Free Republic

Even as the overall population of Christians in the United States declines, evangelicals have become an energetic right-wing voting base, helping President Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016. In Brazil, where Pentecostal and other charismatic Christian churches are rapidly gaining members, evangelical voters are only beginning to flex their electoral muscle. In 1970, 90 percent of Brazil’s population identified as Roman Catholic. By 2017 just under 65 percent did. Evangelicals now make up an estimated 27 percent of Brazil’s 208 million people. As their numbers have grown, so has the evangelical influence over Brazilian politics. My demographic research in...

In the summer of 2008, Bill Hybels stood in front of thousands of pastors and other church leaders gathered at Willow Creek Community Church and admitted his megachurch had failed. “We made a mistake,” he told the crowd gathered for the 2008 Global Leadership Summit (GLS). A detailed Willow study had found that the church had helped many people find new faith in Jesus, but had failed to teach them how to practice the spiritual disciplines needed to grow their faith. He vowed the megachurch would do be better in the future. Ten years later, Willow Creek’s leaders confessed even...

The Washington Post asked locals at a southern Baptist church in Alabama why they voted for President Donald Trump despite that the former reality TV star’s conduct. Their answer was short and to the point. Members of the First Baptist church of Luverne, Alabama say former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president was a no-go for them, according to a report Saturday from WaPo. “She hates me,” Terry Drew, a member of the church, said of Clinton, who lost Alabama by almost 700,000 votes. “She has contempt for people like me, and Clay, and people who love God...

Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination is the consummation of one of the big bets behind the 2016 election. Many white Christians voted for Donald Trump because they believed he would appoint conservative justices who would protect religious liberty and advance the pro-life cause. Now, ostensibly, they’ve been vindicated. With less than two years in office, Trump will very possibly see the confirmation of his second Supreme Court nominee, another handpicked choice of the conservative legal establishment. At the time, however, it wasn’t at all clear how this bet would play out. Particularly in the evangelical world, the divisions over the...

According to Lauren Sandler, opinion columnist for Huffington Post, conservative’s “source document for understanding the rights of Americans is not the Constitution, but the New Testament.” She believes they use this document to force women to submit to their husbands and have babies. Trump’s Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh, although not a evangelical Christian, is a “thriving alumnus of President George W. Bush’s administration, the same administration that “best understood the vigorous political power of cultural conservatives.” He, and other conservative Christians in politics are demanding that “their beliefs be honored as the rule of law.” Sandler claims that “the...

“Meanwhile, a widespread decline in churchgoing and religious affiliation had contributed to a growing anxiety among conservative believers.” Statements like this are uttered with such confidence and frequency that most Americans accept them as uncontested truisms. This one emerged just this month in an exceedingly silly article in The Atlantic on Vice President Mike Pence.Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread...

For millions of evangelical Christians, President Trump’s announcement Monday night was the vision they held in their heads as they stepped into the polling booth almost two years ago: a Republican president, filling the Supreme Court with more conservative justices who might drastically curtail access to legal abortion and advance other conservative Christian priorities. As Trump prepared to announce his second nominee to the court in his 18-month term, these conservative Christians saw much of their dream realized. “It’s a generational decision,” exulted Jack Graham, a Texas pastor who is on Trump’s informal evangelical advisory board. “It’s a decision that...

We hear this on a daily, if not hourly basis. Evangelicals have hurt their witness by voting for Trump. Evangelicals have lost their credibility by supporting Trump. Evangelicals can no longer be taken seriously because they're in bed with Trump. And on and on it goes. It doesn't matter who he appoints to the Supreme Court. It doesn't matter if he improves the economy. Or strengthens the military. Or helps stabilize the Middle East. Not at all. Trump is a heartless, misogynistic, immoral, narcissistic, xenophobic monster, and whoever voted for him (or continues to support him) is not worthy of...

The retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has conservative Christians excited about a huge opportunity to shift American laws on issues like religious freedom and abortion. President Donald Trump has noted he has a list of 25 names as possible Supreme Court candidates, but there's one name that pro-lifers seem to really love. CBN's Chief Political Correspondent David Brody says evangelical circles are buzzing about Amy Coney Barrett. "Many of my sources, evangelical in nature, love her. They believe that she is the one that if they had their dream pick that she would be the one," Brody said...

Hillary Clinton's campaign communications director mocked conservative Catholics and evangelicals in leaked emails from 2011 released on Tuesday. The messages are part of a reported batch hacked from Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, with thousands more to come. The Democrat's communications director Jennifer Palmieri and Center for American Progress (CAP) fellow John Halpin allegedly made the comments in an email chain titled "Conservative Catholics" released on WikiLeaks. "They can throw around 'Thomistic' thought and 'subsidiarity' and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they're talking about," Halpin wrote to Palmieri and Podesta. The emails date from 2011 when...

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders urged religious groups on Monday to "open their doors" to undocumented families, after several prominent conservative evangelicals criticized the Trump administration for separating children from their parents at the border. "I think any evangelical, or any church for that matter, that feels strongly about that, should open their doors and facilitate some of these individuals," Sanders told reporters during a tense late afternoon briefing. "That’s their calling, and if they want to change the laws they should call their members of Congress," she added.

Over 16,000 pro-life Christians have recently signed a petition asking that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be protected from drilling. The reason we are speaking out is because we are "called by God to be a steward of America's majesty." And the Arctic Refuge is one of the most majestic places in our nation. Unfortunately, the Arctic Refuge has never been more imperiled. After four decades of attempts, last year drilling proponents succeeded in attaching an amendment allowing drilling to a must-pass spending bill. Even past staunch Republican defenders of the Arctic Refuge voted the wrong way this time. Before...

Vice President Mike Pence's speech at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting Wednesday has left some Christians unhappy, especially the newly chosen leader of the SBC.

KENOSHA, Wis. — Jill Gilmore is one of those voters who have confounded both Democrats and Never Trump Republicans the most. She is a college-educated, gun-owning female conservative Republican who voted for Donald Trump. But here’s the real kicker: She is also a devout Evangelical Christian. “In the list of what is most important to myself and my family, faith is always first,” said the striking 34-year-old mother of seven, small business owner, and community volunteer who says she and her husband teach their children daily that behavior and respect towards others is not an option, but a requirement. Contrast...

It's no secret that President Donald Trump loathes his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. The reason it's no secret is because on a weekly basis -- and sometimes even a daily basis -- the President is tweeting his distaste for Sessions. Just when you thought the bullying couldn't get any worse -- Trump has repeatedly said he would never and should never have hired Sessions, called him "beleaguered," "very weak" and "disgraceful," and reportedly refers to the former Alabama senator as "Mr. Magoo" -- today happened. The scene: A FEMA briefing in which Trump and a number of his Cabinet officials...

California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte on Franklin Graham encouraging Evangelicals in California to get out and vote, the latest in California's governor's race and the debate over the state's new gas tax hike. Video at link!

When did we who are Christians decide that we could not support a politician who was not holy enough? When did we arrive at the point where we would not support an apparent unrepentant sinner — perhaps, say, a non-Christian — even if his policies are overtly and measurably returning us at least in small part to our Judeo-Christian heritage and improving the state of the nation? The answer? Apparently at the election of Donald Trump. This is not a hard case to make. There are two bookends to the case. First, evangelicals who voted for Trump in November and...

Over the past several years, the Social Justice Warrior movement has swelled to become a formidable beast in the US. Anyone who does not follow their strict doctrine is lambasted with terms such as “fascist”, “racist”, “mansplainer“, “deplorable” and an abundance of other dehumanizing insults. SJWs have corrupted academia, the media and politics. However, this isn’t the first time America has had to deal with such a corrosive ideology. The wave of Evangelicals that came during the last part of last century was (and still partially is) extremely similar to the SJW movement. Just to be clear, being a believer...

Writing in National Review, David French launched another attack on evangelical Christians who support President Trump, calling them out as sinful compromisers denying the supreme purpose of God in their lives. I wholeheartedly reject French’s rebuke as valid. It is wrong biblically, philosophically and, by extension, politically. By way of context, I became a follower of Jesus Christ in 1982 when I was 17. Due to my submission to the authority of Scripture, I likewise fall into the category of what is commonly called “evangelical” — a term that is as frequently misunderstood as it is misused. I mention these...

Ex-President Jimmy Carter says his push for Middle East Peace played an important role in turning the evangelical voting bloc into the arms of the Republican Party. Carter told the Associated Press, that he, “took a position of wanting to see balance between Israel and the Palestinians.” Carter wasn’t able to bring about a final peace deal and was seen by some as not being pro-Israel enough. He claims that this was a major factor in evangelicals aligning with the Republican Party, which has since adopted a hardline pro-Israel stance. They were a major factor in President Trump’s shocking upset...