Free Republic

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), the son of a Baptist minister and an outspoken evangelical in his own right, may still have some work to do to court conservative Christians. The governor is mulling a bid for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and will head to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for a meet and greet with 50 evangelical leaders, who are said to be unsure of how deeply rooted Walker's convictions are on social issues like abortion and gay marriage. "Clearly he's not well known within Washington, D.C., with social conservative leaders. He's more known for his battle with unions...

The decline in Americans who identify as Christian shown by a new Pew report is mostly due to those with weak church ties no longer identifying as Christian, Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, recently wrote. Was he correct? The Christian Post contacted Pew Research Center to find out. The report, released Tuesday, found that Americans who identify as Christian fell from 78 percent to 71 percent of the U.S. population between 2007 and 2014. In the same period, the religiously unaffiliated increased six percentage points, from 16 to 22 percent. (Note: the report...

For years the film industry has loved to use the richness of Catholicism to enhance story lines in movies and television shows. They love using our church architecture, confessionals, Rosaries, cassocks, habits, schools, prayers, and traditions because they offer so much visual recognition, drama, and beauty. These are the same reasons Catholics are so ripe for slapstick, which I admit can be funny. However, as America rapidly moves into an era of declining Christianity, we increasingly see our pop culture presence reduced nearly exclusively to cheap laughs and even cruel bigotry.ABC has decided to double-down on this anti-Christian narrative by working with the often vulgar...

How should we be good Catholics and good Americans?Until recently that did not seem to be an issue to most of us. Separation of Church and State appeared to reconcile the Faith with a secular pluralist public order. The arrangement seemed to leave room for each to be what it is, do what it does, and cooperate in building a world that would be increasingly adequate to man’s material, social, and spiritual needs.That view looks increasingly unrealistic today. Policies cannot be coherent or rational unless they are oriented toward definite goals and standards. Modern governments believe themselves responsible for...

BOSTON (AP) — Parishioners of the St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church must end their 11-year protest vigil and vacate the shuttered Roman Catholic church, a judge ruled Thursday. But the Friends of St. Frances, the group that has been occupying the Scituate church day and night since 2004, say they're not going anywhere. They intend to ask the state court to stay the ruling pending an appeal. "As of today, nothing changes," Jon Rogers, one of the organizers, declared late Thursday. "From Day One, we made a promise that we would exhaust every appeal that was available to us, and...

The Catholic Church in America sometimes looks as if it’s on a suicide mission. Individual bishops or institutions don’t seem able to tell friend from foe, invite enemies into their midst, ignore threats, give the impression that the best they can hope for is that people won’t be too angry at the Church. Which they would rather be thought of as doing nice, uncontroversial things like providing social services, and not overemphasizing more difficult moral matters.A recent instance: President Obama was lavishly welcomed and participated in a panel discussion on overcoming poverty at Georgetown University on Tuesday. No one has...

Popular Christian singer Amy Grant is defending her partnership with Melinda Gates of the pro-abortion Gates Foundation after LifeNews.com exposed the partnership and the foundation’s massive financial support for the abortion industry. Amy Grant is pro-life on the issue of abortion, but she recently announced she is teaming up with one the head of the most pro-abortion foundations that shuttled millions towards abortions and abortion businesses. In an opinion column on Fox News’ web site, Grant announced she is partnering with Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation to push birth control and contraception in impoverished nations. Grant said she hosted...

All it took was one act of kindness – a Bible in particular, to turn the tide for eight year old Phoenix and her brother, seven year old Kingston Walywyn, who were being bullied by a kid from their bus. Like most kids, they were getting frustrated. According to Phoenix, the bully constantly called them names and this made them want to confront him at times. "It made me feel like I wanted to yell at him," Phoenix said in an interview with KHOU. Instead, the siblings told their parents, who asked to have the bus seating arrangement changed....

Contrary to recent reports based on studies that emphasize the growth of non-religious people in the United States and the decline of church attendance, Christianity in America is not dying, according to a new survey that examines the nuances and complexities of how people self-identify with faith by Waco,Texas-based Baylor University. Scholars from Baylor University's Institute of Religion said during a recent conference that reports highlighting the departure of millenials from the organized religion of their parents are being greatly exaggerated. "There's a story some people want to report — that religion is on life support — but it's just...

The House of Representatives today approved a pro-life bill that bans abortions from after 20-weeks of pregnancy up to the day of birth. The vote for the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act broke down on mostly partisan lines with Republicans supporting the ban on late-term abortions and Democrats opposing it. The House approved the bill on a 242-184 vote with four Democrats (Reps. Cuellar, Langevin, Lipinski, and Peterson) voting for the bill and five Republicans voting against it (Reps. Dent, Dold, Hanna, Frelinghuysen) or voting present (Hice). (See very end of this article for how members voted). Should the...

Denzel Washington told graduating students to "put God first in everything" in his commencement address at Dillard University in New Orleans on Saturday. His address covered everything from motivation and discipline, to how to think about money and success, but the underlying theme was dependency on God and gratitude for what God has given you. The two-time Academy Award-winning actor said: "Everything that you think you see in me, everything that I've accomplished, everything that you think I have – and I have a few things – everything I have is by the grace of God... It's a gift." Washington,...

BIBLIANO and AMIGO: Discussions on Eschatology (Lesson #2) by Charles S. Meek AMIGO: We are in the Last Days! The end is near! BIBLIANO: My friend, why do you think that? AMIGO: I watch the Trinity Broadcasting Network. You know—ISIS, Iran getting the nuke, blood moons, riots in the streets. Just read the newspaper! BIBLIANO: Have you ever seriously studied what the Bible says about the so-called Last Days? AMIGO: Don’t have to. All I need is TBN. Those preachers can’t be wrong about this. They sell a lot of books. BIBLIANO: Well, I hate to break your bubble, Amigo....

Christians in Iraq are “on the edge of a terrible catastrophe,” an Iraqi nun said in May 13 testimony before the foreign-affairs committee of the US House of Representatives. Sister Diana Momeka, a Dominican sister who was forced to flee from Mosul, testified in Washington pleaded for help for Iraqi Christians, saying that persecution by the Islamic State has been more brutal than any suffering endured by the country’s Christians in over 1300 years. She also testified that the help furnished by Iraqi government officials for Christian refugees has been “at best modest and slow.” The Dominican sister told...

We often hear it said that it is simply wrong to insult the faith of 1.3 billion Muslims. Why, then, isn’t it wrong to insult the faith of 2.2 billion Christians? It’s done every day, and sometimes the insults are hard to take. Christians are understandably upset when art exhibits feature crucifixes immersed in urine or portraits of Mary covered with dung.It doesn’t require a Ph.D. to figure out why the secular word condemns insults to Muslims but countenances insults to Christians. It’s because the latter won’t come after you with machetes and assault rifles. If Islam were truly...

Pope Francis has warned “the powerful of the Earth” they will answer to God if they fail to protect the environment to ensure the world can feed its population. “The planet has enough food for all, but it seems that there is a lack of willingness to share it with everyone,” Francis said at a mass to mark the opening of the general assembly of the Catholic charitable organisation Caritas. “We must do what we can so that everyone has something to eat, but we must also remind the powerful of the Earth that God will call them to judgment...

Homosexual activists don't want Jesus' forgiveness for their sexual sin – they want his approval. This is something he cannot and will never offer.Homosexual activists are fond of quoting the first half of John 8:11: "Neither do I condemn you." They are not so fond of quoting the second half. In fact, they quite pointedly ignore it as if it weren't even there. But wishing it away doesn't make it disappear. John 7:53-8:11 preserves for us the record of Jesus' encounter with a woman caught in adultery. She was apprehended in flagrante delicto, in the act, and was dragged by...

<p>VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican officially recognized the state of Palestine in a new treaty finalized Wednesday, immediately sparking Israeli ire and accusations that the move hurt peace prospects.</p> <p>The treaty, which concerns the activities of the Catholic Church in Palestinian territory, makes clear that the Holy See has switched its diplomatic recognition from the Palestine Liberation Organization to the state of Palestine.</p>

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks May 12 at the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University in Washington. (CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn) CRUX posted a report yesterday about the "Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty" held at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and attended by President Barack Obama. Here are the opening paragraphs of the story: When it comes to fighting poverty, President Barack Obama wants American Christians to act a lot more like Pope Francis. Obama called Francis “transformative,” saying the pope’s “insistence” that fighting poverty be at the heart of the Christian life has made him...

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, responded to the new Pew Study survey documenting the decline of Christians and rise of religiously unaffiliated, by calling the "increasing strangeness" of Christianity "good news" for the church. "Christianity isn't normal anymore. It never should have been. The increasing strangeness of Christianity might be bad news for America, but it's good news for the church. The major newspapers are telling us today that Christianity is dying, according to this new study, but what is clear from this study is exactly the opposite: while mainline...

New Evangelization, where art thou? The Pew Research Center reports that the number of Americans who identify as Christian has fallen sharply, to the tune of nearly eight percentage points in only seven years.  The survey, carried out in 2014, was the second "Religious Landscape Study" Pew conducted since 2007. Based on the 35,000 people the institute interviewed, the American populace is 21% Catholic. It was 23.9% seven years ago.  While the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian dropped from 78.4% in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014, non-Christian religions are growing. Islam showed the greatest gains, growing half a percentage point...