Free Republic

More than 6,000 congregations have been given the approval to leave the United Methodist Church over the past four years amid a schism within the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States over whether to change its rules against homosexuality. According to numbers compiled by UM News, the number of UMC congregations granted disaffiliation passed the 6,000 mark earlier this week, with 6,182 as of Thursday morning. While the number includes all churches that have disaffiliated from the UMC since 2019, more than 1,800 came in 2022 and more than 4,000 in 2023. The UM News count derives from a...

SBC Pastor Dwight McKissic, the CRT-embracing, pro-choice egalitarian who can frequently be found advocating for every weird and woke position within the denomination, and who keeps on threatening to leave the convention but never does, has likened the SBC’s sentiments and treatment of women in 2023 to the racist treatment and attitudes towards enslaved black folks in the Antebellum South. In a post on Twitter, McKissic says that he believes the following statement with his whole heart: In 50-100 years our theologically conservative descendants will look back upon us theological conservatives now and lament just how poorly we viewed women...

The closure comes after Archbishop Alexander Sample condemned addressing students by their chosen pronouns. According to emails sent to school staff by leaders of four separate Portland Catholic schools Thursday and Friday, the Archdiocese of Portland has “temporarily” closed its Department of Catholic Schools. “Yesterday, Archbishop [Alexander] Sample let pastors of schools know of an important change for catholic schools for our Archdiocese…the Department of Catholic Schools has been ‘temporarily’ closed,” wrote Pastor Matt Libra of St. Rose of Lima Catholic School, a K-8, to parents on Friday. “In the interim period, the Pastoral Center will coordinate the functions of...

GEORGETOWN, Texas — A Georgetown man pleaded guilty in a federal court in Austin to an enhanced charge of possession of child pornography. According to court documents, 57-year-old David Lloyd Walther knowingly searched for, downloaded, distributed, and possessed child sexual abuse material, including child pornography using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network. During a search of Walther's home in November 2022, two large computer hard drives were found with more than 100,000 images and over 5,000 videos of material. Walther was the pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock at the time of his arrest.

Delaware US Attorney David Weiss exploded that fallacy when he slipped out a late Friday evening letter to the House Judiciary Committee, hoping to bury the bad news on the eve of the holiday weekend. Added to the limp, over-long missive to Congress a few hours earlier from Hunter Biden’s fabled lawyer Abbe Lowell whose big complaint was about a breach of the “spirit of the law,” it was not a good day for the Biden protection unit. With Hunter Biden’s former “best friend in business” Devon Archer slated to testify this month before he goes to jail with nothing...

Another huge one-day bag by the Russian military...

Church attendance in the United States is lower than before the coronavirus pandemic, a Gallup News survey found. “U.S. church attendance has shown a small but noticeable decline compared with what it was before the COVID-19 pandemic,” the survey report states. The report details: In the four years before the pandemic, 2016 through 2019, an average of 34 percent of U.S. adults said they had attended church, synagogue, mosque or temple in the past seven days. From 2020 to the present, the average has been 30 percent, including a 31 percent reading in a May 1-24 survey.Gallup noted that church...

A bus carrying migrants from a Texas border city arrived in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday for the second time in less than three weeks. The office of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was not formally notified but became aware on Friday of the bus dispatched from Brownsville, Texas, to L.A. Union Station, Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl said in a statement. 'The City of Los Angeles believes in treating everyone with respect and dignity and will do so,' he said. The bus arrived around 12:40pm, and the 41 asylum-seekers on board were welcomed by a collective of faith and immigrant...

The move to change birth certificates follows Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's order to city councils to stop non-parents from adopting their same-sex partners’ children. PADUA, Italy (LifeSiteNews) — A magistrate in northern Italy has requested that birth certificates issued to lesbian couples have the name of the nonbiological mother removed. Earlier this month, Valeria Sanzari, interim prosecutor of Padua, opened a legal case to remove the names of non-biological parents from birth certificates issued by the famous city, Reuters reported. “In Italy, marriage is only between a man and a woman, and therefore only the biological parent is the...

Two different guns may have been used in the December 8, 1980 shooting of music icon John Lennon, RadarOnline.com has learned. According to British author and TV producer David Whelan, two different types of bullets were removed from Lennon's body during the autopsy. One was marked as a Semi-wadcutter or hollow-point bullet, while the other was listed as a 38-caliber lead bullet. Whelan believes that the different bullet types add weight to his theory that a second shooter was involved in the killing. The author has spent three years investigating the murder and has highlighted several inconsistencies in the official...

Archbishop Andrews Thazhath’s circular insisted on following synod-approved Mass rejected by the majority of priests and laity In a public protest against the Vatican-appointed apostolic administrator of an Indian archdiocese, a group of lay people burnt his circular that insisted on a controversial form of Mass, which has been the center of a five-decade-old liturgical dispute. Parishioners of the St.Mary’s Basilica, the Cathedral in Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese, burnt copies of the circular of their Apostolic Administrator Archbishop Andrews Thazhath on June 26 in Kochi city, the commercial capital of southern Kerala state. The cathedral, the seat of the Major Archbishop of...

Damage in the aftermath of yesterday’s storm Shortly after President Trump finished yesterday’s stump speech, a freak storm wrecked the small town of Pickens, South Carolina. Trees were uprooted, and roofs were blown away. One day later, the power has yet to be fully restored while nearly all 3,126 residents have a hand in cleaning up. But considering the way a crowd of 50,000 welcomed Sen. Lindsey Graham to the stage yesterday, the latest forecasting suggests bad weather has only just begun for the political establishment in the Palmetto State. “It was an odd, wild storm that only touched two...

The fatal shooting by police of a 17-year-old boy driving a car in a Paris suburb is the latest in a spate of such deadly incidents in France. It was the third killing this year during a police traffic stop and followed a record 13 deaths last year. Most of the victims have been of black or Arab origin, Reuters news agency reports. What is the legal basis for firing during a traffic stop? By law French police are allowed to shoot in five instances following a 2017 change in the law. That includes when the driver or occupants of...

Washington, D.C. authorities said that three local businesses on Sunday were hit with explosive devices and a Molotov cocktail. In a news release, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said that the suspected attacks happened within a fifteen-minute span. At approximately 4:30 a.m., the suspect detonated an explosive device on the sidewalk outside the ATM of a Truist Bank located in the Northeast section of the city, adding that the explosive device caused damage at the location. Six minutes later, authorities said the suspect detonated an explosive device on the sidewalk in front of the doors at the Nike Store located...

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France has imposed a partial ban on internet services from Monday across parts of the country as riots continued for the fifth day on Sunday. The unrest was triggered after a 17-year-old was killed by a police officer in a suburb of Paris city on Tuesday. Nahel, who was of Algerian and Moroccan descent, was shot at point-blank for driving off his car during a police traffic check. On Sunday, France’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that the restrictions are “intended to prevent the misuse of social networks and online platforms to coordinate illegal actions and incite violence”. The...

Independent DC journalist Andrew Leyden has reported the United States Secret Service has just shut down streets near Lafayette Park, the Ellipse, and Pennsylvania Avenue. Hazmat crews were also spotted inside the gate of the West Wing of the White House after they received reports of a suspicious substance being found. DC Hazmat crews tested the suspicious substance, and it reportedly tested positive for cocaine hydrochloride. LOOK: DC Fire Hazmat reports they have found a substance that tests positive for Cocaine Hydrochloride near the White House, which is a local anesthetic. Audio from @OpenMHz https://t.co/poI9vabqM7 — Andrew Leyden (@PenguinSix) July...

As chaos and disorder surge through the streets of France, Nationalist politician Marine Le Pen has issued a stirring national address, imploring her compatriots to reject the rising tide of anarchy and violence. “For several days, a state of endemic disorder, violence, and destruction has been established in the country, the images and echoes of which are chillingly brutal,” Le Pen began her address. She painted a sobering picture of a nation in turmoil, referencing attacks on people and property, assaults on police officers and firefighters, the ransacking of town halls, school fires, and the looting of shops. Le Pen...

<p>Michael Imperioli is taking a stand against the Supreme Court, which ruled Friday that conservative Christians have a right to refuse some business services to same-sex couples.</p><p>The "Sopranos" and "White Lotus" star declared Saturday on Instagram that he has "decided to forbid bigots and homophobes from watching The Sopranos, The White Lotus, Goodfellas or any movie or TV show" he's ever appeared in.</p>

“He said one sentence with an obscenity in there - 'you hit my blank car,' and I said, 'no, you hit my car.' And that’s when he swung with his entire force,” Avery recounted. Just moments before that, it was a normal afternoon. He was driving on Mopac at Steck. “And all of a sudden there is a car coming into my lane," Avery said. "I slam on the horn and hit the brakes but it’s unfortunately too late at that point.” Even then, Avery said he didn’t think it was a big deal. “It’s a minor collision at that...