Free Republic

The anti-religionists, represented by well-known atheist Michael Newdow and others, have filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire to challenge the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. You remember Mr. Newdow. He's the same one who sued Congress and the Elk Grove Unified School District in California, demanding the removal of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance to our nation's flag. In 2005, he sued President Bush to prohibit a minister from delivering an invocation at the President's inaugural ceremony. FFRF is also no stranger to the spotlight....

"From murder and intimidation, to the crass and the blasphemous, 2007 was a horrendous year of Christian bashing,” said Dr. Gary L. Cass, Chairman and CEO of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. “Anti- Christian sentiments are being fomented in the culture and are becoming more deadly and cynical,” said Cass.

After catching Harold Meyerson's latest Washington Post hatemongering against religion in general, Christians in particular, and Republicans especially, all I could say was just WOW! This thing is nearly unhinged and if you took the word Christian out and replaced it with any of the favored, protected minorities that the MSM guards like mother hens, it would be indistinguishable from the kind of pure bigotry that would result in Meyerson's utter ostracizing should it have been written about those protected classes. Calling Republicans/Christians torturers, abusers of immigrants, members of the KKK, bigots and even mean, Meyerson skipped only the Nazi...

AURORA, Illinois, December 12, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A YouTube video shows police monitoring a peaceful protest in a Chicago suburb who threatened to arrest a man that was not part of the protest because he was praying while walking his baby in a stroller on the sidewalk near a huge Planned Parenthood abortion facility. Aurora resident Roger Earl was walking his baby and praying from a prayer book on November 17 when police confronted him and told him he couldn't be there. "I wasn't planning to be part of the protest today," said Earl. "I didn't realize that I was...

A national weekly news magazine recently featured a debate between atheist/author Sam Harris and author/pastor Rick Warren ("The Purpose Driven Life"). As part of his debate, Mr. Harris threw down a challenge to prove God's existence by finding a deserving amputee and having 1 billion people pray for God to grow the leg back. In trying to disprove the existence of God, it's unclear why Mr. Harris chooses to focus on amputees growing limbs back rather than looking for a sea to split open or fish and loaves to multiply, and it's equally unclear why Harris specifically asked that it...

Teacher's comments lead to complaint By: JENNIFER KABBANY - For The Californian TEMECULA -- A Temecula Valley High School student has decided to opt for an independent study program rather than finish out the semester on campus because of her teacher's derogatory comments about Christians, the girl's attorney said Friday. Attorney Bob Tyler said 17-year-old junior Brittney Cowles became very upset Thursday after her creative writing teacher allegedly called local Christian parents "crazy" and "prejudiced" for keeping their children home from school to protest a new state law that some parents contend promotes a homosexual agenda in public schools. The...

PHILADELPHIA - You could call it a stick-up of a different kind. Vandals put glue in the locks of several churches in Philadelphia's Tacony and Mayfair sections, making it difficult for parishoners to get inside for Sunday services. At least eight churches of various denominations were targeted on and near Tyson Avenue. In some cases, the vandals broke off keys inside locks. Worshippers at one church used a drill to get their doors open. At another church, a member brought a blow torch from home. Pastor Arthur Johnson says his Tacony Baptist Church was among those affected. He calls it...

In the darkest hour of despair, when all hope seemed lost, the communal leader called together his counsel of the faithful and uttered ritual sayings. Sounds like something out of the eighth century, doesn't it? Just this past week, however, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, facing a massive and seemingly unrelenting drought, declared that "The only solution is rain, and the only place we get that from is from a higher power." He then sent out responses to leaders of several faiths to take part in a prayer service. The potential establishment clause violations inherent in state sponsored prayer are disturbing....

There are a lot of scary things in the world. There’s the “fun-scary”—kids who dress up as clowns, monsters, or fairy princesses once a year to get a month’s supply of candy, which they’ll finish off by morning. There’s scary movies, from “Jaws” to “Friday the 13th“ to—well—“Scary Movie.” The murder mystery genre—in books, TV, and film—can scare even the least gullible. What’s even scarier is that there were about 1.4 million violent crimes last year; about 17,000 of them were murders, about 89 percent from firearms, according to the FBI. Poverty, the deterioration of the environment, and Dick Cheney...

Foster child to be taken away because Christian couple refuse to teach him about homosexuality By JAMES MILLS They are devoted foster parents with an unblemished record of caring for almost 30 vulnerable children. But Vincent and Pauline Matherick will this week have their latest foster son taken away because they have refused to sign new sexual equality regulations. To do so, they claim, would force them to promote homosexuality and go against their Christian faith. The 11-year-old boy, who has been in their care for two years, will be placed in a council hostel this week and the Mathericks...

NEARLY half the British think that religion is harmful, according to a poll carried out by YouGov. Yet more than half also believe in God “or something”. The YouGov poll commissioned by John Humphrys, the broadcaster and writer, found that 42% of the 2,200 people taking part considered religion had a harmful effect. “One reason might be the publicity attracted by a handful of mad mullahs and their hate-filled rhetoric,” writes Humphrys in his new book, In God We Doubt, an extract of which appears in today’s Sunday Times News Review. Only 16% of those polled called themselves atheists; 28%...

“Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America.” Perhaps you remember that pearl from Rosie O’Donnell, the perpetually agitated former co-host of The View. While few had put it quite so brusquely, O’Donnell’s sentiment was hardly a novel one. A steady stream of books and films had for years demonized conservative Christians, attacking their rising influence in politics and on broader American life as heralding the establishment of a Christian theocracy. It was against this backdrop of anti-Christian paranoia that CNN recently aired “God’s Warriors,” a mini-series that investigated what animates the most fervent...

Diploma withheld until she apologized for declaring Christian faith A high school valedictorian is suing a Colorado school district because she was forced to publicly apologize for declaring her Christian faith and inviting students to respond to the Gospel in a speech at her graduation ceremony. Erica Corder, who graduated from Lewis-Palmer High School near Colorado Springs in 2006, alleges in a First Amendment lawsuit filed by Liberty Counsel that the school violated her civil rights. Corder says officials withheld her diploma until she issued an apology, and the school "continues to portray her as a student who engaged in...

When atheist Sam Harris wrote his 2004 bestseller The End of Faith, a radical attack on religious belief in any form, he was prepared for strong rebuttals from Christians. Related articles and links What may have surprised him was the vitriol in which many of the emails and letters were couched. The most hostile messages came from Christians (not Muslims or Hindus). "The truth is," he explained in the forward to his latest bestseller, Letter to a Christian Nation, "that many who claim to be transformed by God's love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.""How do I know this?"...

Valedictorian Threatened with Loss of Diploma over Religious Graduation Message Sues School DENVER, CO, August 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Today, Liberty Counsel filed suit against Lewis Palmer School District on behalf of Erica Corder, a high school valedictorian who was forced to publicly apologize for sharing her Christian faith at graduation. Erica was one of fifteen valedictorians from the Lewis-Palmer High School class of 2006. For the past year, she has been the subject of criticism because the school continues to portray her as a student who engaged in improper conduct because she mentioned Jesus Christ during her speech. Before...

For several weeks CNN has been hyping their miniseries God’s Warriors as an “unprecedented six-hour television event.” The series dedicates two hours each to “God’s Jewish Warriors,” “God’s Muslim Warriors,” and “God’s Christian Warriors.” Prior to the first airing, CNN invited several bloggers to preview a few clips from the series and to submit a question for Christiane Amanpour to be answered during a special webcast. The three clips provided by CNN each highlighted one of the “fundamentalist” branches of the three Abrahamic faiths: the segment on Jews focused on theocratic Israeli settlers, including the man who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin;...

Last week, after an investigation spurred by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering "freedom packages" to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended. What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers. The packages were put together by a fundamentalist Christian ministry called Operation Straight Up,...

Startling.

Jack Kinsella - Commentary The Omega Letter Hating Christ . . . I was reading the comments posted by readers of the Huffington Post in response to a column posted by Max Blumenthal about the "Christians United For Israel Tour" Washington summit meeting, hosted by San Antonio pastor John Hagee... The column was entitled, "Rapture Ready: The Unauthorized Christians United For Israel Tour." Blumenthal's column fairly dripped with hate for Christians in particular, but reserving some for Jews who collaborate with them. "CUFI has added the grassroots muscle of the Christian right to the already potent Israel lobby. Hagee and...

A black dustman has been banned from wearing a St George's Cross bandana because council officials say it could be regarded as racist. ST GEORGE'S CROSS Matthew Carter, 35, who was born in Barbados, used the headgear to keep his dreadlocks out of the way while he was on his rounds in Burnley, Lancs. He had done so for seven months before his photograph appeared in a local newspaper. A number of local people complained, and his superiors called him. "I received a verbal warning," Mr Carter said yesterday. "They told me the St George's Cross was not allowed to...