Free Republic

Since when did the gospel become associated with guns? Since when did the Christian faith become linked to the right to bear arms? Lest I be misunderstood, this article is not about gun control, nor is it about the Second Amendment. I am not asking whether Christians should serve in the military and I am not questioning our right to defend ourselves. I’m simply asking why conservative Christianity – in particular, American evangelical Christianity – is so strongly linked with a passion for guns. There’s certainly no scriptural connection to be made. Again, I’m not advocating for new gun control...

Iconic musician Little Richard is renouncing his past life of sexual immorality, saying he believes same-sex relationships are "unnatural affections." In previous interviews, the famous singer referred to himself as "omnisexual," revealing in an interview with GQ five years ago that he lived a life of perversion, including orgies. But in an extensive interview with Three Angels Broadcasting Network, an Illinois-based Christian and health-oriented television and radio network, Little Richard says he has repented and turned to Jesus Christ for salvation.

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer.

Taylor Benge and his sister survived the massacre in Las Vegas Sunday night, where a gunman killed 58 people and wounded 500 more outside a country music festival. The shooter, who eventually killed himself, aimed at the concertgoers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. His rampage appears to have been meticulously planned.Still shaken, Taylor spoke with CNN anchors John Berman and Kate Boduan Monday morning to offer his eyewitness account. The 21-year-old was at the concert when he said he heard what sounded like fireworks. It wasn't until he saw a man next to him bleeding from...

Several Democrat senators have used the confirmation hearings of the most exclusive club in America to lay down an unconstitutional requirement for qualification to public service. At a hearing in June, Sen. Bernie Sanders questioned the fitness of Wheaton College alumnus Russell Vought for the post of deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Vought had written an article in which he said Muslims "do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned." Sen. Sanders accused Mr. Vought of religious bigotry, saying, "In my view, the statement made by Mr....

Atheism, the rejection of the possibility that “God” exists, has become the dominant thought amongst intellectuals in the past century and has been around longer than most people think. For over 2000 years, it was based on philosophical arguments that can roughly be summed up as the atheist saying, “I don’t know how ‘X’ came to be, but you can’t prove it came from God.” This mindset has been highly effective because it places the burden of proof on the theist to prove the positive of God’s existence, which, superficially, is impossible to do – because no evidence exists that...

Hundreds of thousands of Bibles are about to flood into public schools across the nation, as students in every U.S. state prepare for the annual “Bring Your Bible to School Day” campaign. The concept is simple: On Oct. 5, young people from kindergarten through college-level are encouraged to “bring their Bibles to school and talk about it with friends,” according to a website from co-partners Focus on the Family and Alliance Defending Freedom. “Bring Your Bible to School Day” encourages young people to bolster their faith, stand up for religious liberty and talk with their peers about Jesus.

Subject: Einstein & Billy Graham... ...Billy Graham is now 96 years-old and has Parkinson's disease. In January 2000 leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina invited their City's favourite son, Billy Graham, to a Luncheon in his honor. Billy initially hesitated to accept the invitation...because he struggles with Parkinson's disease! The Charlotte City Leaders said, "We don't expect a major address, just come...and let us honour you". Billy Graham agreed. After wonderful things were said about him, Dr. Graham stepped to the rostrum...looked at the crowd...and said, "I'm reminded today of Albert Einstein, the great physicist who this month has been honoured...

Like many Americans during the past three weeks, I've been bombarded by news about the destructive power of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida. The stories are of misery, death, and destruction. The misery, death, and destruction are acutely difficult to accept because they have been visited upon innocents. I say that knowledgeable of the ancient argument that our personal and collective sinfulness has merited our pain. Yet that raises this question: Does anyone really deserve personal ruination because of personal sin, particularly from a God whose Son said He came to call sinners and not the...

Seems that for Senator Dianne Feinstein, being a believing Catholic is enough to disqualify a candidate for a federal judgeship. Feinstein stated as such at confirmation hearings for Notre Dame law professor Amy Barrett, nominated by President Trump to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. "I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma," explained the Senator. "And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern when you come to the big issues that large numbers of people have...

In a recent op-ed, I discussed the fundamental role despair has played in the opioid crisis. Further that the horrifying and climbing number of opioid deaths is part of a larger phenomenon of deaths of despair – drug overdose, alcoholism, suicide – that began at the millennium, reversing a decades-long trend of increasing longevity. Finally, that these deaths of despair have disproportionately stricken young to middle-aged, unemployed, non-college graduate whites. One might argue that these statistics suggest that this despair primarily is a result of material want. Yet that proposition ignores the fact that, in the annals of human history,...

As I write these words from the safety of my home, with the weather outside beautiful and calm, people in other parts of America (and the Caribbean) are suffering terrible upheaval. Lives have been lost. Families have been torn apart. Houses have been destroyed. Whole islands have been devastated. So, I do not write this lightly. In fact, I think of the famous dictum of Rabbi Irving Greenberg when talking about the Holocaust. “No statement,” he said, “theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.” (He was referring, of course, to...

The director of the National Institutes of Health revealed Wednesday that confronting death sparked his journey from atheism to Christianity. Dr. Francis Collins, NIH director and leader of the Human Genome Project, recounted to Bloomberg’s David Rubenstein how facing the reality of death and the questions it posed during his third year at medical school led him to become a Christian. The conversation, published Wednesday, revealed that Collins initially settled on agnosticism and then shifted toward atheism before ultimately placing his faith in Jesus Christ. Collins said that his spiritual journey began in college where he first confronted differing ideas...

This afternoon, during a confirmation hearing for 7th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein attacked the nominee for her Roman Catholic faith. Barrett is a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who has written about the role of religion in public life and delivered academic lectures to Christian legal groups. Drawing on some of these materials, Feinstein launched a thinly veiled attack on Barrett’s Catholic faith, asserting that her religious views will prevent her from judging fairly.

Five Fundamentals for a Firm Faith – A Homily for the 27th Sunday of the Year Msgr. Charles Pope • October 1, 2016 • The readings for today’s Mass richly describe some essential qualities of faith. There are five fundamentals that can be seen:1. Wanting – The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5-6). There’s an old saying, “What you want, you get.” Many doubt this, thinking that they have wanted many things that they did not get. But it is likely that they just didn’t want it enough. When we really want something (provided it...

The state of Texas might be battered and bruised, but its spirit is not broken. Proof of this is a viral video showing a Texas woman’s amazing gospel performance at a Harvey shelter in Conroe. FOX News reports: A Texas woman’s gospel performance inside a shelter for Tropical Storm Harvey evacuees has gone viral after the impromptu performance lifted the spirits of people stranded away from home. Although it is difficult to understand the full extent of damage from the monster storm until flood waters fully recede, at least 10,000 people have been rescued, more than 30,000 are in shelters and 20...

Coyotes - Don Edwards

Addressing priests in the Philadelphia archdiocese, Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, Scotland, said that American Catholics should learn from the problems facing the Church in Great Britain. The Scottish archbishop predicted that “some version of the problems we face today in Scotland will be heading your way tomorrow.” In particular he warned that intolerance of the faith is likely to increase. Archbishop Tartaglia reported that Catholics now constitute the most active religious group in Scotland, because the Protestant churches are steadily shrinking. Thus the Catholic Church becomes the primary representative of Christianity—and the main target for the more aggressive opponents...

A small group of nuns and priests met the woman in the chapel of a house one June evening. Though it was warm outside, a palpable chill settled over the room. As the priests began to pray, the woman slipped into a trance -- and then snapped to life. She spoke in multiple voices: One was deep, guttural and masculine; another was high-pitched; a third spouted only Latin. When someone secretly sprinkled ordinary water on her, she didn't react. But when holy water was used, she screamed in pain. "Leave her alone, you f***ing priests," the guttural voice shouted. "Stop,...

While it is extremely difficult to measure the extent to which religion impacts Americans, one polling organization has attempted to do so using four criteria. The poll was designed to acquire a sense of how the 50 states compare with each other on the matter of which has the most religious population. The four criteria used were the importance of religion in people’s lives, frequency of attendance at worship services, frequency of prayer, and absolute certainty of belief in God (“How Religious...?,” 2009). As one might expect, more Americans in the “Bible Belt” states indicate that religion is very important...