Free Republic

Official state news report quotes 'Purpose-Driven' author criticizing U.S. Syria's Grand Mufti Sheik Badr al-Din Hassoun and Rick Warren California mega-church pastor Rick Warren, author of the best-selling "Purpose-Driven Life," reportedly told a Syrian-controlled news agency the U.S. should have been holding dialogues with Damascus; Syrian Muslims and Christians co-exist peacefully; and the Syrian leadership is responsible for the nation's tolerance and stability. That's according to the news agency SANA, which has issued a number of reports this week as Warren visits Syria and meets various leaders and officials, much to the dismay of many in the U.S. "We at...

Moral conservatives were shocked to read a thinly veiled defense of infanticide in the New York Times a few years ago by MIT [now of Harvard] professor Steven Pinker. But they would be even more disturbed if they saw Pinker’s justification for his views in a book that appeared about the same time. In How the Mind Works, Pinker argues that the fundamental premise of ethics has been disproved by science. “Ethical theory,” he writes, “requires idealizations like free, sentient, rational, equivalent agents whose behavior is uncaused.” Yet, “the world, as seen by science, does not really have uncaused events.”...

We, the Overseer Board of New Life Church, have concluded our deliberations concerning the moral failings of Pastor Ted Haggard. Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct. The language of our church bylaws state that as Overseers we must decide in cases where the Senior Pastor has "demonstrated immoral conduct" whether we must "remove the pastor from his position or to discipline him in any way they deem necessary."

The leader of one of Colorado's most popular mega-churches, Ted Haggard, is temporarily stepping down from his leadership role, after allegations from a male prostitute that Haggard solicited gay sex. Haggard, the founder and senior leader of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the multimillion- member National Association of Evangelicals, denied the accusations raised by the prostitute on Wednesday. Today, a press conference by church leaders to support Haggard was cancelled shortly before it was scheduled to take place. In stepping down, it was emphasized that Haggard did not admit any wrongdoing, but that he...

Nearly half of Americans are not sure God exists, according to a poll that also found divisions among the public on whether God is male or female or whether God has a human form and has control over events. The survey conducted by Harris Poll found that 42 percent of US adults are not "absolutely certain" there is a God compared to 34 percent who felt that way when asked the same question three years ago. Among the various religious groups, 76 percent of Protestants, 64 percent of Catholics and 30 percent of Jews said they are "absolutely certain" there...

The Alliance Defense Fund has written a letter to a "Christian" college asking officials there to reconsider their decision to ban several national and international Christian student organizations because the groups are too evangelical. Georgetown University, which boasts a tradition of more than 200 years of Jesuit and Catholic teachings, recently sent letters to half a dozen evangelical Christian organizations telling them they no longer are welcome. "Now I've seen derecognition letters before, but this one takes the cake," David French, the senior legal counsel for the ADF, said of the Georgetown University decision. "Blessings and may God's peace be...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A fresh wave of atheistic books has hit the market this autumn, some climbing onto best-seller lists in what proponents see as a backlash against the way religion is entwined in politics. "Religion is fragmenting the human community," said Sam Harris, author of "Letter to a Christian Nation," No. 11 on the New York Times nonfiction list on October 15. There is a "huge visibility and political empowerment of religion. President George W. Bush uses his first veto to deny funding for stem cell research and scientists everywhere are horrified," he said in an interview. Religious polarization...

Gallup polls dating back to 1982 have consistently shown that at least 44% of Americans agree to the statement: “God created humans pretty much in their present form either exactly as the Bible describes it or within the last 10,000 years.” A Zogby poll released earlier this year had a somewhat different, but related, question, and it revealed that 69% of people believe biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution along with the scientific evidence against it. Just 21% felt only scientific evidence supporting evolution should be taught.1 Zogby also discovered that almost 89% of those who were in...

Constantine Wrote Matthew 28:19 Into Your Bible! What Did Matthew Actually Write, "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," OR "Go ye, and make disciples of all the nations IN MY NAME"? This article is based on a publication which was originally written in 1961 and titled “A Collection of the Evidence For and Against the Traditional Wording of the Baptismal Phrase in Matthew 28:19”. The author was a minister, presumably Protestant. He signed his work simply as A. Ploughman. He lived in Birmingham, England. The author had not encountered...

According to a 2005 Pew Research Center poll, 70 percent of evangelical Christians believe that living beings have always existed in their present form, compared with 32 percent of Protestants and 31 percent of Catholics. Politically, 60 percent of Republicans are creationists, whereas only 11 percent accept evolution, compared with 29 percent of Democrats who are creationists and 44 percent who accept evolution. A 2005 Harris Poll found that 63 percent of liberals but only 37 percent of conservatives believe that humans and apes have a common ancestry. What these figures confirm for us is that there are religious and...

IUKA, Miss. -- In April, 150 members of Iuka Baptist Church voted to kick Charles Jones off the deacons' board. The punishment followed weeks of complaints by Mr. Jones and his friends that the pastor was following the teachings of the Rev. Rick Warren, the best-selling author and church-growth guru. After the vote, about 40 other members quit the church to support Mr. Jones.

NEW YORK, JULY 22, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Far from fading away in the shadow of modernity and prosperity, religious fervor is, in fact, growing. This is the argument of an article, "Why God is Winning," published in the July-August issue of the magazine Foreign Policy. The authors, Timothy Samuel Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, explain that one of the most recent confirmations of their thesis was the win last January of the Hamas party in the Palestinian elections. After the election, one supporter of Hamas replaced the flag flying over the parliament with a banner proclaiming Mohammad. Soon afterwards the violent...

This is something God showed me through the scriptures, which has really helped me to understand who God is, in all of is person. Firstly we know that God is three in his manifestation through God the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit. We also know that God is one, Jesus said in his word “The Father and I are one”, He also said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve also seen my father who is in heaven”. So God is three, and God is one, how can this be? God helped me to understand this first by helping me...

DETROIT, MI (3/20/2006)--A billboard erected by the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan which read; "My God is Mother" and "I am an Episcopalian" with a picture of a woman reading a bible, and the diocesan website address, so incensed a group of orthodox clergy that the diocese was forced to bring it down. The billboard had been erected less than a mile from St. John's, an orthodox parish in Detroit on I-75 north, as a part of a slick ad campaign derived from the graphically interesting but theologically awful flashplay intro on the diocesan website www.edomi.org. The billboard, by its appearance...

More Americans are expressing unfavorable views about Islam. A recent public opinion poll shows 25 percent of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And a majority of Americans think Muslims are more prone to resort to violence. A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 46 percent of Americans have a negative view of Islam. That is seven percentage points higher than during the months right after the terrorist attacks of September 2001. Laila Al Qatami, of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, says the behavior of some Muslims, especially the violent protests over cartoons making fun...