In a series of tweets last week, Christian leader and author Beth Moore decried the “increasingly amoral condition of our country” and pleaded with her fellow faith leaders to repent for the “sins of nationalism, racism, sexism, hatred, white supremacy, murder, our lying, our cheating, our bribing, our abuse of power, our bloodthirst, our greed.”

In the Twitter thread, which Moore posted the morning after President Trump was impeached by the House, Moore recalled her reaction to the 1992 election of former President Bill Clinton.

“In early November 1992, I stood in front of the TV watching the last of the election results, tears pouring down my face,” she wrote. “Our country had just elected Bill Clinton president. He was magnetic, brilliant, smooth and utterly immoral. I was a registered Democrat at that time.”

Then in 2016, Moore, lacking faith in either candidate “stood in front of a screen bereft of hope either way that our country was about to elect a president who was honorable.” She wrote, “For days to come, I muttered aloud almost daze-like, ‘Our country just elected Donald Trump president.’” Moore noted that in 2016 she was a registered Republican.

In early November 2016, I stood in front of a screen bereft of hope either way that our country was about to elect a president who was honorable. For days to come, I muttered…

WASHINGTON (RNS) — The State Department issued its latest designations of the world’s most serious violators of religious freedom, moving Sudan down to its next-tier watchlist.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the decisions on Friday (Dec. 20), including the shift of Sudan’s status, which he attributed to “significant steps taken by the civilian-led transitional government to address the previous regime’s ‘systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.’”

Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, told reporters in a conference call Thursday there has been a halt in the raids on house churches and related movements in the predominantly Muslim country.

“They’ve stopped bulldozing churches; they’ve redesignated Christmas — both the normal Christmas and Orthodox Christmas — as national holidays,” the ambassador said. “They have brought, now, people of other faiths into the new cabinet.”

Brownback said he hopes the change in the department’s designation of Sudan will give the new government “breathing room” as its leaders seek to continue to put reforms in place following the ouster of Omar al-Bashir after his 30-year rule.

The department on Wednesday retained its designation for the nine other countries that had been categorized as “countries of particular concern”: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea,…

A woman says she cannot believe her premature baby is alive even after doctors told her the baby was not likely to live.

When Kirsty Mizon’s water broke at 13 weeks, doctors told her she would likely have a miscarriage.

“I was devastated. I went home and I waited for the inevitable to happen,” Mizon explained, according to the Christian Institute. “But it didn’t. My baby’s heartbeat was still going strong.”

Doctors then told her that she would need to consider an abortion because they said the baby could be born with abnormalities or stillborn.

“All the way through the pregnancy they were offering me terminations and saying he will be handicapped and won’t be able to use his limbs,” Mizon said.

“They gave him a one percent survival rate, because I was constantly losing amniotic fluid.

“I didn’t know if I was strong enough to go through it, but I couldn’t give up on my baby,” she said.

Mizon, 23, eventually began making funeral arrangements for the baby, and she went into early labor at 29 weeks and gave birth to a baby girl.

“I heard my baby cry,” she said. “It was the best feeling ever, the greatest sound I have ever heard. The midwife turned to me and said ‘He is a she, you have a little girl.’ I couldn’t believe it.

“I couldn’t believe it. I had kept her in there without fluid for almost four months.

Mizon named the baby girl…

The Trump administration issued a new rule Friday requiring insurance companies that cover abortion within Obamacare to issue two bills to consumers – one for abortion coverage and one for the rest of their monthly premium.

Under a current law known as the Hyde Amendment, taxpayer-funded abortion is prohibited except in the cases of rape, incest and to save the mother’s life.

The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), applies to insurance plans within Obamacare’s state-based exchanges that cover abortions prohibited under Hyde. CMS estimates that 18 states currently have insurers that offer coverage of abortion services prohibited under the Hyde Amendment.

Section 1303 of the Affordable Care Act – better known as Obamacare – requires insurance companies that offer plans covering abortion to “collect from each enrollee in the plan (without regard to the enrollee’s age, sex, or family status) a separate payment” for abortion services.  

The requirement received significant mainstream coverage when Obamacare was debated and was added as a compromise between pro-life and pro-choice groups – although both sides at the time criticized the concept. 

“Providing these separate bills is an essential step in implementing the Affordable Care Act’s bar on tax credits going toward coverage of abortions for which public funding is prohibited,”…

YANGON, Burma, December 20, 2019 (Morning Star News) – Ethnic rebels who closed more than 100 churches in eastern Burma (Myanmar) in 2018 have allowed 51 Baptist churches to reopen, sources said.

Ethnic Wa rebels of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) this week announced they had permitted 51 Baptist churches to reopen in northern Shan state after investigating the congregations and their activities for 14 months. The review process is still underway for the remaining churches, according to UWSA officials.

At least 10 church buildings were destroyed when UWSA troops closed the churches in September 2018 and detained more than 200 Christians who were later released after investigation.

“We are investigating the rest of the churches. We shut down the churches because some people who work at the churches were very extreme,” Nyi Rang, in-charge of UWSA’s liaison office in Lashio town, northern Shan state, told Morning Star News. “In some places, there were a few houses. But there were many churches. It created disunity with local ethnic communities.”

The general secretary of Lahu Baptist Convention, identified only as the Rev. Lazarus, said the churches were not “extreme.”

“I don’t think churches and our religious activities create division and problems, because we have churches that belong to ethnic Wa, Kachin, Lahu, Ahkar and Lisu,” Lazarus told Morning Star News. “There…

President Trump’s nominations to the federal courts have flipped three circuits making them majority Republican-appointed, lowered the age of GOP-appointed judges by 14 years, and reshaped the judiciary for decades to come, according to a series of new reports.

When Trump took office in January 2017, only four of the 13 U.S. appeals courts had a majority of Republican-appointed judges. Today, seven of the 13 appeals courts do.

This year alone, the Second, Third and 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have flipped from majority Democratic-nominated to majority Republican-nominated, according to Law.com. 

All total, 187 Trump-appointed federal judges have been confirmed by the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

“America’s courts are critical to the preservation of religious liberty – and one of the greatest legacies for our first freedom has been the appointment of one of the youngest classes of conservative, textualist judges who will be on the court for the next 30 or even 40 years,” read an analysis by First Liberty Institute, a religious liberty legal organization that supports Trump’s nominations.

“The excellent judges being confirmed for lifetime appointments right now will help safeguard religious liberty for our children and grandchildren. It will be the next generation who will reclaim and reap the benefits as they are set free to enjoy more religious freedom than ever…