Free Republic

Planned Parenthood abortion business officials in Ohio are looking for volunteers to pray at a pryer event. No, Planned Parenthood is not asking people to pray for an end to abortion in the way pro-life advocates pray at prayer events like 40 Days for Life. Instead the abortion giant is hoping Buckeye State residents will pray for more abortions. plannedparenthood118As this Planned Parenthood announcement indicates, the abortion corporation wants people to join an abortion activist who is calling for prayer in response to the state’s refusal to expand Obamacare, which funds abortion and sends taxapayer dollars to the abortion giant....

Archbishop Coakley sues satanic group to hand over consecrated Host.With one month to go before a satanic group in Oklahoma City a public “black mass,” the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is suing to force the group to hand over a consecrated Host it claims to have. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the District Court of Oklahoma County, claims Satanic leader Adam Daniels and his religious organization, the Dakhma of Angra Mainyu, have "unlawfully taken possession of property belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, specifically a Consecrated Host." Daniels, who has claimed publicly to have the Host, clarified in an interview...

You may remember Andrew Keegan as the teen dad on "7th Heaven," the bad boy Zach in "Camp Nowhere" or the high school heartthrob/jerk in "10 Things I Hate About You." But for many, he's now the leader of a "spiritual movement" in Los Angeles' Venice Beach. Vice reports that the 35-year-old has made a major career transition and is now overseeing the new-age church Full Circle. Though even the members don't seem super certain of the mission statement of the religion, there is a talking parrot named Krishna and a guy named Third Eye who greets you at the...

Not Christians or Shi’ites this time, but the Yazidis, whose numbers reach as high as 600,000 in Iraq — and dropping, especially in Sinjar. The sacking of Sinjar has forced the Yazidis to flee to nearby Mount Sinjar to escape brutal execution. What they face on the mountain is a death just as certain, though, and perhaps as torturous: Stranded on a barren mountaintop, thousands of minority Iraqis are faced with a bleak choice: descend and risk slaughter at the hands of the encircled Sunni extremists or sit tight and risk dying of thirst. Humanitarian agencies said Tuesday that between...

THE Iraqi and American authorities are rushing to arrange airdrops of food and water to the Yazidis as tens of thousands of followers of the secretive religion flee fundamentalist gunmen who took over the Iraqi town of Sinjar on August 3rd. A Yazidi elder reached by phone said they were trying to climb high enough into the nearby mountains that members of the Islamic State would not follow. ..Yazidis consider themselves a distinct ethnic and religious group from the Kurds with whom they live (and who consider them Kurdish). Their religion, which combines elements of Zoroastrianism with Sufi Islam and...

Okay, so I was challenged below: "Read the Bible! God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people." So....I may get crucified for this but I have started to say it -- most recently (terrified, trembling) to warm welcome in a synagogue in LA: Actually if you read Genesis Exodus and Deuteronomy in Hebrew -- as I do -- you see that God did not "give" Israel to the Jews/Israelites. We as Jews are raised with the creed that "God gave us the land of Israel" in Genesis -- and that ethnically 'we are the chosen people." But actually...

As I’ve thought about the issues of asking questions, faithful agitation, and looking for a much-needed change regarding gender inequality in the Church, I have come to the conclusion that we as a church don’t know all there is to know about God. None of that has to take away from the truthfulness of the Gospel, but the suggestion that the Church is perfect makes the declaration of having a living prophet seem a bit confusing. If there are not things that we are waiting to open our eyes to (which means God is waiting on us to ask him)...

An arraignment hearing has been set for a former BYU-UVU part-time faculty member charged with sexual abuse. Michio Zushi, 55, is set to appear on July 14 on charges of aggravated sexual abuse of a child after the victim recently came forward to talk to investigators. According to 4th District Court records, Zushi inappropriately touched her beneath her clothing. The incidents occurred between August 2010 and August 2011, and police arrested Zushi in March. Zushi taught Japanese calligraphy at both BYU and UVU but is no longer employed by either university following his arrest. If he is convicted, the presumptive...

Announcement: 9 November 1871 Groundbreaking and Site Dedication: 9 November 1871 by Brigham Young Private Dedication: 1 January 1877 by Wilford Woodruff, Erastus Snow, and Brigham Young Dedication: 6–8 April 1877 by Daniel H. Wells (with Brigham Young presiding) SNIP The St. George Utah Temple is the first temple where endowments for the dead were performed. The Founding Fathers of the United States of America appeared twice to Wilford Woodruff in the St. George Utah Temple asking why their temple work had yet not been performed on their behalves. A striking painting depicting this singular event hangs in the temple...

Archbishop Coakley calls on organizers to change plans.For the second time this year, a public “Black Mass” is being planned—this time in Oklahoma City. According to the Oklahoma City Civic Center website, the event is planned for Sept. 21. Tickets go on sale Wednesday. The website announces: "The Black Mass has been a feared ritual, and now it's being brought into the light! This will be not only enlightening but educational as well. This Black Mass will [be] conducted for the public to attend with certain adaptations to allow for a legal celebration." That includes clothing the "female altar," which...

Lawsuit claims teen girl was repeatedly abused by Mormon missionary in 1985 in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert.PALM SPRINGS – A lawsuit filed Friday against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a church bishop and a missionary, claims a woman was repeatedly sexually abused when she was a teenager in Rancho Mirage and Palm Desert, and it was covered up. The lawsuit, which was filed in Riverside County Superior Court in Palm Springs, contends that from July to November 1985, Jacqueline Tyler, then 13, was repeatedly abused by a missionary and that after a church bishop learned of...

In certain circles, it is popular to talk about the name Lao Tzu (or Laozi) having the dual meaning of "Old Master" and "Ancient Child." ...Another MeaningIn spoken Chinese, the two characters lao tzu can have another meaning when used in another context, but it's like absolutely nothing imagined by Western academics. In this other context, the tzu character looks the same but is pronounced in a different pitch. An English speaker probably won't be able to tell the difference. When pronounced this way, the meaning is 1) father and 2) a rude and crude way to refer to oneself....

In his landmark work Jesus the Christ, James E. Talmage spends several pages outlining the “high priest’s unrighteous adjuration” of the Savior. The Sanhedrin wanted so badly to not only stem the growth of Jesus’ growing disciples, but to take back control of what he continued to point out as a broken religious system of Pharisees, Sadducees, hypocrisy, judgment and adherence to outdated laws that ignored the heart of his message of love, tolerance and spiritual growth. Before I proceed, let me make it clear with those who are looking closely for opportunities to cry foul that I am not...

...The Herald Journal of Logan, Utah is running an online poll asking readers, “Would you support the excommunication of Mormon activists John Dehlin and Kate Kelly?” At the time of this writing, the “No” response outnumbered “Yes” by nearly 4 to 1. Mormon blogger Jana Riess is very troubled by the Church’s actions toward Kelly and Dehlin. She asked, “Are we looking at a Mormon purge?”... “If the point of these pending excommunications is to strike fear in the hearts of other Latter-day Saints who love the Church but do not always agree with it on matters of social justice,...

....From California to Virginia and states in between, more than a dozen Mormons interviewed in the past week said they had recently been informed by their bishops that they faced excommunication or risked losing permission to enter a temple because of comments they had made online about their faith, the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.SNIP "When it goes so far as creating organized groups, staging public events to further a cause, and creating literature for members to share in their local congregations," Otterson said, "the church has to protect the integrity of its doctrine as well as...

It may be called the "New Age Movement" but there is little new about it.In 2012 Barbara Marx Hubbard was the keynote speaker at the national assembly of the Leadership of Catholic Women Religious in the United States. The LWCR is the largest organization of Catholic sisters -- representing many different orders and over 57,000 nuns. Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had some blunt words to say about the American sisters’ choice of speaker when he addressed the leadership on April 30. Cardinal Müller voiced "increasing concern" about the LCWR's promotion of...

Cambridge, Mass., May 12, 2014 / 06:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A satanic black mass re-enactment being planned by a student group at Harvard University has been ‘postponed indefinitely’ and will not take place May 12. The news was announced by the school’s newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, just over an hour before the event was scheduled to occur May 12. Originally, the black mass re-enactment was to take place on campus, at a pub in the basement of Memorial Hall. The Harvard Crimson reported late on the afternoon of May 12 that the event had voluntarily been moved to The Middle...

Wicca, sometimes known as the Goddess movement, Goddess spirituality, or the Craft, appears to be the fastest-growing religion in America. Thirty years ago only a handful of Wiccans existed. One scholar has estimated that there are now more than 200,000 adherents of Wicca and related "neopagan" faiths in the United States, the country where neopaganism, like many formal religions, is most flourishing. Wiccans—who may also call themselves Witches (the capital W is meant to distance them from the word's negative connotations, because Wiccans neither worship Satan nor practice the sort of malicious magic traditionally associated with witches) or just plain...

The Ivy League continually sinks to shockingly low depths, but the latest news is particularly chilling. Today, the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club will host the Satanic Temple group as it reenacts a “Black Mass” on Harvard’s main campus. Just what is a “black mass”? Said to have been created in the Middle Ages by those who practiced witchcraft, the black mass is a Catholic Mass, except inverted — for example, Communion bread is desecrated and mocked. As for the New York–based Satanic Temple, it is the same group that recently proposed erecting a large statue of the devil beside...

Cambridge, Mass., May 9, 2014 / 12:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Harvard student group organizing a re-enactment of a satanic black mass on campus has dismissed Catholic critics, calling their views arrogant and their objections ignorant and intolerant. “Satanists have a ritual that they perform for their own affirmative reasons,” the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club told CNA May 8, adding that these reasons “currently have absolutely nothing to do with Catholicism beyond the symbols themselves.” “Offense is anachronistic and based on intolerance and ignorance about the practice (of) Satanism.” The club has faced controversy since it announced its plans...