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Southwest Airlines Flight 1800-299-7264 Reservations

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

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Why the Hell Does Hell Still Matter?

…. The common claim that hell has been on the outs in America since at least 1800 is simply untrue. If anything, 1800 represented a turning point in the other direction. The idea of universal salvation had appealed to both elites like Chauncy and common folk in the late-1700s. The promise that all humans would eventually be saved represented an extreme backlash against the dominant Calvinist notion that God chose only some for heaven. Universal sal…

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Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

…omen have long been marginalized by men. A man asking a woman to move on a flight may reasonably be interpreted as another chapter in a seemingly never-ending story. I am sympathetic to such a view. But haven’t Orthodox Jews experienced a long history of oppression? As far as who feels marginalized in the specific context of a typical commercial flight, consider that separation of sexes is far more common in traditional religious environments. Doe…

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Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

…our flight to JFK, the first leg in a thirty-hour series of international flights, without notification. At the airport we learned that our savvier co-passengers had already filled the Delta flight that was our only alternative. I assumed that the system would somehow take care of us—we had paid good money and followed every rule—until our travel agent called with frantic instructions: “You must make this connection. Bribe two Delta passengers! P…

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Hajj Journal: The Journey Begins and Ends

…ly swarm to three million persons! But others travel to Jeddah too on this flight, including Muslims and non-Muslims. Jeddah is a port city; and as the major airport hub for Saudi Arabia, this flight has all types. Now, I’ve been on many planes, but this is the first time I’ve been on a plane where 50% of the seats are business- and first-class. Sorta gives you an idea who comes to the Kingdom, among Muslims and non-Muslims alike: big business. Ok…

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6 Reservations About U.S. Intervention in Libya

I, like many others, have found myself unable to turn away from the Arab revolutions. As a strong believer in the egalitarian nature of the Muslim religion, and a fervent critic of common assumptions about Arabs and Muslims, these revelations were a welcome confirmation of my beliefs. I also hate dictators.  As such, I never had, and still have, no love for Libya’s clown Colonel, Mu’ammar Qaddafi; and like any other person of conscience, I watche…

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AFA: Native Americans Lost their Land for Not Being Christians

…ht of conquest.” Fischer went on to blame poverty and alcoholism on Indian reservations on Native Americans themselves, because they “continue to cling to the darkness of indigenous superstition” and refuse to come into “the light of Christianity” and assimilate “into Christian culture.” How Christianity would have helped Native Americans adapt to confinement on reservations is anybody’s guess. Fischer was apparently propelled into his diatribe by…

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Should Christians Confess to Plants? A Cranky Meditation

…t to participate. If liturgy asks people to pray or sing things that raise reservations, they find themselves in a quandary. It feels wrong to participate, and it feels equally problematic to refrain. Although I very much appreciate innovative worship, I have experienced this situation too many times. To be sure, I feel uncomfortable with worship every week. I’m asked to affirm things I desire to believe when the truth is that I carry doubts and r…

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Denzel’s Profane Preaching: A Religious Movie for the Rest of Us

…d gathering—on his way to a lurching belly-flop in an adjoining field. But Flight, like most of the other religiously-themed scripts to which Washington agrees to lend his star power, is no Kirk Cameron morality play. As in The Book of Eli, in which Washington played a post-apocalyptic loner who creates a trail of gore during a violent spiritual pursuit of the lone remaining copy of the Bible, the celluloid preaching in Flight is rated R. In addit…

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I Know Why a Rain Dance Won’t End The Drought

…the high mountains cause thunderstorms to form. These storms move from the southwest to the northeast right toward the Hopi reservation in north-central Arizona. The weather pattern, called the ‘monsoon’ in Arizona, is predictable (monsoon actually comes from the Arabic word for season). Arizona’s monsoon may deposit only a few tenths of an inch of rain, but there may be 2-3 storms a week in the dry summer, just enough to water the corn at a criti…

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