Free Republic

Nathaniel Morales, who was recently convicted of sexually abusing boys he met in a Gaithersburg church decades ago, was sentenced to 40 years in prison Thursday. In two trials in May, jurors found Morales guilty of a series of counts of sex abuse and sex offense. Victims gave powerful testimonies of what Morales did to them and the lasting effect it had.

I am new to this journey. My daughter Faith is only 5 years old. She is mentally and physically disabled, still small enough to carry, quiet . . . mostly, and has not developed the larger, louder, and strange movements and sounds that many older people who are mentally and physically disabled seem to develop as they try to express themselves – yet. We have taken our daughter to concerts, plays, movie theatres, political speeches, pro-life fundraisers and community events, and spend a lot of time in hallways and lobbies when she does get loud. However, we’ve found that the...

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” – 2 Timothy 4:3 Dear false prophets, false teachers and Christian apostates of every stripe: We’ve all heard this phrase: “You know who you are!” It’s an expression typically levied in the context of some corrective admonition, intended for some person or persons, busy about some misbehavior. While sent via certified mail, this is one of those rare open letters to whom the preponderance of intended recipients have, somehow, managed to convince themselves,...

By now, we’ve all heard the refrain that U.S. churches need liberalize their teachings on sexuality and homosexuality or rapidly decline. The logic behind the argument is simple: more and more Americans are embracing homosexuality and same-sex marriage, including growing numbers of religious Millennials. So long as churches remain the face of opposition to gay marriage, those churches will shrink into irrelevancy when gay marriage (inevitably, we are told) becomes a settled political issue. These arguments often see church acceptance of homosexuality as a carrot as well as a stick. It isn’t so much that denouncing homosexuality will drive people...

A restaurant owner who is under fire for offering a faith-based discount to customers says he doesn’t plan to discontinue it, despite receiving a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a secular activist group. Steven Rose, owner of Bailey’s Pizza in Searcy, Arkansas, told TheBlaze Wednesday that he posted a 10 percent discount on his restaurant’s Facebook page on July 19 for anyone who brought in a church bulletin. Not long after, he received a comment from a user named “Bong Hits for Jesus” that read, “Good luck on your discrimination lawsuit.” “I didn’t give much credence to it,”...

He was once a terrified 11-year-old filled with guilt and shame at being molested by his St. Paul parish priest. As an adult serving six years aboard Navy submarines, he felt safer next to a nuclear warhead in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than he had at church. Now, he said, he's not terrified anymore. And he wants the world to know his name. "My name is Jon Jaker," said the 54-year-old resident of Orange, Calif., who won a settlement Wednesday morning in his lawsuit against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Jaker claimed he was sexually abused...

The family of the black teenager shot dead by a policeman in St Louis are haunted by the image of him holding his hands up at the moment he was killed, a family member claimed today. Ty Pruitt said that the mental picture of Michael Brown surrendering was stuck in his relatives’ minds as it showed he was ‘killed like an animal’. Pruitt spoke out at an emotional Sunday church service during which Brown’s mother Lesley McSpadden sobbed and wiped the tears away from her eyes with a tissue. His father Michael Brown Sr stood grim faced whilst wearing a...

A half-dozen strippers paraded topless outside a rural Ohio church as its parishioners entered and exited this Sunday as a counterprotest to the church's efforts to close their business. A total of 30 dancers, friends, fellow employees, and strip industry executives gathered outside New Beginnings Ministries in Warsaw, Ohio, on Sunday, the second week the sex workers protested the evangelical church's strong moral stance. The church, which has about 125 members in a city of 700, has protested the Foxhole North, located just nine miles down the road from its sanctuary, for years. Thomas George who owns that location and...

Is the Internal Revenue Service a threat to religious liberty? As the IRS continues to come under well-aimed fire for harassing conservative groups, on Friday it secured a final court order formalizing what amounts to a secret agreement to monitor the pulpits of ill-favored churches. The serious danger, as former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams told Fox News, is that the IRS will start treating “theology as politics,” and regulate it accordingly. Lovers of liberty should be very concerned. According to a June 27 IRS letter to the Justice Department, 99 churches merit “high priority examination” for allegedly illegal...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)On Thursday’s “Outnumbered” on the Fox News Channel, panelists Tucker Carlson and Kirsten Powers had a heated exchange over the ongoing border crisis and whether or not it was this country’s so-called Christian duty to grant those unaccompanied minors entering the United States asylum. Carlson questioned Powers’ suggestion as it being the Christian obligation of the country to accept these minors into the United States. He argued that it wasn’t “Christian” to shirk those cost onto the American people through the use of their tax dollars and called out church groups encouraging those fleeing Central American countries to seek government...

LITTLE ROCK, AR - According to the Little Rock Police Department, Jacob J. Taylor was arrested for parole violations. Additional investigations have been started. We will bring you updates as they become available to us. video on link

Image credit: Jimmy Demello Artworks[/caption] The last time I was in Houston, I had to change the fuse in my paradox meter after meeting a self-described pro-choice Republican woman, who was also a lawyer.  I told her at least she was better than Wendy Davis, to which no response was offered.  I said it a second time, and with a puff of white smoke, the paradox-meter died. Dang, the fuse just blew again, reading Time’s August 4 issue, Religion section article “Atheist “Churches” Gain Popularity—Even in the Bible Belt” (behind a paywall).  Yup, the “Atheist Church” they wrote about...

That Jesus commanded His disciples—of which I am one—to love “the poor” is beyond dispute. Equally beyond dispute, however, is that, regardless of what growing legions of left-leaning clerics would have us believe, Jesus never—never ever—addressed the issue of “inequality.” The head of my church and the most visible religious leader on the world stage today, Pope Francis, is as guilty a culprit as is anyone on this score. The Pope made headlines on more than a few occasions since his tenure began when His Holiness condemned “inequality” generally, and the traditional American economic system in particular, with a bluntness...

The Catholic Church—through the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Migration—both paved the road for Barack Hussein Obama’s ultimate takeover of Free West society and continues to actively enable the Fundamental Transformation of America by sinking the US in a tsunami of illegal aliens.

Lena Dunham isn’t exactly the first person you’d expect to see singing hymns in the pew behind you. Starring in the raunchy HBO show ‘Girls’ and bragging that voting for President Obama during the 2012 election for the “first time” was like losing her virginity are just a couple examples of Dunham’s racy behavior that would make any Christian blush. But, the controversial actress is embarking on a tour for her new book, “Not That Kind of Girl,” coming out in September, that will take place in some churches around the country. On her tour, Dunham will be reading excerpts...

Guns and other weapons are officially unwelcome at Catholic churches, schools and other buildings owned, leased or operated by the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Savannah in Georgia. Atlanta Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory and Savannah Bishop Gregory J. Hartmayer issued a decree prohibiting guns and knives with blades longer than 5 inches from parishes, churches, schools, administrative offices and other buildings owned or used by the Catholic community effective July 1. In a statement, the bishops said Catholic places of worship are sanctuaries where “ways of peace and reconciliation” should be the rule. “This decree is rooted in...

If ever sober-minded folks thought that they could take refuge in the Christian church from the left-wing juggernaut that is our culture’s zeitgeist, they can think this no more. In the vestibule of the Lutheran church in which my son’s summer camp is held, I noticed that the most recent edition of The Lutheran is devoted to the topic of “economic inequality.” Norma Cook Everist, a professor of church and ministry, quotes Luther who wrote that “the poor” are routinely “defrauded” by the rich. Matters, she declares, are “no less” true “today.” Dividing, as it does, the world into...

My alma mater, The University of Chicago, was recently in the news for an overtly politically correct act for replacing its historic Bond Chapel's pews for Muslims to worship. This act is raising hackles reminiscent of the university's other, recent, tone-deaf decision to demolish the childhood home of former President Ronald Reagan, on its campus, and replace it with a parking lot and a commemorative plaque.The school, founded by the Rockefeller family in the late 19th century as a Baptist-affiliated institution of higher learning, with an English-style undergraduate college, and German-style graduate research school, today positions itself as completely non-denominational...

EPC religious organizations demand attention for other reasons than sheer numbers. First, EPC churches draw people together on a much more regular consistent basis than other types of civic organizations, such as ethnic advocacy groups. Some EPC adherents in our study attend services or Bible studies four times a week throughout the year. Second, an EPC pastor or religious leader is more than a trusted community to their church or temple members.

Photo gallery from the city's third 'Mass Mob' this summer. Nearly 2,000 people packed an historic Catholic Church for a regular Sunday Mass. It's the third time it's happened, with the crowds getting bigger each time. (Detroit Free Press had a great article on it here, but won't let folks post excerpts, so you'll have to read the article at the link: http://www.freep.com/article/20140713/NEWS05/307130141/Detroit-Mass-Mob-Sweetest-Heart )