Free Republic

Where’s the Human in Humanism? Humanist Ads Violate their Own Humanist Standards By:   Some parishioners have recently expressed distress over an Ad campaign of the American Humanist Association. Rather provocative Ads are appearing on buses and subways here in the Nation’s Capitol and I suspect elsewhere as well. As Christmas draws near, the “Humanists” have made it a practice in recent years to tweak Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims) and attempt to make the concept of faith look ridiculous. They generally do this by quoting a sacred text and interpreting it in a mechanistic, fundamentalist and literalistic  manner....

The times in which we live are often described as “secular.”  This word comes from the Latin “saecula” meaning “world.” Hence in saying our age is secular is another way of saying our times are  worldly. We may think it has always been so but such is not the case. To be sure, it IS the human condition to be a little preoccupied with the world. But previous times have featured a much more religious focus than our own. The Middle Ages were especially known for way in which faith permeated the culture and daily experience. The Rose window to...

"....A federal appeals court said last year that such a “steady drumbeat” of Christian invocations violates the Constitution’s prohibition against government endorsement of religion...............After the lawsuit was threatened, the town made more of an effort — that’s how the Baha’i representative and the Wiccan got involved — but all agree that the overwhelming number of prayers offered over the approximately 10 years covered by the suit were offered by Christians, and most contained direct references to Christianity. When the case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, a unanimous panel of the court said it was not...

"Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics": In his latest book, Ross Douthat, a public intellectual and a Catholic, argues that “bad religion” poses a greater danger to our nation than does secularism. His book is divided into two parts: in the first he chronicles the decline of traditional Christianity since 1965; in the second he examines four heresies that have flourished since then.

OSLO, NORWAY: It may sound like an unlikely No. 1 best-seller for any country, but in Norway — one of the most secular nations in an increasingly godless Europe — the runaway popularity of the Bible has caught the country by surprise. The Scriptures, in a new Norwegian language version, even outpaced "Fifty Shades of Grey" to become Norway's best-selling book. The sudden burst of interest in God's word has also spread to the stage, with a six-hour play called "Bibelen," Norwegian for "the Bible," drawing 16,000 people in a three-month run that recently ended at one of Oslo's most...

Chesterton is perhaps the most articulate twentieth century practitioner of this Christian paradoxical imagination. He judges that a serious breakdown of the fundamental moral suppositions deposited by biblical faith and the classical tradition is underway and accelerating. He believes that this declension is due to a loss of conviction in our culture about the reality of the Incarnation, that God truly became a human being in Jesus Christ with all the import that that has for human existence. For Chesterton, the doctrine of the Incarnation is the hinge that holds together what is, for the Christian, a vision of the...

[(DIRECT LINK to original entry) This post is the intro to a compendium essay on liberal hate, demagoguery and violence in America. It is written to liberals in the first person, but is illuminating for conservatives as well.] Using guilt by historic association is a popular demagogic tool of contemporary liberals to demonize conservative opponents. As an example let’s examine the animus contemporary liberals have towards Christianity. Yes, of course, many liberals claim to be Christians, but they seem to have a hard time standing up for Christianity when it is demagogued by secular liberals. They often seem to be ashamed...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- A cadet quitting West Point less than six months before graduation says he could no longer be part of a culture that promotes prayers and religious activities and disrespects nonreligious cadets. Blake Page announced his decision to quit the U.S. Military Academy this week in a much-discussed online post that echoed the sentiments of soldiers and airmen at other military installations. The 24-year-old told The Associated Press that a determination this semester that he could not become an officer because of clinical depression played a role in his public protest against what he calls the unconstitutional...

NEW YORK –  For the first time in its history, the United States does not have a Protestant majority, according to a new study. One reason: The number of Americans with no religious affiliation is on the rise. The percentage of Protestant adults in the U.S. has reached a low of 48 percent, the first time that Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life has reported with certainty that the number has fallen below 50 percent. The drop has long been anticipated and comes at a time when no Protestants are on the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republicans have...

My father once told me a story about when he was a boy. He said there was a certain man who every now and again would visit his family and give him 10 cents for an ice cream soda each time. Well, one day this fellow came ‘a callin’, but for some reason, on this occasion the dime wasn’t offered. Being a little tyke who had become accustomed to the gift, my dad asked, “Where’s my 10 cents?” He never got that dime again. The man taught my father a moral lesson: Don’t develop a spirit of entitlement. It’s one...

Islamists seeking to define the character of Libya's tomorrow burst into the open Tuesday with charges that Libya's de facto prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril, a US-educated political scientist, is "worse than Qaddafi." On Tuesday - just one day after Libya's rebel leaders tried to assuage mounting fears in Western capitals it may be dragged under by Islamic currents - Ali al- Salabi, a prominent Islamist scholar, denounced Jibril and his allies as "extreme secularists" who seek to enrich themselves via "the deal of a lifetime." The National Transitional Council (NTC), headed by Jibril, is trying to establish itself in the...

Terrorist proclaimed himself 'Darwinian,' not 'Christian' Norwegian's manifesto shows Breivik not religious, having no personal faith WASHINGTON – A review of Anders Behring Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto shows the media's quick characterization of the Norwegian terrorist as a "Christian" may be as incorrect as it was to call Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh one. Breivik was arrested over the weekend, charged with a pair of brutal attacks in and near Oslo, Norway, including a bombing in the capital city that killed 7 and a shooting spree at a youth political retreat on the island of Utoya that killed more than 80...

While most Israelis worry about a prospective demographic imbalance between Jews and Arabs in the Land of Israel, with demographers claiming that, under current trends, Arabs will eventually outnumber Jews in the country, Professor Arnon Sofer of Haifa University says that there is a more realistic demographic change afoot. And while the notion of Arab births eventually causing Jews to become a minority in the Land of Israel is by no means accepted by all demographers, the imbalance Sofer speaks of – that between the diminishing of the secular Israeli population in the State of Israel and the growth of...

God is not doing very well these days. Here are four reasons why: The first is that increasingly large numbers of men and women attend university, and Western universities have become essentially secular (and leftist) seminaries. Just as the agenda of traditional Christian and Jewish seminaries is to produce religious Christians and religious Jews, the agenda of Western universities is to produce (left-wing) secularists. The difference is that Christian and Jewish seminaries are honest about their agenda, while the universities still claim they have neither a secularist nor a political agenda. The more university education a person receives, the more...

It seems like the religion in the U.S. is a juggernaut that will be nigh unstoppable in the next decade or two. It's seemingly impossible to get elected without being openly and devoutly religious. George Bush claimed to receive divine commandments on how to perform his job. President Obama has made his church attendance receives plenty of attention too. Some question his sincerity, but no one questions that this is the politically smart thing to do. George Bush famously said that Islam is a religion of peace despite all the evidence to the contrary. 40% of U.S. citizens are strict...

In June 2010, the deepening rift between Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) unexpectedly came to the public eye when seventy-two retired ambassadors and consul-generals issued a written statement protesting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan's lack of respect in dubbing them "mon chers" and criticizing the government's foreign policy. Why did the prime minister publicly snub his diplomats? By way of answering this question, this article reviews the ongoing rift between ErdoÄŸan and his diplomats before carrying an English translation of the ambassadors' statement and interviews with two retired senior diplomats. ...

During a House Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called Egypt's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood movement "largely secular." In response to questioning from Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) about the threat posed by the group, Clapper suggested that the Egyptian part of the Brotherhood is not particularly extreme and that the broader international movement is hard to generalize about. "The term 'Muslim Brotherhood'...is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam,"...

A man with a low IQ has been banned from having sex by a High Court judge who admitted the case raised questions about “civil liberties and personal autonomy”. Under the judge's order, the man is now subject to 'close supervision' by the local authority to ensure he does not break the highly unusual order The 41 year-old had been in a relationship with a man whom he lived with and told officials “it would make me feel happy” for it to continue. But his local council decided his “vigorous sex drive” was inappropriate and that with an IQ of...

My last column did its job. I was trying to highlight some of the reasons why conservative Christians are reluctant to join in the struggle against global jihad. And this is a problem, because–apart from Muslims, the only groups who are having children and passing along their beliefs almost undiluted to the next generation are conservative Christians and ultra-orthodox Jews (Snip) To be sure, in countries rich and poor, under all forms of government, birth rates are declining across the globe. But they are declining least among those adhering to strict religious codes and literal belief in the Bible

For Christian parents and students, this should be a matter of deep concern and active awareness. The secularization of most educational institutions is an accomplished fact. Indeed, many college and university campuses are deeply antagonistic to Christian truth claims and the beliefs held by millions of students and their families. Furthermore, the leftist bent of most faculty is well-documented, especially in elite institutions and within the liberal arts faculties. On many campuses, a significant number of faculty members are representatives of what has been called the “adversary culture.” They see their role as political and ideological, and they define their...