Free Republic

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. – First Amendment, U.S. Constitution As demonstrated in the first entry in our Bill of Rights, Americans are a religious people with a history steeped in faith. The first act of the Continental Congress called for prayer. President Lincoln enacted a day of prayer and fasting, and President Truman created an annual National Day of...

Organised religion is in near-terminal decline in Britain because parents have only a 50-50 chance of passing on belief to their offspring, a study claimed yesterday. By contrast, parents without faith are successful in producing a new generation of non-believers, it said. The report identified institutional religion as having a "half-life" of one generation, as children are only half as likely as their parents to say that it is important in their lives. The generational decline is too advanced to reverse, the report suggested, as the proportion of people who believe in God is declining faster than church attendance. Dr...

ELK TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A cross monument in a Vinton County cemetery has some local residents fighting to keep it there, NBC 4's Mike Bowersock reported. A representative from the American Civil Liberties Union told Elk Township the cross must leave the government-owned cemetery. The monument was added to Elk Cemetery in 2004, after being in storage for eight years. Some people said the large cross monument is promoting religion. In 1996, the ACLU forced the county to remove the cross from the McArthur courthouse, where it sat for almost 40 years, Bowersock reported. NBC 4 was unable to reach...

Barry Lynn is the top guy at Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a cartoonish presence on talking head television, ever-ready to declare the imminent threat of theocracy in the land. It should come as no surprise to anyone, then, that the organization Lynn leads last week leveled a series of very serious charges against almost everyone at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The report, available here in PDF, is among the worst examples of McCarthyism since Joe McCarthy stood up on February 9, 1950, and declared that "I have here in...

THE WASHINGTON TIMES Special Report: First of three parts. Oral arguments were to begin before the U.S. Supreme Court on one of the most litigated questions in American law: Should the Ten Commandments be displayed on government property? Outside, protesters sang hymns and held up signs proclaiming "The 10 Commandments: The way to live your life." A few feet away, a larger group clustered around Ellen Birch, a member of American Atheists, who describes herself as a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. "A favorite claim of fundamentalists," she told anyone listening, is that America is "indebted to the Bible and Christianity...

Modern liberalism has been at war with the papacy since the Enlightenment. Hence its solicitousness since John Paul II's death about the "troubled" Church.As secularization picked up speed in the 18th and 19th century and went into overdrive in the 20th, modern liberals militated to secularize and control everything, including the Catholic Church, which they regarded as the only cultural obstacle left to surmount. Enlightenment dilettante Denis Diderot spoke of strangling the last priest with "the guts of the last king." The Church had smelled a rat before the French Revolution. Pope Pius VI warned that the misnamed "Enlightenment" would...

Condemned man gets life in prison for killing waitress Updated: 2:47 p.m. ET March 28, 2005 DENVER - The Colorado Supreme Court threw out the death sentence Monday of a man convicted of raping and killing a cocktail waitress because jurors consulted the Bible during deliberations. The court said Bible passages, including the verse that commands “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” could lead jurors to vote for death. The justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for the 1994 slaying of Rhonda Maloney. Harlan’s attorneys challenged the sentence after discovering five...

DEMRE, Turkey -- In the 4th century, a bishop named Nicholas was a local hero in this seaside town, living the kind of life that eventually led to sainthood. For most of the 16 centuries that followed, Saint Nicholas was known chiefly as the patron of sailors, barrel-makers, small children and Russians. And though it's not entirely clear just when the historical Saint Nicholas began to meld into the image of the jolly man in the red suit, historians can now say precisely when the transformation was complete. On Feb. 3, the Demre City Council voted unanimously to erect a...

Some Local Malls Go P.C. For Religious Holiday Customers at local area malls are being taken by surprised to find that the Easter Bunny they've come to know and love now has a new name. Easter Bunny With Children In fact, some local malls now refer to the Easter icon as the "Spring Bunny." However, some customers don't like the new trend. "It makes me sad, because I think Easter is really important. The message is important," Plano mother Deidra Klemm said. "And I think it's wrong to call him the Spring Bunny. Let's just say what he really is."...

A growing detachment from the Bible has left the Church impotent to cope with the forces of secularism, according to a senior bishop. Clergy are not receiving adequate theological training, Christians are no longer reading the Bible, and the seriousness of worship is being neglected, said the Bishop of Chester, the Rt Rev Peter Forster. Speaking to the Chester Diocesan Evangelical Fellowship, he delivered a rebuke of the way that the Church has lost “theological seriousness”, and warned that without it secularism will thrive. The way that the Bible is read in Church has driven him to despair: “I am...

It seems to me as an immigrant that God in America is the most controversial figure. He has been fought for and fought against. He has been lobbied and lobbed at in the court halls of the country. America's religiosity is an indelible impression for every visitor. Here science and spirituality weave seamlessly into the matrix of life. Trips to space and trips to church are a common happenstance. Visiting America in the 1800s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville remarked: "I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not...

The cross was used by those who hated Christianity, first to kill Jesus and then in an attempt to kill the faith. Today, the symbol of that same cross is so feared in secular society that their own “personal terrorist” has been sent to rip it away from the followers of Christ. This terrorist has a name, and it is the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Rooted in hate and communist philosophy, it cloaks itself in constitutional phraseology and the American flag. In reality, it remains faithful to seeking the destruction of American principles. Though it is bankrolled with an...

Every day, the headlines scream with some new threat from the American Civil Liberties Union. I believe it's important to look behind the curtain and discover the origins of groups and organizations to better understand their activities. The ACLU was founded in the 1920s by Roger Baldwin and Crystal Eastman, described as a "progressive" and "the perfect feminist." Earl Browder was general secretary of the Communist Party of the United States from 1930 through its dissolution in 1944. When the party was reconstituted as the Communist Political Association later that year, Browder was chosen as its president. Browder proudly proclaimed...

London – Carol services banned, religious references carefully excised from cards: to read Britain's press this year, you could be forgiven for thinking the politically correct brigade are set on taking the Christian out of Christmas. A string of stories have appeared in recent weeks detailing the activities of killjoy bureaucrats over-eager to avoid offence to other religions in multi-ethnic Britain during the festive season. At the vanguard of the movement to keep the festival's religious underpinning has been The Sun, the country's best-selling daily paper, which has launched a typically vehement "Save our Christmas" campaign. According to the paper,...

A major concern for sociologists of religion--and a topic of heated debate--is secularization, the process of religious beliefs, symbols, and institutions becoming less influential and significant in society (Swatos and Olson 2000, Bruce 2002, Stark and Finke 2000, Berger 1967). The idea that religion is steadily dying has enjoyed widespread acceptance over the course of the last three centuries among social scientists, with prominent voices from within sociology, psychology, political science, economics, anthropology, history, and philosophy lending support. This is the gist of the theory: In the wake of the Enlightenment, with the rapid progress of scientific inquiry and industrial...

Return to Main Page   Cardinal Ratzinger Discovers America   John Rao, Ph.D. REMNANT COLUMNIST, New York     Cardinal Ratzinger has discovered America. Troubled by the total secularization of European life—reflected, most recently, in the battles over European unification and the continental chorus of criticism accompanying Professor Rocco Buttiglione’s reiteration of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality—the cardinal now suggests that the United States may perhaps offer the better model of Church-State relations for a desacralized world. According to a November 25, 2004, report on Zenit.com, the Cardinal, responding to the secularization of Europe, made the following comments on...

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America is Indeed Becoming Two Nations Over the last few weeks I have come to realize that Democratic Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards is at least partially correct when he says there are two Americas. Unfortunately, his portrayal of the two Americas is nothing more than a recycling of the liberal political tactic of promoting class distinction and envy attempting to pit us against each other. But a more serious analysis of the social, cultural and political forces presently vying for their place in our nation would show that there are, indeed, two Americas. One America is still trying to...

JOHN PAUL II ANGELUS Castel Gandolfo Sunday, 3 August 2003 Dear Brothers and Sisters, 1. Europe is the continent which, in the past 2,000 years, has been marked by Christianity more than any other. From all its regions - in its abbeys, cathedrals and churches - ceaseless praise has been raised to Christ, Lord of time and of history. Baptism and the other Sacraments have consecrated the seasons of life of countless believers. The Eucharist, especially on the Lord's Day, has nourished their faith and love; the Liturgy of the Hours and many other popular forms of prayer have marked...