Search for "cheap airline tickets from flint to little rock ar phone number 1-800-299-7264"

How to Make Nones and Lose Money: Study Shows Cost of Catholic Sex Abuse Scandals

By Kaya Oakes

…, sex abuse—long hidden from the mainstream—is now something enough people are aware of that they’re more likely to report it at a younger age and closer to the time when it occurs. Nonetheless, the general sense of helplessness that many Catholics felt at the height of the scandal continues today. “The church is not a democracy,” Clohessy stresses. “So people have limited ways in which they can express their disgust.” Withdrawing donations is an…

Francis Must Make Changes to Have a Real Effect

By Patricia Miller

…number of Catholics among immigrants to the U.S.,” which has masked “the large number of people who have left the Catholic church.” According to Pew, approximately one-third of those raised Catholic have left the church and 10 percent of all Americans are former Catholics. If you were a business losing one-third of your customers, wouldn’t you want to make some changes? Sure, step one might be to put the business under new management. But that wo…

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…urch would be to misrepresent their stated purpose, or purposes, ones that are far more interesting and provocative than mere apologetics would suggest. It would also significantly underestimate their importance. While the Church’s main quarrel in the Early Modern period might seem to have been with the newly emerging modern sciences, this Library volume suggests a very different view of the period: namely, that the Vatican was less interested in…

The Anti-Trans Hate Machine’s Conspiracies Don’t Stop at the US Border

By Annika Brockschmidt

…all on the CDU and FDP (Germany’s Christian conservative and liberal/libertarian parties) “to fight for the reform of ARD and ZDF.” Poschardt has previously claimed that Putin doesn’t fear “the West” anymore because its men have grown too soft, and because it has succumbed to debates about gender. The very same talking points have been peddled by the Christian Dominionist Erik Prince on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. It’s also no coincidence t…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…” and framed it as an attempt to impose homosexuality on Christians. Two years earlier, Johnson wrote an editorial calling for the criminalization of gay sex. Accordingly, he called the Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared the criminalization of gay sex unconstitutional, “a devastating blow to fundamental American values and millenia of moral teaching.” In another article, he asserted that “same-sex deviate sex…

Religious Opposition To LGBT Equality Softening

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…for policies based on our love of God and call to serve has come. Churches are learning to affirm gifts for ministry rather than reject ministers because of whom they chose as a life partner.” Several pro-gay measures are on the agenda for the PCUSA including benefits for same-gender spouses and domestic partners of church employees, the right of clergy to perform legal weddings in the states that recognize them, the final removal of a ban on gay…

Trump the Totem: Like Other Fascist Leaders, Trump has Turned from Man to Symbol — And That’s the Danger

By Robert P. Jones

…s capable of separating him from his acolytes. A totem can’t lie or be vulgar. A totem doesn’t have marriage vows that can be violated. A totem can’t sexually assault a woman. A totem can’t commit fraud. A totem can’t betray an oath to the Constitution. A totem has no innate human characteristics at all. It’s a mirror, reflecting back the collective fears and aspirations of the group, who both generate its image and receive it back reinforced. Mik…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…st chaplains approved for military service, though MAAF reports that there are a number of Atheist and Humanist chaplain assistants. The DOD’s ruling this week may, thus, have a meaningful impact on the free expression of religious identity for the reported 3.6% of service members who are Humanists and allow more diverse access to resources for spiritual care and the development of communities of support. While the decision certainly reflects gr…

Union Busting for God: Catholic Colleges Invoke “Religious Freedom” to Violate Catholic Teaching

By Kaya Oakes

The 2013 death of 83-year-old Duquesne University adjunct Margaret Mary Vojtko helped open up a national debate about the precarious lives of the estimated seven hundred thousand college faculty in America who teach without benefits or security of employment, often at the same pitiful wages that drove Vojtko to sleep in her office while she battled cancer. While Duquesne faced national criticism after Vojtko’s death, less discussed was the fact t…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ars for a “Warrior Retreat,” didn’t they? And native religions are, well, barbaric and cruel. The prosecution would then be compelled to bring in their “experts” to argue that a non-Indian, who allegedly learned to do this ceremony from “shamans” all over the world, did the sweat lodge the wrong way. Ray would be guilty of manslaughter by way of “malpractice” even if he is an “expert” on the sweat lodge. We’ve been there before. Experts had to be…