Religion Dispatches
…are also at high risk.” The realization that fireworks significantly raise air pollution levels has led officials in Beijing to call for a reduction in the use of pyrotechnics during the Chinese New Year period, and it’s one reason, among others, that Abu Dhabi police have warned Eid celebrants not to use illegal fireworks in the United Arab Emirates. Even in the United States, some critics have called for the federal government to regulate firewo…
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…nature,” Batnitzky says. “We tend to separate the belief and the individual from the social structure… Nobody says, at least in public, that racism is part of the c=Church.” It may seem foreign, but the case of the Christian Dalits challenges Americans to reevaluate the relationship between individual belief and society. As Batnitsky says, it gets to a fundamental question about who we are as Americans: “Are we only individualists?” she asks. “Or…
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…logical and doctrinal realm in the last few weeks. He’s said things on the air that makes my skin crawl. . . a ‘works based’ theology that is based in Mormonism. . . . We are not serving the god of Mormonism that says you can be like God… a religion that said Jesus and Satan were brothers. . . . Leave your pagan—your cult—religion. . . . Howse’s guest was Ed Decker, a former Mormon whose apologetics ministry, Saints Alive, focuses on demonstrating…
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…ike a parking lot. It might look to Lourdes to improve its website: on the official site for the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, visitor FAQs tell you how to get to Lourdes, how to get your hands on some holy water from the grotto, and how to leave an ex-voto offering (look elsewhere for hotel bookings—there are dozens of hotels in Lourdes, all advertising their proximity in meters and yards to the grotto). If you can’t travel, stay on the websi…
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…. 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…
Read More…that discriminatory remarks on the basis of sexual orientation are against Air Force Policy. He should also have known, while Air Force members do have the right to speech and religion, that right does not mean airmen can say whatever they want, whenever they want.” Ouch. However, the military determined neither Monk nor his commander would be punished, which is kind given Monk’s very public, very willful attempt to tarnish their reputation. Perh…
Read More…own mission of preparing Academy cadets to be the very best United States Air Force ocers possible, these very same Air Force Academy cadets and staff will still be consigned to hell unless they accept former Lt. McClary’s own version of Christianity. Such statements are not only antithetical to the clear mission of the United States Air Force Academy, they are totally anathema to the purportedly globally inclusive purpose of this National Praye…
Read More…just how weak The Liberty Institute’s case actually is. In response to an official Air Force investigation, backed by interviews and extensive documentation, they’ve produced two pieces of paper which fit into the Air Force’s case as well as their own. But let’s assume, for a second, that The Liberty Institute is correct. All they’re arguing is that Monk’s commander moved him early because she didn’t like him. Obviously, not a good or ethical thi…
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…r, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christians. I don’t think my site was on the web for five minutes before I started receiving hate mail demanding that I take the site down because it was an affront to God. I was told then, and many still say even today, that there’s no such thing as a “gay Christian” because the two are mutually exclusive. I developed a fairly deep and sophisticated theology around why being gay (or lesbian, or bi, or…
Read More…he Coconino Plateau (7000’) and the San Francisco Peaks (13,000’+) the hot air off the desert and the cool air of 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…
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