Free Republic

Roy Moore's Christianity and conservatism represents something that scares the heebie-jeebies out of the establishment Can someone figure out who you are today by examining your actions from 39 years ago? I am not who I was 39 years ago, or 29 years ago, or 9 years ago. As human beings, we tend to learn, grow and mature. I do not believe Roy Moore is guilty of what he is being accused of, but isn’t it strange that all of this suddenly appeared within 30 days of an election regarding a guy who is not only a threat to the...

Spirituality enables people to see more within the world and within others. It’s no surprise that this leads to a greater sense of fulfillment. A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute has found that higher levels of spirituality are strongly correlated with higher life satisfaction. As a person of faith, my experience with organized religion has ebbed and flowed throughout my life. Yet I have always appreciated how spiritualities across a variety of traditions animate expansive visions and compassionate ethics. Even as the religious landscape in the United States rapidly changes, the importance of spirituality won’t necessarily go...

When Jim Zeigler, the state auditor of Alabama, invoked the Bible to defend Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore against allegations that he had inappropriate contact with underage girls while single and in his 30s (which Moore has sort of denied), it signaled perhaps the final stage in the corruption of American evangelicalism. Zeigler claimed there are many instances in the Bible where older men had sexual relations with young girls. He cites Mary and Joseph as one example. That the religious left has made similar analogies to advance their political agenda is no excuse. It proves my point. Religious liberals...

How the grandparents of today’s Christian victims of ISIS were Editor’s Note: The following review was written by Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. The book reviewed is Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide, a History (published by the Oxford University Press, 2016), by Joseph Yacoub, an Honorary Professor of Political Science at Catholic University of Lyon. A significantly shorter version of this review first appeared in the Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2017. This important contribution to genocide studies documents how the world’s oldest Christian communities—variously referred to as Chaldeans, Syriacs, and Arameans,...

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland wants to be sure that Christian traditions are not subject to “ideological censorship” in the European Union, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said on Thursday, emphasizing her party’s opposition to Muslim immigration. Along with Hungary, Poland has refused to take in any of its quota of the wave of refugees from Syria and elsewhere who have come to Europe since 2015, on the grounds that Muslim immigrants are a threat to their national security and stability. Szydlo’s eurosceptic Law and Justice (PiS) party appeals directly to the more socially conservative sections of Poland’s overwhelmingly Roman Catholic population....

What kind of vermin mocks prayer and politicizes human tragedy after a dark-hearted creep who reportedly bought dogs online and used them for target practice walks into a church and kills 26 innocent people?Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, for one, and leftists at large. Just after the Sutherland Springs, Texas shooting, Warren tweeted: “Thoughts and prayers are not enough, GOP. We must end this violence. We must stop these tragedies. People are dying while you wait.”The Hollywood hypocrite crowd paused from sexually assaulting each other long enough to attack the faithful for their “thoughts and prayers.” Meanwhile, Democrats chimed...

A Christian couple in the Canadian province of Alberta have been told by local Catholic Social Services and the provincial government that they are unfit to adopt children because they accept Biblical teaching regarding the immorality of homosexual acts, according to their attorneys at the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. The married couple, whose initials are given as “C.D. and N.D,” have filed a civil suit against the province alleging religious discrimination, and calling the decision to reject their candidacy for adoption “unreasonable and void by virtue of arbitrariness, bias, bad faith, as well as breaches of procedural fairness and...

Do you oppose the liberal agenda on health care, the living wage, voter ID laws, gay rights, and gun control? If so, you are guilty of supporting “non-Christian” policies. That was the view expressed by William Barber on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show today. But Barber, a liberal pastor from North Carolina, took things an ugly step further. Suggesting that they had failed to address poverty, including child poverty, Barber accused conservative Christians of “policy pedophilia.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Many people have tried to explain away the mass shootings in Texas and Las Vegas as mental illness. I can assure you that 99.9 percent of mentally ill people could never kill anyone. People are ruling out a spiritual component to these shootings. The mass shooters reflect the classic behavior one should expect of armed people who are demon-possessed. I invite Freepers who are mature Christians, and who have developed the ability to do spiritual discernment, to comment on this issue. Then there is the issue of Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, the most committed Christian to be a Senate...

When I was growing up, my parents almost daily rounded up my four siblings and I for family prayer, the seven of us—albeit with differing degrees of attention—reciting out loud the Catholic prayers of the rosary, while meditating on different events in Jesus Christ’s life. At the end of the rosary, after my dad had rattled off the oh, roughly 785 intentions he wanted the Lord to take some action on, it was the kids’ turn to announce to God what we’d like to see happen. And so when one of my brothers was 2, he began to pray for...

With the awful reality of a new and frightening type of terror attack being perpetrated in the streets of our country, my mind returns to the recent memory of a more peaceful day. On that evening, the gentle breezes rustling through the palm trees was matched in melodious beauty by the crash of the waves against the shore. As if in a symphony, the voices of some 50 worshippers rose in praise to our awesome God as we sang of His goodness at the outdoor service on Little Gasparilla Island. Erica Emmanuel, the pastor’s wife, led us in Hillsong’s “Oceans”:...

Humans love dogs more than their fellow man. Two major studies showed that mankind has more empathy for pooches in dire circumstances than suffering people, according to a report in the Times of London. A UK medical research charity staged two phony donation campaigns – one with a dog and the other featuring a man. Of course, the pooch drew more contributions. “Would you give pounds 5 to save Harrison from a slow, painful death?” the separate ads said, featuring a canine and human “Harrison.” Then a Northeastern University study showed that only a baby human could compete with man’s...

Singled-out and entrusted with an eternal mission Who exactly was Abraham? “At a very early age, he began to wonder about the world. He would think about it day and night, and ask himself, How could it be that this great wheel (the universe) is constantly turning, and no one is turning it? And who brought it into existence — for it could not have brought itself into existence” (Maimonides, Hilchos Avodah Zarah 1:3, based on the teachings of the Sages). (snip) He alone, among the whole society around him, was engaged in these thoughts. Among the blindly obedient masses,...

The Russian revolution had started earlier in February. The tsar had already abdicated. And a provisional bourgeois government had begun to establish itself. But it was the occupation of government buildings in Petrograd, on 25 October 1917, by the Red Guards of the Bolsheviks that marks the beginning of the Communist era proper. And it was from this date that an experiment wholly unprecedented in world history began: the systematic, state-sponsored attempt to eliminate religion. “Militant atheism is not merely incidental or marginal to Communist policy. It is not a side effect, but the central pivot,” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Lenin...

Since when did the gospel become associated with guns? Since when did the Christian faith become linked to the right to bear arms? Lest I be misunderstood, this article is not about gun control, nor is it about the Second Amendment. I am not asking whether Christians should serve in the military and I am not questioning our right to defend ourselves. I’m simply asking why conservative Christianity – in particular, American evangelical Christianity – is so strongly linked with a passion for guns. There’s certainly no scriptural connection to be made. Again, I’m not advocating for new gun control...

snip While the Chinese government has branded all religion a national security threat, of paramount concern is Christianity. Christianity has seen such a dramatic surge in popularity that Christians reportedly outnumber Communist Party members in the country. In response to this phenomenon, the Chinese government announced the imposition of new regulations imposing onerous fines and jail time on Christians who participate in “unauthorized” travel to religious conferences, engage in “unregistered” Christian activities like house prayer, or refuse to abide by laws demanding the removal of any public displays of Christianity. The law also bans members of the Communist Party from...

In his speech yesterday at the Party Congress, Xi Jinping reiterated the "new approach" to religious activities. The Catholic Church reiterates the independence of nomination and ordination of bishops. Two bishops present at the Congress: Msgr. Giovanni Fang Xingyao of Linyi and Msgr. Giuseppe Ma Yinglin of Kunming.Beijing (AsiaNews) - Insisting the direction of “Siniciziation of religions” was stressed among main goals and visions in General Secretary Xi Jinping’s work report in the opening session of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. His epic address or the so-called “Xi Jinping Thought” is expected to become dogma...

An online database launched Wednesday singles out churches opposed to homosexuality ostensibly to encourage clarity in whether various churches support LGBT lifestyles. The database, called Church Clarity, scores churches on whether they are “clear” or “unclear” in their message of being “affirming” or “non-affirming” toward LGBT relationships. Church Clarity takes aim specifically at evangelical churches and accuses them of having a dangerous “capitalist mindset” and of being purposefully unclear in their policies toward LGBT relationships .

"But not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without your Father knowing it" Reading the “news” over the ‘Net these days is enough to want to pull one’s hair out. But it is the mainstream media reports of how Western leaders are turning on their own people, not the Fake News that most rational folk can spot at a glance that is really the most worrisome. Easy to dismiss theories from activist talking heads like Sally Kohn over at CNN, who said Harvey Weinstein’s fall “grew from rage over Trump”. (CNN), or that cowgirl hat-wearing “yippie yippie ki...

Attendee: Courses teach 'Christians and Jews were always better off under Muslim rule'! The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in America, is co-sponsoring a “professional development” workshop for K-12 teachers to “Learn about Islam and the Arab World” – and the district has apparently partnered with an anti-Israel group for lessons on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Learning about Islam and the Arab World” is the topic of a two-part course that began Oct. 14 and will continue Oct. 21. It is being led by LAUSD teachers Richard Jessel and Rosa Melendez, according to a posting on the...