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On His “Glory to God for All Things” blog last week, Orthodox priest Fr. Stephen Freeman posted on the Orthodox perspective on Jesus’ atonement in contrast to the theory of penal substitution (penal substitution is the theory that Jesus died instead of you to take on the punishment due to you from God for your sins). Fr. Stephen argues that even the passages that seem to directly imply “penal substitution” atonement, or at least some form of “satisfaction theory” (i.e. Jesus died as a substitution in place of us to satisfy some demand of God), actually do not inherently suggest...

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) — KCBS has learned that Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the principal church of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, has installed a watering system to keep the homeless from sleeping in the cathedral’s doorways. The cathedral, at Geary and Gough, is the home church of the Archbishop. There are four tall side doors, with sheltered alcoves, that attract homeless people at night. “They actually have signs in there that say, ‘No Trespassing,’” said a homeless man named Robert. But there are no signs warning the homeless about what happens in these doorways, at various times, all through the night....

The “Director of Civil and Human Rights” for the United Methodist Church, Bill Mefford, posted a picture to Twitter yesterday mocking the pro-life marchers. Mefford, who works for the Church’s lobby arm, the General Board of Church and Society, ridiculed the marchers by posting a picture of himself standing before them with a sign saying “I march for sandwiches.”[...]

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE – Pope Francis said Thursday there are limits to freedom of expression, especially when it insults or ridicules someone's faith.[...]"If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," Francis said, throwing a pretend punch his way. "It's normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."[...]"There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others," he said. "They...

The average price for a gallon of gas has dropped for 99 days in a row, with six states – Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, Oklahoma and Missouri – having average prices under $2 for the first time since 2009, according to price surveys Friday. Prices have plummeted about 40 percent since the start of June. Put another way, the Auto Club estimates that Americans are saving $500 million -- per day, each day – compared to the high prices paid last spring, allowing that money to be spent with businesses other than oil companies or just kept in the savings...

An Oncue Express station in Oklahoma City was selling the motor fuel for $1.99 a gallon Wednesday, becoming the first one to drop below $2 in the U.S. since July 30, 2010, Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy Organization Inc., said by email from Chicago. "We knew when we saw crude oil prices drop last week that we'd break the $2 threshold pretty soon, but we didn't know if it would happen in South Carolina, Texas, Missouri or Oklahoma," said DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for Gasbuddy. "Today's national average, $2.74, now makes the current price we pay a...

MARK LEVIN, WABC RADIO: My reaction is that Farrakhan is a violent, hateful racist anti-semite and the fact that the president of the United States didn't denounce those comments, the fact that the attorney general of the United States didn't denounce those comments, the fact that not a single Democrat went to the floor of the House or the floor of the Senate and denounced that man and what he stands for, and not even a Republican, as far as I know is unbelievable to me.

Phil Kerpen ✔ @kerpen Penn and now URI both leave broken embeds on their sites after deleting Gruber vids. Way to cover tracks, my fellow stupid Americans.

Take-no-prisoners radio host Mark Levin is congenitally incapable of mincing words, and his visceral reaction to top Obamacare consultant Jonathan Gruber's jaw-dropping admission of the law's inherent deceit is wholly in character. How much longer, Levin asks, are Americans willing to tolerate a thuggish government "growing more tyrannical every day"? Levin on his radio show Wednesday night prefaced his remarks by playing audio of Obama's numerous empty promises about the so-called Affordable Care Act, and a clip of remarks by Donald Berwick, appointed by Obama in 2010 to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. During an event two...

The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word itself has become mystified—and relegated to a “misty” and distant realm that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, as opposed to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge. Most of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, tradition, or various kinds of experts (what I call the “containers”)—instead of telling us the value and importance...

Two ordained Christian pastors in Idaho have filed a federal lawsuit and a motion for temporarily restraining Coeur d'Alene city officials from forcing them to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies or face prosecution for violating "non-discrimination" laws. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed the lawsuit and the motion on behalf of Donald Knapp and his wife, Evelyn, who run Hitching Post Wedding Chapel and have been required by city officials to perform gay ceremonies or face months in jail and/or thousands of dollars in fines. The city says its non-discrimination ordinance requires them to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies because the courts have...

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On March 14 Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told members of the House Armed Services committee that there was no war on religious liberty. “The single biggest frustration I’ve had in this job is the perception that somehow there is religious persecution inside the United States Air Force,” the general told lawmakers. “It is not true.” Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) told me the Air Force seems to be the worst offender when it comes to attacks on religious liberty. If that’s true, perhaps Gen. Welsh could explain why a Bible was removed from a POW/MIA Missing Man...

A Christian preacher arrested and imprisoned without food and water after he told two gay teenagers the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, has won £13,000 in compensation for poor treatment by police. John Craven, 57, says he was held by Greater Manchester Police after he told the couple 'God hates sin, but he loves the sinner'. The young men then kissed in front of him and approached a police officer and claimed Mr Craven's comments were 'insulting' and had caused them 'harassment and distress.' Mr Craven said he was 'grabbed roughly by the arm' on suspicion of public order...

"A life of religious devotion without kindness is not a spiritual life." -Emanuel Swedenborg This video expands on Swedenborg's assertions about what's at the root of organized religion's problems. Lyrics: Peace, please believe, that there's a lot of human need And a lot of hungry bellies that could do without human greed And a lot of people packing churches looking for a seed hoping for a higher love to patch up where we all bleed they're there to learn, it's a perfect opportunity to say hey we're all God's children and pump love and aid into the community but what...

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ruled that Kansas can strip two Planned Parenthood clinics of federal family planning money while the organization moves forward with its legal challenge of a state law it says is retaliation for its advocacy of abortion rights. Kansas is among several conservative states that have sought in recent years to strip Planned Parenthood of funding. At issue in Tuesday's ruling is money distributed to states under Title X, a federally financed family planning program. The Title X money targets low-income individuals seeking reproductive services such as birth control, pregnancy testing, cancer screenings and treatment...

It seems to be a matter of common sense to say that good people will go to heaven and evil people will go to hell. Something would be terribly wrong if God could send an innocent, sincere, charitable, helpful person to hell. Yet sometimes people suggest that a person's salvation depends upon his faith alone, and not upon the good things he does, or how he lives, or whether he obeys the Ten Commandments. The Bible never mentions "faith alone" (except in one passage which says faith alone is dead--James 2:24) The concept first came into existence during the Reformation,...

It is all about the What of repenting--what are we looking for and working on? Next week: The Verbs.Includes Paul's list of 95...From my notes: sinned, wrong, wickedness, bad, evil deeds, evil way, weight, wicked ways, wicked works, abominations, dead works, sexual immorality, adultery, blasphemy, works of our hands, idolatry, murder, sorcery, theft, filthiness, naughtiness, uncleanness, fornication, lewdness, vileness...

How are we guided by the Lord from the mis-impressions and tainted motives of our natural heredity to the wisdom and love of a genuinely good life? One key answer is that we need to learn what the Lord teaches in His Word. We need to learn and we need to consciously work to make different choices from many that come naturally to us. We need to ask the Lord’s help in this work. We need to pray that the light of heaven shine upon our minds. We also need to pay attention to the fruits of our present motives...

[...] There’s still the seventh day to come, but that was a day of rest, and so on the sixth day we’re talking about the ultimate goal, the end, of the Lord’s creation. In the literal sense this is the creation of man, male and female. In the internal sense, it’s something similar. We’ve been talking about the way that the days of creation tell us about the way that a person is regenerated, made a new person, made a heavenly person. And on the sixth day, at the end of the whole process, the goal of all of this,...