Free Republic

"...The state Department of Management Services has notified a Tallahassee-based group called The Satanic Temple that it won't be allowed to put up a religious-themed poster alongside other holiday displays, including a Nativity scene, and other secular displays that have been put up since the Christian-themed first display was approved in November.... ...The reaction to the nativity scene -- set up by the Florida Prayer Network on Dec. 3 -- drew national attention and barbs from Steve Colbert and Jon Stewart when South Florida political blogger Chaz Stevens responded by stacking up a 6-foot-tall "Festivus" pole made of Pabst Blue...

The commander of the Guantanamo Bay naval base decided Wednesday to move Nativity scenes from two dining halls following complaints that the decorations improperly promoted Christianity. ... Wirfel said base officials had received no complaints about the displays. Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the organization received an email from 18 service members who were afraid that any direct appeal to commanders would be ignored and result in retribution. "They are terrified. Right now, there is a witch hunt going on to find out who did this," said Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who said...

WESTMORELAND COUNTY (KDKA) – Two Mt. Pleasant families are baffled, after someone stole the baby Jesus from their nativity scene. The thefts happened on Connellsville Road. “I went to get my mail, and when I came back and looked at the nativity, the baby was gone,” Valarie Goodwin said.

ST. JOSEPH, Minn. (WCCO) – In this season of giving, someone has taken part of the nativity scene from a Minnesota church. Mary and Joseph are among the figures stolen from a display outside the Church of St. Joseph, located in the town of St. Joseph. The church is led by Father Jerome Tupa, who says the manger’s appearance signals the beginning of the advent season, placed near the intersection of Main and Minnesota Streets.

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- U.S. President Barack Obama, visiting the West Bank city of Bethlehem, stopped twice to light candles for his family and himself: first at the Church of Nativity grotto, where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born, then at the adjacent Catholic Church of St. Catherine. On the last leg of his four-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, Obama also took time for a few moments of private prayer and contemplation, said Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, who was the first to greet the American leader inside the church, welcoming him as "a messenger of peace...

HUNTINGTON BEACH (CBSLA.com) — Two nativity scenes were vandalized overnight in Huntington Beach, according to officials. Jeff Nguyen, reporting for CBS2 and KCAL9, spoke to a homeowner whose nativity scene was vandalized. Richard Candlish told Nguyen his holiday decorations give him a sense of pride. But this morning he felt a sense of vulnerability after someone degraded his decorations. Someone scrawled “HAIL Hitler” on his baby Jesus as well as drawing a Hitler-style mustache. “They misspelled HEIL. It really goes to the ignorance of the people who did it,” says Candlish. The same Hitler comment was spray painted on one...

An Italian study carried out on the Basilica’s wooden beams has revealed that the cedar was carved between the 6th and 7th centuries In the next few days, as is the case every year, all eyes will be on the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem. But the deeper the studies on this ancient church go, the more surprises it seems to have in store. This is what transpires from a report published yesterday in the last edition of the Journal of Cultural Heritage and on Terrasanta.net.The report presents the results of a long study carried out on the Basilica’s...

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you. As you know, every year during the holiday and Christmas seasons, religion-objectors redouble their efforts at proscribing religious displays on government buildings and other common areas in our cities, towns, and villages. The mainstream media’s (MSM’s) strategy has been to declare that there is no “war on Christmas” but Bill Donohue from the Catholic League already took the MSM to task. Of course, I often share many of Bill Donohue’s observations across many other social platforms including Twitter, and it was in Twitter where I got a couple of respondents who are...

The carton below is from Soviet Communist Russian times. You can see how the capitalist system is depicted as slavery - the opposite of how communism works, IE., free money, multiplied and returned to the worker - in the right frame. Tell me Obama does not think differently. And, as many Americans kill off Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Jesus, so the Soviets replaced Saint Nick with "Father Frost" - a man who gives out presents because he is a generous communist. From Wikipedia Ded Moroz "Following the Russian Revolution, Christmas traditions were actively discouraged because they...

SANTA MONICA (CBSLA.com) — Churches have found a way to keep the decades-old Christmas nativity display alive in Santa Monica following a controversial ban on having the scenes in a public park. Pastor Keith Magee of Trinity Baptist Church is just one of the organizations Monday night who found a loophole in the ban by putting on a live, temporary nativity scene. Volunteers were on hand to play the roles of Joseph and Mary, among other biblical figures. “We want to have a positive effect here in the community, because the nativity scenes have been a positive thing for the...

News Print Article | Email Friend | Reprint Permissions Toronto nativity scene vandalized for fifth time in six years by Thaddeus Baklinski Thu Nov 29, 2012 13:45 EST Comments (1) Tags: anti-christian bias, nativity, toronto TORONTO, November 29, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Vandals in Toronto attacked and damaged the nativity scene placed in front of Toronto’s Old City Hall courthouse by Gethsemane Ministries, a Catholic lay movement. Suresh Dominic, founder and head of Gethsemane Ministries, told LifeSiteNews.com that the display had been set up on Sunday, but on Wednesday morning it they discovered that someone had smashed the plexiglass window of...

HuffPo: LOS ANGELES — There's no room for the baby Jesus, the manger or the wise men this Christmas in a Santa Monica park following a judge's ruling Monday against churches that tried to keep a 60-year Nativity tradition alive after atheists stole the show with anti-God messages. U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins rejected a motion from the Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee to allow the religious display this season while their lawsuit plays out against the city. Collins said the city was within its constitutional right to eliminate the exemption that had allowed the Nativity at the...

As TV networks began to call the race for President Obama in the 2012 general election earlier this month, Karl Rove fumbled with his white board insisting the race wasn't over and that the votes from vital Ohio counties had not yet been fully tallied. A glimmer of hope that Mitt Romney could snatch victory from the jaws of certain defeat remained visible through the squinting lens of Rove's roseate stubbornness. As his recount was underway last weekend in Florida, Congressman Allen West basked in the glow of adulation conservatives attending an event at the Breakers Hotel in West Palm...

Copies of the Italian version of Pope Benedict XVI's new book, "The Infancy of Jesus," are seen during their release to journalists at the Vatican press office Nov. 20. (CNS/Paul Haring) By Carol Glatz and Francis X. RoccaCatholic News Service VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Nativity story, like the whole story of Christ, is not merely an event in the past, but has unfolding significance for people today, with implications for such issues as the limits of political power and the purpose of human freedom, Pope Benedict writes in his third and final volume on the life and teachings...

...Conservatives are shell-shocked. The event in Palm Beach drew no consensus for the future of conservatism. After four years of economic, political and moral depredations, it becomes increasingly difficult to predict when the pendulum will swing back or if it will at all. We wander along a desolate path of stupefaction, adrift in our bumping and stammering hallucinations. Can a moribund culture ever be revived to resemble the best times in America's past? When Tuesday (11/19/2012), US District Court Judge Audrey B Collins delivered a 28-page ruling denying my client the right to continue a 59-year-old tradition of exhibiting Nativity...

The nearly 60-year tradition of a Nativity scene displayed at a park and hosted by a coalition of churches in Santa Monica, Calif., has ended after a federal judge ruled on Monday that the city can ban such displays. A controversy over the display about the birth of Jesus at Palisades Park erupted last Christmas season when an atheist group "manipulated" the city's lottery system for spaces, according to a nonprofit, resulting in only two booths for the Christian group that normally uses 14 booths for the various Nativity-related scenes. "It's a very sad day when a small number of...

Churches are going to federal court to reclaim their freedom of speech after the city of Santa Monica, Calif., decided to end a nearly 60-year tradition of having Christian displays of the nativity in a public park due to an uproar caused by atheists' anti-God signs. Behind the trouble in Santa Monica is a member of the American Atheists, Damon Vix, who applied for and was granted a booth in Palisades Park alongside the nativity display three years ago. He erected a sign quoting Thomas Jefferson: "Religions are all alike -- founded on fables and mythologies." Another sign read, "Happy...

An unusual nativity display at a Claremont church that portrayed gay couples was vandalized over the weekend in an incident authorities are investigating as a hate crime.

Why would Joseph, “of the lineage of David,” in the city of his family’s origin have to seek shelter in an inn and be turned out into a stable? Recently this question was put to me here in Beirut. This paper presents an answer. In this brief study I will attempt to demonstrate that Jesus was born in a private home and that the “inn” of Luke 2:7 is best understood as the guest room of the family in whose house the birth took place. Recent studies have primarily focused on Luke’s theological interests.1 The concern here is the Palestinian...

What If Mary Said “No”? October 13th, 2009 by Gary ZimakMost of us are familiar with the story of the Annunciation as told in Chapter 1 of Luke’s gospel. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary and informed her that she had been chosen to be the Mother of the Savior. Mary agreed, Jesus was born and the entire human race was redeemed. Sounds simple, right? Did you ever consider what would have happened if Mary said, “no”? Sometimes we forget that Mary had free will and wasn’t forced to go along with the plan that would result in...