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

Hobby Lobby: Key to a More Liberal and Less Religious America?

By Rebecca Sager

…passed in Mississippi and the Hobby Lobby case realize that their actions are part of—and perhaps a causal source—of this growing disenchantment. While the consequences for gays and lesbians in Mississippi, where discrimination is now legal, and employees who want to control their own health care decisions are certainly grave, in the long run it’s perhaps even worse for religious establishments in the US that hope to grow—or at best not diminish…

For Conservatives, the Future Looks Dim… and Gay

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…freedoms for LGBT people, those guarding the battlements of “traditional” marriage are becoming ever more shrill in defense of their dying cause. Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, made a trek to the Washington, D.C., offices of the Human Rights Campaign to hold a press conference denouncing homosexuality as “a destructive sin [and] something to be ashamed of. Out-and-proud homosexualism – far from being a human…

Competing Visions of Family & Freedom at UN; Methodists Try to Avoid Schism on Sexuality; Catholic Cardinal Denounces LGBT ‘Demonic Ideology’; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…dern West, the lost virtues of Western Civilization, and transcends a bipolar paradigm to create a new East-West Christendom. He spoke of Georgia as the one to lead this effort to show the world that “Georgia Is Family!” Former U.S. President George W. Bush sent a message praising the Georgian people and the World Congress of Families; he did not attend but was honored with the Family and Democracy Award. The Associated Press reported that Georgia…

What do the January 6 Commission, Covid Deaths and Gun Massacres All Have in Common? God’s Chosen

By John Stoehr

…en, they act like it implicitly—in that they have decided, as a political party over a number of years, that only Republicans can rule legitimately. The country is politically polarized, because the Republicans now insist on a polarized worldview in which the Republicans are good, because they are good and the Democrats are bad, because they are bad. Calls to “do the right thing,” like establishing a truth commission, cannot therefore be seen as m…

‘Heretics’ or ‘Atheists’? A Response

By Rachel Ozanne

…Christianity, I knew that I didn’t belong in my church community anymore—particularly because the church I grew up in emphasized strict adherence to its doctrine. In short, I became a nonbeliever because I took very seriously Christianity and its truth claims, not because I found them laughable. Given that many people currently understand the term atheist to mean, as Blanchard put it, “militant secularism,” I find her idea that a heretic can “cla…

Hajj Journal: Using the Toilet at the Grand Mosque

By Amina Wadud

…s I did, there are a few extra concerns about sanity in the midst of this particular insanity. For example, by day two I bought my first black abaya and niqab. Whenever I went out without any one I know, I wore it. The anonymity is really useful; plus you can do a lot of observing without being personally observed. It helps if you look like you are not interested in anybody, or like a loose woman just because you are not attached. It erases nation…

Magic in the Air: How Intellectuals Invented the Myth of a Mythless Society

By Jason Josephson Storm

…re similar belief patterns in Western Europe. At the very least, it seems hard to argue that the “modern West” is straightforwardly disenchanted. So I asked myself how did we get the notion that “modernity” (and what it is said to entail) equated with an end of belief in magic and spirits? The issue becomes even more troubling when you realize that the canonical European theorists (anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and so on) who came up…

Conservative Republican Muslim Condemns Fox Report on Congressional Staffers as “Anti-Muslim Bigotry”

By Sarah Posner

…this,” referring to the Tennessean’s revelations about Emerson. As to the particular assertions in the Fox piece, Khan noted that the CMSA didn’t exist when people with terrorist ties were alleged to have gone to the prayer sessions. As to the claim that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen with al Qaeda links, attended a prayer session, Khan said: “if al-Awaki came, we would condemn that. If he came, it was years before anyone knew who he was and…

Islamic Intellectual Leadership at a Crossroads

By Amina Wadud

…it into the book. I told him I do not need the recognition of the particular parties involved, including the neo-Orientalist scholar who edited it, to affirm my contributions to Islam (or to my faith, for both are part of my devotion to Allah). They do have a substantial number of women included, so I would not complain on that count. But, here’s the thing: there are no women under the category of Muslim intellectuals. Apparently women don’t thin…

Post-Election, “Is The Black Church Dead?” Redux

By Anthea Butler

…h was peppered with Scripture, telling the crowd “You are the salt of the earth, you are the light of the world.” These candidates, part of a conservative wave of minority candidates this election cycle, can be seen as part of the push, as Sarah Posner has discussed, to gain traction among African-Americans with by focusing on abortion as “black genocide,” and gay marriage. If the 2010 election is a preliminary tea-leaf-reading to 2012, then Presi…