Free Republic

Phrancis, Phisher of MenReaders might remember the “phishing” scheme that replaced telemarketing as the World’s Most Annoying Thing back in the aughts. The way the scam usually works is that a con artist sends out e-mails designed to look exactly like notifications from real banks, corporations, or government agencies. The e-mail asks the recipient—who believes he or she is communicating with a legitimate entity—to update passwords or provide other personal information. It’s a variety of the old bait-and-switch operation: an unsuspecting victim thinks one thing is going on, all above board and on the level, when in reality he or...

New Evangelization, where art thou? The Pew Research Center reports that the number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen sharply, to the tune of nearly eight percentage points in only seven years.  The survey, carried out in 2014, was the second "Religious Landscape Study" Pew conducted since 2007. Based on the 35,000 people the institute interviewed, the American populace is 21% Catholic. It was 23.9% seven years ago.  While the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014, non-Christian religions are growing. Islam showed the greatest gains, growing half a percentage point...

Everyone has a church and everyone has an understanding of the marks of the church, of what makes their church the true church. For the Roman Catholic, the mark of the church is the pope. In his mind, if you don't have the pope, then you don't have the church as God instituted it. And so a faithful Catholic would get furious if his priest rejected papal supremacy, because doing so would stop the church in his midst from being what the church is and doing what it should do. For the Lutheran, the marks of the church are the...

The parade of hate crimes continue. This time the perpetrator is Vanderbilt University which has put five Christian student organizations on provisional status for being, well, Christian clubs. Vanderbilt was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church in the 1870s, with a donation from philanthropist Cornelius Vanderbilt. Thus, as is the case with 106 of the first 108 colleges and the universities in the United States, Vanderbilt was brought into existence by followers of Jesus Christ. Now his followers are being tagged as homophobic bigots and threatened with expulsion from campus because of their sincerely held religious beliefs. Worse, Vanderbilt has...

<p>STOCKHOLM (AP) — At the "Egalia" preschool, staff avoid using words like "him" or "her" and address the 33 kids as "friends" rather than girls and boys.</p> <p>From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don't fall into gender stereotypes.</p>

Hartford, Conn. - A new study of the 34 million American adults who do not identify with any particular religious group finds that they now largely mirror the wider population in other aspects. However, the group tends to be young, male, politically independent and of Irish ancestry. The number of “Nones” grew greatly in the 1990s. In 1990 they made up 8.2 percent of the population and grew to 14.2 percent by 2001. In 2008 they made up 15 percent. The Nones were the only group to have increased in every state and region of the country during the past...

Quebec Mandates Relativistic Ethical and Religious Education For All Students in Province Program includes positive presentation of homosexual families and requires children to question their own religious upbringing By John-Henry Westen QUEBEC CITY, October 4, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As of the beginning of the 2008 school year, all students in the province of Quebec whether in public school, private school or even homeschooled will be mandated to take a program on "Ethics and Religious Culture" which runs from grade one till the end of high school.  The program is completely relativistic and includes positive presentation of homosexual families and requires...

The key word in the latest guidance offered to today’s students is “ignore.” Is it blatant, brazen or both to call for the use of ignorance to gain or retain knowledge? It is no secret that every deadly ideology of the past had to ignore the truth about a lot of things including itself for its survival and proliferation. Ignoring a message usually gives way to ignoring, abusing and then killing the messenger. History is replete with examples from both the ancient and the modern world.

Taking a Vacation from Secular Email Print By Frederick Clarkson 11/20/2006 03:31:19 PM EST For a generation, the notion of the secular; secularism, secular humanism, the secular left, and most recently (and oxymoronically) secular fundamentalism, and other variations, has become the bogeyman to be opposed. For this, we can thank the works of such religious right theorists as Frances Schaefer, R.J. Rushdoony, and Tim LaHaye, This is part of a central framing of the nature of what some consider to be a war going on in society: a war between religion and non-religion; between Christianity and religious pluralism; between the...

The government of Slovakia has fallen after criticism by a European Union committee that it protects Catholic doctors against being forced to perform abortions. Two clashes of civilization are currently taking place in Europe. Freedom-loving people having to fight on two fronts. One involves the radical segment of the immigrant Muslim population that opposes basic Western values such as freedom of speech and that is intent on imposing Islamic taboos (such as the mere fact of depicting their prophet Muhammad) on the non-Islamic population. The other involves radical secularists that want to eradicate all remnants of traditional Christian culture from...

The column I've written over the past year that attracted the most reader response was one last December about Peter Singer, the Princeton professor of ethics who sees no ethical problem with polyamory, bestiality, necrophilia or some kinds of infanticide. Readers frequently asked questions concerning past and future: How did the individual called by The New Yorker today's "most influential" philosopher develop such beastly positions, and how should conservatives fight his influence? First, the past: Although Singer would like to think that his conclusions are the result of pure intellectual labor, his family history is worth noting. He and President...

Prior to September 11, 2001, Afghanistan’s repressive Taliban regime was known to most of the world only on account of a single controversy involving its decision to destroy two ancient Buddhist statues. Of course reaction to this incident was one of universal outrage, loudly condemned across the political spectrum as an abominable example of religious tyranny. Yet this desire by the Taliban to obliterate all religious symbolism with which it took umbrage has an ominous parallel within the borders of America in the systematic efforts by the ACLU and its ideological supporters to expunge every Christian expression from the public...

Merry Christmas. If that offends you, why should I care? It’s your problem, not mine. Let me explain your problem a little more fully. America is a Christian country. It’s your job to deal with that, because you’re not going to change this fact. America has always been a Christian country, and – open wide now, because you’re going to have to swallow this – it will continue to be. It will continue to be because most Americans aren’t Euroweenies. They haven’t lost the moral courage to be proud of their country and their civilization. Notice the “most” – which...

Many in today's political and social arenas view the Constitution as a "living document" with the need to change/reinterpret it's worded meaning to fit with today's modernistic societal trends and fashion. I strongly oppose and disagree with this flawed view...

Apology to Muslims and censure of Boykin: Resolution H. Res. 419, introduced by Rep. John Conyers Please write your congressional representative about Resolution H. Res. 419, introduced by Representative John Conyers (D-MI). Click here for the Congress.org link. The language concerning “religiously intolerant remarks” amounts to censorship of Christian, as well as other beliefs. The resolution is a knee-jerk reaction to Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin’s exercise of Free Speech and Freedom of Religion in his own church. Proposing such a bill is the worst kid of appeasement to a group that is aggressively intolerant to non-Muslims around the...

Blue Movies Proliferate in Post-Saddam Iraq BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Outside the cinemas on Saadoun Street, groups of men loiter round film posters of naked women, whose private parts are crudely super-imposed with underwear drawn in colored pen. Behind doors in Baghdad's main movie strip, there is no such teasing. Barely a seat is empty as hundreds of men, most puffing cigarettes, sit in total silence and darkness to enjoy scenes of nudity and sex for 1,000 Iraqi dinars ($0.50) a time. "Under Saddam, forget it. You would go to jail for showing or watching this," said movie-watcher Mohammed Jassim at...

Throughout American history, religion in the public square was utterly noncontroversial. But beginning in the 20th century, such expressions aroused disputes. Whereas at the beginning of the country, religion in public life was regarded as permissible by the legal establishment, it is now said to be unquestionably impermissible. Most conservatives (and many libertarians) argue the reason for this situation is a gross misinterpretation of the establishment clause in the First Amendment. Anti-religious secularists, so the argument goes, have distorted the original language to mean that government cannot have anything at all to do with religion or religious organizations. All the...