Free Republic

After 30 years and millions of dollars of restoration, 1500-year-old Santa Maria Antiqua, buried beneath the Roman Forum by an earthquake in 847, has finally reopened to the public, and it is stunning: “This church is the Sistine Chapel of the early Middle Ages,” Maria Andaloro, an art historian involved in the project, told Reuters. “It collected the very best of figurative culture of the Christian world between Rome and Byzantium.” Being buried by the earthquake saved the church from being altered in later centuries, particularly during the Counter-Reformation, said Prof Andaloro. Among the most significant frescoes is a depiction...

My new book, The Protestant's Dilemma, shows in a myriad of ways why Protestantism is implausible. We sifted through many arguments to boil the book down to the most essential. A few chapters didn't make the cut but are still good enough to share. Here's one of them. If Protestantism is true, There's no way to know whether you're assenting to divine revelation or to mere human opinion about divine revelation. Protestants and Catholics both believe that God has revealed himself to man over the course of human history, culminating in his ultimate self-revelation in Jesus Christ. But whereas Catholics...

The minister of Brentford Free Church has said the "thoughts and prayers" of the church community are with those involved in the case of pastor Andrew Gilroy, who was jailed for child sex offences last Friday. Rev David Beazley said the paedophile pastor of the Syon Mission had been a "colleague and friend". He said: "We share the sadness of the whole situation, and our hope is that there will now be opportunity for all those directly and indirectly affected to move on." Gilroy abused his position to befriend teenage boys and invite them to his home for photographic sessions....

CALVISM DEFINED ByRichard Watson CALVINISM, that scheme of doctrine on predestination and grace, which was taught by Calvin, the celebrated reformer, in the early part of the sixteenth century. His opinions are largely opened in the third book of his "Institutes:" "Predestination we call the eternal decree of God; by which he hath determined in himself what he would have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created with similar destiny; but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or other of these ends,...

The Next Christianity   PHILIP JENKINS In looking back over the enormous changes wrought by the twentieth century, Western observers may have missed the most dramatic revolution of all. While secular movements like communism, feminism, and environmentalism have gotten the lion's share of our attention, the explosive southward expansion of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has barely registered on Western consciousness. Nor has the globalization of Christianity — and the enormous religious, political, and social consequences it portends — been properly understood. Ever since the sexual-abuse crisis erupted in the U.S. Roman Catholic Church in the mid-1980s, with...