Search for "cheap airline tickets from cleveland ohio to austin texas phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Will Getting Rid of Bryan Fischer Get Rid of the AFA’s Problem?

By Sarah Posner

…hind the AFA-sponsored prayer rallies The Response, first hosted by former Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2011, and most recently by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal last weekend. About his role in mobilizing evangelicals in the 2008 election, Lane told me, “why the left continues to attack public involvement by folks with faith in the public square is beyond comprehension to most people… What we’re doing is the mobilization of pastors and pews to re…

Authoritarian SCOTUS Didn’t ‘Just Happen’: As Roe Hangs By a Thread the Press Struggles with Context and Framing

By Chrissy Stroop

…ivist Aubrey Schlackman and her “vision” for a maternity ranch in post-Roe Texas, waxing poetic about “a new era in America when the church would establish a kind of Christian social safety net where motherhood was not only supported but also exalted as part of God’s plan for the universe.” The article makes only one brief mention of the pervasive abuse that has been, and still is, associated with such institutions, downplaying it as something tha…

Graeme Wood on ISIS: No Such Thing as Objective Critique

By Eric M. Gurevitch

…ation of a dystopian alternate reality in which David Koresh or Jim Jones survived to wield absolute power over not just a few hundred people, but some 8 million. Scholars of religion like Catherine Wessinger have spilt much ink over the events that lead to the tragic deaths at Jonestown and Waco, Texas. What has become clear in the years since those tragedies is that the true horror of them was avoidable, but only if those in power had both taken…

The Battle for the Evangelical Vote

By Sarah Posner

…, which was behind Lane-inspired efforts like The Response (hosted by then-Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2011, and this year by Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal). Horowitz reports that the AFA “pays him a retainer and provides him with legal and accounting assistance;” in return, AFA “gets its name on all of Mr. Lane’s events and adds to its database the contact information of all the pastors he organizes.” The AFA is known for its virulently anti-g…

Pope Francis Loves Nuns, But Can the Divide Between Sisters and Vatican Be Healed?

By Megan Sweas

…l television this month. After talking with immigrant families in McAllen, Texas on the ABC 20/20 special episode “Pope Francis and the People,” Pope Francis asked to speak with a Catholic sister he saw “hidden there among all the people” in the pews—Sister Norma Pimentel (start at 1:48 for that moment). He thanked Pimentel—and all women religious in the United States—for the work they do, then said, “I’ll tell you one other thing. Is it appropria…

3 Takeaways from #Easter2015

By Michael Schulson

…ested North Point Ministries, also in the Atlanta area. Gateway Church, in Texas, urged parishioners to post a selfie of themselves with someone they’d brought to church, as part of the #EasterYourSelfie campaign. At least one church actively discouraged selfies, though. 3) Hashtagging to Calvary One advantage of hashtags: you can string a series of tweets into a kind of narrative. For example, in the days leading up to Easter, Campus Crusade for…

Hagee’s New Film Uses Jews and Science to Prove Christian, Pro-US God

By Michael Schulson

…itting in a suburban Raleigh cinema, watching a wall-sized projection of a Texas mega-pastor intoning the details of apocalyptic prophecies, and then actual thunder roars. And you can’t help it. You start to wonder. Is it a sign? John Hagee has a penchant for seeing such signs. The popular San Antonio pastor is the founder of Christians United for Israel, an organization that makes AIPAC look wishy-washy, and the author of the book Four Blood Moon…

A Religion Scholar Gets It Wrong on Indiana’s RFRA

By Danny Fisher

…statutes cited by the [Washington Post], says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.” Why this flourish in Indiana’s original version of the law, then? In Epps’s view, making “a business’s ‘free exercise’ right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government” (as in the Hobby Lobby case) was “impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a Ne…

No Bible-as-State-Book for Tennessee as Legislators Suffer “Symbol Fatigue”

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…hip sloop designated as the official maritime sloop of the state of Maine. Ohioans also sought out sloop-related recognition, appealing to their state’s governing assembly to name “Hang on Sloopy” as the state rock song. And in Missouri, where I grew up, residents of the show-me state felt they needed an official state wonder dog. (Specifically, Jim the Wonder Dog, who was not from Missouri but evidently baffled some important Missouri psychologis…

What Republicans Mean When They Compare Climate Change to Religion

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

Last week, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal comparing climate change to religion. Smith argues that the “facts alone,” and not preordained ideological commitments, should inform U.S. climate policy. We need “open debate and critical thinking,” says Smith, which are fundamental to the scientific process and democratic deliberation. Smith could…