Free Republic

For many years, Pastor Charles Henrickson has posted a good Scriptural sermon here on FR. Please pray for him. He has a health challenge; that's all I can say. Some laudable things about Pastor Henrickson: - he has posted a very good Confessional Lutheran sermon here every week for a long time - he uses his real name - he's openly being a member of Free Republic when so many, even in a conservative church body, would look down upon him for that. I don't know any other MO Synod pastor who does this, and I know quite a few....

Alan Atchison, editor of Capstone Report (www.capstonereport.com) joins the Big Brown Gadfly to talk about the scandals rocking the Southern Baptist Convention and launch Bobby's series, "The Total Depravity of the Southern Baptist Convention." The Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC, has had a bad month of June. In a controversial annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, the messengers, or voting representatives of churches, elected as president Ed Litton of Alabama. The election had many suspicious aspects, which this article will discuss momentarily and which should not be dismissed. But even if we take seriously Litton’s surge to the presidency, interceding events...

In these dire times, many are looking to the church to offer hope, but true hope and peace only come through conviction of sin and deep repentance. This is how we will truly change our nation. We can’t make bad people good; only God can do that. The term “Achilles’ heel” refers to an area of weakness and vulnerability. The American church today has an Achilles’ heel—a lack of prayer and powerful preaching. Both are vitally important to spiritual health. Sadly, many Christian leaders focus on image rather than intimacy with Christ, being woke instead of waking up from their...

Chiefs offensive linemen Stefen Wisniewski shared his faith in Jesus while talking to Jason Romano from Sports Spectrum. When asked about what the Lord has been doing in his life this year, Wisniewski didn’t hesitate to elaborate. “It was really humbling being fired, being on the couch,” he began, referencing his time in between jobs after the Eagles let him go. “I really think God was testing me and trying to teach me humility, just to depend on Him...At the end of the day, my football success is only because God has given it to me. I love Job 1:21,...

FOR a hundred years, American students have been taught that the Fourth of July and the American Revolution were mainly political and economic events - triumphs of the secular forces of rationalism in human history. But don't expect to be given that view in Harry Stout's class. Dr. Stout is a professor at Yale University and one of the leaders of a quietly growing number of scholars who, using a new blend of intellectual and social history, have begun to find a religious consciousness and motive at the center of the American Revolution. For Stout - whose nine-year study of...

Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire." So said St Catherine of Siena whose festival day it is today. Marriage is intended to be a way in which man and woman help each other to become what God meant each one to be, their deepest and truest selves. Many are full of fear for the future of the prospects of our world but the message of the celebrations in this country and far beyond its shores is the right one – this is a joyful day! It is good that people in...

Getting here did not come without controversy--But in all due respect, as great as this honor is, it's not what really defines who I am or the things that I've been able to accomplish in my life. I'll always be known as a Redskin... And even now as a Hall of Famer, the one thing I want to make very clear is that my identity and my security is found in the Lord. And what defines me and my validation comes in having accepted his son Jesus Christ as my personal savior. And what defines me is the word of...

Family Research Council (FRC) today expressed outrage after the State of Georgia issued a legal demand that Dr. Eric Walsh, a lay pastor, hand over his sermons, sermon notes and all pastoral documentation, including his Bible. FRC launched a petition today at frc.org/walsh that calls on Governor Deal to "correct this egregious over-reach of the state into church affairs." "This demand for Dr. Eric Walsh's sermons, sermons notes and ministerial documentation is an alarming display of government intrusion into the sanctity of the church, pastor's study and pulpit," said Tony Perkins, Family Research Council president and himself an ordained pastor....

Does it seem plausible that the true spark of the American Revolution was the religion of peace—Christianity? In fact, how could it be any other way in a country expressly founded to establish Christian religious liberty? Colonial America was one of the most intensely evangelized and churched societies in history. For example, according to Harry Stout in The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England, the typical colonists probably listened to 7,000 hours of sermons in their lifetime. For many colonists, their instruction in religion, science, history, politics and most other subjects were delivered only by...

An Iowa church just wants to be free to preach the gospel, but the state’s so-called nondiscrimination requirements could block the house of worship from doing just that. Lawyers for the church are asking a federal court to prevent Iowa from censoring what the religious group can say about homosexuality, same-sex “marriage,” transgenderism and other related topics. The case erupted when the state’s Civil Rights Commission first claimed the authority to control the content of sermons and then to define what’s religious. At issue is the state’s nondiscrimination requirements that specify any “public accommodation” can be ordered not to say...

D. James Kennedy successor keeps quiet on public moral concerns. . . When D. James Kennedy was preaching at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church – the fastest growing Presbyterian church in the nation for much of his tenure – his sermons and comments to media sometimes sparked fireworks. One time he said: “We hear today that this is a pluralistic nation and that it is not a Christian nation. But Christianity itself, general Christianity, was conceived as the support of all our government.” Kennedy, who died in 2007 after 47 years of ministry at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, church, preached that...

Then, on October 29, Senator Cruz released a statement announcing that city officials were in retreat and had withdrawn the subpoenas.

The City of Houston will withdraw its controversial subpoenas of five pastors tied to a lawsuit over the city's equal rights ordinance, Mayor Annise Parker announced at a news conference Wednesday. The announcement came amid a national firestorm about the subpoenas, which have prompted outrage among Christian conservatives. Parker said two meetings yesterday, one with local pastors and another with national clergy, persuaded her to pull the subpoenas altogether. The subpoenas are part of a discovery phase in a suit filed by equal rights opponents, who largely take issue with the rights the law extends to gay and transgender residents.

Houston announced Wednesday that it will withdraw the subpoenas of sermons from five pastors who publicly opposed an ordinance banning discrimination against gay and transgender residents, The Houston Chronicle reported. "I didn't do this to satisfy them," Mayor Annise Parker said, referring to critics of the subpoenas. "I did it because it was not serving Houston."

Although much has been reported regarding the ethics and legality behind the city of Houston's subpoena of five Houston-area pastors that had asked them to turn over all of their sermons that address homosexuality, gender identity, and the city's first openly-lesbian mayor, little attention has been given to who those five pastors actually are and the ministries they operate.Although those five pastors, Steve Riggle, David Welch, Hernan Castaño, Khanh Huynh and Magda Hermida, were not technically parties of the lawsuit against the city's new equal rights ordinance that sparked the need for the subpoenas, they all participated in the coalition...

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee said pastors from across the United States should send "thousands and thousands" of Bibles and sermons to the Houston mayor who demanded pastors turn over their sermons to the government due to their objection to an LGBT discrimination city ordinance. "I hope she gets thousands and thousands of sermons and Bibles," Huckabee said on his Fox News show Saturday, referring to Mayor Annise D. Parker. "It ought to make you mad that the mayor thinks she can turn in her pastors. And so I got an idea," Huckabee explained. "If she wants a sermon, here...

Christians across the nation are mobilizing to defend a group of Houston pastors who were ordered by the city to turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity issues or Houston mayor. Their message is simple – Don’t Mess with Texas Preachers.

Churches have received subpoenas issued by the city of Houston demanding copies of sermons. Houston is probing opposition to a ballot referendum pertaining to an ordinance proposing a local discrimination law affecting gays. (Bryan Preston posted this summary of the lawlessness taking place in Houston.) Over 50,000 petition signatures were gathered opposing the ordinance. Now the city, run by the first openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, is retaliating and demanding that churches turn over sermons. You read that correctly. This is the sort of government behavior that used to be confined to two-bit third-world regimes. The gay rights movement was...

Conservative Christian pastors in Houston who opposed an equal rights ordinance had their sermons and other private communications subpoenaed by city attorneys fighting to keep a repeal referendum off the ballot.Houston Chronicle: Houston's embattled equal rights ordinance took another legal turn this week when it surfaced that city attorneys, in an unusual step, subpoenaed sermons given by local pastors who oppose the law and are tied to the conservative Christian activists that have sued the city. Opponents of the equal rights ordinance are hoping to force a repeal referendum when they get their day in court in January, claiming City...

Houston's embattled equal rights ordinance took another legal turn this week when it surfaced that city attorneys, in an unusual step, subpoenaed sermons given by local pastors who oppose the law and are tied to the conservative Christian activists that have sued the city. Opponents of the equal rights ordinance are hoping to force a repeal referendum when they get their day in court in January, claiming City Attorney David Feldman wrongly determined they had not gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. City attorneys issued subpoenas last month during the case's discovery phase, seeking, among other communications,...