinea pig.In the introduction to her new online video channel, Sarah Palin announces how she’s going to turn traditional media on its head. She’ll, naturally, “cut through the sound bytes” and “through the media’s politically correct filter.” But she may also do something else for media in the process, which is test the hypothesis that there may be a business in getting people to pay $100 a year to watch a niche streaming tv channel. After seeing a solo act like Glenn Beck succeed...