Free Republic

Mary T. Cocaine, the matriarch of Table Talk Pies who played “an influential role in the growth and success” of the iconic Worcester business, has died, officials said Friday. Cocaine died at home on Oct. 6, surrounded by family. She was 94 years and was predeceased by her husband of 68 years, Christo Cocaine, according to a spokesman for Table Talk. Born in Worcester in 1927, Cocaine was the daughter of Theodore Tonna, one of the founders of Table Talk Pies. She was the oldest of seven children. She graduated from The Bancroft School and attended Wheaton College. Cocaine married...

Four student evangelists from Wheaton College in Illinois are suing the Chicago city government over a set of rules that they say are restricting their freedom of speech and religion at a popular park. The students are members of the Chicago Evangelism Team sponsored by the Office of Christian Outreach at Wheaton College, an evangelical institution based in the Chicago suburbs. The students contend they have faced opposition and at times have been prohibited by security from evangelizing at Millennium Park, a 24-acre downtown venue that hosts a range of activities including concerts, theatre, dance performances, art shows, and nature...

An African-American pro-life speaker recently spoke at a Midwestern college and several members of the school’s student government declared the speaker “had made many students, staff, and faculty of color feel unheard, underrepresented, and unsafe on our campus.” On America’s politicized campuses, that hardly is news. However, these were not students at some notoriously leftist school like Oberlin; they were students at Wheaton College in Illinois, a well-known Christian college. Wheaton was the alma mater of the late evangelist Billy Graham along with three missionaries famously martyred in Ecuador in 1956. But today, a pro-life viewpoint that supposedly is common...

This is the tale of two lectures at Wheaton College, a Christian evangelical college in the suburbs of Chicago. One was given in September 2017 and the other in November 2018. Though only a year apart, the responses to the two presentations were universes apart. The reaction is very telling and tragic for those who believe that a Christian education is different than a secular one.The first speech (listen to excerpts here) was given by Dr. George Yancy, a philosophy professor at Emory University (huge thanks to Jamie Dean at World Magazine for an excellent article on this and uncovering...

For Christ and His Kingdom. That’s the motto featured prominently throughout Wheaton College.But what happens when it’s not about Christ or His Kingdom?I found that out recently after being invited by Wheaton College Republicans to speak on something I’m deeply familiar with—abortion and race. As someone conceived in rape yet adopted and loved into a multiracial family of 15, I have a rather unique take on this. I love actual diversity. As a biracial individual, it's literally in my blood.I presented a multimedia talk entitled: “Black Lives Matter In and Out of the Womb” (see video) which provided a perspective that is...

"No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other." (Matthew 6:24) The verse refers to money, but in light of today's debate about the unaccountable devotion many Christian leaders have for President Trump it is not a stretch to apply it to their relationship with him. Last week at Wheaton College in Illinois a number of Christian pastors and leaders gathered to discuss the future of "evangelicalism" in the Trump era. Some who were not there claimed it was a forum...

The U.S. Department of Education published Friday a list of faith-based colleges and universities that requested and were granted a religious exemption from Title IX. LGBT activist groups have been calling on the government to publish the list as part of a shaming campaign called the "Shame List" to pressure Christian colleges to consent to their agenda. The document reveals that an increasing number of colleges are seeking exemptions, and that evangelical Wheaton College is not on the list. As of April 1, as many as 232 colleges have obtained exemption from Title IX while 31 requests are pending, according...

Islam teaches that Christians and Muslims worship the same god, the head of The Center on American-Islamic Relations wrote last week in defense of a suspended Wheaton College professor who asserted that notion on Facebook in December. In an op-ed condemning the Illinois Evangelical higher education institution for suspending and attempting to fire political science professor Dr. Larycia Hawkins for asserting that Christians and Muslims worship the same deity, CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad argued that the school's belief that the two religions don't worship the same God displays a level of "ignorance." "It is clear that Wheaton College has...

Wheaton College said Saturday the evangelical school and professor Larycia Hawkins have "found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation" and "have reached a confidential agreement under which they will part ways" after they disagreed over her remarks that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. "Wheaton College sincerely appreciates Dr. Hawkins' contributions to this institution over the last nine years," Wheaton College President Dr. Philip Graham Ryken said in a statement posted on Wheaton College's website and also released by Arise Chicago on behalf of Hawkins. "We are grateful for her passionate teaching, scholarship, community service and mentorship of...

A political science professor from Wheaton College, a small Christian school outside of Chicago, who wore a hijab to proclaim her "solidarity" with Muslims, has "found a mutual place of resolution and reconciliation" with the school and the two will part ways. Larycia Hawkins also said that her gesture was an acknowledgment that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. After recommending that she be fired, the college's Provost withdrew his request and turned the matter over to the college president who reached the confidential agreement with Hawkins that has led to her leaving the school without being fired. CLTV:...

Do Muslims And Christians Worship The Same God? College Suspends Professor Who Said Yes. Resize Text Print Article Comments 2324 By Kirkland An December 16 In this Dec. 13, 2015 photo, Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor of political science at Wheaton College, a private evangelical school in Wheaton, Ill., wears a hijab at a church service in Chicago. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune via AP) Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois, has placed a professor on administrative leave after she posted on Facebook that Muslims and Christians “worship the same God.” The official school statement Tuesday about associate professor of...

CHICAGO (CBS) — A Wheaton College professor who recently started wearing a hijab in a show of support for Muslims, has been suspended by the evangelical Christian school, after stating on Facebook that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Tenured associate professor Larycia Hawkins is a Christian, but wrote on Facebook on Dec. 10 that she decided to wear a hijab during Advent to stand in solidarity with Muslims and what they’ve endured in this country.

Due to an objection with an Affordable Care Act mandate that requires health insurance plans to offer base birth control, Wheaton College has announced that it will no longer offer health insurance to its students to avoid conflicting with the institution's Christian convictions. The decision, announced to its students on July 10, effectively strips about a quarter of the suburban Chicago non-denominational liberal arts school's undergraduate and graduate students of their health care plans, which is about 700-plus individuals. As one of the most contested aspects of Obamacare has been the requirement for health insurance plans to provide birth control...

Wheaton College, the prominent Evangelical alma mater of former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Sunday that it had removed his name from a center named after him since his scandalous indictment for illegally transferring funds to dodge the IRS and lying to the FBI. Reports surfaced last week alleging that Hastert had sexually molested a male victim to whom he recently paid hush money in violation of federal banking laws, according to a federal law enforcement official briefed on the case. The 73-year-old Wheaton graduate was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury that charged that he had violated...

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education argues that accreditation ought to be denied to Christian colleges that require professors to sign statements of faith or otherwise “draw lines around what is regarded as acceptable teaching and research.” This seems like an obvious next step in the current march of secular intolerance, so I expect we’ll be hearing more arguments like this in the future: ** Why does accreditation matter? Aside from the traditional goal of conferring legitimacy on colleges and their programs, accreditation has taken on a far more consequential role: Students attending institutions that are not accredited...

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, a professor recently argued that Wheaton College’s accreditation, as well as that of several other religious colleges, should be revoked on the grounds that the schools’ required statements of faith violate academic freedom. I write not merely to defend Wheaton’s right to exist, but to express my gratitude that it does exist. Wheaton is an Evangelical Christian college in Illinois that houses the C. S. Lewis papers. I went there recently for a dialogue on C. S. Lewis and reading carefully, even reverently. While I am neither specifically Evangelical, like Wheaton, nor a...

Conservative Christians have generally been known for their enthusiastic support for the Jewish state. But a new movement of young activists is seeking to change that.In 2010, a film was released that perfectly encapsulated the erosion of Evangelical Christian support for Israel. The film, With God on Our Side, featured a young man learning about the Palestinian struggle and coming to see Israel not as evidence of God’s faithfulness, but as a mean and heartless nation enabled by American Evangelicals who have embraced Zionist ideology. The film’s narrative of peace-loving Palestinians mistreated by heartless Israelis and their Christian Zionist supporters...

When religion goes, other religions take its place. They mimic the forms and formalities of it without the substance. They are faiths without any gods but themselves and without any devils but themselves. Confronted with the religious horror of abortion, the post-religious faiths of the free world act out a godless religious drama in which they take turns playing all the old religious roles without the religion. The most pernicious of these is the martyr to the morally superior high ground of humanism. Faced with imagined violence, they retreat into a universalism that no one else shares. "We feel your...

Supreme Court Sides With Christian College In Birth Control Case The three female justices say their colleagues are reversing themselves from this week’s Hobby Lobby ruling. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP) BY ROBERT BARNES July 3 The three female justices of the Supreme Court sharply rebuked their colleagues Thursday for siding with a Christian college in the latest battle over providing women with contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act, saying the court was retreating from assurances offered only days ago. In a short, unsigned opinion, the court said that Wheaton College in Illinois, at least temporarily, does not have to comply...

Thursday, July 8, 2010 A former congressman pleaded guilty Wednesday to serving as an unregistered agent in Washington for a Missouri-based Islamic charity that the federal government said had ties to international terrorism. It was an odd outcome for Mark D. Siljander, who said he wanted to help bridge the gulf between Muslims and Christians. A Republican who attained one of Michigan's congressional seats from 1981 to 1987 with assistance from the Moral Majority, Siljander was outspoken about conservative social issues. Siljander confirmed in a Kansas City, Mo., court that he contacted members of Congress in an effort to lift...