Search for "American Airlines 1800-299-7264 Flight Cancellation Phone Number"

Argue-by-Number: A Suggestion for the Church

By Mark D. Jordan

…n our side. Number 1 could be “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” Number 2: “God doesn’t discriminate.” Number 3: “Sex is only for procreation.” And so on. We could get clever, of course, and assign separate groups of numbers to arguments pro and con or to thematic clusters. I can even imagine some seminary librarian proposing a sort of Dewey Decimal System to organize the arguments. This would allow long series of arguments to be cited b…

Francis Visits the Church that John Paul Broke

By Patricia Miller

…umber of marriages within the church has declined by nearly half. Only the number of Catholic funerals has held steady. And while the number of Catholics overall has remained level, that’s largely due to Hispanic migration to the US; some 40 percent of those born Catholic have left the church. But numbers don’t tell the whole story. The church Francis will encounter is fundamentally different in character from the church of John Paul in two import…

The Sacred and the Dead: Operator, Can You Help Me?

By Maren Haynes

…connection, once burning with possibility and joy, began to cool, as cell phone calls dwindled and numbers eventually changed or were disconnected. As our shared realities drifted apart in their likeness, like Pigpen, I also turned to technologies that promised connection to try to tamp down the yearning and temper that sense of loss. Where Pigpen called up the trusty telephone operator, I did my pining alone, with only the camaraderie of a searc…

In the Aftermath of the “Himalayan Tsunami”

By Luke Whitmore

…(first as Uttaranchal) in 2000, the region has seen a massive rise in the number of visitors to the region, especially by the growing Indian middle class. Roads widened and hotels and visitor services grew exponentially. Building a new hotel or a restaurant by the side of the road felt like a smart investment—even when the road was near a river. Kedarnath saw the building of new cell phone towers, a railway reservation office, helicopter landing…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…er of languages, economic classes, ethnicities and cultures represented in American Catholic churches, American Catholics resist singularity. And it follows that they are going to be inconsistent in how they define mercy, as the hierarchy of the American church is often wont to demonstrate. Even the variety of American “Mercy Doors” found online defies comparison to the huge, ornately carved bass doors Francis pushed open at St. Peter’s when he de…

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…t Atheists and Agnostics are not readily blended populations. Finally, the numbers in the Pew report obscure an understanding of American religiosity as it is expressed in practice—that is, as people do religion or spirituality rather than as they believe. While the researchers marked practice in the conventional categories of worship attendance and prayer, other practices that my research has suggested are religiously or spiritually meaningful to…

A Response to Hussein Rashid

By Amjad Mahmood Khan

…rofessor Rashid should not attack the Community for assuming the mantle of American Muslim leadership when other American Muslims have remained timid or silent on these issues. Second, Professor Rashid contends that the American Muslim community is represented by a diverse range of organizations, and it is this very diversity that makes it difficult for any one Muslim organization to speak with any authority. Professor Rashid is correct to point o…

The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage

By Varun Soni

…rateful Dead 50 years ago, especially in terms of the dramatic rise of the number of Americans who are no longer affiliated with traditional religious institutions or denominations. In the absence of traditional religious affiliation, people are increasingly turning to popular culture to explore and interrogate the ultimate questions of meaning and purpose in their lives. That is why in the United States, there is now a Church of Elvis Presley and…

Before Black Twitter: How the Early Black Press Shaped American Discourse Around Race and Religion

By Benjamin P. Fagan

…Newspaper and the Chosen Nation is that, in the decades leading up to the American Civil War, black Americans used their newspapers to not only proclaim their status as God’s chosen nation on Earth, but to then apply that faith in black chosenness to a range of on-the-ground struggles for black liberation. So I hope that readers of the book not only come away with a better understanding of the contours of black chosenness, but also with a sense o…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…ut all of capitalism. There’s no question that Christian ideas have shaped American business practices, just as American business practices have influenced churches. Lumping the annual revenues of Walmart in with synagogue dues, donations to the Salvation Army, and Catholic hospitals seems like a stretch. And if you look at other corporations, and the criteria used to include them, the territory becomes even murkier. Take Trijicon, for example, ch…