Free Republic

Europe News Europe’s Empty Churches Go on Sale Hundreds of Churches Have Closed or Are Threatened by Plunging Membership, Posing Question: What to Do With Unused Buildings? By Naftali Bendavid Jan. 2, 2015 7:36 p.m. ET ARNHEM, Netherlands—Two dozen scruffy skateboarders launched perilous jumps in a soaring old church building here on a recent night, watched over by a mosaic likeness of Jesus and a solemn array of stone saints. This is the Arnhem Skate Hall, an uneasy reincarnation of the Church of St. Joseph, which once rang with the prayers of nearly 1,000 worshipers. It is one of hundreds...

The Islamic State is turning Christian churches in Iraq and Syria into dungeons and torture chambers after stripping them of priceless artifacts to sell on the black market, according to reports. Ancient relics and even entire murals are being torn from the houses of worship and smuggled out through the same routes previously established for moving oil and weapons in and out of the so-called caliphate, a vast region the jihadist army has claimed as sovereign under Sharia law. "ISIS has a stated goal to wipe out Christianity,” Jay Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice and the...

Several months ago, one of my co-workers was speaking with a Christian university campus minister about the issue of abortion, and he dismissed the topic with a wave. “Abortion isn’t prevalent at our school," he said. "Contraception is widely available, but our students also take sexual purity to heart.” I was a bit suspicious of his answer, so I spoke with a recent graduate of the same university about her thoughts. “I suspect one in three women on campus have had an abortion,” she said matter-of-factly. “It may be higher. Christian kids don’t want to deal with the shame a...

Have you noticed that nobody loves modern churches? Nobody. I mean NOBODY.Seriously. Have you ever met anyone who sees a church like this and and heard them whisper, “I just love that church! It is so inspiring!”.No. Never.Have you ever gone into a “worship space” like this and heard someone say how awed they were to be in the presence of God? I doubt it.  That’s because these buildings were not designed to inspire awe or to remind you about the presence of God. They are people centered, not God centered. They are auditoria not temples.There is a gut level...

From The Wall Street Journal: Americans aren’t building churches like they used to anymore.Construction of religious buildings in the U.S. has fallen to the lowest level at any time since private records began in 1967. Religious groups will build an estimated 10.3 million square feet this year, down 6% from 2013 and 80% since construction peaked in 2002, according to Dodge Data & Analytics. In terms of dollars, spending on houses of worship totaled $3.15 billion last year, down by half from a decade earlier, according to Commerce Department figures.As the economy heals, churches, synagogues, mosques and temples may move...

Test and fine-tune your modernist-church-detection abilities against your communist-architecture-detection skills! It's harder than you think...

A group called Alliance Defending Freedom organized a group of around 1,600 pastors who endorsed candidates from the pulpit in the weeks leading up to tomorrows election. Since the 1950’s the IRS has banned 501(c)(3) tax exempt churches from engaging in political activity, including endorsing candidates. The IRS has never enforced the law. Every few years the government sends out warning letters but it’s never actually taken the law to court. They likely know it wouldn’t be upheld by the Supreme Court. The Alliance Defending Freedom appears to be a conservative group and as such their 1,600 pastors appear to...

The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic looks very normal on the outside... (see pics at the link)

All churches are open to the public. Sure, they lock their doors at times; I’ve yet to run into a place that doesn’t do that, but the idea of church of any denomination is that anyone is welcome to come in and pray. That applies to Christian churches, but that also applies to most other houses of worship I can list: Jewish synagogues, Buddhist temples, and Muslim mosques. After all, how is a church supposed to gain converts if they don’t allow those not already formally affiliated to enter? All churches, and other houses of worship also allow wedding ceremonies...

The Episcopal Church in Connecticut (ECCT) has sold its property at 35 Harris Road, Avon, former home to Christ Episcopal Church, to the Farmington Valley American Muslim Center, Inc. (FVAMC). The sale, for $1.1 million, was completed on Oct. 21. The building was vacated after the congregation voted in 2012 to dissolve as a parish and close by the end of that year. The following spring, Bishop Ian T. Douglas and other ECCT staff hosted a meeting of community leaders and interested residents to discern how the property could best be used “as an asset to God’s mission of restoration...

Life Legal Defense Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom filed a formal complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicesover the California Department of Managed Health Care’s decision to force all employers, including churches, to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans. LLDF and ADF represent seven California churches that object to offering their employees insurance plans covering elective abortions and allege that DMHC’s coercion of abortion coverage violates federal law. Last month, LLDF and ADF filed a separate complaint with HHS on behalf of employees at Loyola Marymount University that also do not want a...

. 2014-10-15 Free Republic’s "Maelstorm" protested today that ... The government has no dominion over religious freedom period. The idea that nonprofit status disappears because a pastor speaks out on political issues is crazy and tyrannical. regarding the Mayor of Houston's campaign to "prosecute" Christian churches for political activity against the ever-growing Gay-Mafia-Agenda in America. Jesus Christ taught in parables. Using a parable that touches both baseball and Christian missionaries in China ... I will explain why Houston's Lesbian Mayor is LEGALLY CORRECT ... in wanting the IRS / Federal Government to "Shut-Down" or "Financially Destroy" ALL Houston-area Christian Churches...

Churches have received subpoenas issued by the city of Houston demanding copies of sermons. Houston is probing opposition to a ballot referendum pertaining to an ordinance proposing a local discrimination law affecting gays. (Bryan Preston posted this summary of the lawlessness taking place in Houston.) Over 50,000 petition signatures were gathered opposing the ordinance. Now the city, run by the first openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, is retaliating and demanding that churches turn over sermons. You read that correctly. This is the sort of government behavior that used to be confined to two-bit third-world regimes. The gay rights movement was...

Some time ago, as part of the media buzz surrounding the purchase of the Crystal Cathedral, the Catholic Diocese of Orange opened the floor to online suggestions as to what the new church should be named. I offered that it should be titled the Cathedral of the Transfiguration; after all, the feast of the Transfiguration is traditionally the patronal festival for churches dedicated to Our Lord, and its suggestions of illumination, splendor, and above all, a glimpse of Heaven afforded through physical change, seemed perfectly suited to the project, even not without a bit of reverent wit. The name chosen,...

Whenever prophetic voices rise to explain world events from a non-secular perspective, those voices are minimized as “fringe” and “lunatic.” But that is simply an occupational hazard of offering a prophetic voice. They will be beaten to a pulp by competing godless voices until they give in or give up. For example, consider today’s voices in the wilderness that connect this country’s moral collapse to the twin scourges of terrorism and financial indebtedness. Anyone that connects our current struggles to our own spiritual and moral vacuum will be labeled a “nut.” I mean, who wants to hear about such things,...

The American tax authority, the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), will monitor churches for electioneering in a settlement reached on 18 July with an atheist group, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF). In 2012 the FFRF filed a lawsuit alleging that "the IRS routinely ignored complaints by the FFRF and others about churches promoting political candidates, issues, or proposed legislation. As part of their tax-exempt status, churches and other religious groups are prohibited from engaging in partisan political activity." Monitoring what is said in houses of worship is a clear violation of the First Amendment, since no law can be...

In Iraq, ISIS is bulldozing churches and turned the Cathedral of Mosul into a mosque. Meanwhile, many thousands of miles away…… in the National Post: What’s happening to Montreal’s churches? Quebec finding new ways to preserve its heritage in a secular ageMONTREAL — Weight machines fill the space where once there were pews, and visitors sip nutritional green smoothies, not communion wine. But despite its dramatic transformation into a private gym and spa, the onetime Dominican St. Jude’s Shrine on Montreal’s St. Denis Street remains a temple of sorts.“It becomes almost a religion for some people,” Sonya Audrey Bonin, general...

The Internal Revenue Service said it will monitor churches and other houses of worship for electioneering in a settlement reached with an atheist group. The settlement was reached Friday (July 18) in federal court in Madison, Wis., where the initial lawsuit was filed in 2012 by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based atheist advocacy group that claims 20,000 members nationwide. The suit alleged the IRS routinely ignored complaints by the FFRF and others about churches promoting political candidates, issues or proposed legislation. As part of their tax-exempt status, churches and other religious groups are prohibited from engaging in partisan...

Most houses of worship have been granted a full exemption from Obamacare's regulation mandating coverage of contraception and abortifacients, but Ed Whelan points out that new legislation unveiled by Senate Democrats yesterday could put that religious protection in jeopardy. Although "bill itself wouldn’t abolish the exemption," Whelan writes, it "would allow the Obama administration (or its successors) to abolish the exemption and the accommodation in their entirety. (If the bill were instead intended to preserve the exemption and the accommodation against regulatory abolition, it would be a fairly simple matter to say so clearly.)"

ISIS is leaving a path of destroyed churches, shrines and mosques in its wake as it storms across Syria and Iraq, and has even set its sights on Mecca -- Islam's holiest site. The nihilistic jihadis, led by self-proclaimed descendant of Prophet Muhammad Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have already bulldozed or blown up some of the most sacred places in Iraq, and seem bent on killing and destroying anyone or anything that does not measure up to their twisted vision of Islam. Experts say the group, which originally stood for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but now simply calls itself "Islamic...