Free Republic

A well-known evangelical pastor and spiritual mentor for President Donald Trump asserted Tuesday that God won’t mind if the president wipes North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un off the face of the earth. Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, who has close ties to the president, believes Trump has the moral authority to destroy Kim Jong-un. “When it comes to how we should deal with evil doers, the Bible, in the book of Romans, is very clear: God has endowed rulers full power to use whatever means necessary — including war — to stop evil,” Jeffress explained in a statement to CBN...

NEW YORK (AP) — Evangelical supporters of President Donald Trump on Monday requested a meeting with Pope Francis over a recent critical article in a Vatican-vetted journal. Johnnie Moore, a leader of Trump’s evangelical advisory board and a spokesman for some of its members, said he sent the request to Rome in response to an article published last month that accused some American Catholics of building an alliance of “hate” with evangelicals who backed the president. The two authors of the piece are confidants of Francis. They published their article in the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, which is reviewed...

A spiritual awakening is underway at the White House. Some of the most powerful people in America have been gathering weekly to learn more about God's Word, and this Trump Cabinet Bible study is making history. They've been called the most evangelical Cabinet in history – men and women who don't mince words when it comes to where they stand on God and the Bible. Ralph Drollinger of Capitol Ministries told CBN News, "These are godly individuals that God has risen to a position of prominence in our culture." They're all hand-picked by President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike...

Recently, Barnabas Aid has drawn attention to the increasing hostility to evangelical Christians that has characterised some sections of the media and even some government institutions. Over the past 12 months we have seen Christian politicians asked overtly theological questions and attempts by some mainstream media in the recent UK general election to ”out” parliamentary candidates as Christians, declaring them “unfit” to hold public office because they held mainstream Christian beliefs such as believing in miracles. In other words, a significant parallel is now developing between how gay people were treated by the press a generation or so ago, and...

Sarah Pulliam Bailey at the Washington Post reports this morning that a handful of conservative evangelical leaders have issued coordinated statements supporting Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner as he faces allegations of improper contacts with Russian government officials. Those defending Kushner include some of Trump’s earliest and strongest supporters on the Religious Right, including Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress, Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. and prosperity gospel preacher Paula White. Also included in the group is Samuel Rodriquez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, who has criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric while simultaneously giving Trump political cover:...

Evangelical Christians have unprecedented access to President Donald Trump’s White House and are “on speed dial” with the administration, according to an activist who prayed over the president in the Oval Office. The evangelical community overwhelmingly backed the Republican in November’s election, and Trump has been quick to repay it. The president has signed an executive order on religious liberty and cut funding to abortion providers overseas....

ANALYSIS/OPINION: Resistance and opposition to same-sex marriage has been crumbling among Americans — save for one specific segment of society that’s proving the last wall to even wider acceptance: Evangelicals. This is not entirely unexpected. But it is uncomfortable. It puts those of most serious faith in a heated spotlight that can be used by the left to showcase the evangelical Christian crowd as discriminatory, as hate-filled, as antithetical to the core values of America. Standing strong on this point is not only going to prove lonely. It’s also going to prove a real test of faith — and conversely,...

On Tuesday, June 27, it will be 50 years since the first automated cash dispenser – which came to be known as an automated teller machine (ATM) – was inaugurated in London. Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face. I belong to the generation who stood 45 minutes to an hour to deposit or cash checks in the pre-ATM era. I remember getting yelled at for taking my bicycle through the drive-up line at the National Bank of Detroit to avoid the much longer line inside. It did not take me very long to become an early...

The Faith and Freedom Coalition kicked off its Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC on June 8. The highly-anticipated conference for people of faith and conservative activists included such high profile speakers as President Donald Trump. Dr. Ralph Reed, founder and President of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, which organized the event, introduced President Trump as “my friend, our friend, the President of the United States, President Donald Trump” causing the crowd to give the chief executive a sweeping standing ovation. The President was nonetheless at home with his people. After all, according to Reed, not only has Donald...

IT started as a face-saving exercise by Hillary Clinton to try to explain away her election loss to a vulgarian real estate billionaire from Queens. But the absurd Russia conspiracy has somehow snowballed into a crisis that threatens to bring down Donald Trump, has all but paralysed his administration, and unleashed the most unhinged attacks on a US president in living memory. Inevitably, last week the violent language and “Assassinate Trump” memes erupted in a burst of deadly gunfire at an early morning baseball practice for Republican congressmen near Washington, DC. The gunman was 66-year-old James Hodgkinson, a left-wing Bernie...

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...