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"If you live your life and don't confess your sins to God almighty through the authority of Christ and his blood, I'm going to say this very plainly, you're going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket," Mr. Hagee said during a service interspersed with religious and patriotic videos. Asked afterward at a political rally whether he agreed with Mr. Hagee, the governor said he didn't hear anything that he would take exception to. He (Perry) said that he believes in the inerrancy of the Bible and that those who don't accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell.A...

Home The God Delusion: David Quinn & Richard Dawkins debate    THE RYAN TUBRIDY SHOW Now, this morning, we are asking, what’s wrong with religion? That’s just one of the questions raised in a new book called, The God Delusion. We’re going to talk to its author — the man who’s been dubbed the world’s most famous, out of the closet, living atheist — Richard Dawkins. Ryan Tubridy Richard Dawkins David Quinn Ryan Tubridy: Richard, good morning to you Richard Dawkins: Good morning. Tubridy: It’s nice to talk to you again. We spoke before once on the similar subject...

While LifeWay Research found the number of Southern Baptist pastors embracing five-point Calvinism to be relatively small, it is undeniable that the conversations on Calvinism within the Southern Baptist Convention have brought renewed interest to the theological system. Proponents of Calvinism, or Reformed theology, view it as a healthy return to early Southern Baptist heritage. Others see Calvinism as a negative trend and fear it is threatening to take over the SBC. In its inaugural survey, LifeWay Research sought to document the prevalence -– or lack thereof –- of Calvinism within the SBC. Surveying 413 pastors, the July/August 2006 LifeWay...

As expected, various and sundry Islamic leaders are criticizing Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech. The LA Times reports: "Pope Benedict XVI flew back to Rome on Thursday to face an international flurry of protest over comments he made critical of historical Islamic violence during a six-day trip to his native Germany. "Muslim clerics and community leaders from Europe to the Middle East and beyond condemned the pope's comments made this week." Both the Times (not surprisingly) and the Muslim leaders, of course, have missed the point. Benedict's remarks (which you can read in full here) must be understood in the context...

A U.S. Baptist preacher has publicly defended himself for firing a female Sunday School teacher after more than 50 years on the job because he believes the Bible bans women from teaching men. Watertown First Baptist Church Pastor Tim LaBouf, also a city council member in Watertown, N.Y., said women could fulfill any role or responsibility they wanted to -- outside the church. "My belief is that the qualifications for both men and women teaching spiritual matters in a church setting end at the church door, period," LaBouf said in a statement on the church Web site (http://www.nnyinfo.com/firstbaptist). LaBouf and...

A few years ago, a professor at Pasadena City College led a class discussion on the famous story “The Lottery.” In the story, a seemingly normal village carries out a bizarre ritual involving human sacrifice. The professor, Kay Haugaard, had taught the story many times over the years and was anticipating the usual shocked reactions from her students. Instead, she found that she was teaching a room full of moral relativists who thought that the ritual might be all right “if it’s a part of a person’s culture . . . and if it has worked for them.” To Haugaard’s...

In the first chapter of their new book, 20 Compelling Evidences that God exists, Ken Boa and Robert Bowman write, “We don’t mean to discourage you from reading the rest of this book. But in the interest of full disclosure, we should tell you that, in a sense, there is only one good reason to believe that God exists: because it’s true.” That statement is both profound and well expressed. Unfortunately, these days it’s not the kind of statement you can make in public without having scorn heaped upon your head. As the authors jokingly point out, the popular viewpoint...

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In an op ed piece in the LA Times, David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, says that reproductive facilities should work towards creating a race of human/chimpanzee hybrids, but, he admits, only because it would offend Christians.   Some geneticists have postulated that their distant evolutionary ancestors may have interbred with those of chimps, and Barash argues that this means there is no moral difference between a human being and a chimpanzee, or indeed, between a human being and a sea sponge.   The psychology professor looks forward to...

Spare us from the God-haters By MICHAEL COREN Toronto Sun July 22, 2006 In West Virginia local activists are trying to remove a picture of Jesus that has hung on the wall of a local school for many years. Various so-called civil liberties groups claim that such a portrait is an infringement of basic human rights. Elsewhere in the United States assorted opponents of organized religion have been fighting for decades to ban prayer in schools, to force teachers to take down copies of The Ten Commandments from classrooms and to eliminate all mentions of God from public halls...

MOVE over Da Vinci, here comes Mary Magdalene. In the latest twist to the seemingly endless literary debate over the roots of Christianity, a controversy is looming over a novel by an author who claims to be descended from Jesus Christ. It may sound familiar to readers of Dan Brown’s blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, but Kathleen McGowan, an American who began her career as a journalist in Belfast, has persuaded publishers that her claims that Magdalene married Jesus and bore his children should be taken seriously. “I don’t want people to think I’m claiming to be some elitist figure...

This article was first published in the July 2006 ABR Electronic Newsletter. And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. – Genesis 11:1–2 (KJV) The Media Blitz Since mid-June, 2006 there has been a flurry of reports in the media and on the Internet about the possible discovery of Noah's Ark on a mountain in northern Iran. Robert ("Bob") Cornuke, who has previously claimed to have found such notable things as...

COLUMBUS, OHIO (6/20/06)-The House of Deputies of the 75th General Convention of the Episcopal Church today overwhelmingly refused to even consider a resolution that affirmed Jesus Christ as the "only name by which any person may be saved."

Take This Poll:... Is This The Begining Of The End? We are at another turning point in history. It was only a few months ago that we were here, but major events are now rapidly altering our world. Many seem to feel that we are in the days just prior to the appearance of the Anti-Christ, the person who will be the literal opposite of Christ. He is predicted to rise out of the newly rebuilt Roman empire. Before the advent of the EU, many predicted the unification of the EU which would become the new Roman empire that...

For all those folks following the Good Book, we have some bad news. Turns out a lot of our modern Bible was tacked on, scratched out, and just plain garbled from the original Gospels as scribes over the millennia tried to present Christianity in what they thought was its truest light. In fact, many of our modern Bibles are based on the wrong originals, says Bart Ehrman in his best-selling book Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind who Changed the Bible and Why. Even our beloved King James version has several segments based on a 12th-century manuscript that scholars now say...

Age of the Universeby Dr. Gerald Schroeder According to a possible reading of ancient commentators' description of God and nature, the world may be simultaneously young and old. One of the most obvious perceived contradictions between Torah and science is the age of the universe. Is it billions of years old, like scientific data, or is it thousands of years, like Biblical data? When we add up the generations of the Bible, we come to 5700-plus years. Whereas, data from the Hubbell telescope or from the land based telescopes in Hawaii, indicate the age at about 15 billion years.Let...

Creationists call us to believe the Biblical creation story as a literal account of historical events. However, Genesis contains two distinctly different creation accounts. Which creation story are they calling us to "literally" believe? For generations, serious students of Scripture have noted stark divisions and variations in the age of the Hebrew, its style and language within Genesis. As we have it now, Genesis is actually a composite of three written primary sources, each with its own character, favorite words and distinctly different names for God. Such differences all but evaporate when translated into English, but they are clear in...

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland has caused controversy among non-Christian faiths by telling them that they needed to realise they live in a Christian country. In comments described as "obnoxious", Cardinal Keith O'Brien said he "tolerated" people who lived differently, but added that he must "take a stand when Christianity itself is questioned in this country" reports The Scotsman newspaper. The Church said the cardinal was not meaning to diminish the stature of other faiths as he set forward his mission to "re-Christianise" Scotland. However, a spokesman for the Hindu Temple in Glasgow condemned the remarks that...

A former Wheaton College professor who was fired because he converted to Catholicism found himself this week at the center of a debate about diversity and theological perspectives in private, faith-based schools. Faculty members at the west suburban evangelical Protestant college must sign a faith statement that the Bible is the final authority. Catholics follow the authority of Scripture and the pope. Joshua Hochschild, an assistant professor of philosophy at Wheaton College for four years, became a Catholic on Easter 2004. He was dismissed last spring.

Moscow, August 9, Interfax - Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar believes the Earth will soon see the coming a Messiah to reward everyone according to his deserts. ‘We know that he (Messiah - IF) is very near at hand, but he needs not only to be born but also to come. The Messiah may well have been born already, but unless he is ordered by God he cannot reveal himself with God’s help and change the world for the better’, the rabbi said in an interview published by the Gazeta daily on Tuesday. Lazar explained this assumptions about the imminent...

JACKSON, Miss. - A Christian adoption agency that receives money from Choose Life license plate fees said it does not place children with Roman Catholic couples because their religion conflicts with the agency's "Statement of Faith." Bethany Christian Services stated the policy in a letter to a Jackson couple this month, and another Mississippi couple said they were rejected for the same reason last year. "It has been our understanding that Catholicism does not agree with our Statement of Faith," Bethany director Karen Stewart wrote. "Our practice to not accept applications from Catholics was an effort to be good stewards...