Free Republic

Suppose for a moment that the birth in Bethlehem that Christians celebrate this week never happened --that it is, as the secularists would have it, mere mumbo jumbo, superstition, a myth. In other words, consider it not as an event but as a narrative. You want to launch a big new global movement from scratch. So what do you use? The birth of a child. If Christianity is just a myth, then it is, so to speak, an immaculately conceived one. On the one hand, what could be more powerless than a newborn babe? On the other, without a newborn...

You may find the title confusing. After all, religious Jews don’t celebrate Christmas. So why should a Jew care if a store clerk says “Merry Christmas?” Why should the public disappearance of Christmas matter to the Jewish people? Patience. All will be explained in due course. In the meantime, ‘tis the season to be politically correct – a coast-to-coast harkening-free zone and the tyranny of hyper-sensitivity. The increasingly successful effort to purge Christmas from our culture (correctly called the War on Christmas) proceeds apace – municipal Christmas trees are re-christened (no pun intended) “holiday trees,” schools ban Christmas decorations and...

Finally, a leader has spoken about the real, essential differences in the struggle between the West and Islam, as it emanates from a contest within Islam itself over the most important things. With startling—indeed alarming—clarity, Pope Benedict XVI told his audience in Regensburg, Germany, that not only is violence in spreading faith unreasonable and therefore against God, but that a conception of God without reason, or above reason, leads to that very violence. To ensure everyone knew what he was talking about, the pope quoted from a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, who was besieged by Islamic forces attempting...

After decades of excoriating evangelical Christians as bigoted morons, foaming-at-the-mouth fanatics and vile hypocrites -- both sexually-obsessed and sexually-repressed (part Elmer Gantry, part Elmer Fudd) -- the media has hit on a new tactic. The cover story ("America's God Complex - Like George W. Bush, The Religious Right Is At The Crossroads") in the November 13th Newsweek explains that evangelicals aren't really all that bad - it's just that the poor fools have been duped by the Republican Party, their energies (which should be devoted to more worthwhile endeavors) diverted to sordid politics. But there's hope that the Bible Belt...

Last month, by a vote of 237-4, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted a pastoral statement calling for an end to the death penalty. The 20-page document -- "A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death" -- makes a number of claims. Among them: that the execution of murderers "violates respect for human life and dignity," that it fuels a "cycle of violence [that] diminishes us all," and that "we have other ways to punish criminals and protect society." The bishops acknowledge in passing that Catholic teaching has never banned the death penalty outright or declared it "intrinsically...