Free Republic

CNSNews.com) – Shaun Casey, the religious affairs adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008, said at a discussion on Tuesday about “God and Politics” that the demise of religious society in the United States is a good thing. “I, frankly, am glad American civil religion is dying,” said Casey, who is an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. Casey made the remarks at an event focusing on religion and the 2012 presidential election at the liberal Center for American Progress where he was a panelist along with Gabriel Salguero, president of the National...

How Will The Shocking Decline Of Christianity In America Affect The Future Of This Nation?January 19,2012 Is Christianity in decline in America? When you examine the cold, hard numbers it is simply not possible to come to any other conclusion. Over the past few decades, the percentage of Christians in America has been steadily declining. This has especially been true among young people. As you will see later in this article, there has been a mass exodus of teens and young adults out of U.S. churches. In addition, what "Christianity" means to American Christians today is often far different from...

US Republican presidential candidate criticized as "religiously exclusionist" for saying, "We always need a Jesus candidate." BOSTON – Jewish groups slammed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Friday for telling listeners of a Boston radio show that “we always need a Jesus guy” in the campaign. Santorum, formerly a Pennsylvania senator and the second-place winner of the Iowa caucus, made the remark Thursday after being asked about a listener’s comment that “we don’t need a Jesus guy this election. We need an economics guy this election.” Santorum continued, “Do you stand up and say, ‘God bless America?’ Do you mean...

One of my superstar former students, writing about his experience at one of our nation's premier law schools, sent me a note after reading my MOJ post on marriage, religious liberty, and the "grand bargain." Here is the text, with names removed to protect the innocent: I had a first-hand experience with this reality in law school. One of my constitutional law professors taught the section of our course relating to same-sex marriage under the "inevitability" banner. I met with him in office hours later to talk to him about something else, but I brought up a question that I...

Gay Pressure on PayPal Named as Fourth Top Anti-Christian Act of 2011 Commentary by Julio Severo Americans were asked to name the top 10 Anti-Christian Acts of 2011 in the US, and the fourth place was given to the homosexual effort to close PayPal accounts from a list of ten Christian organizations, including me. For a long time I have been under attack from Brazilian gay activists. But this was the first time that an American gay group blacklists me with major Christian groups. Read the full article here: Top Anti-Christian Acts of 2011 Revealed The year 2011 saw plenty...

I’ve got a Tim Tebow problem. I want to root for the guy, but I’m afraid of what will happen if the hulky Denver Bronco quarterback continues to pull off what is fast becoming the Greatest Gridiron Story Ever Told. Since taking over as starting quarterback earlier this season, the Heisman winning national champion from the University of Florida has been winning consistently and dramatically, in the final minutes of the game or overtime, relying on powerful legs rather than his infamously erratic arm and confounding skeptical fans along with the Bronco management, who, it is said, were hoping he...

Catholic Church agencies are closing their doors under new laws, policies gutting conscience rightsIs America on track for a religious freedom crisis generated by secularists in and out of government bent on pushing churches around on a variety of fronts? Fresh evidence strongly suggests that the answer is yes. Take what’s been happening lately in Peoria, Ill. In early October, the Diocese of Peoria announced it was discontinuing Catholic Charities foster care services in reaction to a new law requiring state-funded programs to place children with unmarried couples living in civil unions. The diocese said Charities also would withdraw from...

On college and university campuses around the country, officials are increasingly using “nondiscrimination” policies to deny religious groups the right to choose prospective members and leaders based on whether they share the group’s religious beliefs. In other words, laws that were originally designed to protect religious groups and persons from institutionalized discrimination are now being used to punish religious groups for exercising their religious freedoms. San Diego State University is the site of the most recent clash between religious student groups and university nondiscrimination policies. SDSU’s policy prohibits discrimination in membership or leadership on the basis of “race, religion, national...

Styling herself a Christian Cassandra, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann declared Hurricane Irene as God’s warning to Washington. Now that we know she was only joking, we Christians can perhaps shrug our shoulders and leave the victims of Hurricane Irene to deal with its implications on their own. She was serious. She was joking. Maybe it’s her titanium spine that’s giving her the balance to shift positions. Then again, perhaps the titanium spine is a necessary prosthetic given Bachmann’s lack of Christian backbone. If Michele Bachmann actually were serious, she could certainly have drawn upon ample biblical justification. She could have wielded...

Odd how many Americans can agree with Christopher Hitchens on many issues, i.e. his rage at Henry Kissinger. I sympathize totally with such disgust. The Hitchens contempt for the Tea Party, however, is the grandest dividing line, largely due to the tea Party’s fervent belief in God and its faith in Sarah Palin whom Hitchens repeatedly heaps fear and loathing on. Hitchens, however, warns the world to not patronize Sarah Palin! He points out that his favorite film on American Presidential politics is Gore Vidal’s The Best Man. With an almost bottomless irony of ironies, he further adds that at...

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 6, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - While surveying the landscape for inroads to push the homosexual agenda into Poland, American embassy officials under the Obama administration complained that the Catholic Church teaching is a major source of “homophobia” in the heavily Catholic country, according to private cables recently published by Wikileaks. The cables from the American embassy in Warsaw, marked “sensitive but unclassified,” were part of a dump of over 250,000 official government documents last week by Wikileaks. One cable from the American embassy in Warsaw dated August 2009 pointed to the Catholic Church as central in promoting “homophobia”...

Does Bill Keller, Editor of the New York Times have any idea why his editorial “Asking Candidates Tougher Questions about Faith,” contains the very essence of bigotry? He writes “We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans.” He then proceeds to specifically, and quite intolerantly, single out Roman Catholicism and Mormonism. Regarding Mormons, Keller glibly asserts that he didn’t care if Mitt Romney “wore Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap skinny jeans.” Continuing with his laundry list of Mormon beliefs that he doesn’t care about, he...

As the 2012 presidential race gears up, leftist Christophobes are showing some signs of hysteria -- or political opportunism; it's sometimes difficult to tell. The New York Times' executive editor, Bill Keller, in a piece in The New York Times Magazine, argues that presidential candidates should be asked tough questions about their faith. Keller wants to know whether a candidate will place "fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon ... or some other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country" and "whether a president respects serious science and verifiable history." He wants to make sure "religious...

We ask all who read these words to keep the parish family of St. Andrew, Los Angeles, CA in their prayers during these difficult days. In the early morning hours of 15 August, an intruder broke into the parish Church and desecrated the Holy Altar, Tabernacle, Iconography and the entire altar and sacristy area. The most devastating aspect of this horrendous crime was the scattering of the Reserve Sacrament on the floor among and beneath the various altar crosses, candles and vestments strewn throughout the church. The Holy Altar itself was pulled from its foundation and dragged through the Royal...

Recently, the anti-Christian BBC falsely portrayed the Nazi-friendly Norway shooter, Anders Behring Breivik as a “Christian.” But, Breivik also identified as a policeman…another obvious lie. Perhaps the BBC should look in the mirror, before twisting history: On March 9, 1933, their General-Director, John Reith, penned these affectionate words: “I am pretty…certain that the Nazis will clean things up in Germany on the way to being a real power in Europe again.” 1934’s Night of Long Knives in his view was fair play too. Or as the BBC’s top dog, nonjudgmentally put it, “I really admire the way Hitler has cleaned...

Consider how a group of ornery atheists in the US is suing Texas governor Rick Perry for daring to do an incredibly outrageous thing: hold a prayer meeting. Yikes, you would have thought the governor just called for the legalisation of child sex. Actually these angry atheists would clearly have preferred him to do something like that. This is what Perry stated, “Given the trials that beset our nation and world, from the global economic downturn to natural disasters, the lingering danger of terrorism and continued debasement of our culture, I believe it is time to convene the leaders from...

When presidential candidate Michele Bachmann’s husband, Marcus, addressed accusations that his Christian counseling business encourages homosexual clients to try to change their sexual orientation, he appeared to play down the role of so-called conversion therapy at his clinics. "Is it a remedy form that I typically would use?” Bachmann told Minnesota’s Star Tribune newspaper. “It is at the client's discretion. "We don't have an agenda or a philosophy of trying to change someone," Bachmann said, noting that such therapy was not a focus of his two clinics. Bachmann’s seeming ambivalence about conversion therapy - sometimes called reparative therapy - after...

Whatever one thinks about the pros and cons of gay marriage, a tolerant society cannot deny the right of homosexual couples to formalise their relationship. But the campaign for gay marriage is not just about rights but about the contestation of values and attitudes. From a sociological perspective, the ascendancy of the campaign for gay marriage provides a fascinating story about the dynamics of the cultural conflicts that prevail in Western society. During the past decade the issue of gay marriage has been transformed into a cultural weapon that explicitly challenges prevailing norms through condemning those who oppose it. This...

The Government will be forced to say whether it backs the rights of Christians to wear the cross and opt out of diversity legislation as part of a landmark legal case. European judges have ordered ministers to make a formal statement on whether it believes Christians' rights have been infringed by previous decisions in the British courts, which have repeatedly dismissed their right to dress and act according to their beliefs. The move by the European Court in Strasbourg is because Christians who believe they have suffered discrimination for their beliefs are taking a landmark legal fight the court. Four...

A federal judge has ordered a Texas school district to prohibit public prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery’s order against the Medina Valley Independent School District also forbids students from using specific religious words including “prayer” and “amen.” The ruling was in response to a lawsuit filed by Christa and Danny Schultz. Their son is among those scheduled to participate in Saturday’s graduation ceremony. The judge declared that the Schultz family and their son would “suffer irreparable harm” if anyone prayed at the ceremony. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said the school district...

There’s no page for Christophobia on Wikipedia. Uniquely, the “free encyclopedia” feels more comfortable with the milder term, Anti-Christian sentiment. As well, readers are informed: “This article is about negative attitudes towards Christians. For criticism of the doctrines and practices of Christianity, see Criticism of Christianity.” Just in case you didn’t know! Furthermore, the linked “criticism” looks, oddly enough, like anti-Christian mythology masquerading as history. Some would call this an example of Christophobia. The authors (leftwing Democrats in pajamas my guess) also list the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, and Israel as examples “of anti-Christian sentiment in politics and culture” as...

Almost half of Americans believe that Christians in the United States are being persecuted by homosexual "marriage" advocates who take legal action against them over their religious beliefs, and almost one in three Democrats believes such treatment is "necessary," according to the alarming results of a new poll. The results are from a WND/WENZEL Poll conducted for WND by the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies. The scientific telephone survey was conducted April 19-21 and has a margin of error of 3.23 percentage points. It found that 49.2 percent of all respondents consider the legal activism against Christians...

CHICK-FIL-NO-THANK-YOU: Focus St. Louis and the Clayton Chamber of Commerce said today that they are canceling a planned presentation by Dan Cathy, president and COO of Chick-fil-A, following complaints that Cathy and his company are involved with anti-gay organizations. Chick-fil-A, which is known for promoting a company vision of Christian values, was enmeshed in a controversy earlier this year involving an independent Chick-fil-A operator in Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Family Institute, which is affiliated with the Family Resource Institute. The latter institute was recently designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of its anti-gay positions. The...

It’s official: Britain is no longer a Christian nation. In banning Eunice and Owen Johns, a devout Christian couple, from fostering children, Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson declared that we live in a secular state, and that the Johns’ religious convictions disqualified them from raising citizens of that state. We’ve outgrown Christianity, the judges professed. Instead, we have graduated to the status of a multicultural nation, blessed by a plurality of faiths. Ironically, the justices who have pronounced that Britain is no longer Christian did so in a court where witnesses swear on the Bible and invoke God’s...

Army Major John Jackson and his wife Carolyn, devout Christian homeschoolers with a history of serving as adoptive and foster parents, had their five children taken away in April, 2010 by the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services – and despite the collapse of the evidence against the Jacksons, DYFS hasn't returned the children to their parents. During the course of a nine-month legal battle to regain custody of their children, the Jacksons say they have encountered prejudice against their religion and home schooling as they fight a state agency determined to see the children adopted by strangers...

Kevin McKenna’s  review of 2010 in The Observer newspaper includes his assessment of Richard Dawkins behaviour during Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK:‘ The Pope’s visit was great but tinged with sadness because it reduced that once-great biologist Richard Dawkins to a rambling and wild-eyed madman hurling foam-flecked adolescent insults at the Roman holy man. I trust someone is giving the scientist his soup and caramelised biscuits as he recuperates. I even hear of a Richard Dawkins care fund. Could someone forward me the address?’Protect the Pope comment: Couldn’t agree more! It was a relief that the BBC cut away from...

THE BBC has angered Christians with a TV drama in which the Virgin Mary is branded a prostitute and sex cheat. In The Nativity, written by EastEnders scriptwriter Tony Jordan, 15-year-old Mary is attacked by people who do not believe her claim that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph accuses her of “whoring” and even suggests that her pregnancy might have been the result of rape. The Church of England has described the four-part drama, which goes out before the 9pm watershed from tomorrow, as “a gritty interpretation”. But Stephen Green, of the ministry Christian Voice,...

Every year, researchers from the British Social Attitudes survey ask a representative sample of British people whether they regard themselves as belonging to any particular religion and, if so, to which one? When the survey first asked these questions in 1985, 63% of the respondents answered that they were Christians, compared with 34% who said they had no religion (the rest belonged to non-Christian religions).Today, a quarter of a century on, there has been a steady and remarkable turnaround. In the latest 2010 BSA report, published earlier this month, only 42% said they were Christians while 51% now say they...

The metaphor "the War on Christmas" can be mocked -- as if Santa and his reindeer are dodging anti-aircraft fire. But many of our public schools have church-and-state sensitivity police with an alarming degree of Santaphobia. Anyone who's attended a school's "winter concert" in December with no traditional Christmas music -- not even "Frosty the Snowman" -- knows the drill. The vast Christian majority (that funds the public schools) is told that school is no place to celebrate one's religion, even in its most watered-down and secularized forms. There are real-life stories of Scrooge-like school administrators, like the one at...

London (Canada) In Canada, alert citizen James D. W. Lush of London writes, “I read The London Free Press online poll on whether we should call it Christmas or the holiday season. Overwhelmingly by 90% Christmas beat out the politically correct term holiday season. If that is the case, then why is there such a war against the word Christmas and who are the instigators of this politically correct nonsense? Is it the government, the retail stores, our education system? By the looks of the poll, it appears the babe lying in the manger is still the reason for the...

If you believe any of the hogwash about the irrelevance of the religious right to this election, take a look at the numerous right-wing evangelical websites promoting the 40/40 Prayer Vigil, which began in September with a prayer for Christian voter registration and ends--you guessed it--just before election day, Nov. 2. The 40/40 stands for the forty days and forty nights that Jesus supposedly spent wandering in the desert before finally saying no to Satan's temptations. I'm sure that you won't have any trouble figuring out which political party the Southern Baptist Convention--America's largest religious denomination and one of the...

Former Air Force Officers: UFOs Tampered With Nuclear Missiles Updated: 2 hours 39 minutes ago (Sept. 25) -- Former U.S. Air Force officers and a former enlisted man are about to break many years of silence about an alarming series of UFO encounters at nuclear weapons sites -- incidents officially kept secret for decades. When the group appears at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Monday, it will offer testimony about events so chilling, it will seem like a day at a science fiction movie festival. To put you in the mood for the...

Here is a reality check to keep in mind when someone issues another condemnation of Islamophobia in the Western World. Surely, we have plenty of room for improvement, but we are pikers at the game of religious discrimination. In many Muslim countries, discrimination against Christians and Jews is not just practiced, it is codified into law. Thus, consider Egypt, which is one of the more secular and moderate countries in the Muslim World with a sizable religious minority of Coptic Christians. Egyptian law stipulates that a "Muslim man may marry a Christian woman but the opposite is forbidden; and if...

Let me start out by saying I'm an atheist. Am I absolutely sure there is no God, no supreme being looking over us? No, of course not. Contrary to some opinions, that doesn't make me agnostic. I hold the possibility of God to be so remote as to be inconsequential, but I don't for a moment think I possess all knowledge on the matter. I would also add that I am a hopeful atheist, not only confident in my lack of belief, but assured that it is ultimately the belief system most in the world will come to. When we...

You can't be Indian in the U.S. this week and not have people ask you the million dollar question - "What do you think of Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley changing their names and converting?" First, the name thing. Dear Indian parents, with all due respect, have care for your child when you name it in the U.S. Exhibit A: Piyush, which is just an unfortunate name to give a child in this country. Up there with Shital and Ashit, both of which are perfectly good names in India but terrible here. It would have been one thing if Jindal...

» 06/07/2010 16:35TURKEY - VATICAN In memory of Mgr. Padovese, martyr who loved Turkey by Maria Grazia ZambonA portrait of the bishop slain June 3, his brotherly kindness with Christians and Muslims, his tenacity to revive the churches founded by St. Paul. A meditation by an assistant of Mgr. Padovese. Iskenderun (AsiaNews) - A bolt from the blue. In my parish office I was thinking about the interview with the Provincial of the Jesuits in the Middle East that I had just finished - we talked about the small Christian community in Turkey and its future in this land...

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to...

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has condemned The New York Times -- blasting the Gray Lady and its columnist Maureen Dowd for what he says are examples of unfair, prejudicial and just downright mean anti-Catholicism. Dolan used his blog last Thursday on the Archdiocese of New York's Web site to rail against the Times a day after the paper refused to print his critique as an op-ed piece. He singled out Dowd -- a poison-penned, Pulitzer winner and former Catholic-school girl -- for "the most combustible," "intemperate and scurrilous" "diatribe" she wrote on Oct. 25, which "rightly never would have...

Evangelicals believe in many things: The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, church attendance, homeschooling, Fox News, abstinence, personal holiness, toupees, leisure suits, mission work, Dockers, golf, spanking, and dinner, early and often. But the natural starting point for identifying evangelicals by their beliefs is with their best-known doctrine: hell....IN A HANDBASKET Evangelicals believe certain people are going to hell -- you, for example, unless you already happen to be an evangelical. But behind the hellfire and brimstone talk are core beliefs that have deep meaning for evangelicals. Here are the three most important ones:CORE BELIEF #1 -- Every person has...

I thought I’d accidently browsed over to the Daily Kos in reading the Politico’s BEN Smith’s & NIA-MALIKA Henderson’s hit piece, “Glenn Beck up, left down and Van Jones defiant.” This article was a direct frontal assault lashing out against the conservative grassroots, Fox News, talk radio, the Drudge Report’s Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck .(see story) Smith and Henderson left no stone unturned attempting to fault all of Conservatism for Van Jones’ self inflicted troubles. Jones a black nationalist, anarchist, and self avowed communist remade himself into a Green Jobs/Economic rights activist and presidential advisor, found it...

Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)(President of the United States) "For the first time ever, everything is in place for the Battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ."

One can only imagine what would happen if any passionate Christians still remaining at Yale demanded a Christ Month, with full staffing and funding from the university? What would the campus look like with crucifixes, crosses, and chalices hanging from trees like the pink and lavender streamers that presently cover the campus each April during the BGLAD Pride Month celebrations? Such an image of Christian images and icons at an Ivy League school founded 300 years ago by a Christian church is unimaginable, isn't it? The answer to that question provides a snapshot of the intellectual and moral deterioration of...

Britain’s Leaders Warn of the Loss of Common Values The decline of Christianity and moral values in general is reaching new lows in Britain. While the number of faithful has been decreasing for some time now, warnings about the situation are starting to come from all quarters. Britain is no longer a Christian nation, affirmed Anglican bishop, Paul Richardson, in an article published Jun. 27 in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The Anglican prelate was also critical of his fellow bishops for not understanding just how serious the change is in contemporary culture, and for their lack of action in dealing...

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia) is trying to get his so-called Bible bill made into law. And while it's not likely to happen any time soon, it's a wonderful idea...at least in theory. What's wrong with a law which would declare 2010 the "year of the Bible"? Given that we already have days for secretaries, months for reading and have parsed the calendar for just about every other purpose and cause from artichokes to zebras, it's almost silly that we have not already done this. Would it really be so wrong to honor the most influential book, for better or...

The "Mass for Shut-Ins" has been broadcast in Washington DC for 60 years ― the last thirteen on WHUT a PBS affiliate. WLAE in New Orleans, also a PBS affiliate, has been broadcasting a Mass since 1984. Now, PBS is considering a proposal that re-interprets a rule that would prohibit any PBS affiliate from broadcasting any religious (called sectarian) content or be refused the ability to broadcast PBS content. The existing rule requires affiliates to present programs that are noncommercial, nonpartisan and nonsectarian. However, the non-sectarian part of the rule has always been loosely interpreted as has, some would say,...

A Mission Viejo high school history teacher violated the First Amendment by disparaging Christians during a classroom lecture, a federal judge ruled today. James Corbett, a 20-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, was found guilty of referring to Creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense” during a 2007 classroom lecture, denigrating his former Advanced Placement European history student, Chad Farnan.

In recent days a lot of energy has been put forth by me and the site's regular contributors in an effort to keep everyone up to speed on how quickly - and demonstrably - we are moving toward the complete fulfillment of God's promise that the last days would be as they were in the days of Lot. (Luke 17:28-30) We've also discussed how there is an effort underway to silence Christians and, in doing so, the Word of God itself. As I'm going to demonstrate today, we are on the front lines of a spiritual battle here in the...

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART’S EASTER PRESENT: “THE POPE’S TOILET” April 8, 2009 Beginning today through April 13, New York City’s Museum of Modern Art is featuring the film, “The Pope’s Toilet.” Shown in Spanish with English subtitles, the movie revolves around a visit by Pope John Paul II to the poor town of Melo, Uruguay, near Brazil. Anticipating the arrival of the pope, townspeople make plans to set up food and drink stands, etc. One of them decides to make money by setting up an outdoor public pay toilet. The film is the work of two Uruguayans: writer Enrique Fernández...

Although liberal groups and even courts protect HIV and AIDS victims from having to divulge their condition on any records, for fear they might be denied public activity and employment, innocent school kids are scrubbed, fumigated, and isolated lest they spread the deadly virus of Christianity. ....Wade was given a fourth grade assignment to choose a “hero,” write a description of his hero and portray the chosen hero as part of a “live wax museum.” He would then give an oral report in front of the class. When 9-year-old Wade chose Jesus as his hero, school officials immediately insisted that...

One of the gravest threats to religious liberty and freedom of speech is proposed hate crime legislation. Even while national attention is focused is on the economy and Obama’s radical economic and foreign policy, the far left is at work undermining our First Amendment rights at home with hate crime legislation. In other countries where these types of laws have been implemented, pastors and Christians have been jailed and fined for their faithful adherence to the scriptures. US Congressman John Conyers is reintroducing the same hate crime bill that was passed in the last Congress, but was vetoed by President...