Free Republic

I’d been writing novels and literary nonfiction for twenty years before I dared to write a memoir about my flight from my evangelical past. That book became the bestselling CRAZY FOR GOD: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. I’d been so out of touch with the evangelical world that I’d lost track of the players. Put it this way: I’d never heard of Rob Bell. I was expecting a backlash from the sort of people I’d worked with. I was only...

An important 19th century painting that languished in a church janitor's closet has a new home at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Rev. Steven Olson of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Dassel approached the museum back in 2007, looking for advice on how to preserve the painting of Jesus surrounded by the afflicted and the oppressed. It turns out the painting "Christus Consolator," was by the Dutch-born, French-trained artist Ary Scheffer, one of the pre-eminent Romantic painters in Paris of the first half of the 19th century. "Our own version of 'Antiques Roadshow,'" said museum director Kaywin Feldman. MIA painting...

Prime ministers of the seven countries entering NATO this year have been invited to the White House for a special ceremony next Monday formally marking their entry into the alliance. In a statement, the Bush administration says NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and the prime ministers of new member countries Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia will attend. The White House has also invited the prime ministers of NATO candidate nations Albania, Croatia and Macedonia for the day's events. In the statement, the Bush administration says the NATO candidates have already acted as allies in the war...

NATO defense ministers meeting here today discussed expanding the role of NATO forces in Afghanistan. "NATO's first priority … is to get Afghanistan right," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a late-afternoon press conference. "We have no choice in Afghanistan but to meet our commitments to the people of that country and to the international community." NATO is in command of the United Nations-mandated International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, the country's capital. Almost 8,000 NATO troops are involved in this mission. The first step in expanding the alliance's role there could be to stand up five...

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived here late Feb. 5 on the first leg of a five-day European trip that will also include stops in Zagreb, Croatia, and London. The secretary is in Munich to attend the Wehrkunde Security Conference, attended by defense ministers from countries throughout NATO and elsewhere. Rumsfeld said this conference is important because talks here will lay the groundwork for an international summit in Istanbul, Turkey, in June. This is also the first conference Rumsfeld will attend with new NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. Top topics at the conference are likely to include Afghanistan, Iraq...