Free Republic

A Christian evangelist was accused of a hate crime and locked up in a cell after preaching from the Bible to a gay teenager. Gordon Larmour, 42, was charged by police after telling the story of Adam and Eve to a 19-year-old who asked him about God’s views on homosexuality. The street preacher referred to the Book of Genesis and stated that God created Adam and Eve to produce children. Within minutes he was frogmarched to a police van, accused of threatening or abusive behaviour 'aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation' - despite not swearing or using any form...

It's reported Muslim children outnumber Christian children at over thirty church schools in England. A study by the Sunday Times found that one Church of England school had a 100 per cent Muslim population. St Thomas in Werneth is reported by its diocese to have no Christian pupils while another school in West Yorkshire had 98% of pupils from a Muslim background. The Church of England says around 20 of its schools have more Muslim pupils than any other while the Catholic Education Service has 15. Many schools now include Islamic prayers in services while teacher training days are often...

For the first eight years of my school life, I attended parochial schools, then a private girls' high school - all Catholic.  The first five years of my religious education were unscathed by the so-called "spirit of Vatican II".  That all changed when I reached the sixth grade in fall of 1967.  I sensed the seismic shift as solid doctrine was exchanged for, well, I'm not sure what.  One of my more memorable "lessons" was when we were "learning" (?) about "freedom"; it started by us listening to a recording of Andy Williams singing "Born Free".  In lessons teaching about...

Pope Francis has slyly attacked Donald Trump in response to the 45th President of the United States’ recent executive orders banning certain refugees and immigrants from entering the country. Pope Francis made these comments as part of his monthly YouTube series entitled The Pope Video. After announcing his prayer intentions for February, as well as confirming that the theme for the month was for Catholics to “welcome the needy,” Pope Francis asked Catholics to pray that the “poor, refugees, and marginalized” would find “welcome and comfort in our communities.” These comments came just a few days after Donald Trump signed...

Dostoevsky’s The Demons tells the story of a revolution within the context of a small village and a handful of personalities. The strange mix of philosophy and neurosis, crowd psychology and fashionable disdain for tradition all come together in the madness of a bloodbath. It is a 19th century Helter Skelter that presciently predicted the century to come. Our own version of the same sickness plays out with less bloodshed though with similar passion. This article attempts to describe that passion. I have termed it the “sin of democracy,” the notion that the universe is devoid of hierarchy and that all things, ourselves included, are rightly described...

A plague has beset the Seattle area – an increase in heroin overdose deaths in recent years that has reached “crisis levels,” according to a report by a task force convened by the mayors of Seattle and neighboring cities in King County, Washington state. The best way to address the plague, task force members agreed, is to establish so-called “Community Health Engagement Locations” where “supervised consumption occurs for adults with substance abuse disorders…” Of course, what the task force really is recommending are legalized shooting galleries; supposed “safe” sites where junkies are given clean needles with which they are free...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. 1 John 5:14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Do Old Testament verses regarding Israel apply today to the State of Israel, Jews around the world, or the Church? Many Christians believe that God's words to Abraham in Genesis 12:3, where after He instructs him to leave his homeland He says "I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you," as well as other verses regarding Israel, are still in effect today. Favorable foreign policy toward modern Israel, then, is seen as a doorway to blessings from God. But for others a theological quandary exists as to just who and what constitutes "Israel" and what...

International outrage is growing after the Vatican extended an invitation to population control pundit Paul Ehrlich to speak at a February 27-March 1 workshop on “Biological Extinction.” Ehrlich, a supporter of forced sterilization and forced abortion, has epitomized the “ecologist’s” position for decades in his apocalyptic (and false) predictions about the effects of population growth. Sponsored and organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (PASS), the three-day conference also includes other controversial speakers besides Ehrlich, author of the Population Bomb. Several presenters have similar, if less well-known pedigrees, as proponents of population...

It is time for those who worship the One Trud God to come together in this land to hold a great convocation. This convocation will rededicate our people to the authority of God, the Father, over our nation. It will be a time of dedication, of prayer and of renewed vision. These perilous times also contain our greatest hope. We have been delivered from the hands of satan but we have not yet dedicated ourselves to the mighty work of restoration that is before us. As a people we have set our feet upon a path of restoration. Some among...

An Iraqi archbishop has welcomed the new US policy—set in an executive order by President Trump—that gives preference to religious minorities in applications for refugee status. Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil said that the policy would preferential treatment would be a boon to suffering Christians in the Middle East. He made a point of saying that this would be true only if the policy offered support fo all religious minorities, not only Christians. Earlier this week another Iraqi prelate, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, had said that a preference for Christians could ultimately harm Iraqi Christians, by increasing...

CHICAGO (CNS) — U.S. bishops sent their immediate past president to Vietnam to see how they could help with the first college-level Catholic school approved in the Asian country in about 40 years. Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, also wanted Vietnamese Catholics to know “they are not forgotten.” “The church in Vietnam has suffered … hardships and … religious repression, and slowly over these 40 years there are some headways that have been made,” the archbishop told Catholic News Service Feb 2. “I think the episcopal conference of Vietnam is naturally looking for friendship and opportunities to be...

The Maltese bishops' guidelines on Communion mean that secular culture has triumphed over the Church It has been a long time since I last wrote on this site. I am only breaking my silence now because I am so distressed to find the unmistakeable signs that the Church is in the midst of a crisis. The crisis is proceeding almost absent-mindedly under its own momentum, but its nature is clear: the secularist ideologisation of the moral sense. Even more distressing, it is Malta of all places in the world where its signs are most unignorable – and given my personal...

If within the Christian community we can’t even come to a consensus on matters such as abortion, homosexuality, and marriage, it seems to me very unlikely that we will ever get to a clear agreement on immigration. What Christians should seek, says Dr. Daniel Carroll Rodas, Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Denver Theological Seminary and author of "Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible", “is a moral compass from the Bible, not a blueprint for policy. To imitate how an ancient people dealt in its laws with foreigners in that agrarian peasant context does not make...

The L’Osservatore Romano is raving about the letter of the German bishops introducing communion for adulterers, a decision that reduces the indissolubility of matrimony to a meaningless principle while in the individual case adultery is allowed. The German bishops are known for their heterodoxy that has led their local church in an unprecedented crisis with over 100,000 Catholics leaving their Church every year and the number of priestly ordinations down to 58 in 2015. https://gloria.tv/video/4phXZ3ju4Ssg4w2KnZCFEV6Yy

The number of faithful in Syria’s ancient city has fallen from 250,000 to 30,000. Now the war is over, how many of those can be persuaded to stayStanding in the square and closing my eyes tight shut, I could just about imagine what it must have been like in days gone by: the place thronging with people, the faithful chanting, churchgoers flooding in and out of the great cathedrals that stood proud and tall close by. What a difference a few years can make. Here, at the heart of Aleppo’s ancient Old City, the ravages of war have left their...

Rome, Italy, Feb 1, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An Iraqi priest who was forced to flee his village when the Islamic State seized the area in 2014 said the hardship and persecution Christians in Iraq have experienced has taught them what it really means to fully live out their faith. “What we have witnessed is a message for us, so we may reconsider what the objectives of being Christian should be, what it means to live as a Christian to the fullest, not through empty words, and not as something that can be carried away by the wind,”...

HOLLYWOOD WEST, California, February 2, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Robert Barron said in an interview Monday he wouldn’t “press” to reverse the legalization of homosexual “marriage” in the United States. And after criticism, he reiterated the point in a Facebook post Wednesday. An auxiliary bishop for Los Angeles, founder of Word on Fire Ministries and hugely popular social media personality, Barron made his remarks on The Rubin Report. The show is hosted by political commentator Dave Rubin, himself in a homosexual “marriage.” Rubin questioned the bishop on his “personal feelings” about the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling that legalized homosexual “marriage”:...

After weeks of turmoil that saw Pope Francis, the Vatican and the Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta locked in a power struggle, a top official of the order now says they won’t let the crisis deter them from their humanitarian work, particularly with immigrants and refugees. The Order of Malta “is not fighting the pope,” said Albrecht Boeselager, the Grand Chancellor of the Knights of Malta, who was fired last December but reinstated on Saturday after the resignation of Grand Master Matthew Festing. Boeselager contested impressions that Francis essentially sacked Festing. “It’s not right to say that the...

One of the most fascinating speeches in the Bible happens in Acts 5, with Jewish Pharisee Gamaliel addressing the Sanhedrin. He warns them that if the message being preached by the Apostles of Jesus were of man, it would fail. But if it is from God, it can't be stopped. It was of God, and it wasn't stopped. I find that passage particularly relevant today within American Christendom. There is a reason why liberal Christian movements like those championed by Jim Wallis, Rachel Held Evans, Shane Claiborne, and others are so ineffective and unpersuasive in American culture. Rather than seeking...