Free Republic

More than 6,000 congregations have been given the approval to leave the United Methodist Church over the past four years amid a schism within the second-largest Protestant denomination in the United States over whether to change its rules against homosexuality. According to numbers compiled by UM News, the number of UMC congregations granted disaffiliation passed the 6,000 mark earlier this week, with 6,182 as of Thursday morning. While the number includes all churches that have disaffiliated from the UMC since 2019, more than 1,800 came in 2022 and more than 4,000 in 2023. The UM News count derives from a...

In this video we discuss why all Christians should pray the Rosary.

Ten Points in Favor of Communion on the Tongue—and the Sordid History of Communion in the Hand Rorate is pleased to publish this comprehensive study of a most urgent question that has everything to do with authentic (as opposed to glitzy or bureaucratic) Eucharistic revival. The author shows, among other key points, that the conditions established by Rome for the granting or retention of an indult for communion in the hand were never and are not now met in the USA, which means this practice's introduction was duplicitous and its continuation illicit.—PAK Ten Points in Favor of Communion on...

A Real Threat: Rocky Horror Cupich ShowThe Maundy Thursday Eucharist at notorious St Sabina Parish in Chicago Archdiocese was a kind of Protestant service with some "words of consecration".Being Novus Ordo, the performance had no altar but a banquet table around which sat twelve men and women dressed as vice presidents of the banquet - as if a banquet needed a president.It included choreographed dances, purple lighting effects, disco ball strobe lights, brutal noise with crashing cymbals and yelling and tinkly piano music.During the show, Father Michael Pfleger celebrated his own person.Chicago's Cardinal Cupich who supposedly cares about Catholic doctrine...

America’s faithful are bracing — some with cautionary joy and others with looming dread — for the Supreme Court to potentially overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and end the nationwide right to legal abortion. A reversal of the 49-year-old ruling has never felt more possible since a draft opinion suggesting justices may do so was leaked this week. While religious believers at the heart of the decades-old fight over abortion are shocked at the breach of high court protocol, they are still as deeply divided and their beliefs on the contentious issue as entrenched as ever. National...

“…but Hannah had no children.” - 1 Samuel 1:2 Is IVF, AID, or AIH (forms of Artificial Insemination) ethical from a Christian position? There are two views by which I would like to investigate this. First by way of Joseph Fletcher who opposes the Bible, and second by way of the Biblical picture. ...Fletcher believes that AI is an answer for a problematic dilemma which carries couple to a wonderful end. (He is a avid adherent to Consequentialism – that the means does not matter so long as the ends are acceptable.) Though AI and IVF may involve masturbation, this...

More Muslims are converting to Christianity than ever before and at great personal risk. What accounts for the trend? More Muslims have come to faith in Jesus Christ over the last thirty years—and specifically over the last seven to ten years—than at any other time in human history,” wrote Joel Rosenberg in 2008, and the pace has intensified since then. Uwe Siemon-Netto confirmed in 2016 that “a global phenomenon is underway: Muslims are converting to various Christian denominations in droves in every part of the world.” Indeed, Christian missionaries have even coined a name and an abbreviation for them: Muslim-background...

Officials rejected the registration certificates saying the government can revoke them anytime Government officials in eastern China have raided and shut down close to 100 protestant churches as part of the escalating crackdown on Christians in the communist nation. Officials in four cities of Anhui province have closed down 99 churches and prayer venues this year, exploiting a range of pretexts including poverty eradication and prevention of Covid-19 epidemic, reported Bitter Winter, a magazine that covers human rights and liberty in China. At least 43 churches were closed in Suzhou, while 24 in Huaibei, 20 in Fuyang, and 16 in...

istory is the account of vast social movements and cultural changes. To be sure, individuals play their part. But they are usually understood to be products of their times. The Reformation, though, whose five-hundredth anniversary we observe this year and whose impact on not only the church but the world has been monumental, was largely precipitated by one man: Martin Luther. Yes, vast social movements and cultural changes were at work in sixteenth-century Europe. But Luther caused many of them, such as the educational explosion that would lead to universal literacy, the rise of the middle class, and eventually democratic...

In constructing his evangelical family ethic, [Martin] Luther placed emphasis on Genesis 1:28: “Be fruitful and multiply.” This living-together of husband and wife—that they occupy the same home, that they take care of the household, that together they produce and bring up children—is a kind of faint image and a remnant, as it were, of that blessed living together [in Eden]. Luther knew that the contraceptive mentality was alive and well in his own time. He noted that this “inhuman attitude, which is worse than barbarous,” was found chiefly among the well born, “the nobility and princes.” Elsewhere, he linked...

Augsburg Peace Prize awarded to Bishop Bedford-Strohm and Cardinal MarxLWI) - A strong sign for Christian ecumenism: the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, and the Munich Cardinal Reinhard Marx were awarded the 2020 Augsburg Peace Prize for their “unconditional will to live together in peace”. On 11 March 2017, the then President of the German Bishops’ Conference, Reinhard Cardinal Marx, and the Chairperson of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), Bishop Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, jointly presided over a service of repentance and reconciliation in Hildesheim, Germany. The painful divisions between the two separated...

On this date in 1600, Bavarians thronged to a half-mile-long procession in Munich for the horrific execution of the Pappenheimer family. They were marginal, itinerant types: the father, Paulus Pappenheimer, cleaned privies (“Pappenheimer” would remain as Nuremberg slang for a garbageman into the 20th century, according to Robert Butts); the mother, Anna, was the daughter of a gravedigger. They wandered, begged, did odd jobs. They were Lutherans in a Catholic duchy. So they were vulnerable to their extreme turn of bad luck. Fresh to the throne of Bavaria, young Catholic zealot Duke Maximilian I wanted a crackdown on the infernal...

The left is salivating about using the pandemic crisis to force massive changes to American society. Average Americans, of course, just want to go back to work or to the mall or to … church. And those desires -- in particular the last one -- could present a formidable stumbling block in the sprint to the new progressive future. Despite years of eager predictions to the contrary, “the opiate of the masses” is not dead. In fact, it’s feeling better. Since the pandemic began, secular progressives in the media have been spewing venom at Evangelical Christians, blaming their purportedly anti-science...

The United Methodist Church is expected to split into more than one denomination in an attempt to bring to a close a years-long and contentious fight over same-sex marriage. The historic schism would divide the third-largest religious denomination in the United States. Leaders of the church announced Friday they had agreed to spin off a “traditionalist Methodist” denomination, which would continue to oppose same-sex marriage and to refuse ordination to LGBT clergy, while allowing the remaining portion of the United Methodist Church to permit same-sex marriage and LGBT clergy for the first time in its history.

Dr. Rodney Stark has written nearly 40 books on a wide range of topics, including a number of recent books on the history of Christianity, monotheism, Christianity in China, and the roots of modernity...His most recent book is Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History (Templeton Press, 2016), which addresses ten prevalent myths about Church history... CWR: You begin the book by first noting your upbringing as an American Protestant and then discussing “distinguished bigots”. What is a “distinguished bigot”? ... Dr. Rodney Stark: By distinguished bigots I mean prominent scholars and intellectuals who clearly are antagonistic to the...

Back then, many abortion opponents were Catholic Democrats, while many conservative Republican Protestants wanted nothing to do with the issue, viewing it as the province of Catholics, their theological adversaries. In 1967, California State Senator Anthony Beilenson rose to speak to his fellow legislators, making a simple plea to those who opposed the abortion bill he had introduced for debate. “This bill is a request that they respect the sincerity, the religious beliefs, and the convictions of the majority of their fellow Californians.” The religious beliefs that Beilenson was defending were those of the state’s Protestants and Jews. Despite Beilenson’s...

There;s a lot of America's heartland that's been gutted out by the forces of Big Government and Big Business but some Americans still have that good vision for the farmlands and ranch lands of our country under federal government control. The Republicans moving the Bureau of Land Management office to Grand Junction, Colorado doesn't change the principle of federal control that strangles the use of the land and put people like Dwight and Steven Hammond in jail. When Ammon Bundy brought his peaceful protest..... In our world today much rage obviously in the spirit of anarchy and Marxism-Leninism manifesting itself...

A lot of evangelicals are swimming these days. They’re slipping on their metaphorical fins and masks and churning their way across bodies of water to emerge on the other shore as members of a different faith community. Those that move from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism are said to swim the Tiber; those that become Orthodox swim the Bosporus. Reasons for their aquatic activities vary. Some like the art and architecture associated with the ancient faiths. Some like the ceremonial aspects–the liturgies, the veneration of icons, the Eucharist. Some like the history that oozes from Catholicism and Orthodoxy, a history that...

In case no one has ever actually read what Luther wrote. Some additional background is available at the link provided.****** Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. 1. Our Lord and Master Jesus...

Oldline Protestant denominations make for a competitive peer group, but the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is on track to claim the top spot for fastest declining major U.S.-based church last year. Total membership declined from 411,140 in 2017 to 382,248 (-7%) while average worship attendance declined from 139,936 to 124,437 (-11%) according to numbers reported for 2018. Baptisms dropped from 4,344 to 3,782 (-13%) while the number of other additions (including transfers in) declined from 7,441 to 6,969 (-6.4%). At the current rate, the denomination will shrink by another 50 percent within a decade. This annual rate of decline...