Free Republic

I just listened to Bill O'Reilly discuss Michelle Obama's comment that "there is no place better than church to talk politics." My first thought was to agree with the First Lady and to ask why she doesn't do something about her Democrat party which believes the First Amendment's so-called "separation" of church and state means, among other things, that churches cannot take a political stance. The IRS disallows politics in the pulpits and pews across America. Why? Because some Americans oppose tax-exempt faith-based-religions and find it distasteful when they are forced to fund a politically religious ideology. It is necessary...

Acts of faith are performed each day in this country, and we are all the better for it. But sadly, Barack Obama does not seem to have faith in the American system, nor does he believe in American exceptionalism, nor does he believe that Americans can make it on their own without government handouts. In short, Obama doesn’t have faith in us. Faith has become an inflammatory topic in the 2012 election. In policy, speeches and campaign ads, the president has used faith as a means to demagogue his Republican opponent. Faith has been used by the left-wing extremists as...

In 2008, Barack Obama took aim at the “pew gap,” the overwhelming Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church. The Democratic presidential nominee came nowhere near closing it, but he didn’t have to. He just needed an extra percentage point or two among traditional GOP constituents, and he got it. The Democratic National Committee is promising a repeat performance in 2012. But some religious leaders and scholars who backed Obama in 2008 are skeptical. They say the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus, squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and worry it will hurt...

Civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson defended Monday controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright, saying that it was a “source of pain” to see him criticized in the media. “I know it’s a source of pain for me to see him used as an object of degradation and manipulated the way he’s been used the media as if he’s some sort of enemy of the state. It’s not fair and it’s not true,” said Jackson on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown.” “It pains me to see him used as an object of degradation.” Jackson said that Wright had developed an influential ministry, one that...

In a shocking interview yesterday on the Sean Hannity Radio Show, author Ed Klein said Barack Obama’s former pastor helped Obama accept Christianity without having to renounce Islam. The Daily Caller reported: Klein also said Wright told him he “made it comfortable” for Obama to accept Christianity without having renounce his “Islamic background,” which Klein said he has on tape. -snip- Klein spoke more on this in a separate interview with NewsMax: Klein says Obama originally sought out Wright to discuss community activism. “Quickly the conversations turned from picking up garbage on the street and getting streetlights put up on...

Staggering under an avalanche of bad news regarding the economy, Obama’s presidential campaign took another hit over the weekend as the New York Post detailed divisions amongst Democrats and radicals, including charges that Obama tried to buy the silence of his controversial Chicago pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Author Edward Klein in his new book The Amateur writes that Obama offered his long-time radical preacher and pastor $150,000 in hush money for staying out of the spotlight during Obama’s 2008 run for president. I might add that I have a feeling that radical association with Obama was a booming cottage industry...

<p>When sermons of Obama’s Chicago pastor, Jeremiah Wright, surfaced during the Iowa primaries, it threatened to derail Obama’s campaign. ABC aired one where Wright screamed, “Goddamn America!” Edward Klein interviewed Wright, who told him Obama’s team tried to buy his silence.</p>

Jim Jones’ sinister grip on San Francisco How the Peoples Temple cult leader ensnared Harvey Milk and other progressive icons “Season of the Witch,” the new book by Salon founder David Talbot, tells the story of the wild and bloody birth of “San Francisco values.” The following excerpt – Part 1 in a three-part series -- recounts one of the darker dramas before the ultimate triumph of those values. Jim Jones, the strange and charismatic leader of Peoples Temple, proved a master at politically wiring San Francisco in the mid-1970s. The driven preacher had begun his climb up the political...

UNITED NATIONS — A former Nicaraguan foreign minister who once called President Ronald Reagan “the butcher of my people” has been appointed to represent Libya at the United Nations after its delegate was denied a visa, the Nicaraguan government said on Wednesday. Nicaragua said the former minister, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, 78, an outspoken critic of the United States and a Catholic priest, would replace the Libyan diplomat Ali Abdussalam Treki, who had been unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States. Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, defected in late February after denouncing Col. Muammar...

We need to start taking student loan debt seriously, both as a troubling moral issue and as a ticking economic time bomb. By some reports, student loan debt will exceed 1 trillion dollars this year, more than the credit card debt of all Americans. A whole generation of young Americans is at risk in this excessive borrowing. They fall further and further behind in “servicing their debt” because they have no way to keep up with the payments as many of them are unemployed or underemployed. They will delay starting marriage and families; they dare not take the risk of...

When I was 12 years old, I used to play tennis at a certain public park in the Bronx. One day it got back to me that a black fellow at the courts, whose name I forget, said, "Selwyn doesn't like black people." This raised my eyebrows. You see, I had never really thought about the man one way or the other. And what occupied my mind were forehands, backhands, topspin, and volleys, not race. So the only thing I could figure was that I was probably in a funk one day and didn't hear and acknowledge a greeting he...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wept and asked God to spare his life during a pre-Easter Mass after returning from his latest session of cancer treatment in Cuba. Very little is known about the 57-year-old socialist leader's condition, including even what type of cancer he has. Chavez has undergone three operations in less than a year, and received two sessions of radiation treatment. He says the latest surgery was successful, that he is recovering well and will be fit to win a new six-year term at an election in October. Yet big questions remain about his future, and on Thursday the...

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama says the Easter story of Christ's agony and resurrection has helped him get through the tough moments of an embattled presidency. The president got "Amens" from religious leaders at a White House prayer breakfast in the East Room as he recounted Jesus saying, "In this world, you will have trouble."

Pastor Ronald Slaughter wore his Sunday best, plus a white hoodie sweatshirt as he preached his Palm Sunday sermon today. Slaughter and members of his congregation at St. James AME Church in Newark donned hoodies in honor of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teen gunned down by a neighborhood watch captain last month. Several congregants wore their hoodies up while others sitting in the pews came in regular dress. Slaughter, who wore a white zipped up hoodie sweatshirt over a shirt and tie, and other church leaders behind the pulpit wore hoodies but did not cover their heads.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has disclosed that he had angry exchanges with Pope John Paul II about liberation theology and about the ordination of women. The former president said that he complained to the Pontiff about the Church’s “perpetuation of the subservience of women” while Blessed John Paul II was visiting the US in 1978, and “there was more harshness when we turned to the subject of ‘liberation theology.” Carter said that he classified the Pope as a “fundamentalist,” placing him in that category along with Iran’s late Ayatollah Khomeini. In the same interview Carter said that “it...

Because of slavery (Democrats did it), KKK violence (Democrats did it), segregation (Democrats did it), Jim Crow laws (Democrats did it) and other historic abuses heaped on black Americans in our country by the Democratic Party and its supporters, America has been a bit oversensitive about race for the last few decades. Of course, the political party responsible for all of that racism is now the one shouting, "You're a racist," and trying to pit different racial groups against each other. That might seem ironic at first glance, but if you think about it, it's actually par for the...

The recent release of a tape by Andrew Breitbart's outfit sparked renewed interest in President Obama's murky past. In anticipation, conservatives were elated that the president might finally be exposed. The tape showed Obama, then at Harvard Law, orchestrating a protest on behalf of Derrick Bell. Without providing any background on just how radical is Professor Bell, the compliant liberal media derisively dismissed it all as conservative paranoia, even proclaiming presidential vindication. It still appears preposterous to purport that America elected a communist ideologue. The world's greatest beneficiary of capitalist bounty would never willingly empower a radical socialist to "fundamentally...

Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed discovered this little gem of a video, in which then-law student Barack Obama spoke at a protest in favor of Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. Kaczynski explains what the protest was all about. Bell was the first black tenured professor at the school, and a pioneer of "critical race theory," which insisted, controversially, on reading issues of race and power into legal scholarship. His protest that spring was occasioned by Harvard's denial of tenure to a black woman professor, Regina Austin, at a time when only three of the law school's professors were black and only...

Theology of Integral Mission Can the Gospel be used as a mere platform for an ideology? “Theology of Integral Mission is a [Brazilian] Protestant variation of the Liberation Theology”. — Ariovaldo Ramos, in the Marxist magazine Diplomatique. Ramos is a former president of World Vision in Brazil. By Julio Severo Note: This is a message by me to Brazilian evangelicals, because Theology of Integral Mission is by far the most serious problem in the Brazilian churches, making them prey to political opportunists, and because the dominant political ideology in Brazil, in churches and society, is socialist. I hope that this...

Catholic bishops, evangelical pastors and Republican presidential candidates have been decrying the Obama administration's war on religious liberty. Amid all the uproar, it's easy to overlook something equally important: the administration's many battles for religious liberty....In other realms, believers have found a Barack Obama and his Justice Department to be staunch allies.The most conspicuous surprise involves government rules for faith-based organizations that get federal funding for social services.President George W. Bushissued an executive order allowing such groups to hire only people who share their faith — exempting them from the usual ban on religious discrimination. Liberal critics accused him of...