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Iraqi Vicar: No Communion in Nineveh this Week for First Time in 2,000 Years

Photo Credit: Reuters The Islamic State’s goal of eradicating Christianity from its ancient home in northern Iraq is nearly complete, report Christian officials remaining in the area. According to one Vicar, last week marked the first time in millennia that Christians did not receive Holy Communion in Nineveh, northern Iraq.

As the Telegraph reports, Canon Andrew White, the only Anglican Vicar remaining in Iraq, reported that Communion did not take place in Nineveh this year. “All [churches] are closed, all their people have run away.” Canon White noted that the few Iraqis remaining in the region are there due to poverty or immobility, and that those remaining fear for their lives constantly.

He added that many in the area expressed concern over the possibility of airstrikes on the region, citing the possibility of civilian casualties. “From the Iraqi point of view, the only way we can gain some kind of real safety and real removal of the Islamic State, as they call themselves, would be by having troops on the ground,” he noted. President Obama has categorically refused to entertain the option of ground troops in Iraq during this operation.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz Joins Demonstrators in Front of White House; Calls on Obama to Help Imprisoned Sudanese Christian Woman

Photo Credit: The Christian Post / Sonny HongA group of demonstrators representing over 40 different organizations gathered outside the White House to demand that Meriam Ibrahim, a Sudanese Christian woman sentenced to death for apostasy in Sudan, be freed.

Dozens of protesters, including U.S. Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, stood outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on a warm overcast Thursday morning to demand the freeing of Ibrahim.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Senator Cruz said that the effort to free Meriam Ibrahim was part of a grander need for the United States to address international religious liberty.

“There are assaults on religious liberty across the globe and Christians in particular are being persecuted across the globe,” said Cruz, who called the Ibrahim episode “startling.”

“We need far more leadership speaking out for religious liberty of everyone. And especially for Christians who are being targeted.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Afghanistan Newspaper Warns: Missionaries are Promoting Christianity in Country

Photo Credit: APBy Michael W. Chapman.

Although U.S. troops have been in Afghanistan for 13-plus years fighting terrorists and aiding the government to a more stable rule, the Afghanistan newspaper Cheragh complained in a recent editorial that “Western democracy” has produced “negative effects” there and specifically cited missionaries who “fearlessly promote Christianity.”

As BBC Worldwide Monitoring reported, the independent newspaper Cheragh published an editorial on Jan. 27 entitled, “Promoting Islamophobia in the Islamic state of Afghanistan.”

“Western democracy, given to us as a gift by foreigners in our country, has had negative effects on our country, 99 per cent of whose population are Muslim,” reads the editorial. “One of the effects of this type of democracy is the presence and activities of Christian missionaries who have entered Afghanistan under the banner of humanitarian aid and social work.”

“Supported by foreign forces, these missionaries fearlessly promote Christianity,” says Cheragh. “They are particularly active in Kabul, Bamian, Paktia, Nurestan, Konduz, Ghazni, Badakhshan and Mazar-e Sharif. No churches have publicly been built in these provinces yet but they perform their religious rites inside rented houses which are protected by the Afghan police.”

Read more this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP‘Windfalls of war’: Companies with spotty records making billions off Afghanistan

By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos.

The United States government has paid a company based in Switzerland more than $5 billion to feed the troops in Afghanistan, and thanks to a succession of no-bid contract extensions, the company, Supreme Foodservice, overcharged American taxpayers as much as $757 million, officials say.

The U.S. has appropriated more than $100 billion for Afghan reconstruction, which includes not only building and development, but training and arming the Afghan security forces — and the dispute over the massive payments to this single company is just one example of how, more than 12 years into the war, America is struggling to account for how its money has been spent.

So who’s getting rich off the war?

A review conducted by FoxNews.com shows several companies with questionable track records have been able to snag a sizable piece of the pie.

While Supreme Foodservice, a foreign firm, has profited immensely, several American companies have also made out like kings despite delays, accusations of shoddy construction and prolonged contract disputes over the last dozen years.

Read more this story HERE.

Communism, Socialism, and Christianity: One of These Does Not Belong

Photo Credit: APOn Christianity, Socialism and Communism

By Rev. Marcel Guarnizo

February 5, 2014

There has been much discussion in recent weeks over the debt of Christianity to—and its compatibility with —the ideas and praxis of the socialist revolution, and even of communism. Many, even in the Catholic Church, believe that we share some of the ideals of the socialist revolution because it seems to them that communism, socialism and Christianity are for the poor. In addition to this most unfortunate error, the opposite fallacy has also been made popular in the minds of many, namely that capitalists and advocates of a free market economy, hate the poor.

But the historical record of communism tells an entirely different story. I have worked with the countries of the former Soviet Union for over 20 years, and I have seen what communism does to populations and nations. The scourge of the socialist revolution around the world gave us 6 million people killed by artificial famines in Ukraine and, as documented by The Black Book of Communism, 20 million victims in the U.S.S.R., 65 million in China, a million in Vietnam, 2 million in North Korea, another 2 million in Cambodia, a million more in the rest of Eastern Europe, 150,000 in Latin America, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan and through the international Communist movement and related parties about 100,000 more victims in various nations. This is a body count that reaches to 100 million victims worldwide.

Communism completely destroyed the economy, social fabric, and political culture of dozens of nations. It hollowed out the intelligentsia, ruined every economy where the seed of socialism fully “bloomed,” and abrogated fundamental rights and individual freedoms of the nations it subjugated. Clearly the Judeo-Christian commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is not among the doctrinal teachings of communism and the socialist revolution. It is hard to believe that the socialist revolution—unlike Nazism—still finds promoters and defenders in the West.

The compatibility of Christianity and its legitimate concern for the poor owes nothing to the violent and inhuman regimes created by the socialist revolution. No system in human history has produced more poverty and misery than communism.

No greater foe has the Church ever encountered, than the communist revolution. During the 20th century, hundreds of thousands of religious and priests were sent to forced labor camps or simply executed. Five year plans to abolish religion were implemented and no true believer was ever safe in such nations. What social doctrine of the Church was ever derived from such madness? Communism and the socialist revolution are not only the antithesis of Christianity. They are also incompatible with free, just, and democratic societies.

Read more from this story HERE.

NC High School Football Coach Ordered To Cease Baptisms, Leading Prayers

Photo Credit: SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty ImagesHead football coach of Mooresville High School, Hal Capps, has been ordered to stop baptizing players and leading them in prayer following criticism from a national organization promoting constitutional separation of church and state.

The Wisconsin-based nonprofit Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote a request last fall that coach Capps cease leading prayers and joining baptisms for his players as a base rule of separating public school activities and religious ceremonies. School Superintendent Mark Edwards met with Capps, who said, “he understood” the violation and would no longer participate in such religious observances, the Charlotte Observer reports.

“It is a violation of the Constitution for the Mooresville High School football coach to organize, lead, or participate in prayers or other religious proselytizing before, during, or after games and practices,” Patrick Elliott, attorney for Freedom from Religion Foundation, wrote to the school’s district attorney last fall.

“It is well settled that public schools, and by extension public school officials, may not advance or promote religion.”

Elliott emailed the Observer a picture from the Blue Devils’ team Twitter, reportedly showing Capps at a team baptism. But Superintendent Edwards said the photo is from a baptism performed at the Charles Mack Citizen Center, a church that many team members attend and Capps was simply invited to attend.

Read more from this story HERE.

Christian Film Stripped of ‘Best Song’ Oscar Nomination

Photo Credit: Matt Sayles

Photo Credit: Matt Sayles

This year’s most-obscure Oscar nominee is no more.

At a meeting this week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences board of governors decided to strip the surprise nomination for Best Song from “Alone Yet Not Alone,” which appears in the independent Christian-produced film of the same name.

Writer Bruce Broughton, a former member of the board of governors and currently on the music branch’s executive committee, violated the Academy’s rules against lobbying by personally e-mailing “members of the branch to make them aware of his submission during the nominations voting period,” according to a statement released by the governors Wednesday.

The nomination of “Alone Yet Not Alone” raised the eyebrows (and hackles) of many veteran Oscar-watchers when the nominations were announced Jan. 16. The film had a public profile more associated with obscure foreign films and nobody had tipped it as a possible nominee in any category.

“Alone Yet Not Alone” played on 11 screens nationwide for one week in October and grossed less than $135,000, BoxOfficeMojo.com said. As of Wednesday evening, fewer than 100 people had rated it on the Internet Movie Database. By comparison, the Sandra Bullock October release “Gravity,” which was nominated for 10 Oscars, has grossed more than $260 million and been rated by more than 250,000 IMDb users.

Read more from this story HERE.

Planned Parenthood Rep: Christianity ‘Going Down’

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

For those of us so very blessed to have raised our personal white flag in mankind’s inherently fruitless struggle against the Creator, there can be no joy in watching God-deniers continue to labor under the grandest of all deceptions. Regardless of how nasty they may be as individuals, there can be only sadness, genuine pity and prayer.

Still, it is instructive.

When the atheist gives voice to his or her God-denial, it provides those in Truth a small glimpse into the same dark spirit – old as Adam – that prompted the psalmist to observe: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1).

Valerie Tarico is one such God-denier. She’s on a fool’s errand. A steadfast disciple to the unholy trinity of “LGBT,” atheist and pro-abortion activism, Ms. Tarico proudly sits on the Board of Advocates for Planned Parenthood – America’s premier one-stop-death-shop.

For “progressives” like Tarico, the term “religious fundamentalism” is a euphemism for orthodox Christianity. In a tedious, though unintentionally funny screed recently published at Salon.com under the headline: “10 signs that religious fundamentalism is going down,” Ms. Tarico gives empty hope to her fellow hopeless with a word salad steeped in anti-Christian bigotry and wishful thinking. I share excerpts only because they so clearly encapsulate the broader secular-”progressive” mindset. Ms. Tarico’s reflections are so hyperbolic – so far removed from reality – that they require little additional commentary.

Read more from this story HERE.

Kirsten Powers: Democratic Politics ‘Was My Religion’ Before Conversion to Christianity (+video)

Former Democratic strategist Kirsten Powers described on Fox News Sunday how her conversion from atheism to Christianity altered her life, claiming that “Democratic politics” had been “[her] religion, to a certain extent.”…

Powers described her gradual progression from left-wing secularism to devout Christianity, which she also recounts in a “coming out” piece for Christianity Today. “It was a real culture shock for me, and still sometimes is, honestly,” she said. “It was a world that was completely new to me. It was a world where most of the people I came in contact with were conservative. If I had a dollar for every time somebody said, ‘I don’t understand: how can you be a Democrat and be a Christian?’ I’d be a millionaire.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US Army Defines Christian Ministry as ‘Domestic Hate Group’

Photo Credit: Fox News Several dozen U.S. Army active duty and reserve troops were told last week that the American Family Association, a well-respected Christian ministry, should be classified as a domestic hate group because the group advocates for traditional family values.

The briefing was held at Camp Shelby in Mississippi and listed the AFA alongside domestic hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.

A soldier who attended the briefing contacted me and sent me a photograph of a slide show presentation that listed AFA as a domestic hate group. Under the AFA headline is a photograph of Westboro Baptist Church preacher Fred Phelps holding a sign reading “No special law for f***.”

American Family Association has absolutely no affiliation with the controversial church group known for picketing the funerals of American servicemembers.

“I had to show Americans what our soldiers are now being taught,” said the soldier who asked not to be identified. “I couldn’t just let this one pass.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Christian Bakers who Refused Cake Order for Gay Wedding Forced to Close Shop

Photo Credit: https://www.sweetcakesweb.com/index.html

Photo Credit: https://www.sweetcakesweb.com/index.html

A husband-and-wife bakery shop team in Oregon were forced to close their shop doors and move to cheaper digs — their home — after gay-rights activists hounded them and drove away contract business because they refused for Christian reasons to bake for a same-sex wedding.

Aaron and Melissa Klein own and operate Sweet Cakes by Melissa. In the past few months, they’ve faced heated scrutiny — some in the form of physical threats — from those in the gay-rights crowd who decried their May refusal to bake for a lesbian couple who wanted to marry.

The Kleins cited their Christian beliefs of traditional marriage when they turned down that business gig, The Blaze reported. But the lesbian couple filed a complaint with the state, accusing the shop owners of discrimination.

Since, they’ve been hounded by vicious telephone calls and emails.

Read more from this story HERE.