Free Republic

This is a reflection on her sermon delivered at the United Thank Offering Ingathering, Festival Eucharist at General Convention July 8, 2012 By Sarah Frances Ives Ph.D Special to Virtueonline www.virtueonline.org July 8, 2012 On July 8, 2012, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached her brand of post-Christian religion while masquerading as a Christian bishop. She mocked most of the crucial doctrines of the Christian faith, including the God of creation, the Incarnation, and the Trinity. She accomplishes this through her demeaning use of rhetoric. She taunts the Lord by the use of the name "Big Man" and then points...

The announcement on Monday, March 30 that The Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale was appointed as the sixth and newest president of Episcopal Divinity School (EDS) in Cambridge, MA, has orthodox and pro-life Episcopalians shaking their heads... ...the EDS website also has a link to Rev. Ragsdale’s sermon blog. There, the first sermon is entitled, “Our Work is Not Done...” “These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a...

The evangelical church is under constant threat to compromise its reliance on biblical truth. The human desire to be accepted, to not be seen as “outside the mainstream,” can be overwhelming. But that desire is our weakness, our downfall. It does not always immediately destroy the dam we build to protect the waters of truth, but instead it leads to tiny fissures that grow until destruction is inevitable. Twenty years ago, I experienced the painful demise of the Episcopal Church, who once was a bastion of biblical truth. It was not a pretty picture. It was a picture painted in...

One of The Episcopal Church's most controversial bishops will soon be stepping down from his position and the three nominees for his seat have been announced. The Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop to be ordained by The Episcopal Church, will be ending his term as Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. On Thursday, the diocese announced the nominees for his position. The nominees are the Rev. Penelope Maud Bridges of St. Francis Episcopal Church, Great Falls, Va.; the Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld of Grace Episcopal Church, Amherst, Mass.; and the Rev. Dr. William Warwick Rich...

“[We must] talk of hard financial issues and church decline and growth, to address elephants in the room, and to speak truth to one another in love." Executive Council of the Episcopal Church A month long investigation by Virtueonline into the numerical state of The Episcopal Church reveals that more than one third of all 6825 Episcopal parishes in the U.S. have an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 40 or less. VOL believes that the figure of 2.3 million Episcopalians, regularly stated by TEC leaders and officials, does not reveal the true state of church attendance. More than two-thirds of...

Gender Studies may never have had a clear focus but it is still susceptible to mission creep. “And gender studies isn’t focused on analyzing gays and lesbians as a specific subgroup,” Paul Ketzle writes in the Winter issue of Continuum magazine. “Instead, it investigates how a central concept like sexual identity is conceptualized through cultural artifacts (such as novels, poems, art, and film), and also how myriad aspects of our society—from architecture to economic theory—are (sometimes surprisingly) gendered.” Ketzle is an instructor in the University of Utah Honors College. Continuum is the magazine of The University of Utah. “No one...

On Tuesday night, a group of 40 Episcopal bishops from around the country attended a weekly vigil in Douglas, AZ, held for those who have died trying to cross illegally into the U.S. The advocacy group known as Frontera de Cristo has been conducting the vigils along the Pan-American Highway since 2000. The group placed crosses on the sidewalk and spoke the names of those who died attempting the illegal crossing. The bishops are in Arizona for a meeting of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, and have been visiting with illegal aliens and listening to their stories...

Seven years after the Episcopal Church caused an uproar by consecrating its first openly gay bishop, it has done the same thing again -- only this time with a woman. The Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool, of Baltimore, was ordained and consecrated on Saturday, making her the second openly gay bishop in church history and one of the first two female bishops in the Diocese of Los Angeles' 114-year history. Breakaway Episcopal conservatives have formed a rival church, the Anglican Church in North America. Several overseas Anglicans have been pressuring Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's 77...

I have been looking for God my whole life. I first recognized Him in the black foster parents I worked with who manifested Christ-consciousness. I then found him four years ago, when my parents died three weeks apart and I was carried by a force stronger than myself. And more recently, as I’ve gone from left to right, I have discovered him in the many conservatives guiding me, such as AT readers.

BREAKING: Diocese of Los Angeles Elects Non-Celibate Lesbian As Suffragan Bishop

Planned Parenthood Director Who Quit Now Rejected by Episcopalian Church Bryan, TX -- The religious denominations that embrace abortion do so supposedly because they are tolerant and welcoming of people who disagree on issues like abortion. Yet, that is not proving to be the case for Abby Johnson, the former Planned parenthood director who quit after converting to the pro-life perspective. http://www.LifeNews.com/state4578.html

In November 1987, two Gay Activists penned an article published in a Gay Magazine titled THE OVERHAULING OF STRAIGHT AMERICA, which was essentially the outline of “a propaganda campaign to confuse and deceive the American people about their objectives.” Tactics mentioned include “intimidation, lies, and fear to silence opposition.” Nowhere is then seen any better than in California after passage of their Proposition 8, overturning the legislative action allowing same-sex marriage in that state. It can also be seen quite vividly today in Washington State as a measure allowing Domestic Partnerships legal standing, laughably referred to as “Everything but marriage,”...

Only You. And You. And You. Polyamory—relationships with multiple, mutually consenting partners—has a coming-out party. Terisa Greenan and her boyfriend, Matt, are enjoying a rare day of Seattle sun, sharing a beet carpaccio on the patio of a local restaurant. Matt holds Terisa's hand, as his 6-year-old son squeezes in between the couple to give Terisa a kiss. His mother, Vera, looks over and smiles; she's there with her boyfriend, Larry. Suddenly it starts to rain, and the group must move inside. In the process, they rearrange themselves: Matt's hand touches Vera's leg. Terisa gives Larry a kiss. The child,...

Durham, N.C. — Duke University has fired an employee who faces federal child sex charges. Frank M. Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail in Durham, was let go from his position as associate director of the Center for Health Policy at Duke, a spokesman said. Duke Vice President for Public Affairs Michael Schoenfeld said Lombard was placed on unpaid leave at the time of his arrest June 24 and was fired Monday. Schoenfeld added that the university was cooperating with the investigation. Lombard faces extradition to Washington, D.C., to face charges that he solicited an adult to have...

The leader of a pro-family organization says families across the nation need to contact their U.S. senators now to try to derail a legislative plan that already has passed the U.S. House and is being awaited by President Obama – after a Democrat confirmed it would protect "all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or 'paraphilias' listed by the American Psychiatric Association." WND columnist Janet Porter, who also heads the Faith2Action Christian ministry, today cited S. 909, dubbed the "Pedophile Protection Act," as an extreme danger to America. As H.R. 1913, the House version of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes...

The first openly gay Episcopal bishop told a Studio City gathering today that the church should begin mending divisions over the issue of same-sex marriage by getting out of the civil marriage business altogether. During a visit to St. Michael & All Angels Church this morning, the Rev. V. Eugene Robinson said he favored the system used in France and other parts of Europe in which civil marriage – performed by government officials – is completely separate from religious vows. In the U.S., the civil and religious ceremonies are often combined with the cleric signing the government marriage license. "In...

The announcement that the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, has chosen a lesbian, pro-abortion president to lead the seminary has sent shock waves around the Anglican Communion. The appointment of Katherine Hancock Ragsdale highlights a week that also saw TEC bishop-elect Kevin Thew Forrester replace a reading from the New Testament with a reading from the Quran at St. Paul's Marquette, Michigan. One wonders what Episcopal boundaries and barriers have yet to be crossed that the dying embers of historic Christianity could possibly fan into life. That the Diocese of Massachusetts has a functioning transgendered priest complete with a...

It's a subject that can cause nervous snickering, a little uneasiness and even a few bad jokes. But many in the southeast Alaska community of Klawock, population 800, weren't laughing last April after a 26-year-old registered sex offender was accused of molesting a local family's pet dog. The man was spotted by a local woman coaxing the Labrador retriever into the woods near a ball field. There he allegedly tied it to a tree, taped its muzzle shut with duct tape and had sex with it, witnesses told police at the time. The man had been twice convicted of raping...

The act of bestiality is a step closer to becoming illegal in Florida now that a Senate committee voted to slap a third-degree felony charge on anyone who has sex with animals. Florida is one of only 16 states that still permit bestiality -– a fact that animal-rights activist and Sunrise Sen. Nan Rich learned to her horror when a Panhandle man three years ago was suspected of accidentally asphyxiating a family goat with which he was copulating. “There’s a tremendous correlation between sexually deviant behavior and crimes against children and crimes against animals,” said Rich, a Sunrise Democrat. “This...

Documentary on beastiality premieres at Sundance Film Festival By Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times Posted January 21 2007, 6:39 PM EST PARK CITY, Utah -- "Zoo" is a documentary about what director Robinson Devor accurately characterizes as "the last taboo, on the boundary of something comprehensible." But remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted. "Zoo," premiering before a rapt audience Saturday night at Sundance, manages to be a poetic film about a forbidden subject, a perfect marriage between a cool and contemplative director (the little-seen "Police Beat") and potentially incendiary subject matter: sex between men and animals. Not graphic...