Free Republic

Something profound has happened inside portions of American Christianity. The church was once understood as a place where sinners came to encounter a Savior who loved them enough to change them. Increasingly, however, some mainline denominations appear to be embracing a very different message: come as you are--and expect the church to affirm you as you are. That distinction may sound subtle. It is not. It represents a fundamental change in what Christianity is supposed to accomplish. One of the clearest examples can be seen in the direction of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the people shaping its...

Abdul El-Sayed has attracted national attention after invoking Jesus Christ while defending political ideas critics describe as radical. “Jesus, peace and blessings be upon him, was considered radical in his time too,” the Democratic nominee for Michigan's U.S. Senate seat recently said. But whether a Muslim politician accurately understands Jesus is not the most consequential question surrounding El-Sayed's faith. There is another question that reaches directly into the responsibilities of public office: What role does Sharia play when a politician who considers it an obligation before God is making laws for Americans who do not believe in it? That question...

Residents in the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades are taking security into their own hands to protect their properties as they rebuild, blocking streets with barricades and hiring private security. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, eight burglaries were recorded in the area in June alone. The thefts amounted to thousands of dollars in stolen tools and equipment taken from storage containers. “This is the people and the neighbors coming together to solve the problem,” Palisades resident Morgan Goldberg said in a video posted to Instagram after thieves targeted several properties under construction. Like many residents who lost everything in the...

Who gets the GOP when Trump is gone? The old Republican establishment lost control of the party once. It has no intention of letting Trump choose the political order that comes after him.When I first entered the public arena, the focus of my work was almost entirely on why the right needed to take power seriously. Conservatives had suffered a devastating string of political and cultural losses because they focused on argument and ideology while paying little attention to the way power actually worked. That criticism drew plenty of hostility from defenders of the status quo who did not...

Conor Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was placed on Russia's wanted list over allegations he fought as a mercenary for Ukraine. Kennedy, 32, could face seven to 10 years in prison if convicted in Russia. "When I heard about Ukraine's International Legion, I went to the embassy to enlist the next day," Conor Kennedy spent about 2½ months in Ukraine before returning to the United States and resuming his law studies at Georgetown University.

And now… the rest of the story. Every year, families across America gather around the television. They’ll watch a bald kid try to kick a football. They’ll watch a beagle dance on a dog house. They’ll watch Charlie Brown get a rock instead of candy. They’ll laugh. They won’t know they’re watching a man’s autobiography. When Charles Schulz was a little boy, the other children called him “Sparky.” It wasn’t a term of affection. Sparky was the name of a horse in the comic strip Barney Google. A dumb horse. A joke horse. They were calling him an animal. And...

Five teenage boys have died and four people have been taken to hospital following a two-vehicle crash in County Kildare. The collision occurred on the M9 Northbound at Junction 3 at about 03:00 local time on Sunday. Gardaí said the bodies of the five teenage boys, all occupants of one vehicle, have now been removed from the scene and taken to Naas General Hospital where post-mortem examinations will take place. They said the vehicle had been travelling on the wrong side of the carriageway when a head on collision occurred with a second car. The driver and front passenger, both...

The University of Cambridge must uphold its academic integrity in the wake of Jason Arday’s death, its chancellor has said. Lord Smith of Finsbury called for the institution to be fearless in interrogating accusations of plagiarism and suggestions of academic misconduct. Writing in The Telegraph, the peer said: “We must uphold the importance of academic integrity. * * * Lord Smith, who served as secretary of state for culture, media and sport under Sir Tony Blair, had previously labelled the coverage of Mr Arday a “racist feeding frenzy” and said it was correct for the institution to defend him against...

[Catholic Caucus] Pachamama ritual performed by Vatican official took place at pro-LGBT event In addition to the idolatrous Pachamama ritual, the 'human rights' event was held in conjunction with LGBT groups.Rorate Caeli reported published a report from InfoVaticana yesterday morning showing that two Catholic bishops and a monsignor participated in a pagan ritual (venerating and praying to Pachamama) in a conference intended to prepare the way for Pope Leo’s trip to Peru this November. The initial story came from the Vatican News, and unsurprisingly, Vatican News omitted several key details.The event titled “Weaving Voices for Dignity: For Human Rights and...

""Overall, 150 million people across 29 states, from Maine to Montana, in the northern half of the US are expected to experience periods of snow and freezing temperatures between December 2026 and March 2027.""

0:25 VIDEO AT LINK . Woman refueling her SUV. Can you spot what's wrong?..................

Iryna Zarutska's family is going to file a lawsuit regarding her vicious murder in a Charlotte train car. We should be able to sue these negligent judges who let violent criminals back out our streets to victimize us again and again. Decarlos Brown, Jr., the murderer of Iryna Zarutska, had at least 14 prior arrests, including for violent felonies. HOLD THE JUDGES ACCOUNTABLE.

The number of people admitted to German trauma centres with life-threatening stab wounds linked to violent crime has risen sharply over the past decade, according to an analysis of data from hundreds of hospitals. The study by the German Society for Trauma Surgery (DGU), published in the Deutsches Ärzteblatt, examined 3,664 seriously injured patients treated at 600 German hospitals between 2013 and 2024. The number of such cases rose from 212 in 2013 to 336 in 2024, an increase of almost 59%. The figure peaked at 382 in 2023. Although knife-related injuries remain a small proportion of all serious trauma...

George W. Bush got the world's attention by drawing a line after 9/11. "You're either with us or against us," Bush warned when it came to radical Islamic terrorism. It provided a clarifying moment in American foreign policy, and carried enough of a military and economic threat that forced cooperation from unlikely sources.This morning, Donald Trump played the same card Bush did, and against the same type of threat. Trump didn't use precisely the same formulation, but the point comes through clearly. Anyone doing business with Iran will have to choose between the IRGC and having access to Western financial...

The debate for the Los Angeles mayoral race is off to a fiery start after incumbent Karen Bass told her opponent, Nithya Raman, that she was lazy. 'I did the first tax credit when I was Speaker of the House. You were nowhere,' Bass said with Raman sitting next to her. 'Even when it came time to vote for the entertainment industry, you walked on votes. As a matter of fact, I believe you have missed several thousand votes because you don't show up to work.' The incumbent mayor's fierce words came Wednesday night in Sherman Oaks as Election Day...

A passenger plane carrying nearly 300 people struck its tail as it took off from Munich airport in an incident that was described as a 'near disaster'. Footage showed the tumultuous departure of the Vietnam Airlines Boeing 787 on Saturday. A cloud of dust was thrown into the air as the tail hit the ground. Inside the cabin, a loud scraping noise was heard as the plane, which was carrying 271 passengers and 16 crew, lifted off the runway. The 250-ton plane skidded across grass, hit light posts and soared towards trees as the crew – made up of three...

Bishop Eleganti: Islam poses ‘very serious’ danger to the West“Globalism has already failed” and the crisis of predominantly Muslim migration is leading to a point of “no return”, Bishop Marian Eleganti has declared. The former auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Chur is one of a handful of prelates who publicly denounces Islam and the concept of modern migration into the West, and has regularly linked the demographic crisis in the West to the crisis of immigration simultaneously affecting Europe. Interviewed recently by La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, Eleganti warned that the Catholic Church “should not take an idealistic approach on...

Earlier this year, shortly after it was announced that the publisher Simon & Schuster had bought the rights to Jason Arday’s memoir, the then professor of sociology of education at Cambridge University gave an interview to The Bookseller. “I always wanted to be a person who flew close to the sun,” Arday mused. “But sometimes I wonder: did I fly too close?” On the evidence of his book – due to be published in the UK on August 27 – and all that has emerged about Arday in recent weeks, the answer is probably yes. Titled Great and Unfortunate Things,...

Two members of the Milligan University cycling team were killed, and several more were injured, in a collision with a vehicle on a rural highway in eastern Tennessee on Wednesday morning, state officials and the school confirmed. A driver has been arrested. In a news conference Wednesday night, Milligan University President Dr. Stephen Waers said 11 cyclists were on a training ride when the crash occurred at about 8 a.m. local time. Waers said two cyclists were killed and seven others were hospitalized.

A Black and reportedly autistic man touted as the youngest scholar of color to serve as a chair at the University of Cambridge was accused of plagiarism before authorities say he took his own life last week. If that were the only headline following professor Jason Arday’s death at age 41, then it would be tragic enough. However, the feeding frenzy that followed the plagiarism allegations, the way Arday was hounded relentlessly online and in print regarding his credentials and biography, and the way his story became an opportunity for the left and right alike to promote their own beliefs...