Free Republic

Speaking of his faith, Mr. Carter said in his career as a politician he never ran across "any really serious conflicts between my political obligations and my religious faith." Asked about gay marriage, he replied that it is "no problem with me. I think everybody should have a right to get married regardless of their sex." Regarding whether he thinks Jesus would approve of gay marriage, Carter replied "I don’t have any verse in Scripture," but added, "I believe that Jesus would approve of gay marriage." "I think Jesus would encourage any love affair if it was honest and sincere...

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, June 27, 2018, (LifeSiteNews) – The Archdiocese of Albuquerque is currently hosting a conference run by a dissident priest organization with the full support of Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester. The conference, put on by the Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP), is in full swing until June 28. It features Archbishop Wester as its Episcopal Moderator. AUSCP has advocated for homosexuals to be admitted to the priesthood contrary to Church teaching, championed the ordination of married men, and pressed for the ordination of women to the diaconate. The AUSCP is part of an “international coalition...

I heard a tragic story recently, some of the very bad fruit coming from Rob Bell's book Love Wins. (This was Bell's hell-denying book in which he effectively announced his apostasy from evangelical faith.) In light of a growing epidemic of deception in the Church today, a deception that is making people deaf to divine warnings, it seemed that now was a good time to share the story.Earlier this year, a university student was responding to my lecture on God's love for the LGBT community during a time of Q&A. He tried to undermine the authority of the Scriptures and...

Christ Church Cathedral put up the display at their lawn on Monument Circle overnight. It shows statues of Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a cage. “On our lawn tonight we placed The Holy Family…in #ICE detention,” the church wrote on its Twitter page. The display has a sign saying #EveryFamilyIsHoly and its Spanish equivalent, #CadaFamiliaEsSagrada.

LEXINGTON, Kentucky, July 3, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A Catholic church in the heart of Appalachia has attracted media attention for the Gay Pride Month banner stretched across its front lawn. The local ordinary, Bishop John Stowe, has a record of collaborating with a group that rejects Catholic moral teaching, and his spokesperson says individual parishes may decide if they want to promote the homosexual cause. The rainbow banner in front of St. Paul’s parish in Lexington, Kentucky proclaims: LGBTQ+ CATHOLIC FAMILY, FRIENDS & ALLIES ALL ARE WELCOME “Making this kind of statement is a decision a spokesperson for the Diocese of Lexington says is up...

"... last April the “the U.S. Catholic bishops submitted a brief to the Supreme Court declaring that President Donald Trump’s ban on migration from five Muslim countries was ‘blatant religious discrimination.’” Is it really? And do the U.S. Catholic bishops feel any obligation to support measures that would protect Americans from jihad attacks? Apparently not. The message that the bishops are sending to Americans is simple: drop dead. The U.S. Catholic bishops appear to be absolutely unconcerned about the following facts: Somali Muslim migrant Mohammad Barry in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab...

LOS ANGELES – A coalition of religious leaders and black pastors in Los Angeles will hold a press conference at 3 p.m. on Monday, July 2, 2018 in front of the office of Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), located at 10124 South Broadway in Los Angeles. The coalition (Pastors in Soladarity) is being organized by Pastor Shane B. Scott, who is a senior pastor at the Macedonia Baptist Church. At the press conference, the pastors will show support for Congresswoman Waters, who has received criticism from the White House as well as death threats for her call to publically confront White...

A Catholic church in Lexington is making a statement that's getting attention. St. Paul Catholic Church on W. Short Street put up a banner letting members and supporters of the LGBTQ community know they are welcome at their church. "This is a church that's open to all people and hopefully, this sign gets that across," said Stan "JR" Zerkowski, facilitator of Catholic LGBT ministry. The sign reads, "LGBTQ+ Catholic - Family, Friends & Allies - All Are Welcome." The banner has been up for weeks and will continue to stay up through Lexington's Pride Festival.

While some of the most notable commands from God are “you shall have no other gods before me” and “you shall not murder,” it seems that evangelical historian John Fea has discovered another divine decree: “thou shalt not vote for Donald Trump.” On June 24th, The Atlantic published an article by Fea with the headline “Evangelical Fear Elected Trump.” In the piece, Fea, the author of the book Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, offered his explanation for why 81% of evangelicals voted for the current president – and claimed that the “fear” which motivated his fellow believers...

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders urged religious groups on Monday to "open their doors" to undocumented families, after several prominent conservative evangelicals criticized the Trump administration for separating children from their parents at the border. "I think any evangelical, or any church for that matter, that feels strongly about that, should open their doors and facilitate some of these individuals," Sanders told reporters during a tense late afternoon briefing. "That’s their calling, and if they want to change the laws they should call their members of Congress," she added.

More than 600 members of the United Methodist Church signed on to a letter Monday condemning Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the Trump administration's policy of separating migrant parents and children at the U.S. border. In the letter, the group of churchgoers, including clergy and church leadership, accuse Sessions of child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of the doctrine of the United Methodist Church. They note in the letter that Sessions is a member of Ashland Place United Methodist Church, in Mobile, Ala.

Over 16,000 pro-life Christians have recently signed a petition asking that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge be protected from drilling. The reason we are speaking out is because we are "called by God to be a steward of America's majesty." And the Arctic Refuge is one of the most majestic places in our nation. Unfortunately, the Arctic Refuge has never been more imperiled. After four decades of attempts, last year drilling proponents succeeded in attaching an amendment allowing drilling to a must-pass spending bill. Even past staunch Republican defenders of the Arctic Refuge voted the wrong way this time. Before...

America’s largest Protestant group moves to cut ties with the Republican Party and re-engage with mainstream culture. It was immediately clear that change was afoot in Dallas. I’ve attended the annual gatherings of the Southern Baptist Convention dozens of times, but walking around the convention center this week, I was struck by how unfamiliar it all felt. When I was a child, the convention hall was a sea of silver combovers and smelled of denture paste. While the older, more traditionalist crowd was still present in Dallas, the younger, fresh-faced attendees now predominated. “The generational shift happening in the SBC...

We live in times where moral ambiguity can have devastating and even deadly consequences. When it comes to the reality of climate change, there is no ambiguity of the disastrous impact of human degradation of the planet. Just in the past two weeks, a Harvard University study estimates that over 4,500 lives were lost as a consequence of Hurricane Maria. Well over a decade following Hurricane Katrina, white New Orleans has recovered; black New Orleans has not. See a pattern here? The devastating effects of climate change are undeniable, as is this disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable communities throughout...

The Minnesota Conference of the United Methodist Church has removed the term, ‘Father,’ from the Apostle’s Creed in an attempt to be more gender inclusive to God. The ancient creed of the Christian Church reads: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. However, United Methodists in the Minnesota Conference decided that referring to God as “Father” wasn’t inclusive...

The night before Shane Claiborne came to town to preach at a Christian revival, he received a letter from the chief of police at Liberty University warning that if he set foot on the property, he would be arrested for trespassing and face up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine....to the leaders of Liberty, he was a menace to their campus. He and his national network of liberal evangelicals, called the Red Letter Christians, were holding a revival meeting to protest in Liberty’s backyard. Their target: Jerry Falwell Jr., Liberty’s president and a man who has played...

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) cut relational and financial ties with the D.C. Baptist Convention (DCBC) for refusing to disfellowship a church with two lesbian pastors. The Executive Committee of the SBC issued a warning to the DCBC in February in which the D.C. convention was given 90 days to remove any church in its fellowship that “practice affirming, approving or endorsing homosexual behavior,” according to Baptist Press. The executive committee gave the warning specifically with regard to Calvary Baptist Church, which affirmed a lesbian couple as co-pastors in 2017, according to Juicy Ecumenism. The D.C. Baptist Convention failed to...

Bishop Michael Curry is using the attention he received while presiding over the Royal Wedding to lead a new anti-Trump protest. According to sources, Curry and other Chrisitan leaders will host a candlelight vigil to protest the “dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches” — crises that put “the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith” at stake. The event will kick off with a church service beforehand right in front of Lafayette Square, which is across the street from the White House. Who’s going?

Pope Francis has reportedly told a gay man that "God made you that way and loves you as you are," apparently pushing the pontiff's acceptance of homosexuality to a new level. Francis made the comments to Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean victim of priestly sexual abuse who recently spent days with the pope at the Vatican to discuss his ordeal as the pontiff moves to tackle decades of coverups and ostracism of victims in the Chilean church, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. Cruz was quoted as having discussed his homosexuality with Francis. "He told me: 'Juan Carlos, I...

A survivor of clerical sexual abuse has said Pope Francis told him that God had made him gay and loved him, in arguably the most strikingly accepting comments about homosexuality to be uttered by the leader of the Roman Catholic church. Juan Carlos Cruz, who spoke privately with the pope two weeks ago about the abuse he suffered at the hands of one of Chile’s most notorious paedophiles, said the issue of his sexuality had arisen because some of the Latin American country’s bishops had sought to depict him as a pervert as they accused him of lying about the...