Free Republic

Thirty-three Texas prisoners are graduating from a behind-bars seminary program this weekend -- part of an initiative producing what organizers say are the first "pastor inmates" in state history. Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who heads the chamber's Criminal Justice Committee, said 185 prisoners are working to earn college degrees in biblical studies, including Saturday's graduates. The program only offers Christian and biblical studies, is privately funded, and taught by professors from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary visiting prisons. Whitmire said Texas is "still the toughest state in the union" on violent offenders, but that the program has improved prisoner...

A priest had to fend off a robber trying to steal his iPad while he read outside a church in San Francisco. The 62-year-old priest was reading his iPad on the steps outside the Saint Teresa of Avila Church in the city’s Potrero Hill neighborhood around 9:45 p.m. when police say a suspect came up to him and grabbed it. The two struggled over the iPad, and the priest started yelling for help. The suspect let go of the iPad, but was able to swipe the priest’s iPhone that was sitting beside him on the steps before fleeing.

The notion that a rape victim deserved to be raped because she was wearing a tight outfit lights up all our red lights. This is the case first and foremost because it absolves the rapist of responsibility for his crime. Then too, attempts to blame a rape victim for her victimization infuriate us because they are substantively untrue. If men are more likely to rape women in tight clothing then rape should be all but non-existent in traditional Islamic societies. Yet the opposite is the case. Rape and sexual abuse are endemic to such societies. According to the UN, a...

A man suspected of vandalizing the St. Cloud Islamic Center had regularly attended prayer services there, St. Cloud Police said. The incident was reported at 4:48 a.m. Thursday on the 300 block of Fifth Avenue South in St. Cloud. It happened while prayer services were taking place inside. The front door window of the Islamic Center and a window of a nearby car were broken, police said. Witnesses chased a man and detained him for police. Officers determined that the windows had been broken with a basketball-sized plaster ball that is artwork. The suspect made the piece and obtained it...

Pointing approvingly to an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal by House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R.-Texas), Senate Environment Chairman Jim Inhofe (R.-Okla.) said on the Senate floor yesterday that global warming alarmists are advancing a new religious sect. “Global warming alarmism has evolved into a religion where one is either an alarmist or a skeptic,” Inhofe said. “The modern-day religion of climate change has been very artful in establishing and controlling carefully scripted talking points intended to scare the American people under the guise of environmental protectionism,” said Inhofe. …

A Chinese province where authorities have forcibly removed hundreds of rooftop crosses from Protestant and Catholic churches has proposed a ban on any further placement of the religious symbol atop sanctuaries. The draft, if approved, would give authorities in the eastern province of Zhejiang solid legal grounds to remove rooftop crosses. Since early 2014, Zhejiang officials have toppled crosses from more than 400 churches, sometimes resulting in violent clashes with congregation members. They have said the crosses violate building codes, but critics say the rapid growth of Christian groups have made the ruling Communist Party nervous.“The authorities have attached great...

The people of Israel wanted a king. They heard of the nations around them, and they were told that these nations had strong central governments. Each was led by a king, who embodied the power, prestige, and glory of his nation-state. The system of civil rule in Israel at this time was based on decentralized tribes. Each tribe had a system of judges. There was no legislature. There was no central civil government. Samuel was both a priest and a civil judge. Representatives of the people of Israel came to him and asked him to anoint someone to serve as...

We’re at a turning point. I genuinely believe that this is a moment on which we’ll reflect… and the people who refused to fight back, who refused to run a damn cartoon, will find themselves on the wrong side of history. WARNING: Mildly Offensive Language DOUBLE WARNING: Video EXTREMELY offensive to Muslims.

A priest, a rabbi, and a violinist sing a beautiful song. No punchline.

Question: A friend of mine has been reading the Left Behind books that have all of this stuff about the “Rapture” in them. Is there really going to be a “Rapture” like these books talk about?   Answer: No.The “Rapture” refers to a passage in First Thessalonians 4, where Christians are “caught up” in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” Many Christians believe, and the Left Behind books promote, that this being “caught up” to meet the Lord will occur before the Great Tribulation sometime in the near future. Christians will simply vanish, meet Jesus somewhere in the...

NEW ORLEANS —Kenneth Green was only 56 years old.He was a loving husband, father and the senior pastor of Greater Saint Mary Baptist Church in Algiers. Sunday, he collapsed and died in the middle of his sermon.Joan Martin was sitting in the pew, and broke down in tears."He took a swallow of water, before he took water he wiped his face, and then he looked up and it looked like his eyes were rolled back, like there was no life in his eyes, and he tumbled over. Everybody was in a state of shock people were crying," said Martin.She said...

Is this the face of Jesus as a boy? Italian police reverse the ageing process on image taken from the Turin Shroud to create photo-fit of Christ as a young child This is the face of Jesus Christ as a child – according to Italian police. Detectives used computer forensic techniques that have helped to catch mafia bosses to generate the image. First, they created a photo-fit picture from the facial image in the Turin Shroud, which many believe to be that of Jesus. They then used a computer program to reverse the ageing process by reducing the jaw size,...

An international team of astronomers led by Yale University and the University of California-Santa Cruz have pushed back the cosmic frontier of galaxy exploration to a time when the universe was only 5% of its present age. The team discovered an exceptionally luminous galaxy more than 13 billion years in the past and determined its exact distance from Earth using the powerful MOSFIRE instrument on the W.M. Keck Observatory's 10-meter telescope, in Hawaii. It is the most distant galaxy currently measured. The galaxy, EGS-zs8-1, was originally identified based on its particular colors in images from NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space...

MSM: CBS Reporter Provoked Rape in Cairo We are now in an environment where it is no longer safe to openly blame the perpetrators of violent acts committed by religious extremists. The official party narrative, as postulated by the state-sponsored media, is that the victims of these heinous acts are responsible for provoking their attackers. Viewed in this light, it is time to rethink whether we should allow our women to venture out into public alone, especially those without a head-covering. Remember Lara Logan, the female CBS reporter who was raped in Tahrir Square during the Cairo protests? She was...

“Todd Myers is an eco-mythbuster. He exposes trends among modern environmentalists that are based more on ‘feel-good’ sentimentality than on scientific reality. If you truly care about the environment, then you should read this book.” Alex B. Berezow, Ph.D., Editor of RealClearScience.com Wherever we turn, politicians, businesses and activists are promoting the latest fashionable “green” policy or product. Green buildings, biofuels, electric cars, compact fluorescent lightbulbs and a variety of other technologies are touted as the next key step in protecting the environment and promoting a sustainable future. Increasingly, however, scientific and economic information regarding environmental problems takes a back...

Somehow this just struck me.....the government is attempting to FORCE believers in Jesus to celebrate a perversion of their DEEPLY HELD religious beliefs. Why aren't Muslims being forced to celebrate and/or create depictions of their prophet? I wouldn't want the government to do that, just like I don't want it inflicting anti-Christian beliefs upon Christians.

The graffiti on a building in Belgium says it all: "Welcome to 'Belgistan." In fact, some are now calling it the Muslim capital of Europe.

The Vatican has gathered religious leaders, scientists, politicians and businessmen under one roof to agree that acting on climate change is a "moral and religious imperative for humanity". This was the essence of a declaration signed by the attendees of a one-day meeting hosted yesterday by the Holy See. It outlines a vision for the future of the planet, including the adoption of low-carbon energy systems, a shift of investment away from the military and towards sustainable development, and the transfer of money from the rich to the poor. The meeting was organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and...

When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah's prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible. Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity. This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of...

Is nonconformity and freethinking a mental illness? According to the newest edition of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), it certainly is. The manual identifies a new mental illness called “oppositional defiant disorder” or ODD. Defined as an “ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior,” symptoms include questioning authority, negativity, defiance, argumentativeness, and being easily annoyed.