Free Republic

The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019, 65% of American adults describe themselves as Christians when asked about their religion, down 12 percentage points over the past decade. Meanwhile, the religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. Both Protestantism and Catholicism are experiencing losses of population share. Currently, 43% of U.S. adults identify with Protestantism, down from 51% in...

Sarah Palin turns 49 years old today, still relatively young and poised for the third act of her public life, whatever she chooses for that to be. Act I: Ambitious young woman rises through the ranks in local Alaskan politics to become the state's youngest governor (and first female governor). Picked in 2008 as the unconvential running mate for Republican John McCain's presidential bid. Her presence on the ticket certainly didn't help McCain, but her image as a folksy soccer mom and an arch-conservative firebrand energizes her own base and she becomes a Tea Party icon. Act II: After McCain's...

A MEDIEVAL cemetery regarded as one of the wonders of the Caucasus has been destroyed in an act of cultural vandalism likened to the Taliban blowing up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001. The Jugha cemetery was a unique collection of several thousand carved stone crosses on Azerbaijan's southern border with Iran. But after 18 years of conflict between Azerbaijan and its western neighbour, Armenia, it has been confirmed that the cemetery has vanished. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting, a London-based non-government organisation that supports independent journalism, said one of its staff had recently been to the...

JERUSALEM (Nov. 21) - A barely legible clue - the name "Simon" carved in Greek letters - beckoned from high up on the weather-beaten facade of an ancient burial monument. Their curiosity piqued, two Jerusalem scholars uncovered six previously invisible lines of inscription: a Gospel verse - Luke 2:25.