Free Republic

LAS VEGAS - Former President Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot in Tuesday's Republican presidential primary in the early voting state of Nevada. But his absence wasn't enough to help secure a victory for his last remaining major rival for the 2024 GOP nomination – Nikki Haley. Voters casting ballots in the state-run Republican nominating contest couldn't write in Trump's name, but they could vote for a "none of these candidates" option. And the Associated Press projected that the "none of these candidates" option would defeat Haley in a primary where no delegates to this summer's Republican convention were at...

"Why I Won't Acquiesce To Stupid" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prv06WbrvT4

Anyone out shopping yesterday notice more transvestites than usual? In my local WalMart I counted 5 definitely and maybe 7 and no I didn't go into the bathroom. In a good year I'll see maybe .75 total transvestites in this lily-white, upper-crust area Wal Mart in the Capital District of NY. No pictures as I'm awful with my phone/camera and being sneaky. I realize evidence is crucial to the believability of this event and I am sorry, and that's why I'm wondering anyone else saw this. It looked like an organized event, or maybe the bus of a traveling Drag...

Top IRS officials specifically targeted tea party groups and misled the public about its secret political targeting program led by ex-official Lois Lerner, according to a bombshell new congressional report. The Daily Caller has obtained an advance copy of a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report set to be released Tuesday morning that definitively proves malicious intent by the IRS to improperly block conservative groups that an IRS adviser deemed “icky.” (That’s right. “Icky.”) “The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS’s targeting of conservative applicants,” the Oversight...

WASHINGTON – An openly transgender Episcopal priest is set to preach at Washington National Cathedral. The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, the Episcopal chaplain at Boston University, will be a guest preacher on Sunday. He'll be the first openly transgender priest to preach from Canterbury Pulpit at the cathedral.

Well, that didn't take long. As my colleague Edward Malnick reports, the first gay Church of England priest – a canon, no less – today married his boyfriend. Canon Jeremy Pemberton, 58, a divorced hospital chaplain and father of five, wed his long-term partner Laurence Cunnington, 51. We're not told where, but obviously it wasn't in an C of E church. That's against the law. But they may well be able to have their marriage blessed in church because that's only "against the rules" as opposed to illegal.Campaigners predicted that Canon Pemberton would be the first of many. I think they're...

(I received this the other day. It's written by Pastor Tom Brock) -Today I walked through my old alma mater, Luther Theological Seminary in St Paul, Mn. It is known as probably the most conservative of the ELCA seminaries. You wouldn’t know it from the number of gay/lesbian bumper stickers in the parking lot. Upon entering the main building a sign was up promoting a new book at Luther’s Bookstore, “Pastrix” by ELCA Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. She was a favorite speaker at the ELCA Youth Assembly and a few months ago spoke at the historic Central Lutheran Church in downtown...

Since shortly after its formation in 1988 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has been fixated on deviant sexual behavior, culminating in the endorsement of homosexual pastors in 2009, homosexual “marriage” in 2011, and the election last month of their first homosexual bishop. Dr. James Nestingen, a highly respected scholar and retired ELCA seminary professor, recently concluded that promoting acceptance of deviant sexual behavior has actually replaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the primary mission and message of the ELCA. Those within the ELCA demanding these radical changes asserted it is necessary for the ELCA’s very survival. Supposedly, they...

My dear Wormwood, The collective heads of the Hades High Council is positively spinning with all the news of these foolish earthlings in their desire to find peace, harmony, love and "why can't we all get along" interfaith notions. Their compromises over pansexual behavior have to be one of the single greatest triumphs of the 21st Century. Our Father had to be dragged away from a round of bishop bashing just to hear the good news. Now that both the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have succumbed to the notion of civil partnerships while condemning gay marriage is of course...

What started off as a rocky relationship between the Episcopal and Roman Catholic bishops of San Francisco got even worse on Thursday (Oct. 4) when Episcopal Bishop Marc Andrus said he was denied entrance to the installation Mass of the new Roman Catholic archbishop. Andrus said he arrived at St. Mary's Cathedral 30 minutes before the installation Mass of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was scheduled to start, but was kept in a holding area with an employee of the Catholic archdiocese until after the service started. After other local clergy had processed in for the 2 p.m. Mass, Andrus said the...

Commentators at the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times may decry the Episcopal Church as a place offering pet funerals but nothing for the faithful or failing to provide anything one cannot get from purely secular liberalism. These traditionalists appear to bemoan the loss of a 1950s-era church that promoted an Eisenhower-era civil religion replete with the cross draped in the American flag. While they wax nostalgia over a past that largely existed only in TV Land,.the Episcopal Church made history at its 77th triennial General Convention by passing two gender nondiscrimination resolutions. Led by a grassroots coalition...

New numbers reveal that the collapse of the Episcopal Church dramatically accelerated in the last ten years. The denomination is literally falling apart, with attendance down 25% between 2000 and 2010. For a link to the PDF file with the numbers, and for Rod Dreher’s comments on them, look here; but it’s important to note that the effect of these numbers on the life and the well being of local churches is even greater than the raw figures might suggest. Many mainline Protestant congregations today are stuck with an infrastructure built in the 1950s and 1960s. There are buildings to...

Two days after he was consecrated as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida, Gregory Brewer was marching Monday with the crowd demanding justice for Trayvon Martin. He was the only white clergyman to address the Sanford City Commission inside the Civic Center that evening, urging city leaders to address the concerns of the black community. "I thought it was very courageous," said Andy Searles, a pastor with Aloma United Methodist Church in Winter Park. "It would have been very easy for him to sit in his office and organize the paperwork on his desk, but he made a...

A jettisoning of the faith, one mis-action at a timeLittle by little, the foundation of faith in The Episcopal Church is being reduced to ruins and the once grand colonial church of the Reformation is being progressively transformed into a social action agency. The latest proposed element to chip away at core Anglican beliefs is the Diocese of East Oregon's desire to offer Holy Communion to anyone who approaches the altar rail with their hands upraised. Baptism would not be a prerequisite. The Diocese of East Oregon has made it a matter of Communion without Baptism. Apparently, it was the...

Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, president and dean of the Episcopal Divinity Church, testified at a House hearing on March 8, 2012 against a bill that would make it a federal crime to transport minor girls without parental consent across state lines to get an abortion. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr) (CNSNews.com) – Were Congress to outlaw the transporting of a minor without her parents’ permission across state lines to get an abortion, an abortion- and gay-rights activist testifying on Capitol Hill Thursday she would break the law to continue to help girls end their pregnancies.Appearing as a Democratic Party witness at a...

Berwyn, IL — After years of declining membership, two Lutheran churches in Berwyn recently were forced to merge. While the new church faces many issues as it struggles to adapt to modern society, no one seems to have any qualms about the new pastor, the Rev. Julie Boleyn, who was ordained Jan. 14. Calm, charismatic and serene in the strength of her faith, Boleyn also is the first lesbian to be ordained in the Greater Metropolitan Chicago Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. For several years, both the United Berwyn Lutheran Church and the First Lutheran Church of...

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...

Pro-gay activists have launched a boycott of an Iowa baker who declined to create a wedding cake for a lesbian couple based on her religious beliefs. Victoria Childress, the owner of Victoria’s Cake Cottage in Des Moines, has been accused of being anti-gay, homophobic, and a bigot after she refused to make a cake for Trina Vodraska and Janelle Sievers. Childress told Fox News & Commentary that she made five cakes for the couple to taste – unaware that they were lesbians. “She introduced herself, and I said, ‘Is this your sister?’” Childress said. “She said, ‘No. This is my...

This is no nursery rhyme but rather the cast of characters lining up to appear at the 2012 Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly meeting in Pittsburgh. ACT I: An assault on marriageThe chameleon:  This character will attempt to lead commissioners to see marriage differently than the Church has historically defined it. Separating marriage from the Biblical narrative of creation and the Biblical witness of Jesus' affirmation between one man and one woman, the assembly will be asked to see a "new normal" that is inclusive of gay marriage. Presented plainly, the redefinition of marriage will arrive at the assembly through...

One of the oldest Presbyterian churches in Syracuse — First Presbyterian Church United – this month decided it will close in April 2012. The Near West Side church, founded in 1826 and located at 620 W. Genesee St. since 1904, will have its last service on Easter, April 8, 2012. The church has been steadily losing members over the years and is financially strapped, said Nancy Wind, associate for congregational life at the church. There are about 100 church members; of those about 40 attend worship services, she said. “We’ve been running a deficit budget for at least a decade...