Free Republic

Classes began in early September last year at a small new international university, called Nalanda, in Bihar in northeast India -- one of the most backward parts of the country. Only two faculties -- history, and environment and ecology -- were holding classes for fewer than twenty students. And yet the opening of Nalanda was the subject of headlines in all the major newspapers in India and received attention across the world. "Ritorno a Nalanda" was the headline in Corriere della Sera. The new venture is meant to be a revival of Nalanda Mahavihara, the oldest university in the world,...

A 1,500-year-old church has been discovered at a Byzantine period rest stop on the road connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, archaeologists announced today (June 10). The ancient road station and church, uncovered during a highway construction project, sit next to a seep spring called 'Ain Naqa'a, which is on the outskirts of Moshav Bet Neqofa, a settlement in Jerusalem. Along the old road, which was likely paved in the Roman period, "other settlements and road stations have previously been discovered that served those traveling the route in ancient times," Annette Nagar, the director of the excavation on behalf of the...

(IsraelNN.com) Columbus was a Jew named Salvador Fernando Zarco and was among those expelled from Spain in 1492, a rare triangular Kabbalistic signet indicates. Jose Rodrigues Dos Santos has authored an historical novel, Codex 632: The Secret Identity of Christopher Columbus, which relates the deciphering of a rare triangular Kabbalistic signet. The interpretation of the recent discovery of the signet claims to reveal the secret identity of Columbus. The unique triangular monogram is similar to inscriptions on gravestones in Jewish cemeteries in Spain and southern France. The interpretation of the recent discovery of the signet claims to reveal the secret...

JNS.org – Road workers doing construction on a highway leading from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem have unearthed a large Byzantine-era road station and church. According to the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the archaeological find was discovered outside of the town of Abu Gosh and is thought to be approximately 1,500 years old. The uncovered church is about 52 feet long, with a side chapel measuring 21 feet long and 11.5 feet wide that has a mosaic floor. “Fragments of red-colored plaster found in the rubble strewn throughout the building showed that the church walls had been decorated with frescoes,” the...

Palliative and intensive care units at hospitals have a close relationship with death, giving rise to many experiences that defy any rational explanation. Patients who foresee the exact time when they will die; others who seem to decide for themselves the day and the hour, moving their death forward or delaying it; family members' prophetic dreams or presentiments on the part of third parties who, without even knowing that someone has been brought to the hospital or has suffered an accident, are certain that he has died. Only healthcare professionals who work closely with terminally ill patients know first-hand the...

“Fascinating,” says medical resuscitation expert Sam Parnia of a recent PLOS One study finding highly unexpected electrical activity in the hippocampus of one man, and 26 cats, with flat-lined “isoelectric” electroencephalograms (EEGs). The isoelectric flat line—so popular in movies and on TV shows—helps determine if patients are in a brain death they can’t recover from.

Obama scorned Christians at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Tuesday, twisting the words of Jesus Christ into an insult against the Savior of the believers he was addressing. “It’s important for us to guard against cynicism and not buy the idea that the poor will always be with us and there’s nothing we can do,” Obama said. Lest leftists and liberal Christians say his comment was “taken out of context,” but here are his full remarks: “One of the things I’m always concerned about is cynicism,” Obama said. “My chief of staff, Denis McDonough, we take walks around the South...

“After the [Christian governor] told them [U.S. authorities] that they were ignoring the 12 Shariah states who (sic) institutionalized persecution … he suddenly developed visa problems. … The question remains — why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer based in Washington D.C. “In the same week that the State Dept says it will take the engagement of religious leaders seriously … it refuses a visa to a persecuted Christian nun who has fled ISIS, Sister Diana.” — Chris Seiple, President, Institute for Global Engagement.Late on the evening of May...

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks May 12 at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University in Washington. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn) CRUX posted a report yesterday about the "Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty" held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and attended by President Barack Obama. Here are the opening paragraphs of the story: When it comes to fighting poverty, President Barack Obama wants American Christians to act a lot more like Pope Francis. Obama called Francis “transformative,” saying the pope’s “insistence” that fighting poverty be at the heart of the Christian life has made him...

New Evangelization, where art thou? The Pew Research Center reports that the number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen sharply, to the tune of nearly eight percentage points in only seven years.  The survey, carried out in 2014, was the second "Religious Landscape Study" Pew conducted since 2007. Based on the 35,000 people the institute interviewed, the American populace is 21% Catholic. It was 23.9% seven years ago.  While the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014, non-Christian religions are growing. Islam showed the greatest gains, growing half a percentage point...

The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region, according to an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center. Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007.

During his “Talking Points Memo” segment on Tuesday, “The O’Reilly Factor” host Bill O’Reilly explained that Americans have changed their stance on a number of issues, including immigration and Christianity and that has been to the detriment of the United States.

The New York Times has a breathless report on the decline of Christianity in America. Much of the lefty twitterverse is celebrating the decline. The Christian share of adults in the United States has declined sharply since 2007, affecting nearly all major Christian traditions and denominations, and crossing age, race and region, according to an extensive survey by the Pew Research Center. Seventy-one percent of American adults were Christian in 2014, the lowest estimate from any sizable survey to date, and a decline of 5 million adults and 8 percentage points since a similar Pew survey in 2007. But that...

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, responded to the new Pew Study survey documenting the decline of Christians and rise of religiously unaffiliated, by calling the "increasing strangeness" of Christianity "good news" for the church. "Christianity isn't normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it's good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline...

  The New York Times declared that Christianity in America is declining and I say “Amen to that!” Actually, the article’s title is “Big Drop in Share of Americans Calling Themselves Christian” and that’s why I’m happy it’s true.  The Times piece is based on a Pew Research Center survey, which shows that people are abandoning the moniker of Christian religious identity in favor of post-modern nihilism. The biggest declines are in Mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations.  If you’re a Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian (PCUSA), Episcopal, Congregationalist, or Disciple of Christ, you’re becoming a rarer commodity.  And that’s a good thing....

When Bay Guys Talk: Whether they’re gays continuing to force more of their radical anti-freedom agenda off onto us or radical Muslims pushing for sharia law in our communities, we’d better get serious about organizing ourselves to oppose them Everyone knows that the self-styled progressives and others on the Left are inveterate liars. Not a day goes by that some left-wing activist or talking head won’t be found on our television screens or in our newspapers uttering some falsehood designed to make the leftist agenda more palatable to the masses or to cover up the disasters being caused by it.

. . . but there is less here than meets the eye. At first, the numbers seem alarming, and there is an alarming element to it. Since the last time such a poll was taken in 2008, the percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent. Yes, 70 percent is still an overwhelming majority, but an 8 percent drop in just seven years is pretty big. So how does one account for those one-time devoted followers of Jesus Christ suddenly abandoning the Kingdom of God? One doesn’t, because that’s not what’s really happened here....

The last several decades, the Left has done its best to change America’s religious landscape. According to a new Pew study, they’re succeeding better than many thought possible: "The number of Americans who don’t affiliate with a particular religion has grown to 56 million in recent years, making the faith group researchers call “nones” the second-largest in total numbers behind evangelicals, according to a Pew Research Center study released Tuesday." Christians are still the majority, but their numbers have fallen from 78 percent to just under 71 percent. The main reason? Increasingly more Americans consider themselves “non affiliated” with any...

Christianity is in sharp decline in America, according to new research from the Pew Research Center, making for a significantly less Christian country than that of just seven years ago. The number of Christians dropped by almost 8 percentage points in seven years to 71 percent, and the trend holds across race, gender, education, and geographic dimensions, though Christianity still dominates American religious identity at 70 percent, USA Today said. "It's remarkably widespread," Alan Cooperman, director of religion research for the Pew Research Center, said, according to The Washington Post. "The country is becoming less religious as a whole, and...

An extensive study by the Pew Research Center has revealed that Christians are declining sharply in America in terms of population share, while the religiously unaffiliated are rising, and now make up a larger share than American Catholics. The rise of religious intermarriages was one trend linked to the growth of the unaffiliated. The report, which was released on Tuesday, stated: "The drop in the Christian share of the population has been driven mainly by declines among mainline Protestants and Catholics. Each of those large religious traditions has shrunk by approximately 3 percentage points since 2007. The evangelical Protestant share...