Free Republic

A Phoenix man has been sentenced to 60 days in jail after he refused to stop hosting Bible studies in the privacy of his home – in violation of the city’s building code laws.

The younger generation is becoming godless. Increasing numbers of Americans under the age of 30 are skeptical about the existence of God. This will have profound repercussions upon our society, fostering moral disintegration and the eventual death of our Judeo-Christian civilization. Traditional America is dying. In its place, a new liberal barbarism is being born. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center finds that belief in God has dropped dramatically among so-called millennials — those born after 1980 — during the past five years. In particular, the Pew poll found that 31 percent of respondents say they doubt whether...

When it comes to religiosity, some American states truly do fit in to the union — the European Union, that is. According to recent surveys, the most and least religious states are mainly where one might expect: respectively, the Bible Belt of the South, and New England and the West. A recent Gallup study, for instance, rated (in order) Mississippi, Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma as the 10 most religious states; and Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, New York, and Rhode Island (the last...

28 Iyar, 5772 May 20, '12 Translated from the Makor Rishon newspaperSome people still think that the reason that our national train continues to speed down the Oslo track is because of the people at the helm. Begin surrendered the Sinai Peninsula because he was tricked. Netanyahu hugged Arafat because he is pliable. Sharon destroyed Gush Katif because he is corrupt. And the list goes on. But the truth is just the opposite. The Right continues to slide down the slippery slope of the "peace process" not because of the weakness of its leaders but despite the fact that its...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Arianne Gasser of Canton, Ohio, is proud to call herself a graduate student at a prestigious Catholic university, and she also is proud to call herself an atheist. The pride she has in her atheist status is part of what inspired her to travel from the Philadelphia area, where she is enrolled at Villanova University, to Washington in March to join thousands of other atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers for the "Reason Rally," an event that was billed as an assembly to unify secular people nationwide. Carrying a sign that reads, "This is what an atheist looks...

Secular fundamentalists, it turns out, have their own version of Sharia law. It is just as unbending, rigid and dangerous to liberty as the Muslim kind. And secular Sharia has ten commandments, just like the Judeo-Christian tradition does. The Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition supplied the foundation for the American political experiment. As George Washington said, "Of all the disposition and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports." By "Religion," Washington meant Christianity, and by "morality," he meant the Ten Commandments. In other words, according to the Father of our country, it is impossible...

Jonah Goldberg's most recent "Goldberg File" comments at length, and with several good points, on the maddening way that modern liberalism presents itself as an objective, secular belief system above the superstitious, backwards fray of traditional (and non-traditional) religions: Speaking of Liberal Fascism, one of its core themes -- and mine -- is that modern liberalism is a political religion. That's why I've been so intrigued and frustrated by the discussion around Rick Santorum and his various comments, including: His ham-fisted remarks about wanting to vomit after reading JFK's church-state speech, his defense of religious freedom, his insistence that Obama's...

(Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum challenged President Barack Obama's Christian beliefs on Saturday, saying White House policies were motivated by a "different theology." A devout Roman Catholic who has risen to the top of Republican polls in recent days, Santorum said the Obama administration had failed to prevent gas prices rising and was using "political science" in the debate about climate change. Obama's agenda is "not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs. It's about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different...

We are experiencing an ever widening cultural divide, according to Charles Murray. Upper-middle class professional types may pretend that they are cultural relativists, accepting of whatever lifestyle their fellow human beings happen to choose. In reality, they live by old fashioned puritan values, however. They get married and stay married. They work hard and work long hours. Not so for the blue collar, never-got-beyond-high-school class, however. A shocking number aren't even working at all. Many are not getting married in the first place. Of those that get married, the divorce and separation rates are soaring. What about happiness and well-being?...

As the recent battle for a proper understanding of religious liberty shows, our culture and many of our government leaders and organizations are becoming increasingly secularized and hostile to religion and religious practice.Yet another example of this is a recent rule change in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). According to this program, a person who has been engaged in Public Service employment for ten years, can have the remainder of their Student Loan form the government forgiven, presuming they have faithfully been paying it up till then.However, a recent rule change now excludes those who are involved in any...

"And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (From this week's Torah portion, Yitro, Exodus 19:6) Before the giving of the Torah, before the Ten Commandments, before the most momentous and splendorous ceremony in history, the Creator explains why. Before "Honor your parents", before "Guard the Sabbath day to sanctify it", before all the 'how', G-d explains why He gave us the Torah; why this trek from the House of Bondage to the Land of Israel. What is the destiny? What is the purpose? "And you will be to Me a kingdom of priests...

Fr. George Rutler was kind enough to share his latest parish bulletin concerning the recent HHS mandate with the Cardinal Newman Society.He writes:Our many fellow Catholics now enchained for the Faith of our Fathers in such places as China, Syria, and Egypt are, as Father Faber’s hymn says, “in heart and conscience free.” But what happens when a government tries to chain the conscience itself?A few weeks ago, in a remarkably unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the attempt of the present Administration in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC to restrict religious freedom. Chief Justice Roberts...

We live in a secularized world of nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is unwelcome. Rooted in the “Enlightenment,” this view supports a secularized and authoritarian public square enforced by government and that progress requires forcing religion ever backward into remote corners of society. In short, America has become a secular theocracy with a civic religion of national politics (nationalism) occupying the public realm in which government has replaced God...

We live in an increasingly secularized world of massive and pervasive nation states in which traditional religion, especially Christianity, is ruled unwelcome and even a real danger on the basis of a purported history of intolerance and “religious violence.” This is found in most all “public” domains, including the institutions of education, business, government, welfare, transportation, parks and recreation, science, art, foreign affairs, economics, entertainment, and the media. A secularized public square policed by government is viewed as providing a neutral, rational, free, and safe domain that keeps the “irrational” forces of religion from creating conflict and darkness. And we...

While necessity is the mother of invention, sloth and envy beget mediocrity and upheaval – the twin siblings of secular-socialism. It is in this vein that a rebellious and increasingly violent spirit of incoherent anarchy continues to fester in urban centers across the nation. This is most evident in the form of the envy-driven "Occupy wherever" nonsense embraced by the "progressive" establishment. Still, this Obama-supported effort to supplant, through lawless imposition, our free-market constitutional republic with some misguided conception of an outcome-based equalitocracy is rooted in much more than just good old-fashioned class warfare. Part and parcel of secular-socialism is...

CUMBERLAND — Thanks to a small group of local men, the tradition of erecting a Nativity scene and decorating a large Christmas tree on the lawn of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in downtown Cumberland will continue. Two years ago, city officials decided to end city government’s involvement with the Nativity scene. According to Michael Mudge, one of the men who is keeping the tradition alive, city leaders had received a complaint from two people who objected to local government being involved in the Christian Nativity tradition.After Christmas 2009, the city donated the Nativity items to The Cumberland Nativity & Tree Display...

The Vatican has accused the BBC of an ‘act of enormous foolishness’ for dumping the terms BC and AD in case they cause offence to non-Christians. The Roman Catholic Church also severely criticised the ‘senseless hypocrisy’ of Britain’s public service broadcaster for using a false respect for other religions to purge Christianity from Western culture. ‘It is by now very clear that respect for other religions is only an excuse, because those who wish to erase every trace of Christianity from Western culture are only a few secular westerners,’ said a front page editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official...

The origin of the war against Christianity in the United States can be traced back to the early days of the public school movement when Unitarians, Owenite socialists and atheists, and Hegelian pantheists vehemently rejected the God-centered worldview of the Founding Fathers and sought to secularize education and substitute salvation through scientific education than by salvation through Christ . However, it wasn’t until the turn of the last century and the rise of the progressive education movement that the war in America took on the militancy which characterizes it today. The progressives were, for the most part, members of the...

John Rossomando Follow John on Twitter A reporter’s question to GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich whether or not he would impose Christian values “on everyone else” Wednesday during the announcement of his 21st Century Contract With America showcases the growing intolerance of Christians on the part of militant secularists. This is also true of the other relgiously motivated attacks on other GOP presidential candidates. My question to this secularist journalists is: “When will you keep your secular utilitarian worldview to yourself and stop trying to force everyone else to accept it?” The First Amendment’s establishment clause aimed to prevent Congress...

Non-believers are often more educated, more tolerant and know more about God than the pious. A new wave of research is trying to figure out what goes on in the minds of an ever-growing group of people known as the "Nones". Barry Kosmin is a different kind of market researcher. His data focuses on consumers targeted by companies like Lifechurch.tv or World Overcomers Christian Church TM. The sociologist analyzes church-affiliated commercial entities, from souvenir shops to television channels and worship services. But the most significant target of Kosmin's research is the consumer group most likely to shy away from such...