Search Results for:

United Airlines 800-299-7264 Reservations Toll Free Number

Unquestioned Support for Israel Wasn’t Always the Way for Conservative Christians

…estinians. According to a policy paper from the U.S. State Department, the number of displaced Palestinian persons numbered 725,000 by May 1949. Although Palestinian repatriation and compensation for property was required under the UN Partition Agreement of 1947 and UN Resolution 192, Israeli Foreign minister Moshe Sharett objected on the basis “that their [Palestinian] return would disturb the homogeneity of Israeli areas.” In response, Christian…

Read More

Why ‘Do You Believe in God?’ Is at the Heart of Our Religious Problem

…question about whether or not we believe in God. Throughout my life in the United States, the first question I’m asked about religion is: “Do you believe in God?” I use the word god in the singular, as this is the default manner in which I’m asked the question. My answer often confuses people: “You are skipping an important question before asking this. I do not care if there are gods or not.” Whether unconsciously or not, we use the term “religion…

Read More

Pastor of Kentucky Church Severed From Baptists Over LGBT Inclusion: Not Activism, Just Honesty

…years. I came about the time that folks from Burma began arriving in large numbers and uniting in membership with Crescent Hill, and much of my time in those early years was spent trying to figure out how in the world we might be able to be a unified body that includes people who don’t speak English, who have a completely foreign background and cultural experience. It took a lot of hard work but we reached a place a number of years ago where, whil…

Read More

After Westboro: The Trouble With “Tolerance”

…the world by our vocal chords, speech produces real consequences. That is, free speech is not free from consequences that affect our bodily, material reality. Our speech, our words, our language constructs our world, defines reality and gives meaning to our sense of self. Michel Foucault called this type of power “discourse.” The term “discourse” describes the stories we as a society tell about ourselves and the world, from what perspective we tel…

Read More

Contraception Isn’t Meat

…ario, Jains run a number of large institutions with many employees, a high number of whom are not Jain. At some point, a number of people realize that the current system is a complicated and inefficient way to feed people, and so there are attempts at reforming the system. One of the questions that the would-be reformers have to consider is: What do most people, in fact, eat? That’s important, because they are trying to craft a system that takes i…

Read More

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

…, represented was the triumph of a new kind of mathematical science, where numbers and computation were esteemed in a whole new way. Copernicus, be sure to recall, did not yet have access to the telescope, so he was basing a number of his computations on things he could not see. In this brave new world, then, the scientists were also casting their “faith in things not seen.” It’s just that what they “saw” was perceived to run counter to the Roman…

Read More

Material(ist) Girl: A Philosopher Argues Against the Soul

…nto this long conversation about reincarnation and I presented him with my reservations about such a thing. Something is left, namely the body, and as that disintegrates small creatures make use of the bits and pieces and in that sense it’s reincarnated, but there isn’t anything else, some nonphysical thing that has feelings and thoughts and memories and personality that goes into the little critters or into a person. What gets transferred from pa…

Read More

American Missionary Could Face Genocide Charges, But Brazil’s Indigenous Communities Have a Bigger Problem

…rts assimilation of indigenous communities and opening their resource-rich reservations in the Amazon to commercial interests, including large-scale farming, logging, and mining. Although the Brazilian constitution protects these populations and their lands, the new president has considered these regulations an impediment to economic development and publicly said he won’t get “into this nonsense of defending land for Indians.” The policy of openin…

Read More

Romney Stands Up to Bryan Fischer at Values Voters Summit

…ects on the hurt dished out to Mormon girls at her high school and her own reservations about LDS people. “I’m starting to wonder what I’ve been so afraid of,” Weiseth writes. The post has gone viral among Mormon readers. It certainly touched me. Perhaps it can help bring about greater dialogue between evangelical Christians and Mormons. No one should underestimate the strength and longevity of anti-Mormon sentiment in the south. (On Monday, I’ll…

Read More

What if Israel Were in Germany? An Alternate History

…meddling of Western powers to whom a genuine commitment to Arab rights and freedoms is not a priority. I feel even less qualified to make predictions about the Arab Spring, but the fact that the push for change is coming from within rather than being imposed from without seems like grounds for cautious optimism. I hope it pans out, and I also hope that whomever we elect in November doesn’t decide to “help” in ways that do more harm than good. In t…

Read More