Free Republic

At about the moment fired FBI Director James Comey was sitting down to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Steve Scheffler, a well-known Iowa social conservative activist, was waiting in a Washington hotel to hear President Trump speak to a crowd of about 700 at the annual meeting of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. I asked Scheffler if Iowa Republicans are worried about Trump and the Russia investigation. "I don't think so at all," he said. "I think it's all a lot of fluff and the Democrats are looking for some traction because they still can't get over the fact...

President Donald Trump's widespread support among white evangelicals is holding steady as he approaches his 100th day in office, and their backing is nearly double his approval rating among the general public, a new Pew Research Center analysis finds. The analysis is consistent with other recent surveys that have shown voters who backed Trump in November are still fervently behind him. But Pew's data is notable because Trump is a relative newcomer to the evangelical community, a critical voting bloc that helped power his underdog victory. Eight in 10 white evangelicals who attend church at least once a month approve...

It was only fitting that the liberal editorialists at the New York Times saw fit on Holy Thursday to blame Christianity for the rise of fake news. In a column by Molly Worthen titled “The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society”, Worthen relies on former Christian turned Episcopalian Rachel Held Evans to attack Bible believing Christians. "Conservative evangelicals are not the only ones who think that an authority trusted by the other side is probably lying. But they believe that their own authority — the inerrant Bible — is both supernatural and scientifically sound, and this conviction gives that natural...

An evangelical radio personality known as "The Bible Answer Man" and president and chairman of the Christian Research Institute was formally received into the Eastern Orthodox Church Sunday.The Christian Post confirmed that Hank Hannegraaf was chrismated on Palm Sunday at Saint Nektarios Greek Orthodox Church in Charlotte, North Carolina."What astounding news," said Rod Dreher, an Orthodox Christian and author of the New York Times best-selling book The Benedict Option, in an interview with The Christian Post Monday."Many evangelicals seek the early church; well here it is, in Orthodoxy," he continued."I am sure some will be scandalized by Hannegraaf's conversion but I...

 In a piece over at Fox News, Larry Alex Taunton argued that evangelicals “need to stop being wimps.” (A glance at the URL suggests that the writer’s original title may have been a bit saltier.) Taunton makes a vividly argued case.As an example of wimpiness, he adduces Barnabas Piper, famous for being the son of John Piper. Writing at WORLD, Piper reassured the world that he’d not eat at Chick-fil-A to support a fellow-believer targeted by “gay agenda” activists et al for the compounded crimes of (a) being a Christian (b) out-loud and (c) in public. Piper was very...

In spite of the original date, this was an excerpt on The Aquila Report today, assuming because it is about to be released as a movie. _______________________________________________ The publishing world sees very few books reach blockbuster status, but William Paul Young’s The Shack has now exceeded even that. The book, originally self-published by Young and two friends, has now sold more than 10 million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. It is now one of the best-selling paperback books of all time, and its readers are enthusiastic. According to Young, the book was originally written for his...

The following is what I heard on an NPR (National Public Radio) broadcast this morning, sometime in the 8:30 - 9:15 am EST hour. (Wish I could post a transcript of this NPR segment, I don't know if NPR eventually posts either transcripts or podcasts, but if they do I don't believe it will be posted this soon.)The "Takeway" program's host said he heard from an Evangelical pastor (not named) in Pennsylvania that [paraphrased] many evangelicals there voted for Trump on the assumption that God would "eliminate" President Trump and install Mike Pence in his place The word "eliminated" is...

President Trump has nominated his new CIA chief, Mike Pompeo. An evangelical Christian, Pompeo is a well-respected figure in the national security community. He is also an army veteran, and a staunch pro-life advocate. Two years ago, Pompeo gave a Church speech where he said Muslims who think Islam is “the only way” needed to be dealt with. “This threat to America is from people who deeply believe that Islam is the way and the light and the only answer,” Pompeo told the church-goers, according to Press TV. “These folks believe that it is religiously driven for them to wipe...

Israeli settlers and their American evangelical supporters are among the invitees to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on January 20. Yehuda Glick, a Brooklyn-born rabbi and member of the Israeli parliament’s ruling Likud party confirmed that he will be attending the inauguration with fellow Likud lawmaker Sharren Haskel. They will be joined by Atlanta-born Israeli rabbi Jeremy Gimpel, who spoke about his intention to attend on a radio show on the Land of Israel Network. Gimpel is bringing his teenage son, a Trump fan, as a present for his bar mitzvah trip. Glick is a well-known agitator for Jewish prayer at...

The Democratic Party has a “religious illiteracy” problem that prevents them from reaching out to evangelicals, according to a former Democratic staffer. Michael Wear, a former Obama White House staffer, explained three reasons why the Democratic Party fails to reach out to evangelical voters or voters with different theologies. Wear, speaking with The Atlantic, pointed out that many young Democrats don’t know how to discuss or deal with religious topics. This “illiteracy” contributes to why Democrats fail to reach out to evangelicals, Wear explained. “It’s tied to the demographics of the country: More 20- and 30-year-olds are taking positions of...

You only think you know what won the election for Donald Trump. Hillary’s corruption? The betrayal of the American Dream? Vladimir Putin? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Let me tell you the real story, and the person behind it. Elections are won by the marginal voter, the swing voter, the guy right at 50 percent. And in American politics he’s generally a Catholic. That’s the story this time, too. It wasn’t the white Evangelicals. They went overwhelmingly for Trump, but that was also true in 2012 when they weren’t even sure Romney was Christian. They aren’t the swing voters. Catholics, on the...

Two-thirds of Americans surveyed, including four out of 10 evangelicals, believe physician-assisted suicide is morally acceptable, according to a new poll, Christianity Today reports. “If they are facing a slow, painful death, Americans want options. Many believe that asking for help in dying is a moral option. They don’t believe that suffering until they die of natural causes is the only way out,” said Scott McConnell, Executive Director of LifeWay Research, which conducted the poll. Among faith groups, whether Catholics and evangelical Protestants who are traditionally pro-life or no specific denomination identified, more than 50 percent in all demographics support...

On December 8, religion reporter Sarah Pulliam Bailey wrote an opinion column for The Washington Post titled, “Evangelicals, your attacks on ‘the media’ are getting dangerous.” The reverse is actually true, and it is the secular media’s attacks on evangelicals that are getting dangerous, including Bailey’s article. Her fundamental argument is that because evangelicals talk about “the mainstream media” as “Satan’s newspaper,” they are now buying today’s “fake news” as if it were gospel truth, as evidenced by the fact that the Washington pizza shooter said that “he has been influenced by the book Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge...

Evangelical Leader Tony Perkins Slams Tillerson Pick For State By BRENT GRIFFITHS 12/12/16 Social conservative leader Tony Perkins is sounding the alarm over the possibility that Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, will become secretary of state, after previously criticizing the notion that Mitt Romney might be the nation’s top diplomat. “Trump calls Rex a 'world class player and deal-maker,' but if these are the kinds of deals Tillerson makes — sending dollars to an abortion business that's just been referred for criminal prosecution and risking the well-being of young boys under his charge in an attempt to placate radical homosexual...

The presidential election was so close that many factors were “but-for” causes of Donald Trump’s victory. One that’s been mostly overlooked is Trump’s surprising success with religious voters. According to exit polls, Trump received 81 percent of the white evangelical Christian vote, and Hillary Clinton only 16 percent. Trump did significantly better than the overtly religious Mitt Romney and the overtly evangelical George W. Bush. He likely over-performed among other theologically conservative voters, such as traditionalist Catholics, as well. Not bad for a thrice-married adulterer of no discernible faith.

A week after the election, the Huffington Post published a blog entry in which Progressive Christians suggested what like-minded Christians should do in order to “take back their faith.” Still reeling from the election in which Donald Trump was elected president, several progressive Christians pondered the necessary steps to draw a stronger contrast between their brand of kindhearted progressive Christianity, and the kind of conservative, evangelical Christianity that helped elect Donald Trump. The responses were predictably representative of left-wing Christianity, which centered on re-emphasizing social justice issues and identity politics as the “loving,” compassionate, anti-Trumpian counterpart to the hate-filled Christianity...

“Clinton's loss at the hands of Donald Trump amounted to the most surprising outcome in the history of modern electoral politics.” So writes David Catanese for usnews.com (11/11/16).Many of the pollsters proved to be wrong after all. To his credit, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia cried mea culpa, declaring: “We were wrong, ok? The entire punditry industry. The entire polling industry. The entire analyst industry. And I want to take this opportunity to take my fair share of the blame. We were wrong.”“Success,” noted John F. Kennedy after he took responsibility for the fiasco that was the Bay of Pigs, “has...

I find it ironic that the same people who have mocked us for years as hypocrites, bigots, haters, homophobes, transphobes, and worse now tell us that we have lost our moral credibility by voting for Trump.It is true that there are Christian leaders in other nations who feel that we (meaning, in particular, white evangelicals) have compromised our moral witness by voting for Trump in such overwhelming numbers (81 percent of white evangelicals voted for him). And it is true that it is difficult to reconcile our historic mantra of “character matters” with a vote for Trump, unless we are...

Evangelical Christians proved to be a driving force behind Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election, but some high-profile Christian entertainers have voiced their disagreement with fellow believers who supported the candidate. According to the Fox News exit polls, white evangelical voters helped seal the deal for President-elect Trump. Similarly, a study conducted by WPA Research and commissioned by Family Research Council, shows that 1 in 3 Hispanics and a significant number of African-Americans also voted for him as well. And that 59 percent of Trump voters were impacted by the Republican Party's pro-life and pro-religious liberty stand. For Yolanda...