Free Republic

If you have accepted God’s calling on your life to serve His people as a shepherd and a leader, then you have my respect. I honor you for your service, and I recognize your sacrifice. Pastoral ministry is anything but easy, and only those who have served as pastoral leaders know the immense pressures you face. You are the one to get the phone call from the shocked parents who just learned that their child was killed in a car accident. You have to bring comforting words at the funeral. You have to answer the questions of, “Where was God?”...

Pawlowski was scheduled to appear at the trucker blockage in Alberta before being arrested for ‘mischief’ by undercover police. CALGARY, Alberta – Canadian pastor Artur Pawlowski was arrested yet again at his home in Calgary this morning before he was scheduled to appear at a peaceful Freedom Trucker protest. Rebel News reported that an undercover SWAT team arrested the Christian preacher after staking out his home in a van, according to Pawlowski’s son, Nathaniel. ... Pawlowski was planning to perform a church service at the trucker blockage in Milk River, Alberta. In a live video of the preacher’s arrest, a...

YouTube removed an entire radio show from its platform this week, hosted by popular Christian author and social commentator Eric Metaxas, citing violations of their community standards. Metaxas – author of biographies on the lives of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther, and William Wilberforce, among many other books – announced the news to his social media pages on Tuesday. “It’s happened,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “Despite our going FAR out of our way to comply with their arbitrary ‘community standards’, YouTube decided to remove every single video we’ve ever done on the Eric Metaxas Show off their platform.” The...

For the past 45 years Grace Community Church has leased a large portion of its parking lot from Los Angeles County. On Friday the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works terminated that agreement – no doubt in retaliation for the church invoking its Constitutional rights to gather for Sunday worship. “If Grace fails to vacate the premise as required, the District may enter the premises and remove Grace’s personal property,” the letter said. The California mega-church was given 30-days to to vacate the property. The church had been paying $8301.41 per month to use the parking lot.

The Communist Party of China (CPC) is using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to shut down Christian worship, according to a new report.In one example cited in the Friday report from UCANews, Chinese government officials prevented hundreds of underground Christians in China from celebrating the Feast of the Assumption on August 15.

Unlike his dissembling predecessor, the president calls it like he sees it. Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Islam’s New War on Christians, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. According to President Donald Trump, Christians in the Middle East are being treated in a manner that is “beyond disgraceful”; Christianity is being “treated horribly and very unfairly, and it’s criminal.”  He said this during his August 13 news conference, in response to the question, “How does the accord today between Israel and the UAE help struggling and persecuted Christians in the Middle East?” Below is the...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Secular elite are blasting a California priest for his traditional presentation of the Catholic faith. San Francisco mayor London Breed and Bay Area media are excoriating Fr. Joseph Illo, pastor of Star of the Sea parish in San Francisco, for encouraging his parishioners to attend Holy Mass — safely — during the California shutdown. Late last week, media source SFist accused Fr. Illo of making "a number of outrageously irresponsible statements that sound like they came from Fox News." One statement SFist found "outrageously irresponsible" was the priest's empirical observation that among the "thousands of people"...

In a spate of Fulani militant attacks in July on predominantly Christian villages in southern Kaduna State, Nigeria, at least 121 people were killed and thousands displaced. The spree of bloodshed began on 10 July with a three-day onslaught on the Chibob farming community in Gora ward that left 22 dead. Then Fulani militants struck in attacks in Kauru local government area that saw at least 38 murdered in Kagoro town in the week of 19 July, with 32 killed in Kukum Daji and Gora Gan in separate attacks. On 22 July, armed with knives and machetes, Fulani militants broke...

A member of China’s Early Rain Covenant Church says the Chinese Communist Party continues to persecute members of the church by threatening to send their children to government re-education camps or forcibly remove adopted children from their parents. In a video released Wednesday alongside a new report by International Christian Concern, Liao Qiang, a member of ERCC in Chengdu, said that despite shuttering the church and jailing Pastor Wang Yi in December of 2018, the CCP continues to harass its members. Qiang said in the video accompanying ICC's new report on Religious Suppression in China that his family was forced...

Mozambique: Muslims burn churches, kidnap young girls, behead people, displace 1000s in escalating jihad violence JUL 26, 2020 11:00 AM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS “Bishop Luiz Fernando Lisboa of Mozambique’s Pemba diocese has been an outspoken advocate for the needs of the more than 200,000 people who have been displaced by the violent insurgency.” Lisboa states rightly: “The world has no idea yet what is happening because of indifference.” If the world truly cared about black lives, there would be a loud outcry over the genocide of black African Christians that is continuing and escalating. There would also be international outrage...

The CCP continues cracking down on house churches and state-approved venues in the southeastern province of Jiangxi.China’s regime did not cease suppressing places of worship across the country even amid the coronavirus outbreak. In Jiangxi Province’s Shangrao city alone, at least 400 Three-Self and house church venues were suppressed in the spring—some demolished, while others closed or repurposed, their crosses destroyed. In the city’s Yugan county, 234 churches and venues were recently shut down; 48 Three-Self sites were closed between April 18 and 30. “The central and provincial governments planned to send a team to focus on rectifying Christianity in...

As of July 13th, 2020 ALL indoor Church services have been banned in at least 30 counties, even in-home Bible studies, and fellowship. In other counties, fellowship may be limited to 25% capacity or 100 people, whichever is less. Also, singing, chanting, praise, and worship have been banned. However, the exact same order also allows protests. Under Governor Newsom’s latest directive, residents of California can engage in protests and riots, but cannot house a Bible Study with a friend or neighbor. Liberty Counsel will be filing suit against Gov. Newsom on behalf of Pastor Samuel Rodriguez, who is president of...

China has appointed a hardliner, who is known for removing hundreds of crosses from churches in the eastern province of Zhejiang, to take charge of its office overseeing matters in Hong Kong, which might raise concerns among pro-democracy protesters and residents in the semi-autonomous city. Xia Baolong, the vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference who was a close aide to Chinese Premier Xi Jinping from 2003 to 2007 when he was Communist Party secretary of Zhejiang Province, will serve as the director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office, China’s Human Resources Ministry has announced, according...

THE vicious jihadist terrorist organisation, Islamic State’s West Africa Province, ISWAP, also known as Boko Haram sect has beheaded abducted Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, in Michika Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Rev. Lawan Andimi.

China announced it will soon implement harsh new measures requiring all religious personnel to support and implement total submission to the Chinese Communist Party, sparking concern among Chinese Christians. Asia News reports that the new administrative measures will be put in place for Chinese religious groups starting Feb. 1. The measures complete the "Regulations on religious affairs" revised two years ago and implemented on Feb. 1, 2018. The new measures include six chapters and 41 articles dealing with the organization, functions, offices, supervision, projects and economic administration of communities and groups at both a national and local level. Under the...

Last week the Egyptian court system denied justice to Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian minority by again postponing judgment on two notorious cases that have been at court for years. The first concerns Soa‘d Thabet, a 70-year-old Coptic grandmother. On May 20, 2016, a mob of some 300 Muslim men descended on her home, stripped her completely naked, beat, spit on, and paraded her in the streets of al-Karm village (in Minya governorate) to jeers, whistles, and triumphant shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” Earlier that day she and her husband had gone to local police and complained that they were being harassed...

A federal judge has affirmed a Colorado law that effectively bans business owners from freely expressing in public their religious beliefs about marriage and homosexuality. Colorado was the loser in a similar dispute, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the state show "hostility" to the Christian beliefs of Jack Phillips in its handling of his refusal to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Since then, openly homosexual Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has pursued a gay-rights agenda that includes allowing people to indicate their sex on driver's licenses according to their "gender identity" and banning...

WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - President Trump is honoring a Christian martyr by naming the mission to kill a top ISIS leader and her captor after her. In an address at the White House on Sunday, Trump announced that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a special forces raid in Syria while he and his security team watched. Also on Sunday, National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the mission was named in honor of Kayla Mueller, captured in Syria in 2013 while working with humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders. Mueller spent 18 months in...

JERUSALEM, Israel – The US military operation that resulted in the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was dedicated to Kayla Mueller, a young Christian woman who was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by the Islamic State. Mueller, 26, was abducted by ISIS in August 2013 in Aleppo, Syria while serving on a humanitarian mission with Doctors Without Borders. US officials said Baghdadi tortured and repeatedly raped her at his compound before announcing in 2015 that she died in captivity. Her body has never been recovered. White House National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien told NBC's Meet the Press" on Sunday...

Beijing, China, Sep 23, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Christian churches in China have been ordered to take down displays of the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to reports. According to Bitter Winter, a magazine covering religious liberty and human rights in China, churches belonging to the country’s state-run “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” Protestant denomination have been ordered to replace displays of the decalogue with sayings of the Chinese president. The new directive reportedly comes after Three-Self churches were initially told to remove the First Commandment, “You shall have no gods before me,”...