Free Republic

"Midtown Manhattan cathedral engulfed in flames: 'Irreplaceable' 160-year-old Orthodox Christian church is consumed by fire" A 160-year-old Orthodox Christian cathedral in New York has been completely destroyed after a huge fire tore through it on Sunday The blaze broke out at the Serbian Cathedral of Saint Sava on 25th Street in Manhattan's Flatiron district at around 7pm. It is not known how the fire started, though it is believed to have broken out on the first floor of the building before consuming the interior and roof. An FDNY spokesman said that nobody was believed to be inside the building at...

A huge fire has engulfed a Serbian Orthodox Church in downtown Manhattan, on the day that Orthodox Christians are celebrating the Holy Easter.

Russians are becoming more and more religious, according to a poll by state survey company WCIOM. More Russians claimed they relied on divine help or intervention and more believed in predetermined fate than they did 25 years ago.

The Babylon Bee | Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire. Home Celebs CelebsMinistriesU.S. The Power Of Positive Declarations: Joel Osteen Can Now Fly February 28, 2016 HOUSTON, TX—Joel Osteen, celebrity senior pastor of Lakewood Church, has been proclaiming the life-changing power of regular, vocal, positive declarations and self-affirmations for years, and for just as long has pointed to his own life and accomplishments as irrefutable evidence of their efficacy. “My primary residence has more elevators than your house has bathrooms,” he told churchgoers in a recent sermon. “And do you know why? It’s because I declared it would happen....

My adolescence was a social nightmare.... .... I didn’t utter the word “gay” to describe myself until I was 19 years old, and no one prior to that time knew about my so-called sexual orientation. ....Fast-forward six years...I found myself a Christian in a new community: the church. Though my soul’s deepest need (reconciliation with God) was satisfied through being united to Jesus, the relational sphere of my life remained strangled by insecurity... .... I lingered in the shadows...attending services and then quickly escaping.... I began to sneak out of the building when some guy literally began to yell my...

Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who oversaw a warming of relations with the Communist government and played a role in the secret negotiations that led to U.S.-Cuba detente, has stepped down, the Vatican announced Tuesday. He is being replaced....

Religious groups ‘must adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party’ – Pres. Xi Jinping 24 April 2016 13:03 • AFP Chinese religious groups must obey the staunchly atheist ruling Communist Party, President Xi Jinping has told a key meeting on religion according to state media, as Beijing tightens controls on civil society organisations and churches. “Religious groups… must adhere to the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC),” Xi told senior party officials at a conference ending on Saturday, the official Xinhua news agency said. But party members must be “unyielding Marxist atheists”, he said, calling on them...

The left has always had great admiration for the conscientious objector. I know something about that because I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s when the Vietnam War was being fought. Some people refused to serve in the war because of their deeply held religious beliefs. To those on the right they were cowards. To those on the left they were heroes. As the son of a military officer I got one side of the story. As a student in the public schools I got the other. My teachers did their best to convince me there...

“I’m a very spiritual person and I’m really open to learning,” the Catholic-born actress told The Sun on her conversion to Islam. Lohan, 29, who was spotted carrying a copy of the Koran while tending to her community service in New York last summer, also said there’s more to the text than what many people have been led to believe. And you can totally trust Lindsay when it comes to the Koran because it’s not like she’s walking around preaching about it without even reading the whole thing. Who does that? “I’m not done reading it. Do you know how...

Citing “religious liberty” as a reason for denying one class of citizens bathroom access, equal housing or services is a human rights violation. That’s the finding of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an independent, bipartisan agency that advises the president and Congress on civil rights matters.

Few influences affect a man’s heart for God more than his wife, for better or for worse. She will either encourage his spiritual devotion to the Lord or she will hinder it. She will either enlarge his passion for God or she will pour cold water on it. What kind of wife encourages her husband’s spiritual growth? Proverbs 31:10–31 provides a profile of the wife who is worthy of her husband’s trust. Such a wife is the embodiment of true wisdom from God, causing the husband to confide in her with complete trust.“An excellent wife who can find? She is...

“I have found the greatest power in the world is the power of prayer.” Cecil B. Demille Hollywood Prayer Network (HPN) is a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization led by entertainment industry Christians, seeking to impact our culture for Christ through prayer. We are committed to asking Christians everywhere to pray for the artists and professionals, projects and productions, and global impact of Hollywood: the world’s most influential mission field. With an attitude of love, it is our passion to mobilize people around the world to engage in culture, pray for the media, and help transform the spiritual climate of Hollywood. Whether...

Textbooks in Pakistan that are used to teach about 41 million children, negatively portray religious minorities such as Christians and Hindus, referring to them as "nefarious, violent, and tyrannical by nature." (Reuters/Kham)Third-grade level students attend class at the Mashal Model School on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. "Pakistan's public school textbooks contain deeply troubling content that portrays non-Muslim citizens as outsiders, unpatriotic, and inferior; are filled with errors; and present widely-disputed historical 'facts' as settled history," said Robert George in a press release. George is the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). A study done by...

I was a registered Libertarian for twelve years. While I probably still agree with much of what the party stands for, I left the Libertarians for the same reason I grow weary of the Republican Party: its philosophy, to the extent it has one, is sterile. By sterile, I mean its lack of appeal to higher law and our nobler passions. For instance, the libertarian assertion that my rights only go so far as to not impinge on those of others is all well and good. However, without at least introducing why this is so, that our rights are gifts...

An update on Dr. Sproul's health: He is currently in the hospital near his home in Florida and is receiving steroids intravenously at his pulmonologist's recommendation. His breathing has been difficult over the past several months. We are encouraged that his vital metrics are good and the chest X-ray was clear showing no signs of pneumonia. He is getting expert care from the medical staff and they will continue to observe his progress and see how he responds to treatment. Please keep the Sproul family in your prayers.

Tough luck, pastafarians. You'll just have to go back to being annoying, dressing like pirates, and pretending to worship a wad of noodles without any of the protections of a real religion As Dan and I have written several times, militant atheists are so obsessed with a thing they don’t believe in - namely faith - that they spend much of their time thinking up creative ways to mock it. This makes them feel clever, superior, and better than the neanderthals that believe in a higher power. If they actually got their wish, and religion became a thing of the...

Radio host Glenn Beck told his audience last month that Ted Cruz was “anointed for this time.” Beck also brought a fasting child on stage in Utah and declared, “This is the priesthood rising.” On his television program last week, Beck told his studio audience that he sent an encouraging note to Ted Cruz a couple weeks back because nobody knows what it is like to carry the Moses-like burden that Cruz bears. Transcript via RWW: “Imagine being in a position to where you believe it, you believe the country is at the end, you believe that God is telling...

Politics Socialism’s Lonely Eden by Chad Ashby March 22, 2016 The rise of Bernie Sanders this election cycle has American voters dusting off an old question: What is socialism? In 2016, the Cold War is a distant memory, and many millennial voters were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a political race shaped by tweets and sound bytes, it’s tempting to think socialism is just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of liberal policies like free college, universal healthcare, wealth redistribution, and tax plans. Such assumptions suggest that socialism is misunderstood in the 21st century—in fact, even...

SENATOR Ted Cruz may be dubbed the most despised man in Washington but he is certain God wants him to be the next president of the US. snip What is disconcerting is the paradox that such a religious person as Cruz can attract such hatred. If you think hatred is a strong word this is what Cruz’s college room-mate says of him: “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.” In case the US did not get the message, Craig Mazin – now a scriptwriter...

Attending the School of God from R.C. Sproul Apr 09, 2016 Category: Articles We live in a culture that is a quick and dirty culture. We want to become mature Christians in five easy lessons. We want to become saints by fifteen minutes a day. We want to have flat stomachs and strong abs by three workouts a week. That may work over a given period of time for your abs, but it’s not going to work for your soul. Attending the school of God takes time and labor and energy and deeply committing oneself to prayer, to the study of...