Free Republic

In recent months, I have spent a lot of time meditating on and praying about the meaning and the mystery of life. None of us asked to be born or created, yet with every fiber of our being, we want to live. And most of us have a strong desire to reproduce as well – to bring children into the world. But why? Why are we here? What is our purpose? And why are we so eager to bring the next generation into this fallen world? To what end?

On this date in 1934, Chinese Communists beheaded John and Betty Stam in the Anhui province town of Miaoshu. The Stams had settled as China Inland Mission proselytizers in the town of Jingde (at their time generally rendered as “Tsingteh”). Betty Stam (nee Scott) had grown up in China, the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary. John was a New Jersey native who had graduated Moody Bible Institute in 1932. They had a three-month-old daughter named Helen Priscilla. On December 6, 1934, Communist rebels in China’s long-running civil war entered Jingde and seized the foreign family. According to a tribute page...

The American Center for Law and Justice, an organization that works on behalf of persecuted Christians both in the United States and overseas, has scolded the United Nations Human Rights Council for ignoring the plight of Christians in Iraq and Syria. In a statement it released following its presentation to the UNHRC, the organization warned that ISIS is carrying out genocide against Christians and other minorities. “Through our affiliate, the European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), we made an oral intervention before the United Nations Human Rights Council on behalf of Christians facing genocide in the Middle East,” the...

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna confirmed this sad news.

Catholic Priest Beheaded in Syria by Al-Qaeda-Linked Rebels as Men and Children Take Pictures and Cheer Jun. 30, 2013 7:37am Sharona Schwartz Syrian Catholic priest Francois Murad killed last weekend by jihadi fighters was beheaded, according to a report by Catholic Online which is linking to video purportedly showing the brutal murder. As TheBlaze reported last week, Murad, 49, was setting up a monastery in Gassanieh, northern Syria. Last Sunday, on the Christian leader’s Sabbath, extremist militants trying to topple President Bashar Assad breached the monastery and grabbed Murad. While earlier reports suggested Murad may have been shot to death,...

Centuries on, but martyred queen's story still unfinished By Anna Kamushadze St Ketevan’s relics were found in the Augustine Tower in Old Goa, India The history of the mortal remains of St Ketevan, Queen of Georgia, is as tragic as her life was. The Portuguese missionaries who witnessed her death and protected her remains left no precise account of where the body of the saint, canonised shortly after her death, lay. Contemporary reports from England speak of her being laid to rest in Goa, India, then a Portuguese colony. A bone belonging to Ketevan is housed in the church that...

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA (ANS) -- Somali Christian sources report that Ali Mustaf Maka'il, a 22-year-old college student and cloth merchant, who converted from Islam to Christianity eleven months ago, was shot and killed in the Manabolyo quarter of Mogadishu on September 7. According to a report from The Barnabas Fund, quoting a Christian source inside Somalia, the gunman was loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (ICU), the Islamist organization that took power in Mogadishu in early June 2006 and now controls much of southern Somalia. The report states: "The gunman shot Ali in the back after he refused to join...

Many commentators have noted that the war on terrorism will require a battle for the "hearts and minds" of the world's Muslim radicals. We agree. But it's also true that, when all else fails, some of the more incorrigible hearts and minds need to be atomized. That's where the U.S. Predator unmanned drone comes in. In northwest Yemen on Sunday, a certain Qaed Salim Sunian al-Harethi was travelling by car with five other notables when a Hellfire missile, released by a Predator soundlessly lurking at high altitude, hit his vehicle. Car and occupants were destroyed. But Mr. al-Harethi will not...