Free Republic

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...