Search for "cheap airline tickets from houston to oklahoma city phone number 1-800-299-7264"

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

By Sarah M. Pike

…eligious pilgrimage. Time and space are said to be different in Black Rock City. No one was talking on cell phones, clocks were largely invisible, and the city’s layout reoriented participants with its semi-circular streets running from A to L. This year the letters marked various rites of passage: Anniversary, Birthday, Coming Out, Divorce, Engagement, Funeral, Graduation, Hajj, Initiation, Journey, Kindergarten, and Liminal. Bisecting the rites…

Elaine Howard Ecklund Wants to Dispel Myths Surrounding Religious Resistance to Science

By Sammy Feldblum

…an awesome study. My sense is that after big storm events, each time a big city gets hit, that city becomes more attuned to climate change. That certainly seemed to be the case in New York, with Sandy. I think of that as being the case in New Orleans as well. Well, we have noticed the city looking to Rice University for expert help: on how should we do our levee system, structural help, what’s happening to our water quality, how can we build diffe…

Atheist Nazis? The Pope’s Cheap Atonement

By Susannah Heschel

Adam Clayton Powell called it “cheap grace,” but we might call it “cheap atonement”: the effort by sinners to select which sins to acknowledge and repent. Pope Benedict XVI ended his heavily protested visit to England with a heartfelt apology for German bombings of England during the Battle of Britain; though he refused to accept Christian responsibility for the Holocaust, blaming it instead on pagans and atheists. Given that Cardinal Walter Kasp…

Searching for Moral High Ground While Houston Drowns: A Perspective on the Lakewood Church Controversy

By Joshua L. Lazard

…ees arriving, as the downtown George R. Brown Convention Center was at capacity. In a city with dozens and dozens of churches, some quite large, why was Osteen and Lakewood Church singled out in such a prominent way? It seems as though every negative assumption about organized religion and preachers—right or wrong—was projected onto Osteen. Likewise, every cynical opinion about megachurches and their members were flattened and placed on Lakewood….

Satanic FOIA Reveals Deep Confusion About 1st Amendment

By Joseph Laycock

…etters, petitions, and audio files of voice mail messages addressed to the Oklahoma Capital Preservation Commission—an amazing archive for a historian of American religion.* One Oklahoma paralegal felt it would demonstrate the state’s religious diversity, while another accused the legislature of hypocrisy and threatened to take a sledgehammer to the Ten Commandments monument. Aother, referring to the Temple’s statement that Lucifer symbolizes “the…

Election Update: Oklahoma Bans Shari’ah Law

By Haroon Moghul

…apid growth of Islamic finance as a global industry will just have to pass Oklahoma by. As a discourse, Shari’ah law has become far more globally significant due to the warnings of persons like Geert Wilders and other alarmists; now, apparently, we can add the people of Oklahoma to that list. What is happening to our America? Why are we so afraid of an abstract Islam, far beyond the ability of extremists and radicals to harm us? Travel to other pl…

Glenn Beck’s Cheap Grace

By Karyn Carlo

…way from the hard work of repentance, who tickle our ears with promises of cheap grace, and offer a vision of the cross of Jesus that has nothing to say to the crosses, and lynching trees, of history. But, if we do, we will be settling for the gospel of Caesar, not the good news of Jesus Christ. Perhaps it is time to put down the chalk, stop drawing pyrotechnical conspiracy theories that play into our worst fears and listen, instead, for the diffi…

Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

By Kathryn Joyce

…E) Act in 1991 paved the way for the violence to come 18 years later. “The city has blood on its hands. Dr. Tiller wasn’t killed because he was a doctor, but because the city allowed it to get out of hand.” The debate in the years between touched many people in Wichita. Mary Harren, the local representative of Catholics for Choice in Wichita, says that half of her extended family stopped talking to her when she came out as pro-choice. And, though…

“Spilled Semen” Amendment to Personhood Bill Offered by Oklahoma Democrat

By Sarah Posner

Oklahoma State Senator Constance Johnson, a Democrat, has offered an amendment to the “personhood” bill pending in the state legislature. The pending bill, if passed, would declare that “the unborn child at every stage of development (has) all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.” Johnson writes that “the Personhood bill would potentially allow governmental intrusion into famili…

What the Conservative Christian “Fake-Trans Bathroom Creeper” Has To Do With Suburban Anxiety

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…spatial metaphors at play here. Invaders of light coming from outside the city—a city that’s still “theirs”—to do battle with the forces of evil secularism that have somehow appeared from within the city itself. As far as coherence goes, I’m not sure the metaphors hang together. The pairing of opponents seems off, like Jedi vs. Zombies, or Crusaders vs. Martian Bodysnatchers. (OK, those could be awesome movies, but you get my point.) But note how…