Free Republic

LINCOLN, Neb. — Self-identified liberal voters are less forgiving to Democratic politicians who cross party lines on certain issues than conservative voters are to Republican lawmakers doing the same thing, a recent study shows. Researchers at the University of Nebraska used MRI technology to examine the brains of 58 people when they face incongruent positions by politicians. The researchers wanted to see which parts of the brain lit up when people evaluated fictional politicians’ stances on key conservative and liberal issues.

The Presbyterian Church USA (PC USA) has accused Caterpillar, HP and Motorola of supporting the Israeli government in a "non-peaceful way." As a result of those claim, the Church has now indicated that it will divest of the companies' stock. The Church has been trying to convince Caterpillar to cease its indirect engagement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years, a PC USA representative wrote in a statement.Caterpillar, a producer of mining equipment, has “profited from sales of its products to Israeli military and civilian authorities, including its D-9 bulldozers which are used to demolish Palestinian homes and construct settlements and...

A new faith coalition out in Cleveland, Ohio, raises some interesting questions about the intermingling of organized religion and leftist politics. The founding of the Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC), a group that describes itself as “a non-partisan coalition of faith communities and partner organizations in Cuyahoga County working together to build power for social justice,” claims that its focus is uniting the masses to improve local neighborhoods. While many would see this as a worthy endeavor, others — mainly those with fears about the use of faith to progress the liberal agenda — are questioning the GCC’s motivations. The central...

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has done us a wonderful service with her Aug. 15 article in the Atlantic, “Is Rick Perry as Christian as He Thinks He Is?” It’s a masterpiece of liberal misuse of the Bible, which will become more frequent as the campaign heats up. First, only God and Mr. Perry know what Mr. Perry thinks of his own faith. I doubt that either has shared that knowledge with Mrs. Townsend or her editors. Maryland’s Democrat lieutenant governor from 1995 to 2003, Mrs. Townsend starkly makes the case that being Christian means using other people’s tax dollars to help...

ELCA Bishops be warned. If you seek to remove pastors who disagree with the direction of the denomination, you will lose. That is what happened in Greenfield, Indiana, recently. It all began with St. James Lutheran Church’s pastor, Larry Gember. The spiritual leader of the congregation, recommended that they vote to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (The St. James Church Council also recommend that they leave.) Pastor Gember outlined his thoughts in a letter to the congregation a few weeks before the church’s scheduled November 21, 2010, vote. In the letter, Pastor Gember outlined troubling issues he saw...

A burned copy of the Quran, Islam's holy text, was found in a trash can outside a San Francisco mosque last weekend, a spokeswoman for the Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Saturday. The burned Quran was discovered Sunday in a trash can outside the Islamic Society of San Francisco, located at 20 Jones St., according to Zahra Billo, programs and outreach director of the Bay Area chapter of CAIR. The Quran was found in a trash can had been taken out for collection the night before, Billo said. "It was partially burned but you could...

The head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America reported that 40 positions may be cut as the denomination struggles financially. "These have been very painful days in this organization," ELCA Presiding Bishop the Rev. Mark S. Hanson told the Church Council Friday, according to the ELCA News Service. Lutherans are looking to reduce their 2010 budget by 10 percent due to decreased giving over the past 30 years, the economic downturn, and the decision by some congregations to withhold funding. Several congregations have decided to cut all funding to the ELCA following the controversial vote in August by the...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans are a diverse, extraordinary, resilient, and passionate group of forgiving men and women. I wouldn't be standing beside them demanding full and equal treatment under the law and speaking out against the harm caused by religion-based bigotry at the National Equality March in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 11 if I thought they were not created in God's image the same as myself, same as my family, as we all are--we are all God's children. And I know better than anyone, since six years ago I was one of those bigots. At that time...

MANCHESTER, NH (July 9, 2021) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church today has warned that the Diocese of New Hampshire must not in any way be ostracized because it has chosen to elect the church’s first openly non-celibate animal-loving bishop. "As presiding bishop, I am called to see to it that all perspectives are treated with respect,” said the Most Rev. Annie Thangohs. “We can, of course, disagree on the issue of animal-loving in the Christian life. I have seen, however, some distressing accounts in the secular press. I had hoped that we had removed that hateful term,...

This following report comes to us from Christian Post: Members of a committee in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) will gather this week to consider proposed changes, including the removal of a negative reference to homosexual behavior, to a historic document. The General Assembly Special Committee on Correcting Translation Problems of the Heidelberg Catechism is scheduled to begin a two-day meeting on March 27… Much of the controversy revolved around a reference to “homosexual perversion” among a list of sinful behaviors that is not found in the original German text. Opponents of the current translation argued that the original text and...

The long-anticipated book Godless: The Church of Liberalism was finally released this week. If the New York Times reviews it at all, they'll only talk about the Ann Coulter action-figure doll, so I think I'll write my own review. Get Yours FREE! Godless begins with a murder at the Louvre and then takes readers on a roller-coaster ride through the Church of Liberalism in a desperate game of cat and mouse in which the hunter becomes the hunted -- with a twist at the end you simply won't believe! It's a real page-turner -- even the book-on-tape version and large-print...

The judicial branch is no place for politics, Judge John E. Jones III told a crowd Tuesday afternoon at Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. The federal judge from Pottsville ruled in December that Dover's intelligent design policy was unconstitutional...... Jones was among the speakers at a two-day convocation..Though he was asked to speak about the Constitution's Establishment Clause..he instead talked about the broader issue of th epublic blurring the lines between the branches of government...... judges should make decisions based on the law, not based on personal affiliation, he said. "We must remember that we have a rule of law,"...

What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle? To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul. Paul Craig Roberts, economist and columnist, writes eloquently about the anti-white racism endemic in American universities that demonizes white males as the font of all evil. Shelby Steele of the Hoover ...

A United Methodist pastor in Virginia has been placed on "involuntary leave of absence" for refusing to allow a homosexual to become a member of his congregation. The Rev. Edward Johnson was placed on a yearlong involuntary leave of absence, effective July 1, by action of the clergy of the denomination's Virginia Annual (regional) Conference on June 13. He will receive medical benefits but no salary. The clergyman, pastor of South Hill (Va.) United Methodist Church for six years, could be reinstated as a United Methodist pastor in good standing if he fulfills recommendations from the conference's board of ordained...