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Brussels Airlines Reservation 800-299-7264 Official Site Phone Number

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

…those victims who did report their victimization to Episcopal leaders, the number one assessment from both trans/non-binary and cisgender respondents was that “little or no change” came about as a result. 20.6% of transgender and non-binary survivors reported that they simply left the church altogether. By comparison, “only” 10.7% of cisgender women felt they had to leave. (Curiously, there’s no data on this front for LGB-identified Episcopalians….

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Orlando Massacre and ISIS: The Illusion of Power

…or liberation. Moreover, volunteers are not streaming to the region in the numbers that previously had supported the movement. Although their online presence continues to be active on Twitter and on secret sites on the dark web, volunteers seem hesitant to join a losing operation. In this context ISIS needs the illusion of power. There is no doubt that this is what the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks were meant to achieve. ISIS has also encou…

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Countering the “Countering Violent Extremism” Program

…ical and religious lives of foreign subjects.” There is a contrast between official ways of approaching religion in bureaucracies in Brussels and Washington, and the approach taken by most scholars who study religion. The purveyors of CVE programming tend to depict religion as a force for good (and for evil) that stands apart from the world and acts upon it. “Religion made them do it,” says the State Department. To the extent that religion is unde…

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Good Mourning Modeled by Chaplains and Clergy at the Oakland Ghost Ship Fire

…ly Graham Crusade had, according to Landeza, been trying to enter the fire site for days. Landeza, who was born and raised in Berkeley and has ministered in the Bay Area for decades (and had been at the fire site for five days straight by the time this writer was able to reach him), said the Billy Graham chaplains were “not even from the area” and had driven in from other parts of California. “They don’t reflect the diversity of Oakland or appreci…

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Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

…plugged-in lifestyle doesn’t really get at the heart of the issue. I think the Amish, of all people, have it right. It’s not so much about what you as an individual are doing or not doing, as the effect technology has on the community: Why not make life easier and just put [a phone] in the house? “What would that lead to?” another Amish man asked me. “We don’t want to be the kind of people who will interrupt a conversation at home to answer a tel…

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Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

…hting of the temple began and everyone became transfixed by the fire. Each year I find the temple and its fiery demise the most moving experience on the playa; even if someone is hollering obnoxiously or playing with a laser pointer. If every other playa site invites irreverence and irony, this is still the one that takes meaning most seriously. It is a site of both voyeurism and participation, where our deepest fears and most painful losses are a…

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We Went Through Amoris Laetitia Section by Section So You Wouldn’t Have To

…ualism is bad. Also, he notes but offers no explanation for the decreasing number of marriages in many countries. I am glad to see that in Section 34 he understands this basic fact of contemporary western culture: The ideal of marriage, marked by a commitment to exclusivity and stability, is swept aside whenever it proves inconvenient or tiresome. The fear of loneliness and the desire for stability and fidelity exist side by side with a growing fe…

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Pope’s Liberal Defenders are Missing the Point

…and affirms the stained-glass ceiling on the pastoral role of women: “the reservation of the priesthood to males … is not a question open to discussion” (#103). Francis further worried that a discussion on women’s ordination “can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general”—as if the “reservation of the priesthood to males” had nothing whatsoever to do “with power in general” (#104). Evangelii Ga…

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Coulter Calls WND “Fake Christians”

First, Glenn Beck goes off the conservative reservation by declaring that same-sex marriage is no threat to America by saying: “I believe that Thomas Jefferson said, ‘If it neither breaks my leg or picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?’” Then, the notoriously homophobic Ann Coulter gets booked to headline next month’s “Homocon,” an event put on by GOProud, a group of gay Republicans. Coulter’s willingness to talk to gay Republicans got Wo…

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‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

…lectorate than it is with straight voters. LePen’s Party, which includes a number of openly gay officials, still pledges to roll back the marriage equality law in favor of civil unions. As AP notes, LePen is not the only nationalist leader who uses fear of radical Islamist violence to attract LGBT support: In the Netherlands, Party for Freedom leader Geert Wilders said that his party, which is hostile to Muslims and wants to halt immigration, shou…

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