Search for "cheap airline tickets from new york ny to grand rapids mi phone number 1-800-299-7264"

A New Frontier for Democrats and Religion?

By Sarah Posner

…s might have talked about peace and poverty, but Francis’s much-discussed “new tone” seems like a permission slip for Democrats to talk religion without a full scale showdown on culture war issues. That said, there are topics apparently left undiscussed: a new war on LGBT people in Russia, Nigeria, and elsewhere, not to mention that elephant in the room with all things Francis, what freedom means for half the world’s population, women. Obama and K…

Why Isn’t Ferguson the Start of a New Civil Rights Movement?

By Rebecca Sager

…ion. Perhaps in the wake of the tragedy in Ferguson there will be a renewed vigor from progressive churches that will help repair old coalitions, build new ones, and tell a new story about who gets to speak “for religious people.”…

Trump Order A ‘Death Sentence’ For Some LGBT Refugees? Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Evangelical Lutheran Church. According to The Local, “The ceremony marks a new milestone for gays and lesbians in Norway, which like its Nordic neighbours is at the forefront of gay rights in Europe. Civil marriage and adoption have been open to gays since 2009 and the Church also authorises the ordination of homosexuals.” The men have been a couple since 1981. Lebanon: Court says homosexuality not punishable offence; profile of LGBT community cen…

The Visceral Vote: Obama-as-Sojourner v. McCain-as-Mythic-Hero

By Ira Chernus

…r some of the pieces. One valuable piece comes from a recent column by the New York Times‘ (neo?)conservative pundit David Brooks. The root of Obama’s problem with the voters, he suggests, is that Obama “has been a sojourner.” His life journey has taken him to many places and many political positions. But he has never settled down in one place. And “voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.” Brooks goes on to contrast the two…

McCain’s VP Courts Conservative Evangelicals

By Kathryn Joyce

…propriates the terminology of women’s liberation to temper the often stark misogyny of the antiabortion movement with the tagline “Women Deserve Better” (than abortion). Feminists for Life has been an early promoter of the increasingly popular prolife emphasis on the harm abortion does to women, and a champion of “father’s rights” with the help of the disgraced ex-Bush appointee Wade Horn (the former pro-abstinence Assistant Secretary of Children…

Russian Attack on LGBTs at UN Rejected; Gay Cake Controversy Rages in N. Ireland; Bishop Calls for Marriage Referendum in Puerto Rico; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…to be “out of the closet”. What we were hearing – and it has snatched the microphone of homosexual life in the same unrepresentative way that Islamism has grabbed the public voice of Muslims – was the voice of a self-appointed moral policeman. If you are gay, Mr Strudwick seemed to assert, there are certain things you must believe. Nothing else is permitted under the gay rights sharia. Nigeria: Presidential candidate denies marriage-equality deal…

Year-End Best Books in Race and Religion in American History

By Paul Harvey

…ven in an American society burdened by slavery and racism since its birth. New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration Judith Weisenfeld NYU Press February 2017 And finally, Judith Weisenfeld’s New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity During the Great Migration is, I think, an instant classic. It resurrects worlds of black American new religious movements from World War I to the mid-twentieth cen…

Prophecy and Prosperity are Keys to Republican Christian Nationalism According to New Poll

By Daniel Schultz

…gained momentum in the Trump years. Still, this is a societal change not limited to any one creed, age, or race. Everyone is experiencing disaffiliation, albeit at different rates. That point cannot be separated from how we understand Christian nationalism and the MAGA base. The next part of the equation is trickier to describe. As RD recently reported, Republican churchgoers are more likely than other members of the GOP to be Christian nationalis…

Noah, Cosmos Controversies Not About Biblical Literalism

By Dan Mathewson

…anderer” at the end of a Slate article: “It never ceases to amaze me how many dummies out there still buy the whole story of the flood, and frankly, all the stories in the Bible. They still think there is some invisible supreme being living in the sky who controls earthly events. Un-effing-believable!”) What tends to get buried beneath the landslide of coverage of religious conservative outrage—and outrage over the outrage—is meaningful analysis o…

Rising Christian Right Movement, New Apostolic Reformation, Emerged as a Mid-20th Century Splinter of White Supremacy

By Keri Ladner

…ue elements of Pentecostalism, especially the Latter Rain Revival (which many Pentecostal denominations formally denounced, even while churchgoers flocked to the revival services). The NAR today seems to have left behind the overtly pseudohistorical belief that claims people of British/European descent are the true Israel of the Bible. But the leaders have held on to many other beliefs that emerged from British Israelism, including that God has ca…