Free Republic

...JoanWalsh at Salon writes that she was raised Catholic, but has since turned into "a secularfeministliberaldemocrat." Last Friday evening, when Obama's supporters were still clinging to their belief that his announcement of a compromise would steal all the wind out of the bishops' sails, she asked this: Why did we spend 10 days listening to prominent Catholics, including even some liberals and Democrats, insist that the White House had overreached and trampled on "religious freedom" - in this case, the "freedom" of the Catholic hierarchy to impose rules that even most Catholics don't live by? ("Catholic tribalism and the contraceptive...

.....First they came for Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs. And the Catholic bishops did not speak out. Now they are coming for the Catholic bishops. Who will speak out now? Not, alas, the United Church of Christ. Let's go back into recent history -- 2009 to be exact. It was a story that involved the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a blatant, full-on attack on the right of free speech and a free press -- the First Amendment. As I wrote here, here, here, here, here, and here three years ago, the Catholic bishops had managed to get their...

The Bay Area's biggest religious institution, the Catholic Church, is throwing its weight against a federal immigration dragnet that in the past two years deported more than 6,500 people from the region. As Republican presidential contenders clash just days before the crucial Florida primary over the harshness or softness of their stands on illegal immigration, Catholic priests here and across the country are championing a humanitarian approach and condemning what they describe as "selfish" demagoguery. "It is heartbreaking to hear the painful stories of unjust deportations pouring in from our congregations. California can do better," San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer...

Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again. I do not come at this issue as a Catholic special pleader, who wants only to protect my own, although it was a little bracing to realize that the president’s decision yesterday essentially told us, as Catholics, that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our...

Has Obama Lost the Catholic Left? Lyndon B. Johnson, after watching Walter Cronkite conclude a special broadcast which was heavily critical of the Tet offensive, said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”Well, this story isn’t exactly on the same level as that, but President Barack Obama may be losing the Catholic Left, with obvious implications for entrenched faculty on many Catholic college campuses. Michael Sean Winters, a lead writer for the National Catholic Reporter and vocal defender of the University of Notre Dame’s 2009 commencement honors for President Obama, wrote yesterday that he can’t see how he could...

The USA’s first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, has responded to presidential hopeful Rick Perry's anti-gay TV promotion suggesting that "it must break God's heart to see religion used in a political campaign like this." Bishop Robinson of the Episcopal Church showed his distaste in a TV interview with MSNBC and also by writing an opinion piece in the Washington Post newspaper. Perry had stated in his commercial that “You don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t...

<p>Good citizens of Atlanta, the Obamas were spotted heading off to church via foot from the White House, traversing Lafayette Park to get to St. John's Church for their Sunday services on December 11, 2011 in Washington, DC.</p> <p>The buzz is that President Obama’s stance on religion was on personal attack in a commercial launched by Rick Perry, that claims that Barack Obama has a supposed “war on religion.”</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama and his family are attending a worship service at a church just across the street from the White House where presidents frequently have visited. The president, first lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia made the short walk across Lafayette Park to St. John's Church.

Lutheranism is dead, or at least soon will be and it wants to take the Catholic Church with it. Herbert W. Chilstrom is former presiding bishop of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Chilstrom has written an open letter to the Bishops of Minnesota asking them to accept gay 'marriage' becuase gays are like blacks or something. May I share a word with all of you who now lead the Roman Catholic community of faith in Minnesota?First, I would go to the wall to defend your right to work for the adoption of the so-called marriage protection amendment. Having said that,...

1. Inclusivism rules, so.. 2.If you disagree with us, you're intolerant and hateful... 3.God is Whatever or Whoever… 4.There are many paths to 'God'… 5.There is no such thing as Divine revelation, truth is what science or reason says it is at the moment or what works for you... 6.The Bible is outdated, of limited value, and in most areas simply wrong…unless interpreted to support what we believe... 7.Science is infallible, not the Bible... 8.The Creation account is myth; evolution is fact... 9.No human life is sacred; in or out of the womb... 10.Mankind is basically good and self-redemption is...

A notoriously 'gay-friendly' parish in San Francisco has invited an openly homosexual Episcopalian cleric to lead an Advent Vespers service. Most Holy Redeemer parish asked Bishop Otis Charles, a retired Episcopalian prelate, to lead the November 30 service. After serving as the Bishop of Utah from 1971 to 1993, he publicly announced that he is homosexual. Divorced from the mother of his 5 children, he solemnized a same-sex union in 2004.

Is The Black Church The Answer To Liberal Prayers? By Lisa Miller, Published: November 24 As the American left continues to seek a coherent way to articulate its moral priorities in these days of political stalemates and widening income gaps, it might look to the most unlikely of places — the academy — for guidance and inspiration. At elite universities and seminaries thrives a constituency of African American intellectuals who fiercely contend that the American conversation needs to stay focused on justice — specifically, for those whom the Bible calls “the least of these.” Cornel West, who was arrested at...

Even though Ron Paul clarified himself at the Tea Party debate, and explained that he doesn’t think those who can’t afford medical care should be laid out on the curb to die, the Left went about painting his answer as morally abominable. Before we deal with their abuse of Christian doctrine, let’s see what Paul said: "I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio, and the churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. And we’ve...

Hundreds of United Methodist clergy are expressing deep concerns over a pledge made by a large group of fellow ministers to marry same-sex couples. They argue that if the pledge is carried through, the future of the denomination is in jeopardy. "We do not know how many, if any, marriages or 'holy unions' of same-sex couples will be performed by UM clergy in the near future," reads a letter, currently signed by more than 400 pastors, to the Council of Bishops. "But we do know the destructive effects that will result in our local churches and throughout the denomination if...

The spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, will resign his position next year almost a decade before he is due to retire in order to return to academic life, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Williams, 61, who has worked hard to prevent the worldwide Anglican community from splitting over the ordination of women and gay bishops, may take up a senior post at Cambridge University, the Sunday Telegraph said. ...Williams has regularly come under fire for his outspoken comments, most recently making headlines in June with an attack on the British government’s deficit-cutting austerity programme....

Styling herself a Christian Cassandra, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann declared Hurricane Irene as God’s warning to Washington. Now that we know she was only joking, we Christians can perhaps shrug our shoulders and leave the victims of Hurricane Irene to deal with its implications on their own. She was serious. She was joking. Maybe it’s her titanium spine that’s giving her the balance to shift positions. Then again, perhaps the titanium spine is a necessary prosthetic given Bachmann’s lack of Christian backbone. If Michele Bachmann actually were serious, she could certainly have drawn upon ample biblical justification. She could have wielded...

Jesus Christ is considered the most important and central figure in all of history for many. Yet in her debut novel, Kristen Wolf turns the biblical portrayal of the Messiah on its head by portraying Jesus as a woman. The Way, which was released in July but is noted in the September 2011 issue of The Oprah Magazine as a “Title to Pick Up Now,” transports its readers back to ancient Palestine where a young girl, Anna, struggles to comprehend her purpose in a male-dominated society. After she witnesses the brutal murder of a woman in her town, and her...

“[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...

Are you LGBT? "A “yes” answer could put students in line to qualify for a scholarship worth one-third of tuition at the private, liberal arts school affiliated with the United Church of Christ, said Rold."

A spokesman for Washington National Cathedral says at least three of the four pinnacles on the central tower have fallen off and the central tower appears to be leaning. The pinnacles are the top stones on the cathedral's towers. Richard Weinberg, director of communications for the cathedral, said the cathedral has been evacuated and stone masons are assessing the damage.

I’ve written before about the crisis of inequality in the United States and about the quasi-religious abhorrence of “wealth redistribution” that causes many Americans to oppose tax increases, even on the ultra rich. The conviction that taxation is intrinsically evil has achieved a sadomasochistic fervor in conservative circles—producing the Tea Party, their Republican zombies, and increasingly terrifying failures of governance. Happily, not all billionaires are content to hoard their money in silence. Earlier this week, Warren Buffett published an op-ed in the New York Times in which he criticized our current approach to raising revenue. As he has lamented many...

Details, from the New York Times: The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, who refused to renounce his increasingly public campaign to see women ordained as priests in the Roman Catholic Church, has been notified of his dismissal by his religious order, the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers.A letter to Father Bourgeois, signed by the superior general and the general secretary of the Maryknoll order in the United States, said the dismissal was necessary because of his “defiant stance” in opposition to church teaching.“Your numerous public statements and appearances in support of the women’s priests movement continues to create in the minds of many...

Governor Rick Perry on evolution, in an interview with the Associated Press: "There are clear indications from our people who have amazing intellectual capability that this didn't happen by accident and a creator put this in place. Now, what was his time frame and how did he create the earth that we know? I'm not going to tell you that I've got the answers to that. I believe that we were created by this all-powerful supreme being and how we got to today versus what we look like thousands of years ago, I think there's enough holes in the theory...

OBAMA IS MUSLIM by Tina Si on Sunday, August 7, 2011 at 12:11pm This is a great Atlas Shrugs website link with a slew of information. All of the blue sentences are links to support the information further. Please share this information with everyone in email and facebook. People need to look at this and see that this isn't conspiracy. This is truth on top of more truth. You can't deny this much info if you honestly look at it all. http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/06/-obama-tells-egyptian-foreign-minister-i-am-a-muslim-stealth-coup-on-the-white-house.html 1. Obama Admits He Is A Muslim http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCAffMSWSzY 2. Obama is Declared Messiah by Louis Farrakhan (The leader...

Religious Left Stews Over Debt Deal Posted By Mark D. Tooley On August 5, 2011 @ 12:27 am The Religious Left is displeased over the debt deal between President Obama and Congress for unforgivably omitting tax increases. They are also peeved over limits, if not outright cuts, to the growth of their beloved welfare, regulatory and entitlement state, which for the Religious Left is the virtual Kingdom of God on Earth. Some religious leftists were more incendiary than others. Emergent Church guru Brian McLaren, champion of religious postmodernism, typically rejects moral absolutes — except when denouncing conservatives. “A zealot faction...

Home and business owners who plan to rebuild after the June 1st tornados might be eligible for state money if they decide to 'go green'. The new incentives, offered by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, will be given to anyone who has had damage from the tornados and plans to make energy efficient upgrades to their home as they rebuild. Bobbie Williams and her husband were at their home on King Street when the tornado hit. They have been living in a trailer for two months as they try to rebuild their home and plan to take advantage of...

It is telling that the Washington Post report on the religious Left’s Circle of Protection campaign for big government describes the effort as one that would “send chills through any politician who looks to churches and religious groups as a source of large voting blocs,� because, in fact, this is not an honest faith-inspired campaign to protect the “least of these� from Draconian government cuts, as claimed. It is a hyper-political movement that offers up the moral authority of churches and aid organizations to advance the ends of the Obama administration and its allies in Congress. The Circle of Protection, led by Jim Wallis and...

The headline on the July 14, 2011, edition of the British paper, The Telegraph, heralded some very bad news for British Anglicans. It declared, “Aging Church of England 'will be dead in 20 years.'” They buttressed their argument in two ways: 1. The average age of a Church of England attendee is 61 (you do the math).2. In the last 40 years, church attendance has been cut in half.You would think that the Archbishop of Canterbury would wake up and smell the coffee. Instead, a few weeks earlier, he finally came clean. Well, he was forced to come clean. For...

In the past I have mentioned that catholic liberals right now are using the clerical abuse issue as a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon any issue or any person they don’t like. If they don’t like, say, the Church’s teaching about the impossibility of the ordination of women, the Church should change its “policy� because, of course, the bishops failed to prevent the sexual abuse of children. If they don’t like that a bishop sticks to the Church’s teaching on contrary-to-nature unions, then he should just shut up, because bishops failed in the sphere of clerical abuse. If they...

As an out Presbyterian preacher, I'd experienced prejudice before. But nothing like what I faced in North CarolinaI was reading "Home in Henderson" -- the unofficial city website for a small town in North Carolina where I had recently moved to preach -- when I came across the blog entry. It was posted under the pseudonym "Church Reporter." "A friend that attends the First Presbyterian Church told me to do a Google search on their new minister Brett Webb-Mitchell," the entry began. "Having done so, I have only three comments to make on the pastor selection: 1. Who is responsible...

Dear Republican Leaders: The Republican Party has become the party dedicated to sabotaging the American future. Check out the sermon I just delivered about the Republican Party on CNN when being interviewed by D.L. Hughley -- and/or read on. You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do...

The earth bursts with life. Far right exclusionary religion bursts with death. If there is a creator of life He/She/It must hate fundamentalist religion. The countries in the world that are the most fundamentalist and religious, and/or those whose identity is most religion-based, are the world's greatest troublemakers. Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Vatican City and the state of Israel come to mind. Just take one example of religion’s baleful influence: President Woodrow Wilson’s messianic religion-inspired intervention in World War One. "My life would not be worth living” Wilson wrote, “if it were not for the driving power of...

This month, I intended to take a rest from writing so I could just enjoy my time out in Colorado. In fact, aside from hunting and learning a few songs on my guitar (yes, I’m having a midlife crisis) I did not plan to do a thing in July. But the liberals keep doing stupid things and sending me stupid emails. So I have to pick up my pen and write – either that or ruin a perfectly good midlife crisis by having a heart attack. The thing that has my blood boiling right now is the misuse of five...

For all of the political drama in New York these past weeks, Friday night’s historic vote in favor of ay marriage by the NYS Senate was actually rather anti-climactic. It was a fight over political and philosophical nomenclature, not over new realities. As the losing side licks its wounds, we should realize that we didn’t lose as much as we think we did last night. We’ve been losing it for decades. What we call the lived reality that is marriage is important. The name indicates the reality. Nomen est omen, as it is said in latin. “The name is the...

More than 200 United Methodist clergy in Illinois have pledged to flout church policy and bless unions for same-sex couples, putting their jobs, homes and callings in jeopardy if couples take advantage of their offer.Methodists in the Northern Illinois Conference also called on the global church to impose no more than a 24-hour suspension for clergy who defy the policy.Elders, deacons and pastors took their stand after civil unions in Illinois became legal this month. But they said their determination to support same-sex unions has been fueled further by a church trial last week in which a jury found a...

Church of England To Allow Gay Clergy To Become Bishops The Church of England is using the Equality Act as a “smokescreen” for allowing gay clergymen to become bishops, according to the leader of the National Secular Society. By Donna Bowater 19 Jun 2011 Guidance due to be published on Monday was expected to pave the way for homosexual clerics in civil partnerships to become bishops provided they remained celibate. The document, published in response to last year’s Equality Act, will be sent to the General Synod before it meets in York next month. The paper said: "Someone in a...

Gay Presbyterians throughout the suburbs now have the opportunity to rise from the pews and into the ranks of the ordained. After decades of debate, Blackhawk Presbytery — which oversees many of the congregations in the Fox Valley and northwestern Illinois — recently became one of 21 presbyteries so far to reverse course on gay ordination. But even with a movement toward acceptance of homosexuality in popular culture, the Rev. John Rickard of Blackhawk Presbytery said he was surprised, but not necessarily dismayed, by the outcome of the vote among his congregations. “Do I think it's going to destroy our...

A progressive religious organization, American Values Network, has a new ad out attacking conservative leaders like Rush Limbaugh and Paul Ryan by criticizing their appreciation for Ayn Rand’s philosophical views. ... And, of course, the group has tied to George Soros. Stu pointed out that they received at least $800,000 from Soros.org, his website for the Open Society Institute.

Gay rights campaigners have urged mosque leaders in east London to ban homophobic clerics from using their premises, following a 21% rise in gay hate crime in the area. Activists, including journalist Julie Bindel and Pride trustee Colm Howard-Lloyd, said some preachers at the East London Mosque and the London Muslim Centre had "created an atmosphere in which hate is socially acceptable; they have spread a message in which maiming and violence is the most dutiful, honourable, devout thing to do". Their concerns follow the £100 fine given to Mohammed Hasnath, who put up "Gay-Free Zone" stickers in the area;

Earlier this month, the national Presbyterian Church approved a change in its constitution to allow openly gay church members to serve as ministers and church leaders. It is a change that one local church pastor says has been a long time coming. "It's been a Presbyterian family quarrel for about 30 years," said Jonathan Smoot, interim pastor at Falls Church Presbyterian Church..."It's just ridiculous to lift up sexual orientation as a primary criterion for that person's character or suitability for ministry," Smoot said. "I hope this puts an end to it.""It needs to be read in its historical context and...

Now that pro-gay liberals in the Presbyterian Church (USA) have succeeded in their 30-year efforts to allow the ordination of gays, a small but influential group of conservative churches have decided to give up the fight to change the Book of Order back to the way it was since 1997 when the original ban was approved. Rev. Janet Edwards, a Presbyterian minister in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also serves as Co-Moderator for More Light Presbyterians, which has been pushing for “full inclusion” of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in PC(USA) for years. In her Huffington Post article, she noted that: Our...

It appears that The Rapture leading to the end of the world predicted by a Christian radio broadcaster for this past Saturday, May 21, did not take place. And the failure was covered worldwide. A Google search on Saturday evening yielded over 32,000 articles — in English alone — in the world media. The secular, especially the anti-religious, Left enjoys these spectacles of religious foolishness. They seem to confirm not only how absurd these end-of-days predictions are, but how absurd religion is in general. But the Left should not laugh too loudly. The religious world has far fewer doomsday predictions...

At a press conference last week, someone asked Chris Christie for his views on evolution vs. creationism. "That's none of your business," the New Jersey governor barked in response. ...it says even more about the current state of the national Republican Party, where magical thinking trumps rationality, and even to acknowledge basic realities about the world we live in runs the risk of damaging one's political future. Christie is not part of the natural constituency for Darwin-denial... (but) he must constantly ask himself the question: Am I about to say something to which a white, evangelical, socially conservative, gun-owning, Obama-despising,...

EV Leads Effort to Reopen Rules Governing Adoption and Foster Care Agencies; Asks State Board to Suspend Rules Until Additional Comments Received At a press conference today, Equality Virginia released its letter written to the chair of the Virginia State Board of Social Services and the Commissioner of the Department asking that the recently adopted rules governing licensed child placing agencies be suspended pending further public comment. James Parrish, Equality Virginia's Executive Director, made the following statement about EV's action: Children in the child welfare system and prospective foster and adoptive parents have the right to be protected against discrimination....

... far too many Americans who identify themselves as “Christians” are taking the easy way out and bowing down to Islam, in an effort to avoid a conflict that has been raging for 1400 years. A conflict in which Christians are clearly losing! Pulpit pals: Christians, Jews, Muslims plan shared worship BY ADELLE M. BANKS Religious and human rights activists are asking U.S. churches to invite Jewish and Muslim clergy to their sanctuaries to read from sacred texts next month in an initiative designed to counter anti-Muslim bigotry. The June 26 initiative, called “Faith Shared: Uniting in Prayer and Understanding,”...

We’ve all heard Christians argue that while their religion might say abortion is wrong, they can’t force their religion on others. That’s the out they give themselves. But Reverend Matthew Westfox of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice goes one step further by actually twisting one of Jesus’ parables into a pro-abortion defense. He did so in an article on his reflections on Easter. Westfox wrote: A pro-life stance cannot concern itself only with the life of the woman. In the parable of the sower, Jesus reminds us that seed alone does not bring about new life — that all...

After 33 years of debate, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has voted to change its constitution and allow openly gay people in same-sex relationships to be ordained as ministers, elders and deacons...

Being gay is a gift from God, asserts one church in Ohio. That’s the message that Central United Methodist Church is spreading throughout their community via a digital billboard, launched on Monday. This “simple statement,” the church announced, is “intended to be a gift to those who have experienced hurt and discrimination because of their real or perceived sexual orientation.” “The Church seeks nothing less than the healing of the world, and Central UMC wants to offer words and acts of healing to those hurt and marginalized,” the website states. Jeff Buchanan, the director of Exodus Church Equipping & Student...

The media stood and applauded yesterday when President Obama and his family went to church for Easter. Yesterday’s visit to Shiloh Baptist Church in D.C. shows again that Obama really is a man of faith, the reports seem to suggest. But while the media rushed to report on the first family’s attendance of the predominately black congregation (and the family’s outfits), what it failed to mention was the views held by the church’s pastor. And while those views are not delivered in the same fiery manner as Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, they sound eerily familiar. What views are those?...

Just when I thought the current team running the White House might have used up all its allotted mistakes comes word that President Obama failed to issue either an Easter or a Good Friday greeting to the nation. Now, let’s forget for a moment that these greetings, which presidents issue on many holidays and commemorations of events, are largely perfunctory and symbolic gestures that nobody cares about. Until there’s a problem with them. Fox News first caught the blunder and put it into context that makes the omission insulting to Christians. The mistake is odd enough to call into question...