Free Republic

Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential run is premised on the idea that, by speaking to the “values” of evangelical voters, he can mobilize them in numbers not seen in a very long time. “Imagine instead millions of people of faith all across America coming out to the polls and voting our values,” Cruz said yesterday, adding that these voters had been “staying home.” Cruz’s decision to announce his run at Liberty University is itself a sign that he hopes to assume the mantle of leading evangelical champion. And as Jon Ward puts it, Cruz’s announcement was “an attempt to lay down...

Why do so many Evangelicals so strongly support Israel? The answer is that a significant majority of American Evangelicals believe that the Abrahamic Covenant is still in force. The Abrahamic Covenant (Gen. 12:1-3) says, among other things, that God promised the land of Canaan to the Jews forever. A significant majority of American Evangelicals believe that God is a keeper of His promises and that the "Promised Land" belongs to the Jews in belief and unbelief, in obedience and in disobedience, forever. (It is an unconditional promise, with no time limits or conditions.) The Abrahamic Covenant also promises that "I...

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf wrote her college honors thesis on “how conservative evangelical support for Israel complicates U.S. foreign policy,” according to Indiana University records. Harf’s thesis further illustrates the collegiate thinking in an Obama administration that has alienated a key American ally in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Harf, 33, previously worked on Obama’s 2012 campaign. Harf’s Indiana University honors political science professor said that Harf did not plan to pursue political science like her professor father Jim, but that she ended up becoming “pretty good” at it. “I always had a soft spot for Jim, since he...

As the chart ... shows, Catholicism is the most common religious tradition in 17 states, while white evangelical Protestants are first in 15 states, mostly in the South. The religiously unaffiliated are the most common religious group in 13 states, mostly in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast. Three states are outliers: Utah, which is 56 percent Mormon, the largest percentage of one single religious tradition, and Iowa and North Dakota, where white mainline Protestants are the dominant religious tradition.

When speaking to religious audiences, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker likes to remind people that he goes to church and knows his Bible. These reminders frequently come as Walker seeks to distinguish himself from political opponents in Wisconsin—the ones, he claims, who’ve sent his family death threats and harassed his kids on Facebook; the “literally thousands of protesters outside our family home” in Wauwatosa. Some of these protesters have, according to Walker, driven past the house and given him the finger as he and his family raked leaves on a Sunday afternoon after church and before the Packers game. Speaking in...

[SNIP]".......When evangelicals picked up the issue of trafficking around the turn of the millennium, they drastically expanded the existing movement’s influence and reach. By now it has spawned major institutional efforts by nonprofits like World Relief, not to mention both state and federal legislation. According to some critics, however, Christians also changed the movement’s character. “It wasn’t until this evangelical coalition emerged that sex trafficking became this huge everyday issue,” said [Gretchen] Soderlund [author of the 2013 book Sex Trafficking, Scandal, and the Transformation of Journalism, 1885–1917, the better comparison may be to the“ white slavery” panic of the late...

At a super-secret conservative confab last week a long-time friend and ally said that after 30 years of giving lectures and speeches to conservative groups there was only one event where he could show his true colors, and it wasn’t the one we were attending.

In the Gospel of St. Mark, the Lord Jesus teaches that “from the beginning of creation ‘God made them male and female.’” He then declares a great and beautiful truth inscribed in creation: “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh” (Mark 10:6–8). For centuries, Christians have proclaimed these words at weddings, for they express the gift of marriage long recognized by all humanity and acknowledged by men and women of faith: Marriage is...

When Pastor Adam Phillips moved across the country with his wife two years ago and planted a new congregation in Portland, Ore., he was heeding the call of his Christian roots, an Evangelical Covenant tradition that today has a primary mission “to reach young people, engage a growing multiethnic population, and develop vibrant local churches that make disciples.” “Pastor Adam,” as his congregation at Christ Church: Portland calls him, was well suited for such a mission. Young, familiar as much with Tumblr as with theological tomes, and a former director of faith mobilization for the ONE Campaign, the antipoverty group...

You wouldn’t think that anyone would fight about Ash Wednesday and Lent. For Catholics it’s part of what we do. For others it’s something they can use or not as they find it helpful, and increasing numbers do. Down-the-line Evangelical churches have started to hold special services for Ash Wednesday complete with ashes and to treat the Sundays after it as Sundays in Lent. Rather severely anti-sacramental Evangelicals now speak of giving things up and fasting on Fridays. I find this cheering, but my friend Carl Trueman doesn’t. Carl teaches Church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, the...

The recent attack on a French satirical magazine renewed Americans’ pass to keep talking seriously about Islam as a threat. In America’s arena of religious intolerance, Muslims are the easiest targets imaginable. So easy, in fact, that another religious movement can chime in on the bigotry of such attacks while keeping a straight face. In light of the political gains being made by the Christian Right, it’s clear that the religious fanatics who should be stopped can less often be found in a mosque than in Congress. The movement does not deserve our tolerance. It’s fascinated by violence, ferociously intolerant...

Public opinion surveys show that a majority of adults — and a growing one — now supports same-sex marriage. But the rapid change in public opinion may obscure another fact: Large areas of the country remain overwhelmingly opposed to same-sex marriage, with little sign of change. Alabama is one of those places, and the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court this weekend encouraged probate judges there to defy a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The emerging national majority in favor of same-sex marriage is built on high levels of support in well-educated metropolitan areas,...

In the new climate of liberal intolerance, conservative Christians can’t even find refuge by agreeing with Elizabeth Warren. Just ask Michael Lindsay, president of Gordon College. On July 1, 2014, he signed a letter to President Obama — writing as an individual rather than in his institutional capacity — exercising his most basic First Amendment right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.” The letter, signed by a number of Christian leaders and scholars — including the CEO of Catholic Charities and Rick Warren, famous pastor of Saddleback Church — dealt with the president’s then-imminent executive order banning...

Over the past few weeks, I have received no less than three inquiries regarding the early church’s celebration of the Lord’s Table and its implications for the evangelical church today. Two of these inquiries have come from Roman Catholics, each of whom has suggested that the Roman Catholic practice of transubstantiation best represents the way the Lord’s Table was observed in the first few centuries of church history. Over the past few weeks, I have received no less than three inquiries regarding the early church’s celebration of the Lord’s Table and its implications for the evangelical church today. Two of...

Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney have gotten much of the attention in these early days of the Republican race for president, but as they court the party’s elite donors in private phone calls and meetings, a group of likely candidates to their right are just as eagerly chasing support among Christian evangelicals and social conservatives. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal led a prayer rally that filled the basketball arena at Louisiana State University on Saturday. Called “The Response,” organizers billed the event as a national call to pray “for a nation that has not honored God in our success or humbly...

efore Mike Huckabee ran in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Lori Jungling, a mother of four in Altoona, about 15 minutes outside Des Moines, had never been involved in a presidential campaign. Actually, Jungling had never even bothered to vote. But in 2007, the message from the Baptist minister-turned-Republican Arkansas governor made its way to Jungling’s personal faith-first foundation, and soon enough she was volunteering—a lot. Calls, emails, tweets, events. She even served as state director for Huck PAC, Huckabee’s 2008 grassroots political action committee. She didn’t take one dime. “He believes what I believe,” she told me. That’s the kind...

Evangelical Christian Republicans would have a serious problem with Charlie Hebdo were it to mock Christians in America, says former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. “It would be a real, real problem for a lot of grassroots evangelicals out there, particularly with respect to the sense of attack on them personally,” said Steele, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “It’s a real balancing act,” he continued, “between . . . that feeling of expression and wanting to be free to do that, and then the personal feeling I have when you express yourself, and I feel like...

If evangelical Christianity is famous for anything in contemporary American politics, it is for its complete opposition to gay marriage. Now, slowly yet undeniably, evangelicals are changing their minds. Every day, evangelical communities across the country are arriving at new crossroads over marriage. My magazine story for TIME this week, “A Change of Heart,” is a deep dive into the changing allegiances and divides in evangelical churches and communities over homosexuality. In public, so many churches and pastors are afraid to talk about the generational and societal shifts happening. But behind the scenes, it’s a whole different game. Support for...

If evangelical Christianity is famous for anything in contemporary American politics, it is for its complete opposition to gay marriage. Now, slowly yet undeniably, evangelicals are changing their minds.Every day, evangelical communities across the country are arriving at new crossroads over marriage. My magazine story for TIME this week, “A Change of Heart,” is a deep dive into the changing allegiances and divides in evangelical churches and communities over homosexuality. In public, so many churches and pastors are afraid to talk about the generational and societal shifts happening. But behind the scenes, it’s a whole different game. Support for gay...

His coalition of evangelicals could be broken up by new alternatives like Ted Cruz.Mike Huckabee loyalists still believe their guy was screwed in 2008. After pulling off an impressive upset of the better-funded Mitt Romney in the Iowa presidential caucuses, the former Arkansas governor eyed a second Republican primary win in South Carolina. His allies are convinced the Palmetto State should’ve been his for the taking – if not for the peculiar, lethargic candidacy of former Sen. Fred Thompson, a friend of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who siphoned conservative voters from Huckabee in South Carolina. Thompson’s 16 percent slice of...