Free Republic

I used to be one of those people who argued with the talking heads on television. I was a political junkie from my earliest days, so there I would be on a Saturday morning, thanking Bill Buckley on the other side of the screen for correcting his "Firing Line" guest's wayward thinking or telling Eleanor Clift on "The McLaughlin Group" that there is another way to think about things (as if she didn't know that on her own, or, well, could hear me). Over the years, I've gotten a lot more peaceful about things and watch a lot less television....

One of our most popular videos encourages pastors to speak out more on moral and cultural issues. And a poll I recently conducted on Twitter confirmed that congregants want their leaders to be more vocal on cultural and even political issues. But what is a proper balance? What should our priorities be as preachers of the Word and shepherds of the flock? Most pastors would say, “My calling is to preach and teach the Scriptures, not to be a cultural commentator.” To a certain extent, that is true. But it is also overstated. After all, doesn’t the Bible itself comment...

This weekend, we celebrate the founding of the greatest nation in the world. We honor the men and women who dedicated—and often sacrificed—their lives to create the land of the free and home of the brave and have defended it for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. I love this country. I join you in celebrating it. But I find myself asking: Is America still the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or is our nation dangerously adrift on a sea of complacency and immorality? Too often we are content to think only of our families and ourselves, ignoring...

From the very beginning of our country, faith played a key role in shaping our culture and our country. Unlike many countries, the founders did not want to establish any state religion. Such a commitment would have created an obstacle to the union they were working to create. But the founders never imagined that America would evolve to a point where churches would be closed while pot stores, liquor stores, and abortion clinics would be seen as more essential to be open during our coronavirus lockdown than churches. Since our country’s founding through the World War era, the importance of...

What a stark contrast I beheld this week between our Lyin’ King President, Barack Obama, and our American treasure, the Reverend Billy Graham. Watching the ninety-five-year-old Graham’s final message to America via the Fox News Channel last Thursday night hammered me in three particular ways. First off, as a self-professed hard-ass, I must admit that I was choked up by the testimonies of transformed lives of the black gent and the suicidal female twenty-something. Matter of fact, and I hate to admit this, I even started to tear up a bit and I haven’t teared up since my dad and...

Those attending the Family Research Council’s most recent Values Voter Summit heard a lot about religious liberty -- and with good reason. In ways both large and small, that cornerstone of freedom has found itself under attack at home and abroad. All Americans should be concerned about its well-being. Religious liberty is as characteristic of America as our democratic political system and our free-market economy. Nowhere in the world is there more religious diversity, with all manner of faiths existing in relative harmony in the same neighborhoods, and with different houses of worship sharing the same streets in many...

The surgeon general of the United States needn't be a surgeon. And he may be a general -- or admiral -- only in name. The rank is essentially a civil office -- despite the dress whites and gold braid. Indeed, it was largely an honorary title before Ronald Reagan chose a physician by the name of C. Everett Koop for the appointment. Dr. Koop, who died this week at the grand old age of 96, was indeed a surgeon and a fine one (his specialty was pediatric surgery at Children's in Philadelphia) and he soon became a household name. And...

The jig is up. The news is out. Pastors across America have called the left’s bluff. The empty words “separation of church and state” – a phrase found nowhere in the U.S. Constitution – have lost their sting. Yes, “separation” still applies, but only insofar as it requires the state to remain separate from the church. That is to say, that government not interfere with the free exercise of either speech or religion. For decades, hard-left anti-theist groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way (PFAW) and Barry Lynn’s Americans United (AU) have employed a cynical disinformation scheme...

On Sunday, C-Span 2 featured former three-term republican Senator, John Danforth, to talk to Chris Haynes of the First Amendment Center, to discuss his new book entitled “Faith and Politics” that assails what he sees as the sinister dominance of the apocryphal “religious right” within the Republican Party. It was noted and discussed that he is an “ordained Episcopal priest.” Ann Coulter has already made an observation that most people accept that the Episcopal Church is “barely a church.” They have homosexual marriages, homosexual priests, homosexual bishops, and it represents one of the decaying mainline denominations that have surrendered and...