Free Republic

I have lived my whole life with a Republican Party with which I disagreed, but at least understood. The first election I can remember was the presidential election of 1980. I was 10 years old. I didn’t know much about politics or party platforms. I only knew that the former peanut-farmer president, Jimmy Carter, was running against a former actor, Ronald Reagan. But it was in that election that Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority reintroduced religious activism into American politics. Speaking at a Dallas convention of Christian fundamentalists, Falwell proclaimed: “During the 1980s, preachers, we have a threefold primary...

On her MSNBC show this morning, Joy Reid referred to Donald Trump's wives, which would include First Lady Melania, as "baby mamas." Reid did so in the context of wondering how the religious right, such as those at Liberty University where Pres. Trump is delivering the commencement address today, can support Trump, given that he is "a guy who's had three wives, five babies with three baby mamas." Here's the YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPjoBeR4avI

A lot of people don't want to hear it, but it's true: in the future, you will either be a religious conservative, or secular. The religious left will evaporate. Don't take my word for it. Take the word of Daniel Cox, the head of research at PRRI, a firm whose religious views tend towards progressivism. Excerpts: The first and perhaps most significant reason for skepticism is that there are far fewer religious liberals today than there were a generation ago. Nearly four in 10 (38 percent) liberals are religiously unaffiliated today, more than double the percentage of the 1990s, according...

Most Americans have never heard of Thomas à Kempis, who in 1418 authored “The Imitation of Christ.” But most of us are familiar with the principle he set forth nearly six centuries ago: “Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen.” That’s why this God-fearing Christian can do no other than vote for Donald Trump. Not because the billionaire real estate developer/reality show personality is remotely worthy of the office previously held by such great Republican presidents as Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, but because Trump will subject the body of Christ to less evil than Hillary Clinton....

If senators got report cards the way children do in school, Ted Cruz’s would say “does not play well with others” every time. He’s been called the Senate’s “most reviled member,” and that’s just among his fellow Republicans. But the junior senator from Texas seems to like it that way. His failures inside the Beltway are successes outside, where he points to them to show he is the only one standing up to what he likes to call the “Washington cartel.” The more Washington hates him the more those who hate Washington love him. That’s his operating assumption, and it’s...

--- Cruz spoke about his experience defending freedom of religion at the Supreme Court and what he said were the threats facing religious liberty. "These threats have been growing, they have been growing for decades but never have the threats been greater to religious liberty than they are right here and now today," he said. "These threats are not imagined, they're not made up. These are real people leading real lives who found themselves facing persecution simply for living out their faith. There is a war on faith in America today." Audience members frequently murmured "Amen" as Cruz spoke. ---...

f nothing else, the continuing fight over ObamaCare's infamous contraception mandate has revealed two profound cultural divides in America. The first is about the role of government. The other is about fertility. It increasingly seems as if the progressive secular worldview is almost hostile to fertility. The logic behind the contraception mandate all but implies that the only way to lead a truly free and human life is to lead a contracepted life. As the Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez has argued, the mandate seems designed not so much to improve access to contraception — a nonproblem — but rather to...

If there were as many “fiscal conservatives” as there are people who claim to be, it is hard to see how Republicans would lose as many elections as they do. One frequently hears this political self-identification: “I’m socially liberal, but fiscally conservative.” Or: “If the Republicans weren’t conservative on so many social issues, I would vote Republican.” Or: “It’s too bad the Christian Right dominates the Republican party. I would vote for the Republicans on fiscal issues, but I can’t stand the religious Right.” The same sentiment holds among many inside the Republican party. Most secular conservatives and the libertarian...

In New Mexico, a photographer declined to take pictures of a lesbian couple’s commitment ceremony. In Washington State, a florist would not provide flowers for a same-sex wedding. And in Colorado, a baker refused to make a cake for a party celebrating the wedding of two men. The business owners cited religious beliefs in declining to provide services celebrating same-sex relationships. And in each case, they were sued. Now, as states around the nation weigh how to balance the rights of same-sex couples with those of conservative religious business owners, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona must decide whether to sign...

“Wicked.” “Crazy.” “Extremist.” Those are the words Americans United For Separation of Church and State uses in reference to the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. But the organization, which claims to fight to “ensure religious freedom for all Americans,” is not using those words to describe Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who shot and killed 27 innocent souls. No, its reproach is directed at the “religious right,” including such figures as Mike Huckabee and William J. Murray, for daring to suggest that the eviction of God from the nation’s public schools just might have contributed to the rise of school-related violence and...

Guys – have a quick puff of your joint before heading down the aisle with your boyfriend. In addition to re-electing Obama, various American states voted to legalise dope and gay marriage. OK, so they weren't necessarily the same states, but you get the picture. Last night was a victory for secular liberal America – or, to put it another way, America's emerging secular liberal majority. The United States is still pious by European standards, but the gap is narrowing every year. You cannot visit American bookshops without being struck by the popularity of atheist cheerleaders or agnostic self-help gurus;...

(Church & State Magazine) — The movement known as the Religious Right is the number-one threat to church-state separation in America. This collection of organizations is well funded and well organized; it uses its massive annual revenue and grassroots troops to undermine the wall of separation in communities nationwide.Americans United staff members have carefully researched this movement, and here are the 10 Religious Right groups that pose the greatest challenges to church-state separation. Most of these organizations are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code, but the financial data includes some affiliated 501(c)(4) lobbying organizations operating alongside the...

Many on the left obsess over this strange notion that the religious right is conspiring to turn America into a theocracy. A case in point was a recent guest on my radio program “Fairness Radio with Chuck & Patrick.” Our guest, the ultra-liberal author and columnist Frederick Clarkson, stated, in a very scholarly and suave tone that he was convinced, after decades of research, that the Christian right was plotting a takeover. I asked him to name names and, after some hemming and hawing, he came up with Rev. Pat Robertson and the late Rev. R.J. Rushdooney. He darkly identified...

Dr. Robert George asked a question which provoked a response being labeled as a sign of a division in the "conservative" movement in America. ..."Is conservatism a three-legged stool or not?" Dr. George used the imagery of the late Ronald Reagan...I am a great admirer of the late Ronald Reagan. Like many other Catholics... The three legs are social conservatives, foreign policy conservatives and economic conservatives. The late President Reagan built an alliance of these three groups of conservatives which changed the political landscape of the Nation. The American Conservative Union (ACU) is the sponsor of the annual Conservative Political...

W. Cleon Skousen's book "The Five Thousand Year Leap" has been reissued, and after an endorsement from Glenn Beck, it was even briefly the No. 1 best-seller at Amazon.com. This is bad news for religious conservatism. Skousen's book is a slipshod mixture of tendentious history, bad theology and paranoid politics in the John Birch Society mold. It ought to be treated as a curiosity of the pre-Reagan right, a fantasy world where communist agents such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Dwight D. Eisenhower worked to undermine America.... The revival of Skousen-esque thinking via Glenn Beck's teary-eyed presentations on the...

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) have turned to evangelical Christians in a last-ditch effort to move immigration reform and climate change legislation. Democrats are making a direct appeal to the GOP base by turning to evangelical Christian and other religious leaders, and there’s some evidence that the talks could be fruitful. “We’re encouraging Southern Baptists to reach out to senators and congressmen to encourage Democrats and Republicans to quit playing politics and deal with immigration reform in a fair way,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “The political will...

Holy Scripture, despite all appearances, will not always be easy to interpret. We can be lulled into thinking our “common sense” and “by the letter” interpretation of a text is what God intends us to get out of it. However, if this is the case, there would be little to no debates about its meaning; there would be little confusion as to its purpose and how it applies to us today. St. Peter would not have needed to tell us that no prophecy of Scripture is to be interpreted privately, because all interpretations of Scripture would end up the...

I posted this first to the latest Glenn Beck thread. I think it embodies what Glenn is talking about in a concentrated summary and deserves notice, IMHO: A right-wing progressive can be defined as one who joins with the left in promoting the all-encompassing all-powerful Commerce Clause in order to push a social "conservative" or religious agenda, primarily today in the federal War on Drugs. (Right-wing Progressivism predates left-wing Progressivism in the alcohol temperance movement of the 1870s and also in the premature ending of Reconstruction and Plessy v. Ferguson institutional and statute-enforced segregation.) The right has been willing to...

In a day of ever-growing moral collapse and turmoil in Washington D.C. and our nation, the American Religious Right have been linking up together more and more on current social and moral issues called “pro-natural laws.” Many of the American Religious Right have even put aside sound Biblical teaching and eternal spiritual absolutes of time and eternity in favor of a greater "social unity” with those who do not hold to such doctrines (Deut. 22:10; 2 Cor. 6:14; Eph. 5:6-8). Such godless and decadent “social squeezing” by the Left in America has been the very catalyst for an “apostate” ecumenical...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A collection of pro-abortion religious groups authored a letter today to members of the Senate that essentially places them on record supporting taxpayer funding of abortions. The letter expresses their opposition to the Nelson amendment, released today, to remove abortion funding from the Senate government-run health care bill. The Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), United Church of Christ, and United Methodist Church are the four mainline protestant denominations to sign the letter asking lawmakers to oppose the Nelson amendment.They are joined by the Disciples Justice Action Center, NA'AMAT USA, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a...