Free Republic

The Department of Justice today filed a statement of interest in a Colorado federal court supporting the First Amendment religious freedom claims of High Plains Harvest Church and its pastor. The statement of interest is part of Attorney General William P. Barr's April 27, 2020 initiative directing Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Eric Dreiband, and the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Matthew Schneider, to review state and local policies to ensure that civil liberties are protected during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Especially during a crisis like this, the ability of people of faith to be able to exercise...

PITTSBURGH, PA—A rowdy gang of angry, riled-up Arminian believers gathered to pull down a statue of Reformer John Calvin standing in front of Calvin Reformed Bible College & Seminary, authorities confirmed Friday. The band of Wesleyan troublemakers brought a rope, lassoed it around the neck of the stone likeness of Calvin, and yanked it down while yelling rallying cries like “Down with limited atonement!” “You’ll never take our free will!” and “For Servetus!” Mob members then stomped on the statue and spray-painted crude Arminian slogans on the downed Reformer, according to police reports. “We encourage all citizens to stay indoors...

Amidst the loneliness and suffering caused by the extended lockdowns, Americans have an opportunity to reconnect with their Creator. It seems to be part of human nature to postpone, for as long as possible, a realistic appraisal of looming catastrophe. At the start of the U.S. Civil War, both sides were so certain of a short, bloodless conflict that the first battle at Manassas was attended by hundreds of holiday picnickers from nearby Washington. Some sipped champagne, hoping to catch a glance what they assumed would be fleeting hostilities.The initial U.S. response to COVID-19 followed a similar pattern, as many...

George Washington dictated a "talk" to the Cherokee Nation, August 29, 1796: “Beloved Cherokees, The wise men of the United States meet together once a year, to consider what will be for the good of all their people ... I have thought that a meeting of your wise men once or twice a year would be alike useful to you ... I now send my best wishes to the Cherokees, and pray the Great Spirit to preserve them.” Twelve of the original 13 states sent delegates to Philadelphia. (Rhode Island boycotted the Convention.) Instead of rewriting the Articles of Confederation,...

Christian leaders who were quick to break social distancing guidelines to stand with Black Lives Matter protesters appear loathe to fight back against the ban on church services. American Christians saw something these past two weeks we’re not used to: People standing for their beliefs in the face of coronavirus.In cities and towns nationwide, millions crowded streets and parks, marching, singing and for some after dark, rioting. Many had been sheltered in place for nearly three months, carefully avoiding their neighbors, watching Netflix, wearing pajamas, and when outside, fleeing into busy streets for fear of unmasked joggers.But this — this...

Why did so many evangelicals turn out to vote for Donald Trump, a serial philanderer with questionable conservative credentials who seems to defy Christian values with his every utterance? To a reporter like Sarah Posner, who has been covering the religious right for decades, the answer turns out to be far more intuitive than one might think. In this taut inquiry, Posner digs deep into the radical history of the religious right to reveal how issues of race and xenophobia have always been at the movement’s core, and how religion often cloaked anxieties about perceived threats to a white, Christian...

The religion of anti-racism proved itself the only force in American discourse powerful enough to end the lockdown.Every once in a while, something happens that is simultaneously absolutely amazing and perfectly predictable. This past week, one of those instances occurred as months of brutal lockdown meant to fight the Chinese virus melted away on the streets of our nation’s cities. In the wake of the brutal police killing of George Floyd, the only thing more powerful in the progressive mind than stopping the virus emerged. Racism. For many Americans, especially among the affluent, celebrity, and opinion-making portion of the population,...

After four days of civil unrest in Chicago and its suburbs, Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on Tuesday turned to religious and community leaders to urge protesters to channel anger over the death of George Floyd toward efforts for criminal justice reform and economic development in minority communities. “What’s very important to me is that we establish an agenda — an agenda that’s led, in part, by the very peaceful protesters that are out on the streets, that were there protesting last night, the night before and the night before, the folks who were there...

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1.  Policy.  (a)  Religious freedom, America’s first freedom, is a moral and national security imperative.  Religious freedom for all people worldwide is a foreign policy priority of the United States, and the United States will respect and vigorously promote this freedom.  As stated in the 2017 National Security Strategy, our Founders understood religious freedom not as a creation of the state, but as a gift of God to every person and a right that is fundamental...

President Donald Trump went to church Monday. That isn’t exactly accurate. There was no chorus of worship, no corporate prayer, no holy reverence, no gathering of believers, and thus no church. Just the leader of the free world and the charred, boarded-up shell of a building, marred with fire at the hands of mutinous rogues. Amid nationwide protests and riots over the needless death of George Floyd at the hands of dishonorable officers, the president stood outside the vandalized historic structure. St. John’s Episcopal Church isn’t the only desolate house of worship today. Church buildings across America stand as empty...

A senior Army chaplain earlier this month emailed other chaplains the text of “Coronavirus and Christ,” a brief book by famed author, podcaster, and pastor John Piper. The command chaplain of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea, Col. Moon H. Kim, wrote in his email: “This book has helped me refocus my sacred calling to my savior Jesus Christ to finish strong. Hopefully this small booklet would help you and your Soldiers, their Families, and others who you serve.”This email and the attached book have led to complaints from 22 other chaplains, who’ve enlisted the help of the Military...

It would be one thing if a famous pastor renounced his faith or if a greatly loved worship leader said she no longer believed. I could understand why this would be big news, and I could understand why the secular media would pick up on it. But why is it big news when the son of a pastor and the frontman for a not-super-famous Christian rock group renounces his faith? Could it be that the world would rather celebrate unbelief than faith? As I tweeted on May 27, “I was saddened to hear the news about the frontman of a...

The power of the word classic cannot be underestimated, communicating as it does the idea of excellence, truth, order, discipline, and beauty. The word “classic” brings to mind something that has withstood the test of time, and by virtue of this fact, participates in some way in the timeless and the eternal. And what is the only thing we know of with these attributes but God and His Eternal Word? When looked at this way, every Christian should want a classical education for their children: It has everything we instinctively want. But when we examine this word “classic,” we find...

REASON #1: ARCHITECTURE Of all of the points that I will make, this is the easiest to understand because it is so visible: we see its evidence every day. The power and beauty of classical architecture is everywhere, from grand buildings like our Supreme Court to our humble everyday homes. The Greeks discovered the proportions that are most pleasing to the human eye which, they tell us, are based on nature’s greatest work of art: the human body. Scale, mass, proportion, and symmetry—the principles of classical architecture—were worked out by the Greeks in great detail and built upon in succeeding...

REASON #2: VIRTUE In the last article, we learned that the Greeks established the first principles of architecture by studying nature. The proportions that are most pleasing to the human eye are those of nature’s greatest work of art—the human body. We learned that God gave man reason and the desire to know, but he did not leave us without guides. He gave us the Greeks, the world’s first systematic, abstract thinkers. And so we study and honor the Greeks because they teach us how to use reason to explore and understand our world, a world that is material and...

Reason #3: SCIENCE Because we live in the aftermath of what has been called the “scientific revolution,” we modern people consider ourselves quite superior to the ancients in regard to the study of the natural world. We are polished practitioners of what C.S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” We think ancient people were ignorant of the natural world and that we, with all our advanced scientitic knowledge, have little to learn from them. But one of the problems with having your nose so high in the air is that you can miss the thing right in front of you. Science, as...

REASON 4: EDUCATION A classical education focuses on the study of the classical languages, Latin and Greek, and on the study of the classical civilization of Greece and Rome. But why is the word classical reserved only for the languages of the Greeks and Romans and only for their civilization? What really is so special about the Greeks and Romans and why should Christians study them? After all they were not Christians, they were pagans. Some have objected to the word pagan and misunderstood its meaning. Pagan is a word Christians coined in the later Roman Empire to refer to...

REASON #5: NATURAL LAW What did the first Continental Congress mean when it appealed to “the immutable laws of nature,” or Thomas Jefferson when he referred to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God and the unalienable rights of man”? Natural law. The principle of natural law is embedded in Western civilization, the Declaration of Independence, and our whole history as a nation. The concept of natural law was first articulated by Aristotle in Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the “particular” laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a “common” law that is...

American government and political science will come alive when you read the Greeks and Romans, the same way that words come alive when you study Latin and Greek. There were many influences on the Founding Fathers, and certainly the modern philosophers—Locke and Hume—were important along with the tradition of English liberty. But separation of powers, mixed government, and checks and balances are the principles that first come to my mind when I think of the genius of the American political system; and where did these concepts come from? Plato in the Republic describes five types of government and says they...

REASON #8: PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY IS A DEEP SUBJECT THAT CAN BE QUITE INTIMIDATING. MODERN PHILOSOPHY IS SO ESOTERIC THAT FEW CAN UNDERSTAND OR RELATE TO IT, BUT CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY IS DIFFERENT. As with so many things, if you go back to the beginning and learn first principles, you can develop a deep and satisfying understanding of a subject that is baffling in its modern form. While philosophy may seem abstract and unrelated to the real world, quite the opposite is true. In fact, we are all philosophers; we all have a view of reality, a worldview, as we say today....