Search for "Lufthansa Flight 800-299-7264 Booking Phone Number Reservations Toll Free"

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…

Change, Not Charity: What Ails the New Left-Right Coalition Against Poverty

By Peter Laarman

…aith leaders who claim to care about the poor slurping up the same reality-free brew and proclaiming, essentially, that there are really No Enemies On The Religious Right and, by extension, No Enemies On The Political Right. Memo to religious middlers: God actually does take sides In recent years Jim Wallis has made himself the leading exemplar of what we might call the No Enemies On The Right viewpoint among religious celebrities. Wallis achieved…

The Missing Element in the Conversation on Christian Nationalism and Freedom: Whiteness

By Peter Laarman

…themselves as the true heirs of 1776, like their forefathers fighting for freedom against tyranny. This freedom included the right to own property, notably slaves…as Jefferson Davis put it, ‘Will you be slaves or will you be independent? Will you consent to be robbed of your property [or] strike bravely for liberty, property, honor, and life?’ Even for the majority of whites who owned no slaves, secession was a war for freedom because it alone co…

On Pi Day, Puzzling Over the Most Famous Transcendental Number

By Ilana E. Strauss

…Physicsworld.com user asks, “What could be more mystical than an imaginary number interacting with real numbers to produce nothing?” Where infinity merges with the earth When you dig into pi, you encounter questions that are as much theological as mathematical: is there a pattern to the universe? Or is it fundamentally random? And how do we reckon with the infinite? Some people have always insisted that there must be a pattern behind pi. If only h…

The Quietly Crumbling Wall of Separation

By Robert Marus

…th’s damage may actually leave some plaintiffs better able to defend their free-exercise rights than before. And other rulings on both free-exercise and non-establishment cases—such as in employment cases involving churches and cases involving government-sanctioned prayer—have maintained a distinctiveness for religion as a constitutional category. But other learned First Amendment scholars—such as Marci Hamilton of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law…

Why Even Progressive Christianity Must Own Its Complicity in Anti-LGBT Violence

By Layton E. Williams

…ian churches and leaders—has led to countless hate crimes, alarmingly high numbers of homeless LGBT young people, and staggering rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide among LGBT youth and adults. Of course, a growing number of churches and denominations today have rejected such a destructive understanding of human sexuality. Religion Dispatches recently compiled a list of the official positions on LGBT issues currently taught by various Chri…

Religious Exceptions Not So Exceptional According to New Study

By Patricia Miller

…most Catholic health care institutions have accepted the accommodation, a number of the nation’s 260 Catholic institutions of higher learning as well as Catholic nonprofits are seeking a broader exemption that would in effect bar their insurers from providing contraceptive coverage as specified under the accommodation designed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a consolidated case challenging th…

Vatican Reverses Anti-Liberation Policies in Mexico

By Ruth Chojnacki and Jennifer Scheper Hughes

…ate, an ancient institution revived by Vatican II. In 2000, 341 of Mexico’s 800 deacons served the Diocese of San Cristobal, the largest number of deacons in any Catholic diocese in the world. Vatican suspicion of Bishop Ruiz’s liberationist pastoral strategy resulted in a failed attempt to remove him in 1993. The deacon program came under particular scrutiny after the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, with reports that Maya catechists defied th…

Malta Adopts Marriage Equality Over Objections of Catholics and Evangelicals; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…anizations, and individuals from any attempt to curb or obstruct religious freedom or freedom of conscience which are guaranteed by international human rights laws.” Caruana said that although TEAM was aware that marriage equality will not affect religious marriage, it was still concerned about religious rights. “As Christians we believe that according to Biblical teaching, God ordained marriage as a union between one man and one woman for the rea…