What's Driving the Rise in Non-Denominational
Christianity? You Might Be Surprised.
Posted By: Mercedes44, 1/11/2025 3:13:17 PM
One of the most wonderful things about Christianity is that there’s remarkable diversity in the way we can worship, provided we believe in the essentials of the faith. After the Protestant Reformation, denominations sprang up that allowed for variations in thoughts on secondary theological issues as well as styles of worship. In more recent years, the “mainline” denominations, so called because they were the churches along the main roads in towns, have opted for theological and political liberalism (and downright heresy) and have seen a resulting decline. Denominations still loom large on the landscape of American Christianity, but their influence is on the downslope, according to some new research.
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One of the most wonderful things about Christianity is that there’s remarkable diversity in the way we can worship, provided we believe in the essentials of the faith. After the Protestant Reformation, denominations sprang up that allowed for variations in thoughts on secondary theological issues as well as styles of worship.
In more recent years, the “mainline” denominations, so called because they were the churches along the main roads in towns, have opted for theological and political liberalism (and downright heresy) and have seen a resulting decline. Denominations still loom large on the landscape of American Christianity, but their influence is on the downslope, according to some new research.
The notoriously political Judge Juan Merchan sentenced President-elect Donald Trump Friday morning for his ridiculous ‘hush money’ conviction in Manhattan. The Lawfare effort was entirely to position President Trump as the first convicted felon in the White House. That’s it. That’s the sum of motive and intent. To create a narrative.
That’s what lawfare is all about, creating public perceptions and using the judicial system to advance political goals. Few people care about the issues and the entire case is likely to be thrown out on a host of appeal reasonings.
Tulsi Gabbard Now Supports FISA-702 In
Order to Get Confirmed as Director of
National Intelligence 8 replies
Order to Get Confirmed as Director of
National Intelligence 8 replies
As the story is told [SEE HERE], and it aligns with every scintilla of researched data on the darkest and deepest elements of the Deep State, DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard has reversed her position and will now support FISA-702, the warrantless searches of American communication and electronic metadata.
Apparently the FISA process and the 702 aspect (specific to American citizens) is the line in the sand the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has drawn. If Tulsi Gabbard does not support it, her confirmation is in doubt. As a result, she has reportedly reversed her position and now supports it.
This is absolutely par for the course.
Biden rails against Meta’s fact-checking
change, suggests it’s un-American: ‘Really shameful’ 10 replies
change, suggests it’s un-American: ‘Really shameful’ 10 replies
President Biden slammed Meta on Friday for ending its third-party fact-checking program, arguing that the change goes against American values and is “shameful.”
“The whole idea of walking away from facts checking [sic] as well as not reporting anything having to do with, uh, um, discrimination regarding TPS I find to be just contrary to American justice,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question about Meta’s recent policy shift.
It’s unclear what the 82-year-old president was referring to when he suggested Meta was not reporting discrimination “regarding TPS,” an acronym for the Temporary Protected Status program offered to foreign nationals from certain countries.
In business, Donald Trump was a real-estate guy.
In the presidency, he might be one, too.
The prospective foreign policy of his second term has taken an unexpected turn, with his recent talk of annexing Canada, buying Greenland and taking back the Panama Canal.
Rather than the neo-isolationist that he’s often accused of being, Trump is talking like a neo-imperialist, at least in our own hemisphere.
Even if President Trump does none of these things — he’s largely joking about the Great White North — his musings are a reminder of the crucial importance of geography and the control of territory.
We once had Teflon John, as in Gotti. Then we had Teflon Ron, as in Reagan.
Now make way for Teflon Don, as in Trump.
Pity the Democrats and their legacy media mouthpieces, who just can’t seem to find any attack line that sticks to the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president. Practice makes perfect, the old saying goes.
But that doesn’t apply to today’s Dems, who have been smearing Trump for the better part of a decade without dragging him down.
They can’t seem to find anything Americans — outside of those who still trust The New York Times and CNN — see as truly impactful or worth their outrage.
11th Circuit Court of Appeals Allows Release
of Jack Smith Lawfare Report Against Donald Trump 10 replies
of Jack Smith Lawfare Report Against Donald Trump 10 replies
This is not the first time the 11th CCA has ruled in favor of Jack Smith. This is the same federal circuit court who said they defer any/all definitions of classified documents and national security matters to the executive branch, in a prior ruling that supported the lawfare operation.
Today the 11th CCA has ruled that part-1 of Jack Smith’s political report outlining the purposes and intents of his 3-year-long prosecution of Donald Trump for refusing to accept the fraudulent 2020 election. The second part of the report on the Mar-a-Lago documents case will not be released due to ongoing litigation against other defendants.
As the Senate showdown over RFK Jr.’s HHS nomination nears its climax, the medical industry and its front group appendages are pulling out all the stops to make sure they knock Kennedy out of contention and get him replaced with one of their dutiful lackeys, as has been standard operation procedure for decades now in Our Sacred Democracy™.
The Committee to Protect Health Care, a partisan dark money PAC with a particular interest in promoting abortion, has issued a stark warning to senators considering RFK Jr.’s nomination.
On Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed a raft of executive orders, one of which we said was “almost entirely overlooked but could easily end up having the biggest impact.”
Turns out we were right.
The executive order – “Modernizing Regulatory Review” – would, we predicted, “unleash the regulatory state with a ferocity never before seen in this country.”
With this one executive order, Biden shows that he’s intent on giving regulators carte blanche to impose massive new rules on businesses and households, on virtually anything and everything they do, regardless of costs. There’s little else Biden has done so far that will have as wide-ranging an impact.
Let me be blunt: Merrick Garland is a foul carbuncle on the derriere of the worst of American politics. He has viewed his position as Attorney General of the United States as the vehicle for being the Democrat party’s enforcer. With the power of the DOJ and FBI at his back, he has worked hard to destroy anyone who threatens Democrat party power.
Nowhere has Garland’s un-American mission been more obvious than with his approach to the events of January 6. For those who need a brief refresher course, January 6 came after a year of violent,
Pope Francis on Jan. 6, 2025 named Cardinal Robert W. McElroy, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of San Diego, as the new archbishop of Washington. As the archbishop of Washington, Cardinal McElroy succeeds Cardinal Wilton Gregory, who has served in that role since 2019. On Jan. 6, Pope Francis also accepted the resignation of Cardinal Gregory as the archbishop of Washington. As required by Church law, Cardinal Gregory had submitted his resignation to the pope two years ago after he turned 75 on Dec. 7, 2022.
Joe Biden Is And Always Was A Massive Jerk
14 replies
Joe Biden, especially since becoming president, has benefited from corporate media portraying him as a unifier, civil, and even a “decent” man. He is not. In fact, when the going gets mildly tough, Biden flies off the handle.
That’s exactly what he did during a question-and-answer session at the White House on Sunday night. My being the oldest president, I know more world leaders than any one of you ever met in your whole g-dd-mn life!” Biden barked at the press. It’s far from the first time Biden lashed out at Democrat propagandists and cheerleaders that make up the corporate media.
Mere months into his White House tenure,
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The tiny Delta Smelt fish have not been seen in the wild in California in over a decade.
And yet, California Democrats flushed annual water flow into the ocean to save this little fish that they can’t even find in its natural habitat.
Now several cities are burnt to the ground.
They sacrificed entire communities for a fish that doesn’t exist. (Snip) For the seventh September in a row, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife has caught zero Delta smelt during its Fall Midwater Trawl Survey of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
The last time Delta smelt – an indicator species for the broader ecological health estuary – were found
Comedians and Act Your Age co-stars Yvette Nicole Brown and Kym Whitley are standing behind Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass amid the wildfire crisis, and they believe the harsh criticism she's receiving is race related.
'Let me tell you something, she's got a spine of steel,' Yvette told TMZ outside a grocery store on Saturday.
'And she's also been a Black woman in America for a long time, so none of this is new to her. We are mad, because we're tired of it.'
Newsom: Trump’s Politicizing Wildfires
‘Incomprehensible,’ ‘Threatening
Our First Responders’ 21 replies
‘Incomprehensible,’ ‘Threatening
Our First Responders’ 21 replies
Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) claimed Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that President-elect Donald Trump was politicizing wildfires in Southern California.
Reporter Jacob Soboroff asked, “President-elect Trump has blamed you for this crisis. He’s called you incompetent. What’s your response?”Newsom said, “Well, I called for him to come out, take a look for himself. We want to do it in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist. He’s the president-elect. I respect the office. We have a president of the United States that within 36 hours provided a major disaster declaration over a text.
Outrage is exploding over a push by numerous Democrats to get people to donate to wildfire "relief funds" facilitated through ActBlue, the party's scandal-ridden fundraising apparatus.
As RedState reported on Saturday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom made the ill-advised move to go on "Pod Save America," a far-left show run by former Barack Obama staffers, while large parts of Los Angeles County still burned. His attempt to pass the buck and paint himself as an innocent bystander amid a laundry list of government failures was bad enough, but then came the plea for donations.
It's no secret that Steve Bannon, once a top aide to Donald Trump, isn't a fan of the president-elect's newest buddy Elon Musk.
But Bannon took his criticism even further last week, telling an Italian newspaper that he will take the billionaire down before Trump's Inauguration day this month.
The comments were basically a declaration of war against the Tesla, SpaceX and X boss who has strategically placed himself within the innermost circle of the incoming president and the latest in Bannon's attacks on him.
'I will have Elon Musk run out of here by Inauguration Day,'
At this point, if Iran test detonates a nuke before Jan 20, I would put good money on someone in the Biden administration having Fed-Exed them the parts.[SNIP] The Biden administration in its final days is shifting more than $100 million in military aid from Israel and Egypt to Lebanon as it tries to bolster a ceasefire agreement it helped mediate between Israel and Hezbollah.
In separate notices sent to Congress, the State Department said it was moving $95 million in military assistance intended for Egypt and $7.5 million for Israel toward supporting the Lebanese army and its government.
Trump will be inaugurated as the nation’s 47th president on January 20, and reports indicate that he plans to arrive at the Oval Office armed with over 100 executive orders dealing with border and energy security. He met with Republican senators Wednesday and talked about his plans, and some of the participants are revealing what he said.
During a Thursday morning appearance on "Fox & Friends" Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said that Trump indicated that there are almost 100 executive orders to address issues like border security and U.S. energy.
"He threw that out — 100 — there could be like 100 EOs, yeah. I believe him,"
Like everyone I am horrified by the devastation in Los Angeles. The scale is beyond imagining, and the incompetence of city and state government so blatant, they will all need close security for the rest of their lives. Of course people are pointing to the Olympics in ‘28, and the inclusion of Los Angeles in the Smart Cities transition which basically means monitoring your very outbreath. Easier to do with fewer residents. Just build thirty-thousand high-rises, and house the cattle to be monitored and monetized.
A DEI Green New Deal Hydrogen Bomb
16 replies
That’s how Victor David Hanson describes this week’s catastrophic wildfires in California.
“It was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention and forest management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy, you put it all together and it's something like a DEI Green New Deal hydrogen bomb… Gavin Newsom was fiddling, he's almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable… The systems breakdown. And to finish, what we're seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th century pastoral
Liberal talk host Bill Maher appeared on CNN this weekend and told Jake Tapper that he doesn’t think history will be kind to Joe Biden.
Maher’s criticism stems mainly from Joe Biden’s decision to run for a second term before ultimately bowing out. Maher compares Biden to late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was hailed as a hero by the left until she died during Trump’s first term, giving him the opportunity to name her replacement.
While Maher is likely right about Joe Biden and history, his criticism is solely about what Biden has done to the Democrat party. Biden will not be treated kindly by history for
Mike Pence Reveals He Congratulated Trump
on Winning Presidential Election at Carter’s Funeral 16 replies
on Winning Presidential Election at Carter’s Funeral 16 replies
Former Vice President Mike Pence revealed that he congratulated President-elect Donald Trump on his win in the presidential election during former President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr.’s funeral.
In an interview with Christianity Today, Pence revealed that Trump “greeted” Pence as he was coming down the aisle, and Pence congratulated him on his win against Vice President Kamala Harris in the November presidential election. Carter passed away at the age of 100 at the end of December.
“He greeted me when he came down the aisle,” Pence told the outlet. “I stood up, extended my hand. He shook my hand. I said, ‘Congratulations, Mr. President,’ and he said, ‘Thanks, Mike.'”
The insurance industry in California was already reeling from a combination of natural disasters and the political disaster known as the Democratic Party in California.
As for the former, the combination of too few controlled burns, drier-than-normal weather, and idiotic zoning regulations pushing people into fire-prone areas all contributed to a situation that only needed someone to light a match. And someone did.
The sheer idiocy of California Democratic Party officials preferring to embrace environmental posturing