A rural Alabama police department is being applauded and criticized for blaming a series of murders on young people who rejected God. 

The police department in Opp, Ala., posted a message on its Facebook page Tuesday noting that five people have been murdered in the county in 2018. Among these was a mother shot and killed Monday and a man who was killed the previous day. “Young people,” the message said, were the murderers. 

“This is happening because we have turned away from God and embraced Satan,” the message, written in all-caps, read. “We may have not meant to do so but, we have. It is time to ask for God’s help to stop this. It is time to be parents and raise our children, not have them raise us. It is time to fully support law enforcement and stand by the officers and deputies that are far too often having to walk into these dangerous situations and clean up the mess.” 

The atheist Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) said the police department’s post crossed a line.

“The department has very directly endorsed one religious ideology to the exclusion of minority religions and atheism, and decried Satanism,” said FFRF attorney Sam Grover. “Neither message is permissible.”

But many on Facebook approved the police department for speaking out. 

“We’ve raised an entire generation of ‘entitled’ children who weren’t made to go to…

A legal organization is demanding the United States Postal Service change its policy on custom stamps after a woman’s order was rejected because it showed her family standing in front of a historic cathedral. 

First Liberty Institute is representing client Tavia Hunt, who submitted an order through Zazzle.com for stamps showing her and her family standing in front of Moscow’s famous St. Basil’s Cathedral. The order was to be filled through Stamps.com, a separate public company. 

But Zazzle.com declined the order, saying it violated USPS policy prohibiting “any depiction” of religious content on customized stamps. The policy was adopted in 2017.

Photo courtesy: First Liberty

“No one should have to go to court to send a Christmas card,” said Hiram Sasser, general counsel for First Liberty Institute. “USPS policies are so ambiguous and unequally applied that even its approved vendors don’t know what is allowed and what isn’t. The USPS has made Zazzle and Stamps.com agents of discrimination.”

First Liberty sent a letter to the Postal Service Dec. 20, asserting that a “photo’s inclusion of a secular cultural icon such as St. Basil’s Cathedral cannot plausibly be prohibited under a regulation for ‘religious’ depictions.” 

The letter says a lawsuit is possible if the issue is not resolved.

“If you insist that Mrs. Hunt’s…

December 20, 2018 (Family Research Council) – When Ashley Bratcher decided to take on the starring role in Unplanned, she wasn’t unsure about life – but she completely exactly ethusiastic about it either. The thing to change all of this was an epiphany that changed her entire world. Ashley, the woman who was preparing to star as the leading character in a movie centered around abortion, had nearly been the victim of it herself.

Ashley’s moving real-life story came to light during a Tuesday interview with Fox & Friends, causing the project to take on an entirely new meaning — one that was not just for the actress. When she first auditioned to take on the role of Abby Johnson, Bratcher had no knowledge of who this person was. “I was given just six pages. Six pages that ignited my curiosity… How could this incredibly [devoted] woman one day change her mind about everything she believed in? There had to be more to the story.”

Johnson’s story, however, is one that is familiar to quite a few pro-lifers. As the former director of Planned Parenthood stood within the four walls of a Byran, Texas clinic room nearly a decade ago in 2009, she viewed the ultrasound of a baby who would never take its first breath. When the doctor began to take another unborn life, Abby Johnson knew that she had to change hers. After seeing the lives of 22,000 unborn babies taken,…

Christian humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse received an award from animal rights organization People for Ethical Treatment of Animals after the group saved a starving tiger and lion who were abandoned after a typhoon.

According to the Christian Post, the North Carolina-based aid organization was awarded a Compassionate Action Award this week from PETA. The group was given the award after they volunteered to fly two starving and abandoned zoo animals from the Pacific island of Saipan, which was devastated by a Typhoon in November, to The Wild Animal Sanctuary in Weld County, Colorado.

Samaritan’s Purse had been flying in tons of supplies to the devastated Island, and on their third trip to the island, since it was struck by Typhoon Yutu in November, the Federal Emergency Management Agency reached out to Samaritan’s Purse for help. 

Through a collaborative effort with FEMA, Tigers in America and The Wild Animal Sanctuary, Samaritan’s Purse was able to fly Tasha and Lambert from the U.S. commonwealth in the North Mariana Islands to a sanctuary in Colorado where they will each have habitats of between 15 and 25 acres, a video detailing the rescue recalled.

In the video, Casey Craig of The Wild Life Sanctuary expressed his gratitude for Samaritan’s Purse. He said, “I know there is not a lot of flights going in and out of Saipan…

With the support of San Francisco’s leaders, transgender activists have enacted the world’s first “Transgender Cultural District” in the Tenderloin area of the city to “create a safe, welcoming and empowering neighborhood lead by trans people for trans people” and to “preserve the places where transgender history took place for future generations.”

Reports claim that Jane Kim, who is an active member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and represents the district that includes the Tenderloin, proposed legislation last year that would enable and assert the creation of “Compton’s Transgender Cultural District.”

“The lower Tenderloin is the most important neighborhood in America for transgender history, culture, and civil rights,” Kim said in a statement. “By creating the Compton’s TLGB District we are honoring this vibrant community built by transgender people, and are sending a message to the world that trans people are welcome here.”

The area stretches across six blocks in the southeastern Tenderloin as well as two blocks of 6th Street, includes the site of the now former Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, a dining establishment that would frequently make phone calls to the police in the 1960’s since it had the idea that the lingering of men dressed as women would have a negative impact on business, and worked to drive them to…

Democratic Congressman Luis Gutierrez stormed out of a House Judiciary Committee meeting Thursday after he called the Secretary of Homeland Security a liar. 

According to CBN News, In a meeting with the House Judiciary Committee and the Secretary of Homeland Security Kirsten Nielson on border security, Representative Gutierrez took his turn to speak to call Christians to the carpet. Gutierrez passionately said, “It is repugnant to me, and astonishing to me, that during Christmas — I like to call them the holiday seasons to be inclusive, but during Christmas because the majority always wants to just call it Christmas — that during Christmas, a time in which we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a Jesus Christ who had to flee for his life with Mary and Joseph, thank God there wasn’t a wall that stopped him from seeking refuge in Egypt.” He continued, “Thank God that wall wasn’t there, thank God there wasn’t any administration like this, or he would have to have perished on the 28th, on the Day of the Innocents, when Herod ordered the murder of every child under two years of age.”

“Maybe I haven’t gone a lot to Bible school, but I know that part,” Gutierrez added. “Thank God. Shame on everybody that separates children and allows them to stay at the other side of the border fearing death, fearing hunger, fearing sickness. Shame on us for…

United States Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made an unexpected announcement late Thursday night informing America that he would be leaving the White House in the new year. 

Mattis, who is a retired four-star general, was nearly-unanimously voted into the President’s Cabinet following Trump’s inauguration. 

The highly respected cabinet member offered the president his resignation following two major military decisions that he seemingly did not agree with. On Wednesday, President Trump announced that the U.S. had defeated ISIS in Syria and that he would be withdrawing all U.S. troops from the Middle Eastern country. According to NPR, Trump also announced that he would be decreasing the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by almost half. 

Many, including Mattis’ close friend Retired Army Gen. Jack Keane, who recommended Mattis for the defense secretary job, are speculating that these two major decisions were factors that played into Mattis’ decision to resign. 

In his resignation letter, the four-star General made it clear that his views no longer aligned with the president’s. He wrote, “My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear-eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held.”

He continued, “Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better…