Free Republic

When the Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, N.Y., left the Episcopal Church over disagreements about what the Bible says about sexuality, the congregation offered to pay for the building in which it worshiped. In return the Episcopal Church sued to seize the building, then sold it for a fraction of the price to someone who turned it into a mosque.

The number of female pastors in Baptist churches has grown by a third in the past five years, according to a recent report covered in the Associated Baptist Press. Baptist Women in Ministry found that women’s involvement in ordained ministry is slowly growing among organizations like the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas. The Southern Baptist Convention’s position is that Scripture forbids women from serving as pastors.

Dozens of churches, from Park Hill Congregational in Denver to Hillview United Methodist in Boise, Idaho, and First United Lutheran in San Francisco to St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church in Honolulu, are planning to send "a message both here at home and to the Arab and Muslim world about our respect for Islam" with a time to read the Quran during worship this Sunday. It's not just wrong, but dangerous, according to Christian trends analysts. The aim of the program, which is promoted by social activists behind the Faith Shared website, is to counter the message from Islamic activists who say...

A little noticed meeting a couple of weeks ago in Atlanta opens a window into the changing relationship between religion and politics in the age of Obama. The gathering at the Carter Center, former President Jimmy Carter's base of operations, brought together a spectrum of Christian leaders to talk about their role in helping to ease the conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians. For the past eight years, the Christian leaders who had the easiest access to the corridors of power at the White House were those who were unabashedly pro-Israel. Their voices reinforced the tendency of the Bush administration...

Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota is a congregation of the more conservative Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod. It is not unusual these days to find families leaving the ELCA to join the church. However, a new member’s class at Bethlehem Lutheran is an unusual place to find young men from the ELCA’s Luther Seminary in Saint Paul. Pastor of the Church, Robert Krueger, says that he sees more ELCA students coming to his traditional and liturgical congregation. “They all have expressed a disappointment in the direction the ELCA is going, and its general disregard for the Bible as...