Free Republic

The most prominent evangelical college in the country joined a chorus of Catholic and Protestant institutions suing the federal government over the contraceptive mandate. Wheaton College filed a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the Department of Health and Human Services had violated its religious freedom and free speech. “This insurance mandate is against our conscience and our Christian conviction,” said Philip Ryken, president of the school located in Wheaton, Ill. “We had no recourse but to file this suit.” The mandate “runs roughshod over Wheaton’s religious beliefs, and the beliefs of millions...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- A major seven-year study published in a mainstream journal is challenging the secular notion that gays and lesbians cannot change their sexual orientation. The longitudinal study followed 61 subjects for between six and seven years and found that 23 percent of them reported successful conversion to heterosexual orientation and function and another 30 percent reported stable behavioral chastity with a significant dis-identification with gay orientation. Twenty percent of the subjects had given up and embraced a gay identity. It is believed to be the first study of its kind -- that is, one that followed people...

A Pennsylvania man charged with drugging a Siberian husky to give his girlfriend’s dog a better shot at winning a suburban kennel club show will go to trial to fight the charges. Ralph Ullum, 68, is accused of slipping the rival show dog two human drugs — Protonix and Benadryl — during an American Kennel Club show last December at the DuPage County Fairgrounds in Wheaton. But Ullam’s attorney said his client never gave Pixie the husky any pills — and never needed to because the show already had ended, with his girlfriend’s dog grabbing the best in show prize....

“Never Google Drunk” Bethany Stotts, June 3, 2010 Commencement is usually a time when the speaker gives encouragement to the college graduates as they head off into the work force and pursue their life dreams. But NBC’s Today Show anchor Ann Curry, this year’s Wheaton College commencement speaker, gave mixed signals, making an embarrassing mistake during her speech. She mistakenly listed Billy Graham and other alumni from Wheaton College (Illinois) as graduates of the Norfolk, Mass.-based campus. In the embedded video from NBC’s Late Night show with Jimmy Fallon, Curry provided her explanation for the journalistic mixup: never Google drunk....

Where am I? The crowd at Saturday's Wheaton College commencement may have wondered that while listening to Ann Curry's speech to grads. The "Today" show anchor gave a shout-out to a few distinguished Wheaton alums, but there was one problem: They were alums of the other Wheaton College. Curry, a graduate of the University of Oregon, cited evangelist Billy Graham, horror director Wes Craven, and 9/11 hero Todd Beamer, who was a passenger on United Airlines flight 93. While it's true all three attended Wheaton, it was the Christian liberal arts college in Illinois, not the school in Norton where...

There’s hardly an evangelical who doesn’t know about Wheaton College. Alma Mater of the Reverend Billy Graham, Wheaton boasts a student body of superior intellect and an education rivaling much of the Ivy League. Wheaton College graduates can boast of presidential speech writers and Speakers of the United States House of Representatives along with doctors and executives and professors and missionaries and pastors across the globe. But Wheaton is different. Founded by an anti-slavery father and son, Jonathan and Charles Blanchard, Wheaton was established as a chain in the Underground Railroad to help runaway slaves. Wheaton’s distinctive has always been...

Students at these schools don’t venture far off the path that leads to the right. Religion plays a big role in the campus activities, generally, as do morals and character profiles that would make any parent proud. The Princeton Review's survey of 122,000 college students for the 2010 edition of the "Best 371 Colleges" book revealed the top 10 colleges that have conservative campus cultures, especially regarding political persuasion, the use of drugs and alcohol and the level of acceptance of the gay community on campus.

The teenagers weren't thinking about last-minute holiday purchases when they pulled into the Montgomery County shopping mall two days before Christmas. Instead, one of the teens later told police, the group went to the crowded mall to randomly shoot someone. All four, including a 14-year-old girl, are members of the Bloods street gang in Prince George's County, authorities said. Two of them opened fire in the parking lot of Westfield Wheaton Shopping Centre when they spotted members of a rival gang, police said. In announcing the arrests yesterday, county police said the four were being held on charges of attempted...

WHEATON, Md. - SNIPPET: "The remaining at-large shooter is described as a black male, with a medium complexion, 16 to 21 years of age, 5 feet, 8 inches tall, wearing a yellow and black jacket with a hood, tan pants, and white shoes." SNIPPET: "Police are still looking for another shooter and other suspects involved. Anyone with information is asked to contact Montgomery County Police at 240-773-5530 or 301-279-8000."

The three people accused of murdering and then burning the body of an 83-year-old Wheaton woman last week are illegal immigrants, a Montgomery County jail official said Wednesday. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents issued warrants for Ramon Alvarado, Jose Alvarado and Ana Rodas on Wednesday afternoon, jail director Arthur Wallenstein said. Wallenstein said that half of the 16 jail inmates accused of murder are illegal immigrants. Cousins Jose and Ramon Alvarado were in jail in connection with the beating death of Lila Meizel. Police say the cousins lighted the woman’s body on fire to cover up a check fraud...

Tom Williamson prayed, bowed, sang, clapped and rejoiced during a recent Anglican prayer service in Wheaton. But this was no ordinary ceremony. About 500 conservative Anglicans from across the United States, Canada and Africa gathered Wednesday to celebrate the formation of a new Anglican province created because of the alienation many feel toward the liberal stance of the Episcopal Church. "My wife and I thought it was important to be here today," Williamson said. "It's a very momentous occasion." Just before the prayer service, conservative leaders held a press conference announcing the formation of the new province they are calling...

WASHINGTON—Montgomery County police have arrested three suspects in connection with a fire that killed an elderly woman Wednesday in Wheaton. Jose Antonio Alvarado, 37, Ana L. Rodas, 33, and Ramon Alberto Alvarado, 32, are all charged with arson, homicide and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The trio lived together in the 12300 block of Downer Drive in Wheaton. They are being held without bond in the Montgomery County Detention Center.

http://www.acn-us.org/archive/2008/11/draft-constitution.html Anglican Leaders Seek to Unite North American Churches Media contact: Mr. Robert Lundy, 770–595–6979, rlundy@americananglican.orgWHEATON, IL, Nov. 17—Leaders of the Common Cause Partnership, a federation of more than 100,000 Anglican Christians in North America, will release to the public on the evening of Dec. 3 the draft constitution of an emerging Anglican Church in North America, formally subscribe to the Jerusalem Declaration of the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) and affirm the GAFCON Statement on the Global Anglican Future at an evening worship celebration in suburban Chicago. This historic event comes in the wake of GAFCON held in Israel...

Jim Kouri, CPP A 24-year-old Wheaton, Illinois resident was arrested for making e-mail threats against the University of Illinois-Chicago campus. Mahtab Shirani was nabbed Tuesday, February 26th, by members of the Chicago FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), according to John W. Richardson, Chief of the University Police Department. Shirani was charged in a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Chicago with one count of making threats through use of interstate commerce, which is a felony offense. According to the police complaint, an individual subsequently identified as Shirani, who is a student at the University, sent an anonymous e-mail...

Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500. First identified in 1931, this blue pigment (known as Maya Blue) has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, composition and persistent color in one of the world’s harshest climates. The anthropologists solved another old mystery, namely the presence of a 14-foot layer of blue precipitate found at the bottom of the...

<p>The Wheaton College student newspaper, The Record, reports today that the influential evangelical college’s president, provost, and chaplain have removed their names from a letter to Muslim leaders that has attracted criticism in some quarters.</p> <p>“Loving God and Neighbor Together” was published in the November 18, 2007, New York Times as a response to an October statement from 138 Muslim scholars and clerics calling for interfaith cooperation. Wheaton College president Duane Litfin and provost Stanton Jones were among the signatories, along with pastors Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, National Association of Evangelicals president Leith Anderson, Youth With a Mission chairman Lynn Green, Frontiers mission founder Greg Livingstone, theologians Miroslav Volf and John Stott, and Christianity Today Media Group editor-in-chief David Neff.</p>

A DuPage County prosecutor killed in a drunken driving crash was traveling more than 80 mph and possibly using her cell phone seconds before her government-issued car struck another vehicle head-on, authorities said Friday. A 33-page police report also indicated that Jane Radostits had been drinking before the May 11 crash during a long lunch at an Oak Brook restaurant with seven other prosecutors and another office staffer. Lab results released last week showed that Radostits, 46, had a blood-alcohol level of .25 percent -- three times the level at which a motorist is considered drunk. "She was drunk, and...

WHEATON, Ill. (STNG) -- A veteran DuPage County prosecutor was driving drunk with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit when she died in a May 11 car crash, authorities said Friday.Jane Radostits died after the 3:45 p.m. head-on crash near Winfield that occurred when her county-issued Chevrolet Impala collided with a Chevy Tahoe SUV, officials have said. Two other vehicles also were damaged in the collision, which happened on a four-lane stretch of Winfield Road and seriously injured a West Chicago woman driving the Tahoe.

A few years back, one-third of freshmen entering Wheaton College (Illinois) didn't know that Paul's travels are recorded in Acts or that the Christmas story is found in Matthew. Gary Burge, Ph.D., Wheaton professor of New Testament, reported these findings from a Bible literacy test administered to incoming freshmen. Burge also said he asked 45 seniors to paraphrase, from memory, the Ten Commandments. Only one student could do so. Though these students are mostly from strongly evangelical churches, their ignorance of Bible basics is disturbing. The professor maintained that biblical illiteracy is "a universal and growing problem" among students and...

Evangelical Christians say the issue of illegal aliens in the United States often creates a conflict between their allegiance to the Gospels and their loyalty to the government. "On one hand, they really want to minister to people, but on the other hand, [illegal aliens] have broken the law -- and that's a problem for people," said John Clifford Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Several conservative Christian groups sent a letter Monday to President Bush asking that his plan to resolve the immigration crisis include strong border security, amnesty for illegals who...