Free Republic

According to Grey Matter Research, Americans think our country is far more religiously diverse than it actually is. In a survey of 747 adults the research and consulting firm found that most underestimated the size of Christianity and over-estimated the size of atheists, Muslims, and other religious minorities. “The typical American adult pegs religious affiliation in the U.S. as follows:  24% Catholic, 20% Protestant, 19% unaffiliated, 9% Jewish, 9% atheist or agnostic, 7% Muslim, 7% Mormon, and 5% from all other religious groups. In reality, according to the 2008 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Americans...

It’s been five years in the making and this morning the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Orlando, Florida will become Catholic.At a Mass of Reception at 10:15 a.m. Sunday, September 16, the Cathedral of the Incarnation, which was formerly associated with the Anglican Church of America, will become the Parish of Incarnation—joining about twenty other former Anglican or Episcopal congregations to be accepted in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, the personal ordinariate established as a home for Anglican converts to Catholicism in the US and Canada.Monsignor Jeffrey N. Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop who now leads...

There shall be circumstantial differences in exchanges between the Holy Ones now and in this convening ALL things shall be made "NEW" in that a "ONENESS" shall be "Made Known" and become obvious to ALL in TRUE UNITY of and for The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth . John 5:32 New King James Version (NKJV) 32 There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true.

A recently released study by a Christian research organization shows that most churchgoers do not read or study the Bible on a daily basis. The findings of the Transformational Discipleship Assessment released by LifeWay Research noted that 19 percent of respondents report reading or studying the Bible outside of church "every day." By contrast, 36 percent of respondents said that they either engage the Bible "once a week," "once a month," or "a few times a month." Eighteen percent reported rarely or never reading or studying the Bible outside of worship. Scott McConnell, director of LifeWay Research, told The Christian...

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., a privately held retail chain with 22,500 employees led by a Christian family, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, opposing the Health and Human Services "preventive services" mandate, the company announced Wednesday. The company becomes the largest and only non-Catholic-owned business to file a lawsuit against the government's contraception mandate. The company's CEO and founder, David Green, said Wednesday that the mandate would force the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the "morning after pill" and "week after pill" in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines...

Pittsburgh Presbytery is poised to vote on a plan that would allow congregations to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) with their buildings if they first engage in an open discernment process and negotiate a settlement with the presbytery. [SNIP] Over the past decade the Presbyterian Church (USA) has lost 195 theologically conservative congregations in disputes over biblical interpretation and sexual morality. Up to 600 are estimated to be in process to follow them, according to The Presbyterian Lay Committee, a conservative group. The denomination has 1.9 million members in 11,000 congregations. In 2007 Pittsburgh Presbytery lost three congregations to the...

Profound changes are about to come upon My Bride and body of Christ in a universal manner as never before . Worship shall ascend to a higher level "and must" to continue the work of the Gospel and to implement Kingdom Regime as My Father has intended it to be " on Earth as it IS in Heaven " for the Latter Rain is about to descend and ascend together "AS ONE" in places I ordain "as the Body of Christ " and it shall flow "AS ONE BODY" no matter where My Children reside and nothing I say "NOTHING"...

The governing boards of both Lutheran Social Services (LSS) and Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis (CC) think the proposed photo-ID-to-vote requirement ought to be rejected. LSS has taken the rare step of asking Lutheran congregations in Minnesota to insert a position statement into Sunday-morning worship bulletins. CC's Office of Social Justice is contacting parishes offering information and even a skit to get their message across. Why should nonpartisan, faith-based social service organizations care about whether a would-be voter needs to wave a government-issued ID card to get a ballot at the polls? It's because such a requirement would...

"Cry Out America," which is part of the Awakening America Alliance, has scheduled a national prayer event for Sept. 11, 2012, in memorial of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that targeted America. The initiative, which seeks to proclaim the Gospel and strengthen America's unity through prayer and faith in God, will be held across several U.S. cities. "At the time the terrorist attack happened, everybody was coming together. And now they're separated again, so we need to come together more often and ... pray for one another all the time. But we really need to remember that...

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched a major attack on his critics in the Government and Church of England months before he leaves office.For almost 10 years he has endured a simultaneous barrage of criticism from those who say he should not meddle in politics and those who argue that when he talks about the Bible he becomes “irrelevant”. This week the Archbishop of Canterbury issues a challenge to critics in a book which he introduces with a warning that he has become “resilient” and even “rebellious”. Faith in the Public Square is a collection of lectures from his decade...

The outgoing leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans suggested a form of job share after admitting that he had failed to do enough to prevent a split over homosexuality. Dr Williams said a new role should be created to oversee the day to day running of the global Anglican communion, leaving future Archbishops of Canterbury free to focus on spiritual leadership and leading the Church of England. In his last major interview before he steps down later his year, he acknowledged that he had struggled to balance the growing demands of the job at home and abroad and admitted...

Perhaps you don’t know it: in northern Europe many people think that the "spread", the difference between the interest rate for the soverign debt of his own "virtuous" country and the rate for those countries in a sorry state to the south, is the fruit of a Catholic sin. In German the word “Schuld”, for debt, also means ‘fault’. This semantic nuance reflects profound cultural differences and helps to better understand the distrust – or prejudice – of some nations of northern Europe towards countries considered members of a blithe "Club Med". The spread between Spanish and Italian bonds on...

The First Presbyterian Church Adult Education Program, partnering with the Peace Islands Institute (formerly the Interfaith Dialog Center of New Jersey), will once again hold its popular series on the Qur'an and its teachings beginning Sept. 16. The eight-week program will cover Muslim culture, history and traditions and will present a unique educational opportunity to read the Qur'an in an environment designed to promote respect and mutual understanding of all faiths and cultures. All faiths are invited to participate and the program is free. The First Presbyterian Church in Rutherford, in an effort to bring people of different faiths together,...

"The following was submitted to my second favorite apologetics ministry Apologetics315, it is about my most favorite apologetics site, how I started an apologetics program at my church and will be featured here along with many other fabulous testimonies and resources to help you get apologetics into your church. ________________________________ Hello there, my name is Damon Whitsell. I am a member of, and now long dreamed of Apologetics teacher at, Grace Community Baptist Church in Dayton Texas. Although I have studied General and Christian Cult Apologetics since 1985 and have been DOING Apologetics online and in life since 1998 because...

Apparently, there are a few nitwits who still believe in the hopey-changey crapola. An Obama calendar sold in Charlotte this week compares the failed president to Jesus Christ. Here is the August 2013 page from the “Keep the Dream Alive” calendar:(IMAGE AT LINK)There’s even a video to accompany the calendar:(VIDEO AT LINK) What part of “worst jobs president since the Great Depression” do they not understand?

Rev Alan Wilson, the Bishop of Buckingham, suggested accepting same-sex unions could “potentially enrich” the institution of marriage. His comments further inflamed the debate between church leaders after he called on them to “get our head around blessing gay people’s relationships.” Dr Wilson, who has been an outspoken advocate of the Prime Minister’s plans to legalise gay marriage, broadcast his message in a three-minute clip on YouTube...He said: “It all comes down to how we see gay people and how we see God "We don't actually believe gay people are sick or stunted or criminal. We don't believe God is...

>When asked what he had learned from his years of studying the Bible, the great Swiss Reformed theologian of grace Karl Barth responded, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” The title of Tullian Tchividjian’s award-winning book, Jesus+Nothing=Everything, offers in similar Barthian fashion a reminder that the Christian faith is not a worldview, political philosophy, social program, or a family values agenda. It is belief in the promises of God fulfilled in the Word of God, Jesus Christ. Tullian is the grandson of Billy Graham and Senior Pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort...

Our church was recently hit with a high-ranking moral tragedy. It was discovered that a staff member (and close friend) was engaging in marital infidelity. I was both shocked and saddened. I didn't see it coming. None of us did. Of all the crises I've faced and had to deal with over the last 17 years of pastoral ministry, this was a first for me. I have dealt on numerous occasions with husbands and wives in the throes of an extramarital affair, but never a staff member. Never someone this close to me. It'll take me a long time to...

One of the great battle cries of the Protestant Reformation was “sola scriptura!” Many thought that the Catholic Church had cluttered up the simple Christian faith by adding all sorts of practices, customs and doctrines over the centuries. They thought the Church in their day was guilty of exactly the same Pharisaical obsession with traditions condemned by Jesus in this Sunday’s gospel (Mark 7:1-23). The solution, it seemed, was simple. Let’s purify the Church by ditching all these traditions and keeping the Bible alone. But if we read this portion of the Bible closely, the Lord is not telling us...

Justin Taylor recently revived Mark Dever’s 2007 series of articles titled “Where’d All These New Calvinists Come From?” This was a ten-part series that looked to the rise of New Calvinism and sought to discover the sources of a theological resurgence. Dever said, Of course, theologically, the answer is “because of the sovereignty of God.” But I’ve never been convinced by hyper-Calvinism’s argument that because God has determined the ends, the means don’t matter. Means do matter. And as a Christian, as an historian who had lived through the very change I was considering, I wondered what factors had been used...