Free Republic

I’m conflicted about Trinity Broadcast Network, which wrapped up its Fall Praise-A-Thon today. There is no denying that “America’s most-watched faith and family friendly network,” as TBN advertises itself, provides a service to the Christian faithful. I, for one, appreciate the platform it provides for such pastors as Ken Copeland, Charles Stanley, John Hagee, Ed Young Sr., David Jeremiah and Joel Osteen. I also enjoy the praise and worship music it presents from such Christian artists as Chris Tomlin, Paul Baloche, Michael W. Smith, Israel Houghton, Martha Munizzi and Cindy Cruse Ratcliff. Yet, my soul is troubled by news reports...

I worked in the White House staffer during the first Bush administration. I remember that the president was so mindful of being above reproach when it came to interactions with female staff, he often wouldn’t even make direct eye contact with them. He was an upright man, who took seriously his wedding vows to honor his wife and “forsake all others.” He took to heart the words of the Apostle Paul, who warned those of us who endeavor to lead righteous lives to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. David Petraeus obviously did not heed the...

As I join my fellow Christ followers in lamenting the re-election of a president whose policies have been decidedly unGodly, I am reminded of the words of the Apostle Paul. “Let every soul,” he instructed, “be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” What that means is that sovereign God, in His divine wisdom, has permitted Barack Obama to rule our troubled land another four years. Just as He allowed Pharoah to rule Egypt during the time of Moses; Ahab to rule Israel during the...

The Bible tells the story of Belshazzar, the very last king of Babylon, who held a great feast for a thousand of his lords during which he commanded his servants to bring the sacred vessels which had been pillaged from God’s holy temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his lords could drink from them. In the midst of the unholy revelry, a disembodied hand materialized and wrote upon a wall: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. It was a message to Belshazzar. “God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it. You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting;...

I got a shout out a few days ago from Nicole Ostil, nee Gomes, who responded to a piece I wrote not so long ago in which I criticized the 24-year-old wife and mother for going on the Internet and asking strange men to help her pay for breast implants. “Thank you for your personal insights,” she wrote, adding, she is “actually quite flattered at all the controversy” stirred up by new media writers like yours truly. For some reason, Nicole felt it necessary to stress to me that the web site on which she solicited her cosmetic surgery, MyFreeImplants.com,...

They never stop – the God-deniers who worship at the altar of evolution. Who pay homage to their high priest, Charles Darwin. Who continue to place their faith in theories they contend to be indisputable science. The latest example is a new fossil study, published in the journal Science, co-authored by David Green, an anatomy professor at Midwestern University in Illinois, and Zeresenay Alemseged, chair of the anthropology department at the California Academy of Sciences. The study claims that that the 3.3 million-year-old remains of a baby monkey, discovered in Ethiopia, somehow confirm that our early human ancestors swung from...

When I think about the sound and fury swirling around Richard Mourdock, the Indiana Republican vying for a U.S. Senate seat, my thoughts turn to Rebecca Kiessling. In a debate this week with Democrat Rep. Joe Donnelly, Mourdock defended his opposition to abortion even in cases in which a pregnancy has resulted from rape. “I think,” said Mourdock, emotionally, “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen.” Rebecca, I suspect, would absolutely agree with Mourdock. Because the Michigan woman was conceived, she attests, “out of a brutal rape at knife point...

I made a visit this past weekend to the University of California, Irvine to attend the Medjugorje Peace Conference, a gathering of very traditional, very conservative Catholics. The standout speaker during the two-day conference was Monsignor Jim Lisante, pastor of Our Lady Of Lourdes Parish in Massapequa, New York, whose homilies are available on ITunes (free of charge), and who often appears on FOX News to speak on matters of faith. The Monsignor offered the most scathing critique of President Obama’s social policies I’ve heard from any cleric in America – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or other.. He began by recounting...

“Only God can judge me.” - Elizabeth Escalona, 23-year-old Texas mom who beat and glued her 2-year-old daughter’s hands to a wall. “Holier than thou critics have nothing on Lance Armstrong.” - de Volkskrant, the Netherlands “Be Cool. Be Kind. Don’t Judge.” - A tee shirt on sale at the Ellen Degeneres online store. Ever notice how often those who lead Godless lives, who engage in immoral behavior, who commit unspeakable acts invoke the words of the Lord to defend their unrepentant sinfulness? “Judge not lest ye be judged.” Usually they direct the words at Christ followers, whom they disparage...

Seven-time Tour de France cycling champion Lance Armstrong has long rejected the idea that God has dominion over his life. He has refused to accept that his Creator saved him from testicular cancer (“If there was a God, I’d still have two balls,” he once sneered). He has refused to credit the Almighty for his exceptional athletic prowess (“One of the redeeming things about being an athlete is redefining what’s humanly possible,” he once declared.) The Bible warns that “God opposes the proud.” And Armstrong’s stunning fall from grace offers proof that God’s Word does not return void. The disgraced...

I don’t believe Timothy Kurek. He’s the alleged Christian, alleged heterosexual who told ABC News he spent a year “pretending” to be gay. Why did the 26-year-old Nashville man, a graduate of Liberty University (the so-called evangelical “West Point”) decide to go undercover? Because, he said, he wanted to “walk in the shoes” of a homosexual. So Kurek went all in. He “came out” as gay to all his family and friends. He got a job in a gay café. He hung out at a gay bar. He joined a gay softball league. He even got a gay bud of...

Most non-Christians are confounded when they see vehicles on the road with an NOTW sticker affixed to the window or bumper. They either don’t know what the letters stand for or – if someone clues them in – they don’t know what exactly the phrase means. Not of This World. Two polls provide some insight. One, from the Public Religion Research Institute, was released a few weeks ago. The other, from Baylor University, was released last year. In the PRRI survey, 81 percent of the 2,500 sampled said that religion played an important role in their lives. And most of...

I would not list Mila Kunis among my all-time favorite actresses. But I did like her work in “the Book of Eli.” Her character, Solara, accompanies the title character, played by Denzel Washington, on a purpose-driven trek across post-apocalyptic America until they reach the West Coast. They arrive at an old prison that has been converted into the world’s last book repository. There Eli, who turns out be blind, recites by heart the King James Bible to a scribe, thereby preserving God’s Word. I know Kunis is a Ukranian-born Jew. But, after watching “The Book of Eli,” with its decidedly...

A handwritten letter by Albert Einstein goes on auction tomorrow on eBay. The online auction site has set the opening bid at a staggering $3 million. That’s more than seven times as much as the letter fetched just four years ago. “This is the most historic and significant piece we have listed on eBay,” said Eric Gazin, president of Auction Cause, the Los Angles-based agency consigned to sell Einstein’s two-pager. So what makes this particular letter by the 20th century’s most renowned physicist so much more valuable than any other missive he hand wrote? Did he scribble his famous formula...

There was an intriguing forum this week in New York City provocatively titled “I’m So Spiritual.” It was co-hosted by The New School, which trains up its students, it says, “to bring actual, positive change to the world,” and New York Salon, an organization composed of intellectuals, academics artists and public personalities, according to Wikipedia. The forum featured four speakers: Courtney Bender, an associate religion professor at ColumbiaUniversity, Matthew Hutson, a Psychology Today science writer, Sally Quinn, editor of the Washington Post’s On Faith blog, and Alan Miller, New York Salon’s co-director. Of the four speakers, Miller proved to be...

During their three-year crime spree, the infamous young couple murdered nine police officers and at least as many civilians. The pair finally got what was coming to them on a dusty road in Louisiana, where a six-man posse ambushed them and shot them dead. Frank Hamer, the Texas Ranger who led the posse, was rewarded for his service by being allowed to take anything the outlaws had in their possession at the time of their deaths. So he took the Colt .45 semi-automatic pistol the 25-year-old male had in his waistband and the .38 Special the 23-year-old female concealed under...

PUEBLO, Colo. - After a lawsuit threat from an atheist group, the city of Pueblo said it would get rid of the opening prayer at council meetings. But one council member says it's the wrong plan. Pueblo city leaders said they would replace the invocation with a moment of silence after receiving a letter earlier this month from watchdog group The Freedom From Religion Foundation. "We may need to improve our process and adapt so we are in compliance, and I think that's important," said council member Chris Nicoll. "But I don't want to do away with it completely." The...

The Connellsville Area School District in Pennsylvania was sued this week in U.S. District Court for refusing to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments that has stood for more than 50 years on the grounds of its junior high school. That follows a similar federal lawsuit against the New Kensington-Arnold School District in Pennsylvania, which was filed two weeks ago, and which objects to display of the Ten Commandments in front of one of the district’s high schools. Both legal actions were initiated by the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist hate group based in Madison, Wisconsin. It...

It was one year ago this month that lawmakers in Fresno County, California wisely rescinded their previous support for a local needle-exchange program, which supplied clean needles and syringes to junkies with which they could shoot up. Fresno recognized, however belatedly, that the program was enabling drug addiction in the name of so-called “harm reduction.” Dr. Marc Lasher, who founded Fresno’s needle exchange program, thinks the county’s ban wrongheaded. So every weekend, he and his team of volunteers pile on an old school bus (kind of like Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, as immortalized by Tom Wolfe in “The...

(CNN) -- A 14-year-old Pakistani girl who had faced life in prison for allegedly burning the Quran will have her case heard in juvenile court, the girl's lawyer told CNN. A local court ordered the transfer on Monday, Tahir Naveed Choudhry said. Pakistani police told CNN their investigation concluded Rimsha Masih is innocent and was framed by an imam. These developments could mark an end to the Christian teen's nightmare since she was accused of blasphemy in August. "This is a precursor to the case ending, and that is quite unprecedented in the 25-year history of Pakistan's blasphemy laws," said...