Free Republic

...The trend that we are seeing is a very positive one. People are seeking tradition...It's a learning lesson for a lot of pastors I talk to. If you are not creating an environment where the people that come to your church can find holiness and meaning and be elevated, you're not doing your job. There was a time in the nineties where people were hungry for a personal encounter with God, and Evangelicalism I think offers that better than some Catholicism circles. Maybe that's to be debated, but times change and needs an appetites change. And I could tell you...

With the left depressed in 2025, much of the cultural energy belongs to the right. But where’s it going to go? One increasing possibility appears to be that newly self-confident right-wingers are getting into various kinds of New Age woo, the occult, gnosticism, RFK Jr. junk science, paganism, Indian esotericism, Chinese numerology, health food fads, etc. In other words, all the old craziness satirized by Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum, plus some new innovations like AI cults and God knows what else. G. K. Chesterton supposedly said, “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.”...

While just 7% of Americans are LGBTQ+, students at Ivy League universities are identifying as non-straight at rates as much as five times the general public. Brown University made headlines after a student poll revealed a whopping 38% of their student body is not straight. “Honestly I’m not surprised by that statistic,” an anonymous senior at Brown University told The Post. “At Brown, there’s no social pressure to fit into a box or hide your identity.” Other Ivies aren’t far behind. In fact, more than a third of students at Princeton and more than a quarter at Yale and Harvard...

Two parents are sounding the alarm after their teenage daughter suffered a horrible death while attempting a deadly social media trend. *** Two parents are sounding the alarm after their teenage daughter suffered a horrible death while attempting a deadly social media trend. Esra had been inhaling fumes from a deodorant can, causing her body to completely shut down. She was rushed to the hospital where she remained on life support for eight days. Doctors ultimately determined her brain was “damaged beyond repair.” Haynes’ family decided to then turn off life support. Esra was participating in a deadly Tiktok challenge...

“Squishy and smooth, kids and adults alike will love the soothing sensory experience of Orbeez!” Spin Master Ltd., the company behind Orbeez, explains on its website. “There’s no limit to the ways you can play. Explode them, squish them, squeeze them, bounce them, crush them or let them flow through your hands! Use your imagination and have endless amounts of fun with Orbeez!” The official description sounds innocuous enough. But the polymer beads also play a central role in a viral social media trend popular among teens and have caused serious injuries across the country. The so-called Orbeez Challenge—which may...

Florida has earned a reputation for being home to some colorful characters -- most notably the "Florida man." He isn't actually a single person but rather a trope of all the Florida men who've made headlines for doing something ... unusual. And he's now starring in the latest internet fad: the "Florida man" challenge, in which you Google "Florida man" and your birthday to see what crazy news story from the state pops up. From botched robberies to deadly cockroach-eating contests, it seems like there's a wild story about a Florida man for every day of the year.

**SNIP** My stomach was, quite literally, in ferment. All those legumes and pulses and generalised vegetable matter appeared to have turned into a giant internal compost heap. It wasn’t too bad in the mornings; but by early afternoon I was like a cow who had overdosed on clover. At first, I palmed the outcome off on our three dogs. But after a while the problem became so severe that even they could not be expected to account for the frequency and potency of aromas emerging from my lower digestive tract. One of the key arguments of vegans against livestock farming...

The day of Jazz Jennings‘ gender confirmation surgery was an emotional one for the whole family. In PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek at Tuesday’s episode of I Am Jazz, the 18-year-old transgender reality star is joined by her parents and siblings in the final moments before being wheeled off to the operating room. “Having my whole family with me throughout this entire journey has been so important,” Jazz says. “From the beginning they have just provided me with unconditional love and support and the fact that they’re here on this day just signifies that we’ve come so, so far since the...

Although it's been out for just a month, Pokemon Go is already bleeding users. A new SurveyMonkey Intelligence report indicates that the game's user base has dropped by over 20% since its peak usage last month. The analytics company estimates that the game peaked at just under 40 million weekly average

The FDA is stockpiling military weapons — and it’s not alone AMERICA’S GUN CULTURE has been a subject of intense interest and controversy for years, with concerns frequently raised about shadowy militias, paramilitary extremists, and unstable zealots in possession of alarming quantities of explosives and firearms. Amid the current din over assault weapons and body armor, consider one domestic organization’s fearsome arsenal of military-style equipment. In the space of eight years, the group amassed a stockpile of pistols, shotguns, and semiautomatic rifles, along with ample supplies of ammunition, liquid explosives, gun scopes, and suppressors. In its cache as well are...

Like most people, the list of books I have read over the years is in the hundreds. The ones still to be read also in the hundreds. That said, of all the books I’ve read or planned to read, a book about “The End Times” had never made either list. Until now. While never a “Bible thumper,” I have always been a person of deep faith, and as outlined in the past, my personal relationship with Jesus Christ started when I was five years old, when a little plastic Baby Jesus became my sole comforter during a fairly violent eviction...

When a revolutionary new product is launched, the first instinct is to understand it by relating its most obvious features to what we already know. In time, it becomes apparent that the analogies we formed, to understand the device, failed to properly inform us of the new way of doing things invited by the product._______________________Source: Apple _______________________ Nowhere is this more obvious than with the Apple Watch. To understand it as a wristwatch that has some fancy features is to miss the relationship it has with the iPhone. The proper, elegant partitioning of tasks is one key area that is...

Nikki Haley and her kids...

Remember the days, not that long ago, when you never encountered the word “gluten”? Unless you were an ambitious baker, it was a rare word, like threnody, or anchorite. No more. Gluten today is nearly up there with yoga and latte, and way more common than twerk. I know people who do not have celiac disease — if you are one of the 1 percent of Americans who suffer from celiac disease, letting gluten pass between your lips is not an option — who banished gluten from their diets just because, and so do you. They report feeling “so much...

The bizarre craze was started by a (blonde) Ukrainian model in her early 20s named Valeria Lukyanova, when -although already a great-looking gal- she went and got various plastic surgeries in order to appear more like a human Barbie Doll, while starving herself skinny and wearing elaborately-constructed makeup to enlarge the appearance of her eyes, etc. (apparently she already had the legs for it). For some time Lukyanova was publicizing herself with a like-minded, 19-y.o. friend, (redhead) Anastasiya Shpagina, but since they reportedly had a doll-fight over who-was-getting-how-much-attention on a Japanese TV interview, the two parted ways. The strange fantasy...

In a safety-obsessed society that bans dodge ball and tag for elementary school kids, perhaps it’s predictable that one of the newest fads on college campuses is something called Prison Ball, according to the Student Free Press Association. Described as “fast-paced” and “crazy” by University of Kansas student player Mike Pitt, the game resembles basic dodge ball, but with a difference. If a player gets hit, he’s not out of the game. Instead he goes to a “jail” near the opponent’s goal. “The way to get out of jail is to catch a ball thrown from the far side of...

February 6, 2010 Save the planet? Darling, that’s so last season Ring-pull handbags and frocks made of milk? Celebrity fashionistas aren’t helping ecology, they are glorifying themselves Janice Turner Although I celebrate the Oscar nomination for Colin Firth, undisputed king of simmering internal conflict, I’m concerned about his wife Livia. I’m not sure she will cope, not after the Screen Actors Guild Awards when, “just hours” before the ceremony, her dress woven from milk — yes, milk — didn’t fit, and her clutch bag encrusted in ring-pulls clashed with her gold vegetarian shoes. Undeniably, as her Vogue blog put it,...

It seems virtually everyone has jumped on the "Give to Haiti" bandwagon. From little kids to super-celebrities, giving to Haiti has become the popular thing to do - the fad d'jour. Celebrities like Olivia Wilde met in California yesterday to raise money for Haiti at the Artists for Peace and Justice event. "Hope for Haiti Now" was reminiscent of the 1980's when Live Aid and We Are The World took the country and the world by storm ... Now whether you realize it or not, you have already made a financial contribution to Haiti ... Because the United States Government...

Candidate-related art taking off July 20, 2008Recommend BY CHRISTINA S.N. LEWIS Last week's New Yorker magazine cover, an illustration depicting Sen. Barack Obama and his wife as fist-bumping terrorists, has been all over the news. But that isn't the only Obama-related artwork attracting attention these days. Collectors, investors and fund-raisers -- many of them looking to cash in on the candidate's popularity and place in history -- are snapping up campaign posters and other works depicting Obama.

As a 17-year-old boy, I had looked for truth and answers in this world and found none. Then, to my own amazement, I found myself completely won over by the bold, unashamed witness of a group of committed Christians on my high school campus. People could have tried to be cool and win me over, but it would have never worked. I'd had enough of "cool" in the crazy home I was raised in to make me choke. I had pretty much seen it all, and nothing to me was lamer than people trying too hard to be cool. The...