Free Republic

Full uncut uncensored AG Bill Barr Speech to Notre Dame on the battle between Christianity and Secularism.

The effective separation of sex from procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age–and one of the most ominous. This awareness is spreading among American evangelicals, and it threatens to set loose a firestorm. Most evangelical Protestants greeted the advent of modern birth control technologies with applause and relief. Lacking any substantial theology of marriage, sex, or the family, evangelicals welcomed the development of “The Pill” much as the world celebrated the discovery of penicillin — as one more milestone in the inevitable march of human progress, and the conquest of nature. At the same...

The race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States continues to intensify as energy builds from the almost weekly announcements of a new candidate vying for the nomination. Most recently, Vice President Joe Biden officially announced his candidacy for Commander and Chief. It came as no surprise, but now he is officially in. The surprise in the race is a candidate who has captured the continued (and largely adoring) gaze of the media. His name appears relentlessly in the headlines from every major media outlet. He has become a national sensation—and he is a name that very...

Southern Baptist theologian and Southern Seminary President Albert Mohler spoke to a Christian Legal Society meeting in Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia on Thursday, Oct. 20, concerning the current crisis confronting Christian life in contemporary America, and what Christian lawyers, in particular, might consider in their now crucial roles. He began by noting that every Christian should be a “would be lawyer,” and vice versa. There will be “many moments of common urgency.” ..."Mohler held that there are two ways that a nation can secularize. It can 1) reject theism outright, or 2) adopt a secular worldview while remaining formally...

According to a group of liberal clergy, killing babies in abortions and selling their body parts to the highest bidder is “God’s work.” On July 29, the Planned Parenthood Clergy Advocacy Board said the undercover videos portraying their executives haggling over the cost of aborted babies’ body parts are simply an attack on health care. Jeffrey Walton from the Institute on Religion and Democracy reports that the board is made up of religious leaders from the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church and American Baptist Churches as well as clergy from Reformed Jewish and Unitarian Universalist congregations. In a statement...

As most Americans were thinking thoughts of Christmas cheer, a federal judge in Utah dropped a bomb on the institution of marriage, striking down the most crucial sections of the Utah statute outlawing polygamy. Last Friday, Judge Clark Waddoups of the United States District Court in Utah ruled that Utah’s anti-polygamy law is unconstitutional, violating the free exercise clause of the First Amendment as well as the guarantee of due process.In one sense, the decision was almost inevitable, given the trajectory of both the culture and the federal courts. On the other hand, the sheer shock of the decision serves...

The collapse of the barrier between popular culture and decadence has released a toxic mudslide of vulgarity into the nation’s family rooms—and just about everywhere else. There is almost no remote corner of this culture that is not marked by the toleration of vulgarity, or the outright celebration of depravity. Lee Siegel has seen this reality, and he doesn’t like it. “When did the culture become so coarse?,” he asks, adding: “It’s a question that quickly gets you branded as either an unsophisticated rube or some angry culture warrior.” Siegel wants us all to know that he is neither unsophisticated...

“It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible, but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly, or we start mentally to check out.” That stunningly clear sentence reflects one of the most amazing, tragic, and lamentable characteristics of contemporary Christianity: an impatience with the Word of God. The sentence above comes from Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today in an essay entitled, “Yawning at the Word.” In just a few hundred words, he captures the tragedy of a church increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of...

The sight of the giant cruise ship Costa Concordia listing in the deadly embrace of the sea is a now a graphic symbol of failure. Its timing is absolutely eerie, coming so close to the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. But, unlike the Titanic, this disaster did not take in the middle of the ocean, far from the range of observation. The Costa Concordia appears to be almost touching the rocky Italian coastline. The digital revolution ensures that we are all able to see the wreck of the ship in living color. And then came the story....

As is so often the case, most of us first learned of Rob Bell’s new book by means of Justin Taylor and his blog, “Between Two Worlds,” at the Gospel Coalition. Justin reminds me of the steady folks at the National Hurricane Center. He is able to advise of looming disaster with amazing calmness. That is why I took special notice of Justin’s stern warning: “It is unspeakably sad when those called to be ministers of the Word distort the gospel and deceive the people of God with false doctrine.” Why would Justin feel the need to issue such a...

Though many Christians are going to try to deny "the obvious," evangelical leader Dr. Albert Mohler believes gay marriage is going to become normalized. "I think it's clear that something like same-sex marriage is going to become normalized, legalized and recognized in the culture. It's time for Christians to start thinking about how we're going to deal with that," he said Friday on the Focus on the Family radio program. Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was speaking in response to the Obama administration's decision this week to stop defending the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act – federal...

When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. "A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth." 2. "God wants people to be good, nice, and fair...

Years ago, when our daughter attended a church- sponsored preschool, we were invited to an informal meeting about parenting techniques. After orientation by the school director, we broke into discussion groups. The topic was discipline, a burning issue for preschool parents, swerving naturally to "How do we teach them right from wrong?" One father in our group apparently wanted to stir the pot. Early in the conversation he asked, "But how do we know what's right and wrong? Do those words have any meaning?" If he was hoping for a Socratic discussion he didn't get it, neither the first time...

The Wall Street Journal may be an unusual venue for theological debate, but this past weekend's edition featured just that - a theological debate of sorts. The "of sorts" is a necessary qualifier in this instance, because The Wall Street Journal's debate was not, as advertised, a debate between an atheist and a believer. Instead, it was a debate between two different species of atheists. The paper's "Weekend Journal" section front page for the September 12-13, 2009 edition featured articles by Richard Dawkins and Karen Armstrong set in opposing columns. The paper headlined the feature as "Man vs. God: Two...

For critics of the Southern Baptist Convention, former President Jimmy Carter is the gift that just keeps on giving. Over the last several days, yet another round of news reports has trumpeted the news that the former president has resigned his membership in the Southern Baptist Convention. Almost a decade after he first made this announcement, his repetitive return to this theme set up a new avalanche of news reports. Reports, we might add, that are not news. Adding insult to injury, the reports are about a "resignation" that isn't even a resignation. Try explaining that to the international media....

Richard Holloway is a Bishop of the Scottish Episcopal Church. There seems to be on obvious problem -- he doesn't believe in God. In the Scottish Episcopal Church, that must not be a problem.

President Barack Obama has put the issue of Islam front and center on the international stage. His visit to Turkey, and his very public statements to the Muslim world, have raised a host of questions at home and abroad. In his speech to the Turkish parliament on Monday, President Obama declared: "The United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam." He went on to say that "our partnership with the Muslim world is critical not just in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject, but also to strengthen opportunity for all its...

LOUISVILLE, January 11, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A leader of the evangelical movement in the United States recently came down hard on the effects of in vitro fertilization on his blog, decrying the destruction of millions of embryos for the sake of IVF.Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the primary school of the Southern Baptist Convention and one of the largest seminaries in the world, called the destruction of embryos in IVF a tragedy, after reading a report in the London Times that over one million human embryos have been killed in IVF procedures...

The mere fact that the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson is the Episcopal Church's first openly homosexual bishop ensures that he will be a media celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic. To a great extent, he has become a symbol to both conservatives and liberals in contemporary Christianity. To conservatives, Bishop Robinson represents a near-total theological meltdown. An entire universe of the theological principles and doctrines of orthodox Christianity must be jettisoned or redefined before an openly homosexual bishop becomes imaginable. In order for this to happen, the tradition of the church must be sidelined and the authority of Scripture...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Instead of taking offense at a recent Vatican statement reasserting the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, evangelicals should seize the chance to respond with equal candor that “any church defined by the claims of the papacy is no true church,” according to a prominent Southern Baptist leader. The Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote on his blog that he appreciated the document’s clarity in voicing a key distinction between Catholics and Protestants over papal authority. He said those differences are often forgotten “in this era of confusion and theological laxity.”...