Search Results for:

American Airlines 1800-299-7264 Manage Flight Booking

Mexican Marriage Marches Show Struggle Between Church and Secular State; Pro-LGBT Mormon Group Grows After ‘Apostate’ Declaration; Botswana Gives Anti-Gay US Pastor the Boot; Global LGBT Recap

…on groups, held a regional conference in Nairobi, Kenya this past weekend. American Religious Right figures on the schedule included Don Feder of the World Congress of Families, Sharon Slater of Family Watch International, Michael Hichborn of the far-right Catholic Lapanto Institute, In a conference preview, the Southern Poverty Law Center noted: Africa continues to be a nexus of anti-LGBT and anti-choice activism on the part of U.S.-based individ…

Read More

Will the Taliban Actually Remain Somewhat Moderate This Time?

…since the North Vietnamese military had attacked it, and in fact the last American soldiers to lose their lives in the war were defending the airport. After that last helicopter flight not a single person was evacuated by the US military. The “boat people” who fled Vietnam did so on their own. By contrast the Taliban has been remarkably patient. The airport hasn’t been bombarded, and tens of thousands of Afghan people have been able to board US m…

Read More

My Congregation Tried to Help a Syrian Family Settle in the US

…It does make me wonder, though, what would happen if this family got their flight waivers tomorrow and showed up next week. Would they be redirected to Connecticut like the family turned away from Indiana this week? Would they face open hostility, suspicion, even violence, as Muslims in many states have? Would my parishioners still want to befriend them, or would they be cowed or converted by the mean-spirited rhetoric that has been flying loose r…

Read More

Larycia Hawkins’ Actual Violation of Wheaton’s Statement of Faith Hints at the School’s True Intentions

…s and cultures—it’s not easy, after all, to cultivate a reputation for top-flight scholarship while simultaneously signaling common cause with evolution-denying right-wing conservatism. Given the emptiness of Wheaton’s theological censure of Dr. Hawkins, it seems even more unlikely that Wheaton’s move to fire Dr. Hawkins is a principled defense of evangelical orthodoxy. In fact, it seems fair to presume that the optics of this situation are delibe…

Read More

Coming Out on a Christian Campus, Then and Now

…a boy—that dunk in the cold baptistery during a gospel revival was more a flight from hell and from my growing sense of sexual difference than a spiritual conviction. After taking the bread and wine that Sunday at Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin’s Hyde Park, I couldn’t get up. I knelt at the altar rail and wept, shaking, still not believing in a God or a community that would accept me just as I am, rather than just how others wanted and…

Read More

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

…e said Bedi was still sleeping, exhausted from the previous day’s overseas flight, and needed to reschedule our interview for that afternoon. I called the number back, convinced the opportunity was lost. “I’m here at the hotel now, but I’m booked solid this afternoon—” “Hold on, let me check with her,” the woman told me. There was a brief pause. “She says to come on up, she’ll meet with you now. It wouldn’t be fair to cancel since you’re already h…

Read More

Capricology: Divine Madness

…s the ability to instantly acquire the skills she needs to get through the flight simulator. She argues in effect that she doesn’t want to do things the easy way; she wants to earn her way through the virtual world. I am reminded of the ongoing debates around multiplayer games about what constitutes cheating and whether it is appropriate for a character to pay real cash to buy a ready-made avatar which can function at higher levels than they have…

Read More

Mitt Romney At Value Voters Summit

…ancy Pelosi’s numbers have being going down a chute faster than a Jet Blue flight attendant” and  “President Obama’s idea of a rogue state is Arizona.”   As for the substance of Romney’s speech, what was most notable was the absence of talk about values, let alone religion.  Instead, Romney sounded every bit the corporate buyout and turnaround specialist, criticizing the “anti-growth,” “anti-investment” Obama administration for forgetting the priv…

Read More

Getting Back into Blogging

…atable Eiffel tower. That’s how I knew it was partially about the hajj. My flight itinerary is set. I fly directly from San Francisco to Paris, and then from Paris to Jeddah, which is like the port city for hajjis. Apparently in the dream, someone was so anxious to show they had gone through Paris, they sort of took anything—because, clearly in the dream, no merit was ascribed to that particular choice. It was worse than my stop at the tourist kio…

Read More

Invited by Allah

…one has to be Muslim for at least six months to make hajj. So I go to the American embassy and secure an affidavit stating I have been practicing Islam since 1972. When I brought that to the embassy they said: you need to have a mahram, the male guardian. At the time I was divorced and my son, Muhammad was only six years old, living with his dad while I was away. My father was deceased and all the other living males in my family were not Muslim….

Read More