Free Republic

"The Islamists are taking revenge on us Christians": With these words the Coptic-Catholic Bishop of Assiut, Kyrillos William Samaan, commented on the latest Islamist attacks on Christians and Christian institutions in Egypt.The bishop made his comments while talking to international Catholic pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on Monday, August 12th.  The Bishop was referring among other things to events in the towns of Sohag, Fayum and Beni Suef and on the Sinai Peninsula, where churches have been attacked by Islamists and Christians have been threatened. There have also been fatalities. In the town of Sohag, there...

Dr. Kamil Sedik, secretary of the Congregational Council in Alexandria, has condemned repeated attacks by Islamist groups against Coptic Christians in Egypt, saying that authorities are permitting the violence by not providing adequate security for vulnerable Copts."Copts are subjected to violence by criminals, who were released from prison by deposed President Morsi, because of their [Copts] ideological affiliation," Sedik told Mideast Christian News. Moreover, Sedik accused government officials of failing to cope with criminal attacks against Copts. "The government does not provide security for Copts, but it tolerates prisoners who are under investigation," he said in reference to the meeting...

Once more we learn of military personnel being punished for causing homosexuals in the military to feel bad. From Fox News: An Army chaplain’s assistant said she was accused of creating a “hostile and antagonistic” environment after she posted a message on her personal Facebook page calling homosexuality a sin. The soldier, who asked not to be identified, said her commander ordered her to either remove the Facebook message or face a reduction in rank and pay. “I haven’t taken it down and I won’t take it down,” she told Fox News. “It is frustrating that people are trying to...

Vladimir Putin has urged the world’s political leaders to stop the violent persecutions against Christians that have erupted in many Middle Eastern countries. Speaking at a meeting with Orthodox Christian leaders in Moscow last week, the Russian President said he noted “with alarm” that “in many of the world’s regions, especially in the Middle East and in North Africa inter-confessional tensions are mounting, and the rights of religious minorities are infringed, including Christians and Orthodox Christians.” “This pressing problem should be a subject of close attention for the entire international community,” Putin said. “It is especially important today to make...

Wealthy gay dad, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, says he and his civil partner Tony will go to court to force churches to host gay weddings. He told the Essex Chronicle that he will take legal action because “I am still not getting what I want”. A Government Bill legalising gay marriage passed Parliament recently but it included measures to protect churches from being forced to perform same-sex weddings. Challenge Mr Drewitt-Barlow said: “The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the church. “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into...

Wealthy gay dad, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, says he and his civil partner Tony will go to court to force churches to host gay weddings. He told the Essex Chronicle that he will take legal action because “I am still not getting what I want”. A Government Bill legalising gay marriage passed Parliament recently but it included measures to protect churches from being forced to perform same-sex weddings. Challenge Mr Drewitt-Barlow said: “The only way forward for us now is to make a challenge in the courts against the church. “It is a shame that we are forced to take Christians into...

If President Eisenhower were alive today, the five-star general may be shocked to know that his own speeches are too offensive to be quoted in the military he used to command. A military chaplain has been taken to task for fulfilling the job description that most spiritual leaders (until recently) were hired to do: talk about faith. In a harmless post for his online website, "Chaplain's Corner," Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes (USAF) of the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska wrote an inspirational piece called, "No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II." The phrase, which President Eisenhower...

President Obama's Defense Department is waging a private war. While our Pentagon is entrusted with the duty to "protect and serve" a secular zone is growing within the ranks of the Military. A little over a year ago then Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the Military would honor through "Gay Pride Month" the contributions of homosexual service members. This announcement came just a few months after the Department of Defense had begun its subtle campaign against the Bible. 1) The Air Force Services Agency through its spokesman Michael Dickerson stated the Air Force has "no requirement to have Bibles in...

Tony Perkins and a coalition of allies have urged support for Rep. John Fleming’s military religious freedom amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. The Catholic League joins with them. But we are doing more than that: I am calling attention today to the way Mikey Weinstein, the president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has smeared Evangelicals. In a report released yesterday, FRC detailed some of the irresponsible comments made by Weinstein, the man who has been leading the fight to censor religious speech in the military. Last month, we prepared our own report: to read “Mikey Weinstein’s Inflammatory...

Christian religious leaders balefully greeted the Supreme Court decision on June 26 to strike down key provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act, signed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton. In an op-ed, Catholic Archbishop P. Timothy Broglio, who serves as chief chaplain to Catholics in US military service, said that Catholic bishops and the Archdiocese of the Military Services remain "resolved in the belief that no Catholic priest will ever be compelled to condone – even silently – same-sex ‘marriages.’” In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that DOMA treated same-sex “marriages” as “less respected than others”, thus...

But it gets more complicated. It is not just any words. In Romans 1, Paul shows how to preach the Gospel. It includes the notion of the Fall and a full recognition of human sin. Certainly, we must avoid “personal judgmentalism” but we may not avoid God as judge, without whom there is no God as Savior. If the Gospel is “the power of God for salvation (Rom 1:16) it is because no other power can change this fallen world-not our deeds, not the message of human flourishing nor the this-worldly utopia of diversity. Our message is that sin needs...

A Midwestern lawmaker is calling on his colleagues in Congress to offer cover to an Army soldier under fire for his conservative political views and religious faith, and accusing the Obama administration of “creating a tyrannical culture of political correctness in the military.” Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., is introducing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would prevent the Army from conducting a court martial of Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers until the military first files a report for Congress to review. “The Secretary of the Army shall provide to Congress a report on activities with respect to Master...

Since the IRS scam has become the most momentous topic of the day, we now know, thanks to my father, that Obama’s brother, Malik Obama, is deeply associated with Omar al-Bashir, the one who was behind the attack on the US embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, which occurred at around the same time as the Benghazi attack ... Malik is the Executive Secretary for the Islamic Da’wa Organization (IDO), which is stationed in Khartoum, Sudan, and which has its primary focus in expanding Wahhabist Islam in the African subcontinent. It was also in Khartoum, as I have written on before, where...

From the outset, Internal Revenue Service lawyers based in Washington, D.C., provided important guidance on the handling of tea-party groups’ applications for tax-exempt status, according to both IRS sources and the inspector general’s report released in mid May. Officials in the Technical Unit of the IRS’s Rulings and Agreements office played an integral role in determining how the targeted applications were treated, provided general guidelines to Cincinnati case workers, briefed other agency employees on the status of the special cases, and reviewed all those intrusive requests demanding “more information” from tea-party groups. At times, the Technical Unit lawyers seemed to...

Under the direction of Lois Lerner, the Federal Election Commission sued the Christian Coalition in the 1990s. She harassed the Christian Coalition for three election cycles. She lost her case. Lerner even asked one conservative during the case if Pat Robertson prayed over him. (Sound familiar?) These actions landed her at the IRS where she used the same tactics against conservatives and Christians – only on a much larger scale. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS during her tenure. For twenty-seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt...

CNN’s Drew Griffin broke into Wolf Blitzer‘s Newsroom report Wednesday afternoon to reveal new information about the investigation into the IRS’ admission that they targeted conservatives during the 2012 election year. Griffin said a Congressional source told him that the acting commissioner of the IRS, Steven Miller, has identified two “rogue” employees in the agency’s Cincinnati office, who he characterized as “off the reservation.” The commissioner reportedly said the two, as yet unnamed, employees were “principally responsible for overly aggressive handling of Tea Party requests for tax exempt status over the past two years.” Another source, according to Griffin, said...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied asylum to a Christian family that came to America to homeschool their children. As previously reported, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike fled to the United States in 2008 after German authorities demanded that they stop homeschooling their six children. Homeschooling was made illegal in the country in 1938 under the dictatorship of Adolph Hitler, and the law has never been repealed.......

It's never comforting to have one's longstanding fears confirmed. Yet, that's exactly what's happened over the last week as Americans have been presented with a stunning array of facts that diminish faith in our government. Whether it's on foreign policy, taxes, or the health-care system our lives depend on, members of the Obama Administration are making it harder to trust them to perform the most very basic functions of public service. *snip* Next, the Department of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has found that conservative and Tea Party groups, after complaining for years of being unfairly targeted by...

Dear Comrades, The Vanguard of the Socialist Democratic Party of the USSA, better known as Militant Atheists, are courageously fighting for the rights of workers and peasants in the American military to be liberated from the oppressive presence of religion in the Armed Services. Under direction from the White Fortress, officers are learning the Socialist principle of eliminating all public religious expression in keeping with the doctrines of Marxist-Obamism. Officers in the military know that their chances of advancement hinge on their ability to suppress religious expression, especially the worst kind: proselytizing and openly discussing religion as a believer. To...

In a move that foreshadows the radical left’s plans for churches should gay marriage become the law of the land, the California legislature is moving to strip the Boy Scouts of America – a private organization – of its non-profit status for refusing to allow gay scoutmasters...