Free Republic

One World Spirituality: Three Worldviews Merge By Brannon Howse I’m a news and worldview junkie. As an adult, I have always eagerly studied cultural trends, global strategies, public policy and religious worldviews in order to better understand the times in which we live. In 2007, I began to notice a trend. I saw politicians, religious leaders, actors, and laypeople picking various parts of three worldviews to form a “new” worldview. While there is nothing new under the sun, and the lie of Satan is continually being re-packaged, 99.9% of Americans—including even Christian worldview experts and authors—are not recognizing this worldview...

Bars and restaurants around Wrigley Field that ignore the city’s call to voluntarily cut off liquor sales after the seventh inning could face a dire alternative: Area residents could vote them dry, Mayor Daley warned Tuesday. One day after bar owners reacted angrily to the city’s proposal, Daley defended it as "common sense." He argued that Cubs fans who’ve been drinking up until the seventh-inning stretch of potential title-clinching games need, what he called, "some smoothing time" before the celebration begins in earnest. » Click to enlarge image Fans celebrate after the Cubs won the Central Division title. Mayor Daley...

In Part 1 of this series, I wrote of the great elephants of India, who, although they have the physical capacity to uproot trees during the day, can be restrained all night long by a piece of twine and a twig. How is this possible? The elephant’s training begins when it is still young and considerably less powerful. Removed from its mother, the elephant is then shackled with an iron chain to a large tree. For days and weeks on end, the baby elephant strains against its restraints, only to find that all exertion is useless. Then slowly, over a...

The trained elephant of India is a perfect picture of the power of psychological captivity. Tamed and utilized for its enormous strength, the great beast stands nearly 10 feet tall and weighs up to 5 tons when fully grown. Its tasks may include uprooting full-grown trees, hauling great boulders, and carrying enormous loads on its shoulders. And yet, when the day’s work is done and this powerful beast must be kept from wandering off during the night, its owner simply takes a piece of twine, attaches it to a small branch embedded in the ground, and ties it around the...

Presidents “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” GEORGE WASHINGTON Commander-in-Chief in the American Revolution; Signer of the Constitution; First President of the United States “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” JOHN ADAMS Signer of the Declaration of Independence; One of Two...

Gov. Wants Health Care Expansion Despite Unpaid Bills CHICAGO (CBS) ― Gov. Rod Blagojevich continues to push an expansion of state-subsidized health insurance, despite a new audit that found at least $1.5 billion in unpaid bills and the system is plagued by mismanagement. CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery reports among the health care programs affected by the state's delinquency in paying its bills is a treatment program for pregnant drug abusers. The Haymarket Center recently had to wait more than three months for payment from the State of Illinois, and in the meanwhile had to find $600,000 elsewhere to...

For My Democratic Friends: (Both of you!) Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to observe religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendar year beginning the upcoming January 1st and ending...

A Deeper Understanding of the Threat of International Law In the March/April 2006 Home School Court Report, I made the case for a parental rights amendment to the United States Constitution. Even though parental rights are recognized as a fundamental right under current Supreme Court doctrine, there are two threats to recognition of this principle. First, a growing number of Supreme Court justices refuse to recognize that parental rights are a fundamental right. Justice Antonin Scalia, a noted conservative, holds that parental rights are not judicially enforceable at all until there is a specific parental rights provision in the Constitution....

A troubling wind is blowing in Washington, suggesting that the advocates of an internationalist approach to children’s rights are preparing for a major offensive. On April 16, 2007, I attended a briefing held in the United States Senate to promote the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). The panel of speakers was an impressive collection of academics and activists. The featured speaker was Professor Jaap Doek, a law professor from Amsterdam, who recently completed a five-year term as the chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child—the agency with the...

Jenks will get the save in tonights victory, but will have to settle for a tie with the 1972 record of most consecutive batters retired.

snip~In my experience, three factors influence how people of conservative religious faith, especially Evangelicals, approach the issue of man-caused Global Warming. The first is their theological view of man and the environment; the second is the perceived credibility of the scientific debate; and the third is how Evangelicals prioritize the issue of Global Warming among the other cultural and social issues of concern to them.Concerning the first factor, a very accurate rendering of Evangelicals' general theological position on the environment is presented in the Cornwall Declaration, [6] prepared by twenty-five conservative Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish theologians. In general, conservative people...

BAGHDAD - Despite the chaos and sectarian violence raging across Baghdad, Farouq Mansour felt relatively safe as a Christian living in a multiethnic neighborhood in the capital. Then, two months ago, al-Qaida gunmen kidnapped him and demanded that his family convert to Islam or pay a $30,000 ransom. Two weeks later, he paid up, was released and immediately fled to Syria, joining a mass exodus of Iraq's increasingly threatened Christian minority. "There is no future for us in Iraq," Mansour said. Although Islamic extremists have targeted Iraqi Christians before, bombing churches and threatening religious leaders, the latest attacks have taken...

The Associated Press proudly calls itself the "essential global news network" and a "bastion of the people's right to know around the world." But when it comes to the "people's right to know" whether Associated Press employees are cooperating with terrorists overseas, the "essential global news network's" motto is: Bug off. On April 12, I learned from military sources that an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, Fallujah native Bilal Hussein, had been captured in Ramadi in an apartment with insurgents and a cache of weapons. This was news. I asked the AP for confirmation. Corporate spokesman Jack Stokes informed me...

The Minneapolis Police Department has temporarily suspended the use of a well-known psychologist who has been screening potential officers for more than a year after community members questioned his affiliation with a group that opposes civil rights for gays. The issue of Michael A. Campion's affiliation with a conservative Illinois group that says it opposes the "gay lifestyle" was brought to interim Chief Tim Dolan's attention on Wednesday during a meeting with the Police Community Relations Council. Although he said there's no indication of any bias in Campion's work, Dolan decided the next day to stop using him until an...

A Yom Kippur appearance at a synagogue. A trip to Washington's Holocaust museum. A circumcision? Ever since Mel Gibson said he wanted the Jewish community to help him make amends for his anti-Semitic comments, suggestions have been pouring in, some in jest and some quite serious. "I don't think he should be totally drummed out of the business," said radio host and comedian Al Franken. "I think he should just have to start all over again." Writing on the Huffington Post blog, he proposed putting Gibson in a movie as an "under-five," an actor who has fewer than five lines.

In response to our open letter to the Oprah Winfrey Show, HSLDA President Mike Smith received a call from Tim Bennett, the President of Harpo Productions. Mr. Bennett conveyed that there had been an oversight when homeschoolers were excluded from "Oprah's National High School Essay Contest," but that it was too late to amend the rules to include homeschoolers. Yesterday, HSLDA received a written reply from Harpo Productions, Inc. which recognized that "...homeschooling is an important contributor to the educational success of this country." HSLDA congratulates Oprah Winfrey for acknowledging that homeschooling is a viable educational alternative and entitled to...

Mexican Official Calls Fence Plan 'Stupid' By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press Writer MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexico's foreign secretary Monday leveled his country's sharpest criticism yet at U.S. proposal for a fence along parts of its southern border, condemning it as "stupid" and "underhanded." In a radio interview, Luis Ernesto Derbez said U.S. legislators who approved the bill were turning a blind eye to the contributions millions of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere make to America's economy and culture. "It's a law that looks underhanded to everybody ... stupid," Derbez said.