Free Republic

The Presbyterian Church (USA) just revealed its membership numbers for 2024, and it is not pretty. The liberal denomination is showing a continued loss of membership, closure of churches, an increasingly aging population, and an inexorable decline into irrelevancy, with one of the only rising data points being the number of members who identify as “non-binary” or “genderqueer.” Since its formation, the PCUSA has denigrated to one massive pen for goats, run almost exclusively by faithless, didn’t-finish-well octogenarians and blue-haired lesbians, with barely a sheep to be found anywhere. Some of their greatest hits over the last three years include:...

Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has thrown her support behind Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the accused MS-13 gang member and alleged domestic abuser who was deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration. “Before the election, I warned that there is no safe haven under authoritarianism,” the former secretary of state wrote in a Wednesday X post: “If they can ship Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a foreign prison—accused of no crime, with no trial—they can do it to anyone,” Clinton continued. “Americans of conscience must stand against this now.” Abrego Garcia, 29, entered the United States illegally when he was 16...

Ukraine’s future membership of the NATO alliance may play the role of both carrot and stick to encourage more civilised behaviour from Russia in future, a report claims. Unfortunately for Ukraine itself, which makes a great deal of wanting to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to guarantee itself against future Russian aggression, it now seems all but impossible as war peace talks begin. While Russia is obviously against the idea, the United States is also reluctant under President Trump, just as it was under President Biden. Even European states, who are generally the most enthusiastic backers of Kyiv...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested this week that NATO welcoming Ukraine into the alliance could halt the “hot stage” of the war, while Russia would temporarily keep the territory it overtook. “If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” Zelensky said in an interview Friday with SkyNews. “We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way,” he added. Back in early July during a summit...

It is early Sunday morning, here in The Piney Woods of East Texas. The birds are calling out to one another to greet the cool of the new day. Another beginning of a day of life here at my home, where lack of rainfall has turned the landscape straw-yellow and crisp, and the trees from the stress of drought and the relentless high summer temperatures have caused the oaks and ash trees to begin shedding their leaves. Burn bans are in place, but I know God is Faithful. Rain is coming to the thirsty land. He answers prayer. Today I...

The United Nations General Assembly on Friday overwhelmingly backed a Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member by recognizing it as qualified to join and recommending the U.N. Security Council “reconsider the matter favorably.” The vote by the 193-member General Assembly was a global survey of support for the Palestinian bid to become a full U.N. member – a move that would effectively recognize a Palestinian state – after the United States vetoed it in the U.N. Security Council last month. The assembly adopted a resolution with 143 votes in favor and nine against – including the U.S. and...

The US on Thursday vetoed a Security Council resolution to admit the Palestinian Authority as a full member state of the United Nations. 12 countries voted in favor of the resolution: Slovenia, Sierra Leone, Russia, South Korea, Mozambique, Malta, Japan, Guyana, France, Ecuador, China, and Algeria. Two countries abstained – Britain and Switzerland. Foreign Minister Israel Katz said following the vote, “The proposal to recognize a Palestinian state, more than 6 months after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and after the sexual crimes and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists was a reward for terrorism.” “I commend...

A majority of adults in the United States said the decline in union membership is bad for the country, according to a survey conducted earlier this year. The Pew Research Center poll found that 54 percent of surveyed U.S. adults believe the decline in union membership is bad for the country. Another 59 percent said that the decline is bad for working people, the survey found. Union membership has been decreasing in the U.S. in recent years. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the union membership rate at 10 percent in 2023, which is slightly down from 10.1 percent...

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) – Hungary’s prime minister said Friday he does not support moving forward on negotiations on Ukraine’s future membership in the European Union, signaling again that his country could pose a major roadblock to Kyiv’s ambitions to join the bloc. EU leaders are to decide in mid-December whether Ukraine should be formally invited to begin talks to join the 27-member union, with Hungary seen as a potential obstacle. Unanimity among all member states is required to admit a new country into the bloc, giving Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, a powerful veto.

VILNIUS, Lithuania — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tore into NATO leaders including President Biden Tuesday for not extending NATO membership to his war-torn country — introducing fresh diplomatic drama into the annual gathering of the military alliance’s leaders. Zelensky, who will join the NATO summit in Lithuania on Wednesday, slammed the reticence as “weakness” and “absurd” — just moments after Biden referred to the development of new non-public language under development for NATO ascension. “Now, on the way to Vilnius, we received signals that certain wording is being discussed without Ukraine. And I would like to emphasize that this wording...

President Joe Biden said Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” that he didn’t think Ukraine was ready for NATO membership. Biden said, “I don’t think it’s ready for membership in NATO. But here is the deal, I spent a great deal of time holding NATO together because I believe Putin has an overwhelming objective at the time that he launched 85,000 troops into Ukraine, and that was to break NATO. He was confident in my view that he could break NATO. So holding NATO together is really critical.”

At the end of the meeting of G7 nations in Japan, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday that Ukraine currently does not meet the requirements to join the NATO alliance. The expansion of the American-led NATO alliance into Ukraine does not seem to be on the cards any time soon, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz downplaying the idea after meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Hiroshima, Japan over the weekend.

Big Labor and its acolytes have been trumpeting a recent Gallup poll suggesting widespread public support for organized labor.According to the survey, about 71 percent of Americans expressed a favorable opinion of unions, up from 64 percent pre-pandemic and a low of 48 percent in 2009.Even more revealing, they say, are figures from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) showing the overall number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions increased by 273,000 — 1.9 percent — to 14.3 million during 2022 over the previous year.If true, it would be the best showing for unions since the 1960s.Both notions...

The Ukrainian government has revealed it plans to be a full European Union member-state within two years ahead of a historic Ukraine-EU summit in Kyiv. “We have a very ambitious plan to join the European Union within the next two years,” revealed Denys Shmyhal, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, in comments to POLITICO. “So we expect that this year, in 2023, we can already have this pre-entry stage of negotiations,” Shmyhal continued, speaking ahead of a summit between President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and top eurocrats at the European Commission and the European Council.

Let’s start with a scenario that your church has an average worship attendance of 100. I use that number for simplicity. The median worship attendance is 65.Now, let’s ask a simple question. How many attendees do you have to add to your attendance in a year to stay even?The answer for a typical church is 32 with a worship attendance of 100. You can double the number to 64 if the church’s attendance is 200.Did you get that? A church has to increase the number of attendees by 32 percent each year just to stay even.In a church with 100...

The leaders of nine NATO nations from Central and Eastern Europe issued a joint statement on Sunday in support of Ukraine's path to membership in the alliance. "We firmly stand behind the 2008 Bucharest NATO Summit decision concerning Ukraine’s future membership," the presidents of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, Poland, Czechia, Romania, North Macedonia, and Slovakia said on Sunday. At that 2008 summit, NATO allies said they "welcomed" Ukraine and Georgia's aspirations to the join the alliance, though no clear timetable has ever been announced.

Ask anyone who shops at Costco (COST) what they think of it and you'll probably hear exuberant praise, along with a list of the great deals they scored on their last visit. More than 111 million people pay an annual membership fee just to get in the door, with fewer than 10% each year who decide the experience isn’t worth the price of renewing. To some, shopping at Costco is close to a religious experience, which might explain why Sunday is its busiest day. For others, going to the warehouse is like going on a treasure hunt. They may be...

New York businesses are struggling to abide by the state’s mask and vaccination rules, with one gym alone seeing 200 membership suspensions or cancelations over the coercive rules thrust upon business owners by the Democrat governor. This month, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) issued an ultimatum to businesses, requiring them to either check the vaccination status of customers or require masks across the board. The state will not revisit the rule until January 15, 2022. But now, businesses which were already struggling due to extended lockdowns and restrictions are facing yet another uphill battle.

A year after reporting the largest single-year membership decline in more than 100 years, churches in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, lost more than 400,000 members in 2020 and set a new record for the single-year decline amid the coronavirus pandemic and a bitter culture war. The Annual Church Profile report shows membership in SBC congregations declined by a staggering 435,632 in 2020, more than 50% higher than the 287,655 members the denomination reported losing from 2018 to 2019. While the number of SBC congregations increased slightly by 62 to 47,592 over the previous year, the...

Church is essential. That’s what many of us have said in the face of ongoing COVID restrictions. But to a growing number of Americans, church is not essential — even among those who believe.Gallup surveys the religious attitudes and practices of Americans twice each year. They roll this data into three-year chunks for comparison over time. From 1998-2000, 69% of American adults were members of a church, synagogue, temple, or mosque. By 2008-2010, that figure had dropped to 62%. And by 2018-2020, just 49%. So over one decade, a drop of 7%. Then over the next decade, a drop of...