Free Republic

A Protestant Historian Discovers the Catholic Church – Conversion Story of A. David Anders, Ph.D. February 13, 2012 A Protestant Historian Discovers the Catholic Church by A. David Anders, Ph.D. I grew up an Evangelical Protestant in Birmingham, Alabama. My parents were loving and devoted, sincere in their faith, and deeply involved in our church. They instilled in me a respect for the Bible as the Word of God, and a desire for a living faith in Christ. Missionaries frequented our home and brought their enthusiasm for their work. Bookshelves in our house were filled with theology and apologetics. From...

During Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, NASCAR great Darrell Waltrip shared his Christian testimony with the thousands gathered, including Barack and Michelle Obama and the Dalai Lama, stating that he thought he was once a pretty good person, but “good people” go to Hell without Christ. Waltrip, a NASCAR Hall of Fame recipient with 84 wins, spoke about the importance of coming to Christ and becoming a new creature before approximately 4,000 attendees, which hailed from 170 countries worldwide. He spent most of his talk sharing his story of how God changed his life from being a man that...

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Andrea Mitchell criticized President Barack Obama over his remarks at last weeks prayer breakfast saying, “You don’t use the word crusade.” “You don’t use the word crusades number one in any context right now,” Mitchell said. “It just it’s too fraught.

For a little more than 100 years weÂ’ve had standardized IQ tests, and over those 100 years there has been a consistent, linear increase in IQ scores, on the order of 3 points per decade. According to IQ tests, we are getting smarter. Also over the last 100 years, rates of belief in God and religious participation have been decreasing. The decrease in religiosity has been less linear than the rise in IQ, but discounting periods of increased religiosity corresponding to major crises like WWI, the Great Depression and WWII, overall there has been a roughly corresponding decrease in...

The heart-wrenching yet inspiring story of Jong-rak Lee, a pastor who has made his life's mission to save abandoned babies left on the streets of Seoul, South Korea, is coming to theaters on March 3rd by way of a Focus on the Family documentary titled The Drop Box. Since 2009, Pastor Lee has taken society's most vulnerable members--unwanted babies--into his home through a "Drop Box," where the infants could be dropped off rather than left on the streets to die. The Drop Box is equipped with lights and a heater and reads in Korean, "Please don't throw away unwanted or...

When I was a child, there was a popular game show on television called “To Tell the Truth.” In the game, three contestants would claim to be the same person — Bill Smith, for example. Four celebrities would question the contestants in an attempt to determine who was telling the truth. Finally the host would ask the big question, “Will the real Bill Smith please stand up?” I do not remember how the game was actually won or lost, but I do think about the host’s final question sometimes when I think about the church. We confess in the Nicene...

During Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, NASCAR great Darrell Waltrip shared his Christian testimony with the thousands gathered, including Barack and Michelle Obama and the Dalai Lama, stating that he thought he was once a pretty good person, but “good people” go to Hell without Christ.

With videos of beheadings, stonings, and incineration of helpless victims by the Islamic State flooding the media, President Obama took the occasion of his address to the National Prayer Breakfast this week as an opportunity to try to dampen the anger of partisans of civilized behavior. "Let's not forget that 800 years ago Christians committed horrendous crimes against peaceful Muslims during the so-called Crusades," Obama reminded. "Whole populations were massacred—men, women, and children—all in the name of Christ. Five hundred years ago, the Inquisition sent thousands of heretics and apostates to be burned at the stake. From a historical perspective,...

On Tuesday, the so-called Islamic State released a slickly produced video showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a steel cage. On Wednesday, the United Nations issued a report detailing various "mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive" at the hands of the Islamic State. And on Thursday, President Obama seized the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to forthrightly criticize the "terrible deeds" ... committed "in the name of Christ." "Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history," Obama said, referring to the ennobling aspects of...

Where is the collective outrage about all those, including Americans, burned alive by terrorists? Is it because they were Jews? Christians? Islamic State, which burned the Jordanian pilot alive, now symbolizes the most absolute horror, and is exorcised as “barbaric” and not "true" Islam. A Muslim killed by Muslims, the perfect victim, which fills the Western world's appeasing and empty conscience.

Colin Campbell February 5, 2015President Barack Obama wants Christians to know Islam is not the only religion that has inspired violence and terror. "Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the crusades and the inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," Obama said Wednesday. "And in our home country, slavery, and Jim Crow, all too often was justified in the name of Christ." Obama made the comments while giving a major speech on religion at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. Citing Islamic, Jewish, and...

Food is one issue that unites the far left and the Christian right in America. This hasn’t always been the case but in the last decade the Christian right has begun to embrace the radical food politics of the left. For Christians it has become a new form of asceticism. Paul tells us in 1 Tim 4:1-4: Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to...

ISIS has opened a special market to sell property it looted from Assyrian homes and churches in Mosul. The market, called "Spoils Of The Nazarenes," sells televisions, refrigerators, microwave ovens and other electronic devices, as well as furniture and artwork. Prices range from 50,000 to 75,000 Iraqi Dinars ($42 to $63). ISIS captured the city of Mosul on June 10. Almost immediately thereafter it began to drive Assyrians out of Mosul and destroy Christian and non-Sunni institutions. It imposed a poll tax (jizya) on Assyrians, ordered unmarried women to 'Jihad by sex', destroyed the statue of the Virgin Mary at...

According to a new video released by the Islamic barbaric group ISIS, which also identifies itself as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a Japanese Christian man who had traveled to Iraq in an attempt to rescue a friend who was captured by the terrorist organization has been beheaded. As previously reported, Kenji Goto, 47, who became a Christian in 1997, told reporters last year that he felt compelled to do what he could to help rescue Haruna Yukawa, 42, after he was abducted in August near the city of Aleppo. Yukawa had been through a number of difficult...

NASHVILLE – An apostate pastor in the Bible Belt who leads the congregation that country star Carrie Underwood attends recently announced from the pulpit that not only can practicing homosexuals be members, but those in sexual sin can now fully serve in his church and will be allowed to “marry” at the facility. “Our position that these siblings of ours, other than heterosexual, … cannot have the full privileges of membership, but only partial membership, has changed,” Stan Mitchell of GracePointe Church in Franklin, Tennessee announced earlier this month as some clapped and others sat silently in disapproval. “Full privileges...

Southern Illinois cross drew nearly 10,000 visitors in 2014 The Associated Press January 31, 2015 EFFINGHAM, Ill. — Officials say a nearly 200-foot tall cross in Southern Illinois recorded close to 10,000 visitors last year. The Effingham Daily News reports (http://bit.ly/1CURTZD ) 9,479 people visited the Cross at the Crossroads. That's about 2,000 more visitors than in 2013. The cross and Welcome Center are located along Interstate 57 near Effingham. Carol Gapsis is the director of the Welcome Center. She says the cross is more than just another landmark for travelers. Gapsis says: "It serves as a beacon of hope...

Muslim persecution of Christians is at a high tide — and there are grave fears of more sectarian bloodletting as millions of people in Nigeria, which is half Muslim and half Christian, vote for their national leaders next month. These religious atrocities cry out for media attention and political awareness, said Raymond Ibrahim, author of the monthly report “Muslim Persecution of Christians,” which has chronicled attacks on Christians in dozens of countries since July 2011. Mainstream media rarely cover attacks on Christians, even though they happen “all around the Islamic world,” Mr. Ibrahim said Tuesday.

Gatestone Institute reported, via Religion of Peace: On January 6, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi became the first Egyptian president ever to visit the St. Mark Cathedral during Coptic Christmas Eve Mass and offer his good wishes to the nation’s Christian minority. Because Islamic law bans wishing non-Muslims well on their religious celebrations, all previous presidents — Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and of course Morsi — had never attended Coptic Christmas mass. As expected, the greetings el-Sisi received from the hundreds of Christians present were jubilant. His address was often interrupted by applause, clapping, and cheers of “We love you!” and “Hand in...

WASHINGTON (BP)--"Scores of Christians" have been detained since Christmas in Tehran, according to a statement protesting the action by Iranian authorities issued by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Jan. 7. "They were informally accused of being 'evangelical missionaries,' although no formal charges have been filed by authorities," USCIRF stated, noting: "Iranian law makes proselytizing of Muslims by non-Muslims illegal, in contravention of international standards." According to the USCIRF statement: "Reports indicate that as many as 70 Christians have been detained over the past two weeks. Some individuals have since been released, although it is unclear how many...

Since at least the time of the outset of the Iraq War—and quite possibly well before then—there has been much debate among those on the right over why Islamic militants have set their sights upon America and the West.