Free Republic

Beijing, China, Sep 23, 2019 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Christian churches in China have been ordered to take down displays of the Ten Commandments and replace them with quotes from Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to reports. According to Bitter Winter, a magazine covering religious liberty and human rights in China, churches belonging to the country’s state-run “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” Protestant denomination have been ordered to replace displays of the decalogue with sayings of the Chinese president. The new directive reportedly comes after Three-Self churches were initially told to remove the First Commandment, “You shall have no gods before me,”...

Christian artists Breanna Koski (L) and Joanna Duka say they cannot create art for events that celebrate same-sex marriage. | (Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom) A pair of Christian artists cannot be forced by a city ordinance to make wedding invitations for same-sex marriages, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday.In Brush & Nib v. City of Phoenix, Arizona’s highest court ruled that Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski, owners of Brush & Nib Studio, cannot be compelled by a local antidiscrimination ordinance to provide their services to same-sex weddings.Writing for the majority, Justice Andrew Gould concluded that the city of Phoenix “cannot...

"In the same week as the awful attack on the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand... more than two hundred Christians were killed in Nigeria. There was hardly any mention of the latter in the news. There were no marches for martyred Christians, no tolling of church bells ordered by governments, no 'Je suis Charlie' t-shirts... no public outrage at all." — Fr. Benedict Kiely, Crisis Magazine, September 4, 2019 NASA's satellites observed the Amazon fires, prompting world leaders to pledge to protect the rainforest. But the burning, chopping and murder of Christians is not tracked by satellites and their suffering...

Christian authors who once identified as gay or lesbian are highlighting the double standard Amazon is applying by removing their books from the platform while continuing to sell titles that promote pedophilia. Restored Hope Network Executive Director Anne Paulk and pastoral counselor Joe Dallas both saw their books removed from the retail giant. Amazon told some authors that their books, which detail how Jesus transformed their lives and sexual identities, were in "violation of our content guidelines." Paulk, the author of Restoring Sexual Identity: Hope for Women Who Struggle with Same-Sex Attraction, said in a statement to The Christian Post...

Earlier this week, I met with some Christian friends who have lived and worked in China for many years. What they shared with me was chilling and sobering. (They are well-connected and not simply airing personal opinions.) First, the crackdown against Christian believers in the country (not to mention the crackdown against Muslims and others, which we did not discuss in detail), is getting increasingly severe. Just a few years ago, there were real signs of change. Persecution was lessening and liberties were increasing. But not today. There is a systematic attempt to purge the Gospel from the nation. Even...

Earlier this week, I met with some Christian friends who have lived and worked in China for many years. What they shared with me was chilling and sobering. (They are well-connected and not simply airing personal opinions.) First, the crackdown against Christian believers in the country (not to mention the crackdown against Muslims and others, which we did not discuss in detail), is getting increasingly severe. Just a few years ago, there were real signs of change. Persecution was lessening and liberties were increasing. But not today. There is a systematic attempt to purge the gospel from the nation. Even...

Convert, pay or die. Five years ago, that was the "choice" the Islamic State (ISIS) gave to Christians in Mosul, then Iraq's third-largest city: either embrace Islam, submit to a religious tax or face the sword. ISIS then marked Christian houses with the Arabic letter Ù† (N), the first letter of the Arabic word "Nasrani" ("Nazarene," or "Christian") . Christians could often take no more than the clothes on their back and flee a city that had been home to Christians for 1,700 years. Two years ago, ISIS was defeated in Mosul and its Caliphate crushed. The extremists, however, had...

Pakistan: “Every year at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert to Islam” AUG 14, 2019 4:00 PM BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS The brutal persecution of young Christian girls in Pakistan is ongoing, and largely ignored by “feminists” and fake human rights activists, who call it “Islamophobic” to shed light on such atrocities: The Pontifical charity, Aid to the Church in Need, is sounding the alarm on the plight of young Christian women, and even teenagers, in Pakistan who are forced to convert to Islam. “Every year at least a thousand girls are kidnapped, raped, and forced...

Christian parents in China have shared how their schoolchildren are being taught that Christianity is an “evil cult” and encouraged to “hate God” as the officially atheist country continues to tighten its grip on religion. According to Chinese persecution watchdog Bitter Winter, since the Regulations on Religious Affairs legislation was implemented last year, schools around China have adopted “unprecedented measures” to keep students away from Christianity. Schools in China are government-controlled, and therefore Communist in ideology.The policy has resulted in difficult situations for families as children are encouraged to question the beliefs of family members and report those closest to...

Jordan is supposed to be their transit country; they are seeking resettlement to other countries via the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Australian Special Humanitarian Program. The registration with the UNHCR gives them the protective status of refugee as they await resettlement. Yet, the process of resettlement takes at minimum several months and sometimes even years due to the growing refugee backlog..... "The majority of those stuck in limbo have been waiting more than two years—some since the rise of ISIS in 2014," according to the report. "Since January, the process has become...

The Trump administration has honored an 83-year-old Muslim cleric from Nigeria who saved hundreds of Christians during a terror attack in 2018.Imam Abubakar Abdullahi, who saved the Christians after hiding them in his home and a mosque, was honored by The State Department in an awards ceremony on Wednesday for his actions on June 23, 2018.The incident occurred when "ethnic Fulani herdsmen, who are predominantly Muslim, launched attacks on ten villages in Barkin Ladi, killing hundreds of Christians."According to The State Department:

Facebook... posts may be able to predict whether someone will develop diabetes and other conditions including depression, anxiety, alcohol abuse, sexually-transmitted diseases, and drug abuse better than demographic information like age, sex, and race. People who often use the words “God” and “pray” in their Facebook posts are 15 times more likely to develop Type 2 diabetes than people who rarely use those terms on the platform, a new study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine finds. Raina Merchant, the lead author of the study and the director of Penn Medicine’s Center for Digital Health, said she didn’t...

Christian baker Jack Phillips of Colorado is facing a third lawsuit over his refusal on religious grounds to make certain cakes, the latest legal battle for the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner. Transgender woman Autumn Scardina filed a second lawsuit against Phillips last Wednesday in District Court for the city and county of Denver, Colorado. In the new lawsuit, Scardina claimed that Phillips violated Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act and Consumer Protection Act by refusing to bake what the plaintiff labeled a “birthday cake.” The “birthday cake” as described in the lawsuit, which was to be blue on the outside and pink on the...

In this great country, it's not a crime to be a Christian — at least not yet. But the Left is working on it. Free expression of religion is not just shunned. It is ridiculed and mocked. Anti-Christian bigotry is the only form of acceptable intolerance remaining in this country — to be encouraged and incited by our "tolerant" liberal friends in academia, the media, and entertainment. Christian principles were foundational to the American Republic. Yet what matters to the Left is silencing the Christian influence of this nation. The battle to destroy Christianity is really the battle to destroy...

Author, filmmaker, and lawyer Mike Cernovich said that a review of Google’s internal emails via the discovery process in an ongoing anti-discrimination lawsuit against the company will reveal its hatred of Christians and conservatives throughout its organization. He offered his remarks on Tuesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow. Marlow invited Cernovich’s comments on the latest developments in the aforementioned anti-discrimination class action lawsuit filed against Google. “This is actually fantastic news and a huge legal development,” replied Cernovich. “Maybe a lot of people don’t realize what discovery is. Discovery is a process whereby a lawyer...

For several decades, I have drawn attention to the Church’s historic persecution of the Jews in Jesus’ name. It is one of the ugliest and longest chapters in Church history, and it cannot be downplayed, forgotten, or ignored. With God’s help, I will continue to call out “Christian” antisemitism wherever I see it today. But I will not ignore Jewish persecution of Christians. It too must be called out. In the Gospels, Jesus and His followers, all of them Jews, were persecuted by hypocritical Jewish leaders, ultimately leading to the Lord’s death on the cross. And that pattern continued in...

Courts can't stop the corrosion of liberalism, but they can stop state-sponsored attacks on individuals. If a long Struggle Session couldn’t break Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop, I doubt another frivolous lawsuit will do the trick. Then again, the campaign to destroy Phillips’s business was never merely about punishing a single man for refusing to submit to prevailing leftist orthodoxy. It was also a warning to all would-be apostates that thought crimes could lead to fiscal ruin, public denunciation, and endless harassment. In that sense, the prosecution has probably already paid off. Courts won’t put to rest the...

Muslims destroying Christian crosses all over the world, and no one reports it June 10, 2019 (American Thinker) — A Muslim migrant in Rome recently stabbed a Christian man in the throat for wearing a crucifix around his neck. The assailant, a 37-year-old Moroccan, is accused of attempted homicide; "religious hate" is cited as an "aggravating factor" in the crime. This is hardly the first "religious hate" crime to occur in the context of the cross in Italy. Among others, A Muslim boy of African origin picked on, insulted, and eventually beat a 12-year-old girl during school because she too was wearing a...

ADF says court 'narrowly' interpreted 2018 Supreme Court decisionThe Washington Supreme Court has again ruled against Christian grandma florist Barronelle Stutzman who faces the risk of crippling fines for refusing to create floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding. The state’s highest court unanimously upheld its 2017 decision, leaving Stutzman on the hook to pay thousands in legal fees for violating the state’s non-discrimination law that protects on the basis of sexual orientation. The U.S. Supreme Court vacated the Washington court’s 2017 decision last June and sent the case back to the court for further consideration in light of the court’s...

Jacob Rudenstrand’s Stream article Friday on Christian refugees being denied asylum in Sweden and the United Kingdom is disturbing on multiple levels. These governments have taken on the authority to determine Christian doctrine. They’re deciding who counts as Christian. This is just wrong. In Britain, reports Rudenstrand, “the government quoted Bible verses” to argue that Christianity isn’t a religion of peace. In Sweden, officials regularly give asylum seekers “pop quizzes on theology to determine whether they are genuine believers.” Some of those questions have been so complex, “not even experienced pastors have been able to answer.” That’s bad. Worse yet,...