Free Republic

Sojourners President and Founder Jim Wallis, one of several faith leaders who are heading to Ferguson, Missouri this weekend to march for justice, is challenging Christians to put their faith ahead of their race when it comes to issues concerning racial relations. "If white Christians in America acted more Christian than white when it came to race, black parents would be less fearful for their children," said Wallis. Christians who put faith ahead of race would not be afraid to take on tough racial issues like the police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson with their peers and fight...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) WASHINGTON (AP) — Hillary Rodham Clinton is the one figure uniting religious conservatives frustrated by a leaderless Republican Party that's divided over foreign policy, immigration and social issues. The prospect of another Clinton White House stirred anguish at the Values Voter Summit this weekend where hundreds of conservative activists debated the GOP's future and warned that the acknowledged but unannounced 2016 Democratic front-runner would cement what they see as President Barack Obama's attack on religious freedom....

FULL TITLE: Episcopal priest praises new Planned Parenthood clinic as “safe place for the termination of pregnancy” It’s certainly no secret that some churches support the choice to abort. While it’s counter-intuitive to the Christian faith, which began with Mary’s unplanned pregnancy, it’s a reality in 2014 that many who identify as Christian also identify as pro-choice. Despite this troubling truth, it’s still disconcerting when a minister of the gospel speaks out and makes a statement welcoming a new abortion facility to his region the same way one might welcome a new business offering jobs to a troubled economy. However,...

The first woman bishop in the Church of England could be in the Gloucester diocese, a senior clergyman has said. The archdeacon of Cheltenham's comments came during an open meeting where some 70 people shared their views on what qualities the new bishop should have. The Venerable Robert Springett said he felt the likelihood was "really pretty high" as the diocese could now pick the best person regardless of gender. The Right Reverend Michael Perham, stepped back as bishop in August. He had been due to retire in November. He was interviewed by the Metropolitan Police investigating two allegations of...

Yet another megachurch has announced that it will spend millions to officially separate itself from Presbyterian Church (USA), a denomination that has, in recent years, experienced turmoil over what critics decry as an increasingly liberal theology. Nearly 89 percent of the congregation at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, voted in October 2013 to leave the denomination and to join the more theologically conservative Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians — a decision that carries with it a hefty price tag. The church will need to pay $7.8 million in order to officially leave Presbyterian Church (USA) and keep its...

Green Jesus. That is the image that now greets visitors to the Huffington Post Religion page at the very top. If you think that the Huffington Post has an agenda it is pushing, you would be correct. A total of seven stories are devoted to the topic of global warming in general and Sunday's "People's Climate March NYC" in particular. The extent that the Huffington Post is inappropriately using religion to push a worldwide political program of big spending programs on a problem that doesn't exist can be seen in the "religion" articles used to hype this agenda. The desperation...

FULL TITLE - Top Obama Bundlers Funded LGBT Attack on San Francisco Archbishop for Traditional Marriage Stance A leftist group funded by top gay activist bundlers for Obama’s 2012 campaign coordinated both a “well planned and financed” attack against San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone for his decision to speak during the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. in June, says Catholic San Francisco. Faithful America is an organization that claims to be “the largest and fastest growing online community of Christians putting faith into action for social justice.” According to Valerie Schmalz writing at Catholic San Francisco, there is...

THE “D’ESCOTO CASE” AND THOSE WHO WANT TO WIPE OUT THE WORK DONE BY JOHN PAUL II AND BENEDICT XVI Antonio Socci Libero September 7, 2014 In the era of Bergoglio, the Vatican has practically rehabilitated Liberation Theology, which came into existence in the 1960s and has caused untold disasters, mainly in Latin America, by fostering the Church’s subordination to Marxist thought. Over the past months there have been startling occurrences, such as the “landing” of Gustavo Gutierrez (“the father” of Liberation Theology) in the Vatican itself. A year ago, “L'Osservatore Romano” published large extracts from one of his books...

<p>TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — On her 27th day of living in a tiny room at a Tucson church known for pioneering the popular immigrant sanctuary movement in the 1980s, Rosa Robles Loreto swept a courtyard, prayed with a group of parishioners and greeted her uniformed son fresh off his baseball practice.</p>

Rob Bell will be out on the road as part of a new speaking tour. But unlike the intimate theater shows he used to host, his new platform will be in arenas around the country. Oprah has announced that Bell will be among the guests on her eight-city “The Life You Want Weekend” tour, kicking off this fall. In a press release, Oprah said, “All of my life I have wanted to lead people to an empathy space. To a gratitude space. I want us all to fulfill our greatest potential. To find our calling, and summon the courage to...

TOPEKA, Kan., Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Remember when "God" said he wanted to plaster a pro-tolerance message on a billboard in the back yard of the Westboro Baptist Church? Well, thanks to the donations of more than 3,700 funders, God -- or at least the mysterious person running God's Facebook page -- has raised more than $80,0000 in support of a "God Loves Gays" billboard in Topeka, Kan.

The federal government’s number crunchers believe some 21,318 same-sex couples call Georgia home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s most recent accounting, and new research forecasts that as many as half would jump the broom within three years if allowed by their government. I’m one-half of one of those aggrieved couples — denied, for more than five years, the social stability and legal protections of marriage. And, as a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee and adviser to prominent party figures, I’m also a professional political operative who’s helped install in government those who perpetuate marriage bias in America....

A day after the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade announced a step toward LGBT inclusion, a pastor at the Archdiocese of Washington said that it is time to end such events altogether as they have been “hijacked.” Instead of wearing green and attending St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, Monsignor Charles Pope, said Catholics should “enter their churches and get down on their knees on St. Patrick’s Day to pray in reparation for the foolishness, and to pray for this confused world to return to its senses.” The statements were published on Pope’s designated blog on the Archdiocese of Washington’s...

NEW YORK (RNS) After years of strong resistance, organizers of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade on Wednesday (Sept. 3) said that gays and lesbians will be allowed to march under their own banner for the first time, and Cardinal Timothy Dolan — the parade’s grand marshal next March — has welcomed the move. The decision is another sign of how quickly changing public attitudes toward gay people have pushed changes in state laws, government policies and the practices of private entities. Dolan’s positive response may also point to a shifting dynamic within the Catholic Church on gays and lesbians...

New York’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade will finally end its ban on gay groups marching in its annual Irish celebration, organizers said Wednesday. The organizing committee said this move to “change of tone and expanded inclusiveness is a gesture of goodwill to the LGBT community in our continuing effort to keep the parade above politics.”

Mike Dickinson, the unhinged Virginia Democrat who once sought the House seat formerly held by Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., issued a tweet Sunday asking God to kill everyone in the NRA with the Ebola virus. The tweet was sent after he issued another message saying he would lead a prayer asking God to murder everyone in the NRA during the debut of his alleged radio program. "Dear god (sic)," he began. "Please use Ebola to infect the @NRA and it's various members. For they are A (sic) true virus and true terrorists in America." He followed that up with another...

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity. At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this...

I have argued before that, in their fullest, libertarianism and Catholicism are incompatible -- but to what degree are they so? Leaders of the libertarian movement have certainly said silly, anti-Catholic things. Ludwig von Mises, for example, compared Christ to the Bolshevists and also said, "..[I]t is the resistance which the Church has offered to the spread of liberal ideas which has prepared the soil for the destructive resentment of modern socialist thought" (Socialism, Chapter 29). Translation: opposition to liberalism of one stripe must be blamed for inspiring liberalism of another. Huh? Much of the conflict between libertarians and the...

Planned Parenthood abortion business officials in Ohio are looking for volunteers to pray at a pryer event. No, Planned Parenthood is not asking people to pray for an end to abortion in the way pro-life advocates pray at prayer events like 40 Days for Life. Instead the abortion giant is hoping Buckeye State residents will pray for more abortions. plannedparenthood118As this Planned Parenthood announcement indicates, the abortion corporation wants people to join an abortion activist who is calling for prayer in response to the state’s refusal to expand Obamacare, which funds abortion and sends taxapayer dollars to the abortion giant....

A recent story at Esquire chronicled the abortion practice of Willie Parker, an abortionist who commutes from Chicago to Mississippi to commit abortions at the state’s last abortion mill. Mississippi is devoid of any abortionists of its own who are capable of obtaining hospital admitting privileges, a requirement now mandated by law in several states. Consequently, Parker — who boasts an unusually clean record for an abortionist, and was able to obtain privileges nearby — travels to the South to fill in.Esquire calls Parker’s practice a “ministry,” playing off of the abortionist’s professed Christianity. The author chose to conclude the...