Search for "cheap airline tickets from california to maui hi phone number 1-800-299-7264"

A Question for Hobby Lobby Supporters…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…o is the salient difference the size of the list? Is there some number of things-this-paper-can-be-used-for that puts the employer at a safe moral distance from the act, where previously they had been complicit? If so, what’s the number? How long does the list of possible uses have to be to assuage the employer’s conscience enough to let the employees use their compensation for things the employer finds morally repugnant? See, here’s the thing I’d…

New Doc Strives for Christian Unity—But What if Unity is the Problem?

By Noah Berlatsky

…iation—LGBT acceptance. Gulker himself finds this rift especially painful. His children are both queer, and he clearly wants to support them and love them. But he also feels a commitment to Christian community. Initially he says that his commitment is to what he describes (inaccurately) as the church’s 2000 years of heteronormative tradition. But towards the end he admits that he had not actually been opposed to marriage equality at all. In fact,…

The Revolution Will Not Be Fetishized: Taking Resistance Beyond the Spiritual Industrial Complex

By Andrea R. Jain

…alist understandings of “progress.” This largely replaced the radical anti-hierarchical, egalitarian, anti-capitalist understandings of emancipation that had flourished in 1960s and 1970s spiritual movements. Consider the political dissenter Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel Brave New World and what it represented to many participants in the 1960s British-American counterculture whose countless spiritualities subverted the social status quo through…

Fasting and Faithy Friends of Convenience

By Sarah Posner

…nd of religion. Wallis, for his part, loves to describe President Obama as his “friend.” His 2006 Sojourners event, at which Obama gave an enthusiastically received speech, was seen as a turning point in a surge of young evangelical support for his candidacy. Wallis is frequently cited as one of President Obama’s “spiritual advisors,” and was one of the early promoters of, and advisors to, Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership…

The Story Behind the Catholic Church’s Stunning Reversal on Contraception

By Patricia Miller

…ance conception, is a woman who cannot hope to be much more than a baby-machine,”; she wrote. Cahill and Ruether were not alone in concluding that the church’s dictum on contraception was an anachronism. Catholic theologians and bishops were also suggesting it was time to revisit the teaching. Two developments spurred their willingness to question the ban. One was a change in how the church viewed the purpose of marital sex. The church had held si…

How Religion Shapes (or Doesn’t) Our Views on Public Issues

By Daniel Schultz

…ts everyone to be bound in covenant relationships? Not so fast, Sparky. I think what this shows is that liberal believers bracket the question out of the religious realm. That is, if you asked people in many UCC congregations if they thought faith was important in determining attitudes toward gays and lesbians, they might agree. But ask about same-sex marriage, and the answer you might receive would be “that’s a matter for civil jurisdiction, not…

Did North Carolinians Vote Against their Own Beliefs?

By Peter Montgomery

…their families and deny them equal rights as citizens. The second saddest number comes with its own silver lining. Public Policy Polling reported on Sunday that most North Carolina residents believe that gay couples should have access to some legal protections. But because most voters didn’t understand just how extreme and far-reaching the amendment before them today was, they would vote for it to “protect” marriage. According to PPP: In some sen…

‘It’s a Gay Problem,’ and Other Myths From the Catholic Church’s Sexual Abuse Crisis

By Joelle Casteix

…ical development minimizes and normalizes sexual assault. Victims of “pedophilia” (children victimized pre-puberty), church defenders say, are different from victims of “ephebophilia,” those abused after puberty but before adulthood. Older victims are considered “less catastrophically damaged” by the church, implying that what happened to them was less abhorrent and caused less pain. But let’s get down to the truth: Whether a 15-year-old or an 8-y…

Packed with Threats of Political Violence, Media Largely Ignore the NAR’s ‘Million Women’ Rally in DC

By Frederick Clarkson

…in Mordecai, persuade the king to retract his order, made at the behest of his chief minister, Haman, to exterminate all Jews in the kingdom. Instead, the king hangs Haman on the gallows he had built for Mordecai, and grants the Jews permission to annihilate their enemies. The story goes on to detail that Haman’s ten sons and 500 other men are killed on the first day, and 300 more the next. Eventually, 75,000 people are killed in other Persian pro…

A Peek Inside the ‘Onion’ of Scientology

By Kristin Rawls

…, I was the only person in the room. I don’t really know what their membership numbers are right now. However, there is an independent movement of Scientologists that is splintering from the Church. They’re similar to the Protestant reformers who broke with the Catholic Church. Specifically, they are not charging people tremendous sums, which is what the organized Church does, and they’re not being nearly as punitive. I think money and dogmatism…