U.S. Representative Don Beyer (D-VA-08) reportedly compared President Joe Biden to Jesus Christ during a Tuesday fundraising event in McLean, Virginia, drawing similarities between the suffering Jesus experienced when crucified to the various political and personal tragedies of the president’s life.
Beyer apparently “invoked the crucifixion of Jesus” during the fundraising event, according to The Washington Free Beacon.
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The Lino Lakes City Council has voted 4-1 to postpone development of a new residential community centered around a mosque, with a final vote to decide the moratorium coming on July 8.
The development, with the proposed name of “Madinah Lakes,” was slated to cover 156 acres in Lino Lakes’ northwest quadrant. 434 housing units, businesses, and a grocery store, along with the $15 million, 40,000 square foot mosque at its center, were to be built on an area formerly dedicated to sod farming. The community was specifically marketed as “Masjid-Centric” in reference to the mosque.
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The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the approval of what would have been the nation’s first publicly-funded religious school was unconstitutional, according to court records.
Oklahoma’s Virtual Charter School Board voted to approve an application for a virtual religious charter school in June 2023, prompting state Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond to file a lawsuit in October to block the funding, calling it “an irreparable violation of our individual religious liberty” and “an unthinkable waste of our tax dollars.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court ultimately sided with Drummond on Tuesday, finding that “under Oklahoma law, a charter school is a public school” and that “as such, a charter school must be nonsectarian,” per court filings.
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A new study by Catholic market research company Vinea Research found that belief in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is greater than a 2019 Pew Research study previously estimated.
Pew Research had found that 69 percent of U.S. Catholics personally believe that “the bread and wine used in Communion ‘are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.’” By contrast, only 31 percent of Catholics said that they believe that “the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”
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The Southern Baptist Convention voted Wednesday against enshrining a ban on churches with female pastors.
While 61% of those who voted supported the ban, it needed a two-thirds majority to pass, according to CNN. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest protestant denomination in the U.S. and held its annual meeting in Indianapolis.
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You may have heard that, early last year, the FBI issued a memo targeting Catholics—specifically “radical traditional Catholics”—that relied on the work of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center. The FBI rushed to rescind the memo on Catholics after a whistleblower published it and The Daily Signal demanded answers.
This week, the SPLC released its annual list of “hate groups” and the “radical traditional Catholic” category remains.
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost wants to stop the sale of ancient Jewish texts and books at the nation’s first permanent Jewish institution of higher learning in Cincinnati.
Yost filed for a temporary restraining order to prevent Hebrew Union College from selling copies of the Talmud and other ancient books after the school expressed interest in parting with them to offset growing deficits.
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The Pope declared that a London-born teenager who died of leukemia in 2006 is qualified to become the first millennial saint.
Carlo Acutis posted about the teachings of the Catholic church online and reportedly became known as “God’s influencer.”
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On Sunday, a Catholic monk in the United States claimed that he is now “transgender.”
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CVS Health Corporation settled with nurse practitioner Robyn Strader after she sued the company after it stopped providing religious accommodations regarding “pregnancy prevention services.”
Strader said she had been granted a religious exemption for six years permitting her to not prescribe contraceptives, and filed the lawsuit in January 2023 after having been fired following the policy change in 2021, according to the press release. First Liberty Institute, which represented Strader, announced Monday that CVS had agreed to a settlement of which the terms “were not made public.”
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Pope Francis has appointed a priest who is a native of Tennessee to become the next Bishop of Knoxville.
“Pope Francis has appointed Reverend James Mark Beckman, as Bishop of Knoxville,” according to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “Bishop-elect Beckman is a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, and currently serves as pastor of Saint Henry parish in Nashville, Tennessee. The appointment was publicized in Washington, D.C. on May 7, 2024, by Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States.”
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The delegates are also expected to vote on whether to replace its “Social Principles” document with one that changes the definition of marriage from being between a man and a woman to a union between “two people of faith.” It would also remove a line in the document that considers the practice of homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching.”
United Methodist delegates voted to remove a ban on members of the LGBTQ community serving as clergy members on Wednesday, ending decades of controversy around the issue.
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Matt Giffin, a reporter at The Tennessee Star, and Michael Patrick Leahy, editor-in-chief and CEO of The Star, discussed a recent segment from Steve Bannon’s War Room where host Bannon explained how leftist Christians deceptively cherry-pick elements from the Gospel to push a socialist agenda.
Bannon specifically used Jim Wallis, founder of the non-profit, faith-based organization Sojourners and author of The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Re-founding Democracy, as an example of those using selective elements from the Gospel to paint Jesus as a social justice warrior.
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You may not get any chocolate bunnies this Easter, but you’re bound to stumble across an article or meme suggesting that the story of Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead is just a reincarnation of some pagan myth. Whether it’s Ishtar, Osiris, or Attis, these claims are tantalizing but devoid of scholarly content–much like the sugar rush of the chocolate bunny, with its deficit of actual nourishment.
Claims like these are at least as old as James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, published in 1890. However, they circulate routinely in new packaging. Unfortunately, the public tends to remain ignorant of the results of alternative scholarship. Sensationalism (like sex) sells. So does controversy. And when the sensation or the controversy revolves around beliefs that millions believe in whole-heartedly, sorting fact from fiction becomes increasingly difficult.
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A lawsuit brought by religious and faith-based organizations against Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares was settled on Monday, with the parties forming a settlement that drops a requirement for the groups to hire non-Christians.
The conclusion of Cavalry Road Baptist Church v. Miyares was announced by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), whose attorneys represented two Virginia churches, three Christian schools and a pregnancy center network.
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On International Women’s Day, March 8, Angel Studios’ latest film, Cabrini, was released in theaters across America. The movie tells the incredible true story of the first American saint, St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, and her mission to help vulnerable, impoverished, and destitute immigrants in the United States.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, millions of Italian immigrants came to America, most through Ellis Island, in search of their American dream. But many who journeyed in search of opportunity were met with poverty, desperation, and difficulty. Italian immigrants were ostracized from society, perceived to be of inferior intelligence, and struggled to speak English.
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Over the last five years, the United States has suffered a dramatic increase in the number of attacks on Christian churches, often the result of far-left political movements.
As reported by Breitbart, the data from the Family Research Council (FRC) revealed a record-high number of church attacks in the year 2023 alone, with 436 incidents; these attacks range from arson and gun-related attacks, to vandalism and bomb threats.
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The Presbyterian Church (USA) has permitted, but not required, its ministers to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies since 2014. But that allowance is no longer sufficient for the progressive denomination; it now aims to mandate that future ministers affirm transgenderism and same-sex marriage as prerequisites for ordination. At its General Assembly this June, the denomination will take up legislation that would implement that requirement.
The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s proposed requirement stands out for its inclusion of affirmation for transgenderism alongside same-sex marriage. Specifically, it does so by adding “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” to its list of groups protected from discrimination, included in “worship, governance, and emerging life.” The proposal would also change the denomination’s “[s]tandards for ordained service” to make it obligatory for ministry candidates to pledge adherence to this principle of “non-discrimination.”
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Catholic churches in the United States have been attacked at least 400 times over the past four years, according to data compiled by the Catholic advocacy organization CatholicVote.
The hundreds of attacks across the nation began in connection with widespread civil unrest in May 2020, CatholicVote said. Examples include church burnings, beheadings of statues of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, swastikas painted on grave stones, satanic and blasphemous statements graffitied on walls, windows smashed, Masses disrupted, and even the murder of a Catholic priest.
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Pope Francis is delivering another robust denunciation of liberal transgender ideology sweeping the West, declaring it was the “ugliest danger” while urging the world to embrace the differences between men and women.
“Erasing differences is erasing humanity,” the pontiff declared Friday in Rome. “Men and woman, however, are in a fruitful tension.”
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State Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville) challenged California Governor Gavin Newsom to a debate after the Democrat targeted Tennessee for its pro-life legislation to protect unborn children using funds from a Super PAC that some speculate could lay the foundations of a campaign to oust President Joe Biden.
In a Sunday post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the California governor falsely claimed Tennessee’s pro-life legislation offers no exceptions, including for rape or incest, and asserted that “Republicans in Tennessee are trying to punish young women” who travel to abort their children.
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A Mass of Reparation was quietly held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan over the weekend after a depraved funeral service for a renowned transgender activist scandalized parishioners. Some Catholics, however, say that’s not enough and are calling for an exorcism to be performed at the cathedral.
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has condemned the heavily attended February 15 funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a biological male who identified as a female.
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The Goldwater Institute (GI) sued the U.S. Department of Education last week over fining Grand Canyon University (GCU) almost $40 million.
The fine was purportedly for “insufficiently inform[ing] PhD students that they may have to take continuing courses while completing their doctoral dissertations,” GI said in a press release. GI noted that the $37 million fine against the Christian university “is 10 times bigger than penalties the Education Department assessed against Penn State and Michigan State for covering up the sexual crimes of Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar.”
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Allen Jackson Ministries will host a Culture and Christianity Conference at World Outreach Church in April built around the theme “Lead with Faith.”
The Culture & Christianity Conference, according to Allen Jackson Ministries, is designed to “help equip, prepare, and embolden the rising generation of Americans to be voices for God’s Truth, wherever He leads.”
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Ash Wednesday is—oddly perhaps—a day I have long associated with bushfires, better known in the American hemisphere as wildfires.
I come from the Adelaide Hills in South Australia, where on Ash Wednesday in 1983, catastrophic bushfires, driven by 70-mph winds and fueled by years of drought-ravaged eucalyptus forest, tragically claimed 28 lives. In the neighboring state of Victoria, even more lives were lost under similar conditions. In total, 75 Australians perished and 3,000 homes were destroyed in what were the nation’s deadliest bushfires up to that point.
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A bill advanced on Thursday in the Arizona Senate that would prohibit the display of Satanic displays on public property in the state. The bill’s sponsor, Senator Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), warns that satanism should not have a place on public property as the “antithesis of religion.”
Hoffman celebrated after SB 1279 passed a committee vote in a post to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
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Two Virginia bishops issued a letter through the Virginia Catholic Conference on Monday urging Catholics to oppose legislation in the Virginia General Assembly that would legalize physician assisted suicide within the commonwealth. The legislation passed a second committee vote on Thursday.
Bishop Michael Burbridge of Arlington and Bishop Barry Knestout of Richmond warned in their letter that bills “to legalize physician assisted suicide” are “moving rapidly” through the General Assembly. The bishops wrote, “We are alarmed and deeply saddened by this development. Human life is sacred and must never be abandoned or discarded.
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More than half a century ago, Time magazine famously asked, “Is God Dead?” The black and red cover, the magazine’s first to include only text, sparked countless angry sermons and thousands of letters from readers accusing Time of engaging in tasteless nihilism, Marxist pandering, and outright blasphemy.
The question, which typified the counter-culture movement and the intellectual radicalism of the 1960s, was far off the mark both then and now. The United States has always been and remains a very religious nation despite steep declines in attendance at churches, synagogues, and mosques – trends that have captured far more headlines in recent years than the nation’s enduring faith. America is also a majority Christian nation, though other religious groups and affiliations and those identifying as non-believers are growing.
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Pope Francis on Monday slammed surrogacy as a “deplorable” practice comparable to human trafficking, and he called for a global ban on it.
“The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking,” Francis told members of the Vatican Diplomatic Corps in an annual address Monday.
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Bradlee Dean, founder of the nonprofit Christian organization You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide International (YCRBYCHI) and host of the radio show Sons of Liberty, spoke to the Grassroots Tea Party Activists of Arizona Thursday evening in the West Valley. Dean, an ordained minister and drummer for the Junkyard Prophet, a Christian rock band, founded YCRBYCHI in 1997, which gives presentations to students at school assemblies across the country.
The fiery, entertaining Dean started his radio show in 2002, which is now nationally syndicated. He produced a mini-series documentary in 2011 titled My War, where he “slings rocks at the political, social, and immoral giants of our time and confronts society’s ills.” He said his band has “purposely turned down 5 record deals in order to maintain control of their uncompromising message.” The Minnesota native wrote a regular column for WND until 2017.
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The family of Jan. 6 protester Ashli Babbitt has filed a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit against the government, saying she posed no threat to anyone when she was killed.
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The window that opened in 2019 to allow United Methodist churches to depart their embattled denomination closes in a week or so, at the end of the year, and at this late hour, approximately one-fourth of the member churches that constitute Protestantism’s second-largest denomination have climbed through that window.
In the largest U.S. church schism since Civil War times, nearly 7,700 churches of the roughly 30,000 in the United Methodist Church (UMC) have voted to take their property and go elsewhere.
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The wife of a former Tennessee sheriff’s deputy who was convicted for on charges related to January 6 told The Tennessee Star that families and friends of those defendants often experience survivor’s guilt, especially as many of those accused of crimes spend their third Christmas in jails or prisons.
Sarah McAbee, the executive director of Stand in the Gap and wife of January 6 prisoner Ronald McAbee, explained, “Wives are waking up without their husbands, children are waking up without their fathers. Even in the federal prison system, they only get a 15 minute phone call per day.” She told The Star that January 6 have “have to decide, am I going to call my spouse? Am I going to call my parents? Am I going to call my child?”
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For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16 (KJV)
We thought about and were well on the way to drafting a much different column for this Christmas – Biden Outdoes The Grinch seemed apropos to this season of economic distress and discontent. But in looking through past Christmas columns we ran across one of our columns from 2019, entitled “The Gift of Christmas is Fulfilled at Easter” and we were brought back to the recognition that no Christian should be bitter on Christmas, because if there is one day of the year that is to be dedicated to hope it is Christmas and the anniversary of the birth of Our Savior.
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Former President Trump released a statement on Thursday in remembrance of Dr. Clarence Sexton, who passed away on December 12.
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When Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann asked priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers in the German Diocese of Speyer to offer blessings for same-sex unions and remarried couples early last month, his letter made international news — and it should have. That’s because the Catholic Church believes same-sex unions are sinful and contrary to both the law of God and the laws of nature.
That teaching — that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is, in fact, a sin — has repeatedly put a Church hierarchy dedicated to “inclusion” and “solidarity” in a tight spot. Progressives both inside (men like Wiesemann and Fr. James Martin) and outside of the Church have repeatedly pressured Catholic leadership to offer some kind of legitimization to homosexual unions.
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An official rule permitting congregations to part ways with the United Methodist Church (UMC) while retaining church property is about to expire, but the effects of the split are far from over.
Churches in Alabama continue to face divisions even after failing to leave the denomination under the rule. Some congregants who were members of UMC churches left to form their own independent churches or joined other Methodist denominations like the Global Methodist Church (GMC).
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The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) charged three members of a Muslim family with the alleged beating of their juvenile son and brother on Monday, and police records reportedly reveal the violence was sparked by the victim’s recent conversion to Christianity.
Police arrested Rawaaa Khawaji, Nick Kadum, and John Kadum, who are reportedly the mother, father, and older son of the juvenile victim discovered by law enforcement, according to police documents reviewed by Fox 17.
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If the Biden administration doesn’t intend to punish medical professionals for refusing to participate in so-called gender affirming care, from using patients’ preferred pronouns to referring them for castration, it’s certainly not acting like it.
That was the impression of at least two of three judges on a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel hearing a pre-enforcement challenge to the feds’ reinterpretation of the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition on sex discrimination in Section 1557 as covering gender identity as well.
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A Williamsburg music and arts festival is denying it ever scheduled a menorah lighting to celebrate Hanukkah after Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) condemned the group’s purported decision to cancel it amid Israel’s defensive war against Hamas.
News broke on Sunday that the 2nd Sundays Art and Music Festival in Williamsburg canceled a menorah lighting scheduled for its December 10 event, with The Virginia Gazette reporting that festival founder Shirley Vermillion “said 2nd Sundays are inclusive to different religions and cultures,” and reported that Vermillion stated the menorah lighting “seemed very inappropriate” due to what the outlet called “current events in Israel and Gaza.”
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Pope Francis is reportedly planning to remove an American conservative cardinal, who has been critical of the Vatican in the past, from his apartment over issues of “disunity,” according to ABC News.
Cardinal Raymond Burke, 75, was removed by the pope as the Vatican’s high court justice in 2014 and has been openly critical of Francis’ statements on LGBTQ issues and reform of the Catholic Church. Francis allegedly held a meeting with other Vatican leaders on Nov. 20 to discuss his plan to remove Burke’s apartment and salary as a retired cardinal because he is a source of “disunity,” according to ABC News, which cited two anonymous sources.
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A group of faith organizations led by the Faith and Freedom Coalition has sent a letter to congressional leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate urging a number of steps be taken to support Israel and fight antisemitism.
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In a show of solidarity for arguably the most antisemitic member of congress, the Middle Tennessee Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America is rallying around U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12) after she was disciplined by her colleagues in a rare congressional censure.
The local chapter’s X account reposted the national organization’s screed over the U.S. House of Representatives vote last week to punish Tlaib.
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On Wednesday, the Vatican released a document declaring that people who believe themselves to be “transgender” will now be allowed to be baptized and be named as godparents, with certain limitations.
As reported by Fox News, the document in question was an official response to a dubia seeking guidance on how to deal with the issue, submitted by Brazilian Bishop Giuseppe Negri of Santo Amaro. The document was signed by Pope Francis himself and promoted by the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
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Game 5 of the World Series will include a radical presence, at least outside Chase Field.
Far Left protesters plan to hold an All Out for Palestine at the World Series rally beginning at 7 p.m. Wednesday in downtown Phoenix — as the baseball game begins — in what could be the elimination contest for the Arizona Diamondbacks against the Texas Rangers.
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Apparently bowing to public pressure, the Sheraton Mesa in Wrigleyville West has canceled the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) banquet featuring U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12).
“Thank you everyone! I am sure there were multiple groups working at this, but I believe we all contributed to this success,” celebrated the organizer of the change.org petition calling on the hotel to cancel the event, scheduled for Nov.18.
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GOP U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is calling on her rivals in the critical race to condemn the anti-Israel Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and their Israel-hating keynote speaker, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (R-MI-12).
Tlaib, a Palestinian American member of the House’s radical “Squad” and ardent supporter of the leftist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, is scheduled to speak at the Arizona chapter of CAIR’s annual banquet, slated for Nov. 18 in Mesa.
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Metro Nashville Councilman Sean Parker, like many of his leftist friends, has demanded Israel stop its war to root out terrorist network Hamas.
Parker should know the kind of evil Israel is up against.
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The Faith and Freedom Coalition (FFC) released a statement Wednesday congratulating Louisiana U.S. Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA-04) after he was elected the 56th Speaker of the House.
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The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) bills itself as a leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding, with a mission to “enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.”
CAIR is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, say Jewish groups that have watched the council vilify Israel and stand silent on the unholy warriors of Hamas.
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