Free Republic

God created government. So preached Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in the days leading up to the presidential election. Hibbs has joined with nearly 1,600 pastors across the country and about 140 in California in the Pulpit Initiative, a legal effort aimed at protecting the free-speech rights of pastors in the pulpit. Hibbs' sermons in a series called "Politics and Faith" may have been enough to let the church know which candidate he supported. Or at least who he didn't. He preached about politics and Israel. And politics and defending the pre-born. Hibbs was emphatic during an...

At the same time the IRS harassed Republican nonprofit groups during the 2012 political campaign, it selectively advised black churches and other Democrat nonprofits on how far they can go in campaigning for President Obama and other Democrats. This raw exercise in political favoritism has not been reported in the context of the still-smoldering IRS scandal, in which the agency in 2012 audited big GOP donors and blocked Tea Party groups trying to obtain tax-exempt status as part of what House investigators suspect was an effort to re-elect the president. But that same year, top officials with both the IRS...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Worried they could be sued by gay couples, some churches are changing their bylaws to reflect their view that the Bible allows only marriage between one man and one woman. Although there have been lawsuits against wedding industry businesses that refuse to serve gay couples, attorneys promoting the bylaw changes say they don't know of any lawsuits against churches. Critics say the changes are unnecessary, but some churches fear that it's only a matter of time before one of them is sued. "I thought marriage was always between one man and one woman, but the Supreme...

Islamists in Minya, Egypt held Muslim prayers inside three destroyed Coptic Churches after they were destroyed this week. Copts pray inside the Church of St. Moses (Moussa), destroyed by Muslim rioters in Minya, Egypt, Aug. 14-15, 2013. (Rotati Caeli) Islamists prayed in three Coptic Churches in Minya on Saturday.The Muslims believe that any place in which they pray has to be turned into a mosque.Wataninet reported: In the ruins of three of the churches the Islamists had attacked and burned in the Minya region in Upper Egypt, the Islamists yesterday gathered and held Muslim prayers. The three churches are...

BENI MAZAR, Egypt — The fire burned all night long. It was only after desperate town residents borrowed the keys to a firetruck that they were able to quell the blaze. By then, the evangelical church was all but destroyed. It was one of more than 60 churches that have been attacked, vandalized and in many cases set aflame across Egypt in a surge of violence against Christians that has followed the bloody Aug. 14 raid by Egyptian security forces on two Islamist protest camps in Cairo. The attacks, most of them in Egypt’s Nile Valley, have lent legitimacy to

At least 58 Christian churches, schools, institutions, homes and shops have been attacked, looted and torched over the last three days by the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the former Egyptian president who was deposed on 3 July . On August 14 the army has tried to evict the sit-in of the Islamists in Rabaa El Nahda Square and Adaweya. In a wave of devastating violence, over 600 people were killed and thousands injured. But violent attacks were also carried out on Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical churches as well as the homes and shops of Christians, as we have...

Unintended Consequences: How the “relevant” church and segregating youth is killing Christianity. I recently spent six-months doing a rotation as a hospital chaplain. One day I received a page (Yes, hospitals actually still use pagers). Chaplains are generally called to the rooms of people who look ill: People gray with kidney disease, or yellow with liver failure, discouraged amputees, nervous cancer patients. In this room, however, was a strikingly attractive 23 year-old young lady sitting up cheerfully in the hospital bed, holding her infant daughter and chatting with family and friends. Confused, I stepped outside and asked her nurse, “Why...

Fun times at the Immanuel Baptist Church of Skiatook, Oklahoma. Recent video shows pastor Jim Standridge throwing what can only be described as an uncomfortably epic hissy-fit upon discovering one of his younger churchgoers had fallen asleep during his sermon. “Don’t you go to sleep while I’m talking?” Standridge said from his pulpit, looking directly at the snoozing churchgoer. “Hey! Hey! Don’t you lay your head back!” “I’m important. I’m somebody,” the pastor continued as he stepped down from the pulpit and walked directly over to the unidentified sleepy male. “You may do your English teacher that way, but I’m...

Fans of baroque church design are sometimes accused of snobbery. Yet after readers peruse this kaleidoscope of ugly houses of worship, you will likely have a little more sympathy for the stodgy. Not only are these artistic innovations ugly, but also bizarre, weird, dumb, and gross. These holy train wrecks come to you from Monroe, Ohio to Uvari, India. Gaze upon these Catholic chapels and cathedrals, nondenominational megachurches, Baptist buildings, and even one mosque for good measure.

The Obama Internal Revenue Service targeted several Christian groups including a 180 year-old Baptist paper. The Obama IRS targeted Christian groups including Franklin Graham and the 180 year-old Biblical Recorder. The Obama IRS implemented a program to infiltrate and target conservative, evangelical Christian churches. ... The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, an international relief organization, were both targeted by the Obama IRS.

On Thursday the Examiner provided an exclusive report indicating that the Obama administration had implemented a covert program beginning in 2009 that was intended to spy on conservative, evangelical Christian churches. That program involved infiltration -- sending in government operatives to join churches for the purpose of data collection. The government snoops would keep their eyes and ears open for criticism of the Obama administration, talk of Tea Party participation, conversations about gun ownership, and a number of other issues. But a special report issued today by Fox News indicates that the program went far beyond infiltration and snooping. The...

Liberal Christians have much that you can teach us conservatives. Your passion for loving thy neighbor is admirable. But, I’ve got a few questions for you: 1. Have you let the culture influence you rather than the other way around? If so, how is that biblical? 2. Are you offering a message of hope and forgiveness (from the pulpit) through repentance and faith to those who may have strayed—on these issues: Adultery, Homosexuality, and Abortion? Remember, there are two sides to sin—the sin itself, and the recovery and healing. 3. Do you care about the TRUTH of homosexuality (or just...

If you've ever had the great fortune of seeing the entrance to a mosque, you'll have noticed that there are two doors: one, the main, huge, is for men, another, small and lateral, for women (as in the picture below of the East London Mosque). Apparently we need "right-wing groups" now in England to protest sexism, because the Left totally condones it. The recently-formed England National Resistance (ENR) felt outraged that the North West Kent Muslim Association’s mosque in Crayford High Street has separate entrances for men and women. Particularly offensive is the fact that this was once a church,...

For the Rev. Ernest Easley, the decision to cut ties with the Boy Scouts was simple. The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. The Boy Scouts do not. “We are not willing to compromise God’s word,” said Easley, pastor of the 2,300-member Roswell Street Baptist Church in Marietta, Ga., which has sponsored Boy Scout Troop 204 since 1945. Easley, chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee, said his church will shut down its troop at end of the year because of a recently adopted policy to allow openly gay scouts. He’s urging other Baptists to do the same. Roswell...

Leave Boy Scouts, pastor advises parents Posted on May 28, 2013 | by Art Toalston MARIETTA, Ga. (BP) -- Parents of Boy Scouts should remove their children from the organization, Atlanta-area pastor Ernest Easley advised in his Sunday sermon. Troop 204's affiliation with Roswell Street Baptist Church also will end, Easley said. "I never dreamed I'd have to stand up publicly and say to parents: Pull your kids out of the Boy Scouts," Easley told Baptist Press May 28. "If you would have asked me that five years ago, 10 years ago, I would have laughed," Easley said. "And even...

This is a request for information assistance. Last night, I received a disturbing email from a longtime friend and pastor from my hometown church, which is breaking from the corrupt, mainline Presbyterian Church (USA), like many others are doing. Apparently PC (USA) has asked the congregation for an exorbitant sum of money, and is threatening the church manse and other property in an effort to force the congregation back into the corrupted fold. I've been out of the Presbyterian loop for a while but want to help, and so I'm wondering if anyone has any specific information about what is...

Earlier this month news reports surfaced out of Saudi Arabia that raised the red flag for Christians, reports MNN. Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for the Voice of the Martyrs USA, says, "The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia--the top Islamic official in the country of Saudi Arabia--has declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.'" Nettleton goes on to note that the report hasn't surfaced anywhere except on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site, which was then picked up by The Atlantic. Ranked second on the Open Doors World Watch List (a compilation of the...

This is our heritage. This is what they want us to toss into the garbage.

Within moments of Pope Benedict’s announcement that he was abdicating the Chair of St. Peter, secularists began demanding that the College of Cardinals choose a less rigid, more progressive pontiff; in other words, a pope who would repudiate Church teachings on chastity, same-sex “marriage,” divorce, contraception, abortion, and priestly celibacy.Leading the charge was The New York Times, which devoted plenty of front page, above-the-fold space to castigating the Church and Benedict. The op-ed editor published, ad nauseam, the usual tired-old Catholic critics, including Garry Wills and Hans Küng.And the moment secularists realized that Pope Francis is not a South American liberation theologian, but...

Indonesian city officials destroyed a Christian church in front of its weeping congregation. Muslims stood around and egged on the destruction. ... Muslim protesters egged on workers and branded the Christians “infidels”. Dozens in the 100-strong congregation wailed as a digger tore down the brick walls, with worshippers accusing the government of “criminalising our religion”, in a sign of increasing intolerance in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. “My heart is aching and I feel numb watching my church collapse. I went to this church for 11 years,” worshipper Megarenta Sihite, 46, told AFP, wiping away tears as fellow worshippers, dressed...