Free Republic

Pastor James Brown Jr. of the Covenant Baptist Church in Barnesville, Ga., wants his state legislature to pass a bill that permits churchgoers to carry firearms to worship at his church. Joining him in the effort is Pastor Joe Morecraft of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Cumming, Ga. And the campaign is just getting started. The bill, HB 54, was introduced in late January by Republican state Rep. Bobby Franklin, who serves the state's 43rd district. If passed, it will repeal a section of a law prohibiting individuals from carrying guns in a church setting. Currently, the state's "Common Sense Lawful...

After the Black Rascal and Bear Creek homeless encampments were closed in October, some of the homeless were offered a place to live at the Sierra Presbyterian Church. But since then, neighbors living near the church on M Street have complained about the encampments being so close to their homes. Some have repeatedly asked the Merced City Council for help. Now they may get their wish. The homeless who have been living at the Presbyterian Church in North Merced have been asked to find new living arrangements. The church has given them until Sunday to leave. The eight or nine...

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging it failed to prevent the sexual abuse of a teenager by an older teen at an African mission boarding house in 1988. The Louisville-based denomination says the suit should be barred under the statute of limitations because it happened so long ago — a stance the plaintiff's lawyer calls "hypocritical," following a church commission's recommendation that the church lobby against such statutes. Meanwhile, federal authorities in Florida have filed child-pornography charges against the alleged perpetrator in the lawsuit. Samuel Shamba Warlick, 39, of Oviedo, Fla., was charged Jan....

The First Presbyterian Church of Rutherford has partnered with the Interfaith Dialog Center (IDC) of New Jersey to present a unique educational opportunity for the community to read the Qur'an in an environment designed to promote respect and mutual understanding of all faiths and cultures. Participants will read the Qur'an from cover to cover over a period of 10 weeks and are invited and encouraged to attend weekly one-hour discussions led by IDC experts on the assigned surahs (or chapters). The sessions are designed to review the week's readings, explore similarities and differences with the Bible and foster meaningful discussion....

...This brings us to the Presbyterian Church, which has historically held that the gift of tongues was limited to the generation of Christ’s apostles and has since then ceased ....The Presbyterian position on tongues, as well as the “sensational gifts” (interpretation of tongues, healing, prophecy, miracles, etc…) differs sharply from the Pentecostal view at a fundamental philosophical level...Unlike Pentecostals, Presbyterians do not look at the events of Acts as being normative for what the church should expect to experience in every generation. To the contrary, Presbyterians interpret Acts as the history of the birth of the church, not a pattern...

The Presbyterian Church in America commissioned a report, which was given to their 28th General Assembly in 2000. The report considered several possible interpretations of the days in Genesis 1, including: Calendar-Day view (6 literal consecutive 24-hour days) Day-Age view (each "day" represents a long period of time) Framework (the 6 "days" are a framework for portraying God's creative work) Analogic (similar to the day-age view, but not identical to it) Each of these were considered in detail, and the report gives the strength of each view, and the objections to each. A few other views were considered briefly. The...

In Geneva, 450 years ago, a new version of the Bible in English began to come off the printing presses. For the first time, English-speaking people in the British Isles could purchase a Bible in their own tongue translated, in its entirety, directly from the original Hebrew and Greek – a notable milestone on the road begun by William Tyndale, who famously intended to make it possible for a ploughboy to know more of the Scripture than the learned man who claimed that it was better to be without God’s law than the Pope’s. Tyndale was to find it impossible...

On Jan. 16, Dr. Ali Chaudry will be speaking at the Eleventh Hour Spreakers program (11 a.m.) following the morning worship service at the Presbyterian Church in Westfield.

This past week the Missouri Presbytery exonerated Jeffery Meyers on all counts basically denying that he is a Federal Visionist. This in spite of the fact that Meyers, along with his assistant pastor Mark Horne, was a signer of the Joint Federal Vision Profession of Faith. You can read the MO Pres’ statement clearing Meyers here. In every instance the MO Pres concluded there was “insufficient evidence to raise a strong presumption of guilt that TE Meyers is teaching contrary to the Westminster Standards.” So, for a quick review of just a few of the many notable exceptions to the...

The Christian tradition that emerged from John Wesley’s eighteenth-century Methodist movement has developed several branches. One of them is called the Wesleyan Church, and I was born into a family in that denomination. My parents met at a Bible college in Oskaloosa, Iowa. My father was studying to be a minister, and my mother was there to pick a husband out of the pool of future preachers.Dad’s family was predominately Wesleyan. As Wesleyans, we believed in being born again. We boiled it down to the ABCs. A: Accept Jesus as Savior. B: Believe He died for you, personally, on...

I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard this year’s GA will entertain an overture requesting the BCO be adapted to allow ordination of female deacons. Actually, I just didn’t want to believe my ears. This overture should really come as no surprise. My pastor along with other friends in the PCA have been predicting it for years based on previous compromises within our denomination on issues like the Lord’s Day, Subscription, etc. Now it’s here. Let’s examine it. I have copied the supporting argument directly from the body of Overture 9, which is in bold below, and have added...

Response to the Elders' Letter of January 20, 1996 PCA are the true separatists and schismatics.. Historical Introduction I and my family were formerly members of a small, conservative congregation in the denomination known as the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). The following letters, sent in February and September of 1996, were part of my explanation and justification of our separation from them and from the PCA. The earlier letter (about two-thirds of which is reproduced here) marked the climax of my attempts to convince the session [1] of that church of their departure, both congregationally and denominationally, from the...

In the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) and the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) the controversy has been especially painful because the Federal Vision teachings have been adopted by a number of pastors and elders, who by their teaching and example, have turned whole congregations away from the doctrines of Scripture and the Westminster Standards on crucial gospel issues The committee points out that in regard to the doctrine of justification more narrowly considered, FV problems include a failure to affirm the imputation of Christ’s active obedience along with a redefinition of faith that merges Christ’s trust in the Father with...

Chapter XVI Of Good Works I. Good works are only such as God has commanded in His holy Word,[1] and not such as, without the warrant thereof, are devised by men, out of blind zeal, or upon any pretence of good intention.[2] II. These good works, done in obedience to God's commandments, are the fruits and evidences of a true and lively faith:[3] and by them believers manifest their thankfulness,[4] strengthen their assurance,[5] edify their brethren,[6] adorn the profession of the Gospel,[7] stop the mouths of the adversaries,[8] and glorify God,[9] whose workmanship they are, created in Christ Jesus thereunto,[10]...

Denominations and Christian Truth Question: I have a question about Christianity. I once heard that there are thousands of different Christian denominations. The exact number is not important. Each denomination has its own, unique interpretation of the Bible, and each denomination asserts that its interpretation is the correct one. Not every denomination can be right; someone has to be wrong. With respect to the OPC and John Calvin, how do you know that the OPC's interpretation is the correct one? Answer: It was Solomon who wrote "this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have...

In shopping around for a Cub Scout program for their two sons, ages 6 and 8, Jeremy and Jodi Stokes decided on the one at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews. The Stokes, also of Matthews, weren't members of the evangelical megachurch, but they had many friends who were. And unlike the Cub Scout pack at their own church, which doesn't have a program for 6-year-old Tiger Scouts, Christ Covenant's was big enough to accommodate both of their boys. The couple even signed up to be Scout leaders - he would lead the Bears, she'd help with the Tigers - when...

Bingo in the Buff By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, Posted Wednesday, October 6, 2010 “This is not your grandmother’s bingo,” says Marcus Wise, a writer for ArtVoice, a Buffalo, N.Y. area Web publication. Wise’s article, written in 2008, refers to Saturday night games that are now being played at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, home of “Buff Bingo.” The players’ pitch is clearly intended to attract Buffalo’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender population. But – true to management’s professed inclusiveness – “the crowd averages half and half,” according to the event’s hostess and drag queen Gladys Over. Wise describes Gladys as...

Though clearly regretful, a local division of the Presbyterian Church USA decided Friday to rebuke a Bay Area minister who performed wedding ceremonies for at least 16 same-sex couples during the five months in 2008 in which it was legal to do so. The Permanent Judicial Commission of the Napa-based Presbytery of the Redwoods said it thought its hands were tied by the denominational constitution's same-sex marriage ban. After a three-day trial that included testimony from 11 of the Bay Area couples the Rev. Jane Adams Spahr married, five of whom live in the East Bay, the commission profusely praised...

For the nineteenth consecutive year, the U.S. Assemblies of God has reported a gain in inclusive membership. According to the National Council of Churches' 2010 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, the AG grew 1.27 percent for the reporting year to 2,863,265. Joining the Assemblies of God in growth were Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), up 1.76 percent; the Catholic Church, up 1.49 percent; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, up 1.71 percent; and Jehovah Witness, up 2 percent.The report, which is based on statistics gathered in 2008 and reported in 2009, ==snip== Of significance, the Assemblies of...

July 23, 2010NEWS FEATURE Christians examine morality of birth control By Kristen Moulton (RNS) Is contraception a sin? The very suggestion made Bryan Hodge and his classmates at Chicago’s Moody Bible Institute laugh. As his friends scoffed and began rebutting the oddball idea, Hodge found himself on the other side, poking holes in their arguments. He finished a bachelor’s degree in biblical theology at Moody and earned a master’s degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Now, more than a decade later, he is trying to drive a hole the size of the ark through what has become conventional wisdom among...