Free Republic

A thousand Christians have fled their homes and are now sleeping rough after they were targeted by rampaging mobs. Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) reports that the level of destruction in Jaranwala, near Faisalabad, has been "down to the last lightbulb". Churches have not been spared in this week's wave of violence. According to ACN, the number of churches and chapels targeted has risen to 21, with one source in the country who cannot be named for security reasons saying that many of them were set on fire and "nothing is left". The source told ACN that up...

A liberal college town in Idaho is paying $300,000 to three Christian churchgoers who sued the city after being arrested for not wearing masks at an outside service during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The city of Moscow announced this week that it would settle with Gabriel Rench, as well as Sean and Rachel Bohnet, who brought a case against city leaders in March 2021 that alleged their rights under the First and Fourth Amendments were violated when they were arrested at an outdoor "psalm sing" conducted by leaders from their church. Moscow, home to the University of Idaho,...

Despte Macron’s ban on social media posts and news about the jihad violence in France, reports continue to leak out of the country. Rumble is currently unavailable in France. ... A 16th century church in France is set ablaze and burns to the ground during the riots that have engulfed France, spurred on by groups of migrant men. ... A 16th-century church was attacked and set on fire in Drosnay in the North-Eastern region of France as fresh violence erupted in the country recently. A video showing the church engulfed in massive fire has surfaced online.

More than half of Protestant churches rely on armed members as part of their security plans, a survey of pastors shows.About 81% of churches have at least one security measure in place and 54% rely on armed congregants as part of their security, according to a survey of 1,000 pastors conducted by the evangelical research group Lifeway Research.The most-cited option, reported by 57% of pastors, is to have “an intentional plan for an active shooter situation.” Having armed members was the second most-cited security option. Third was radio communications among security personnel (26%), followed by a no-firearms policy for church...

On an almost daily basis, I talk to friends who lead churches around the USA who are trying to understand what is happening in our culture and how to help the people in their churches to be faithful to Jesus in light of what is happening. It seems like the basic framework and foundations of our society are changing rapidly. But maybe it hasn’t been as fast as we think. The “Long March through the Institutions” was a phrase attributed to the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and then coined as a succinct mission statement by Marxist student activist Rudi...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a warning of “a heightened threat environment,” including possible attacks against such institutions as churches and the police, as the 2024 election draws closer. Just The News reports that the Memorial Day bulletin issued by the DHS also warned of political violence that could be sparked by “legislative or judicial decisions pertaining to sociopolitical issues.” “The United States remains in a heightened threat environment,” the bulletin declares. “Lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the...

Resolving lawsuits brought by four churches, two federal courts in California have ruled that the First Amendment protects the churches’ right to decline elective abortion coverage in their health insurance plans. Given the courts’ rulings in these multi-year lawsuits, state officials have agreed to pay $1,400,000 toward the churches’ attorneys’ fees. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent Skyline Wesleyan Church, located in the San Diego area, in one federal lawsuit, and Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch in another. Both lawsuits challenged California’s abortion-coverage mandate. In both...

Attacks on churches and Christian institutions on American soil are at an all-time high. The March 27, 2023 killings in Nashville — where a woman claiming to be a man (aka “transgender”) stormed a private Christian school and murdered three children and three adults — is just the spectacular tip of a growing but concealed iceberg. According to recent reports by the Family Research Council, “criminal acts against churches have been steadily on the rise for the past several years. ... there were more church attacks in the first quarter of this year than there were in the first quarters...

The Presbyterian Center, a building belonging to Presbyterian Church (USA) located in Louisville, Kentucky. | PCUSA Presbyterian Church (USA) lost more than 100 congregations and over 53,000 members in 2022, reflecting the yearslong trend of decline for the mainline Protestant denomination.The PCUSA Office of the General Assembly released its annual statistics for 2022 this week, which found that the denomination dropped from having approximately 1.193 million members to approximately 1.140 million members.Additionally, PCUSA saw the number of member congregations decline from 8,813 in 2021 to 8,705, as well as their number of ministers drop from 18,458 in 2021 to...

Patriarch Kirill commends and thanks the volunteers for their selfless service.The Common Cause Project is a collection of volunteers who are dedicated to preserving the Russian spiritual tradition in the North of Russia by means of restoring and renovating wooden churches in Russia’s North, many of which have fallen into disrepair or ruin due to decades of enforced neglect or outright attack under communism. Since 2006, however, stalwart volunteers each year trek into the inaccessible North in order to restore and save these spiritual treasures from destruction. Often when they are finished with the renovations, they turn the temples over...

Virginia Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine gave the FBI his approval to investigate Catholic parishes in his own state on Monday. When asked by a local ABC affiliate about the FBI’s Richmond division infiltrating Catholic communities to spy on the church for alleged extremism, Kaine called the revelations a misunderstanding. “I think the key is communication,” Kaine told ABC13. “If the FBI has a concern like that, then go to the church leaders and say, ‘Hey look, we have a concern and we don’t want your members to get unwittingly caught up in something.'”Former FBI Special Agent Kyle Seraphin blew the...

Andrey Sadovoy, the mayor of Lviv in western Ukraine, announced on April 6 that the two Ukrainian Orthodox Churches in his city were no more -- the Church of St. Vladimir was demolished by backhoe and the Church of St. George was made part of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, backed by the Zelensky government, reported RT, the website Orthodox Christianity, and The Kyiv Independent. The Church of St. Vladimir was under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, as was the Church of St. George. Under President Volodomyr Zelensky, some churches formerly attached to the Russian Orthodox Church have,...

A recent poll showing a decline in traditional American values confirms what conservatives have been saying: the character of America is changing. The percentage of those polled who said patriotism is important dropped from 70 percent 25 years ago, to 38 percent today. While 59 percent said having children was important 25 years ago, now just 30 percent do. And the importance of religion dropped from 62 percent to 39 percent now calling it important. The poll, released in March 2023, was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and funded by the Wall Street...

Washington D.C., Mar 22, 2023 / 14:47 pm A coalition of conservative organizations is taking legal action to obtain documents from the Department of Justice related to the surge in pro-abortion attacks on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers and a lack of prosecution from the agency. Based on data compiled by CNA, there have been more than 100 attacks on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers since the May 2022 leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned the abortion protections guaranteed in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The DOJ has...

A 60-year-old black man was arrested in Atlanta last month after he allegedly vandalized a historic Baptist church with spray-painted imagery of swastikas as a hanging. Atlanta Police arrested James McIntyre on February 19 in connection to the vandalism after surveillance cameras caught him tagging Providence Missionary Baptist Church on Benjamin E. Mays Drive, according to Fox 5. Officials said that during the investigation, they found McIntyre sitting across the street from the scene of the crime.

VIENNA (AP) — Austrian police warned Wednesday of a possible “Islamist-motivated attack” in Vienna against churches and other houses of worship, citing undisclosed information received by the country’s intelligence service. Police in Vienna tweeted that they had heightened security in front of certain buildings and increased the presence of officers in the Austrian capital. “There is a nonspecific threat of an assault against churches,” Vienna police tweeted. “As (a) precautionary measure ... points of interest have been put under increased guard by regular and special operation police forces.” “If there is a concrete danger for the population at a concrete...

Enforcers of the county’s rules reported the number of cars in the parking lot, whether or not masks were being worn, and even instances of hugging.SAN JOSE, California (LifeSiteNews) — A Christian church in California’s Santa Clara County was hit with hefty fines and its members were surveilled via stakeouts, cell phone monitoring, and other measures “reminiscent of totalitarian regimes” after the church defied the county’s draconian COVID-19 lockdown rules in 2020, according to a March 5 report by independent journalist David Zweig. San Jose’s Calvary Christian Fellowship, headed by pastor Mike McClure, openly defied the Silicon Valley county’s harsh...

There’s a lot to celebrate in Christian worship services. Singing hymns, prayers, and the learning of God’s Word are all part of corporate worship, and I happily participate in that. I also participate in confession. The Protestant tradition involves both a public and silent confession of sins. It’s an acknowledgement that we are sinful by nature, and have sinned by thought, word and deed. Through this confession and our earnest repentance, we seek and receive forgiveness through God’s grace. I sin every single day. I don’t like that I sin but as a member of the human race, it is...

A trio of Florida Republicans are among 20 GOP lawmakers demanding that the FBI explain why it is targeting conservative Catholics for surveillance and intelligence-gathering. Sen. Rick Scott and Reps. Greg Steube and Bill Posey, of Sarasota and Rockledge, respectively, signed a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray expressing deep concerns about the Richmond field office’s warning about “Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology.”

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics. As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic. The situation means some hard decisions for pastors, who have to decide when a dwindling congregation is no longer sustainable. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy...