Search for "Spirit Customer Service 1 800-299-7264 Number For Reservations"

Alabama’s Yoga Ban Is Part of the Christian Right’s War on Pluralism

By Manisha Sunil

…most foundational freedom—in service of a conservative Christian agenda. In 1993, the state’s Board of Education voted to prohibit yoga, hypnosis and meditation in public schools, stemming from conservative pressure. The current bill, which is now moving to the state’s Senate, would allow the practice of yoga in classes, but still forbid chanting, mantras, and the use of “namaste,” a Sanskrit salutation. To an extent, I agree with the latter part…

Christianity Today’s ‘Humble’ Hindu-to-Jesus Conversion Story is Still a Story of Christian Triumphalism

By Murali Balaji

…ed to his next question: would I like to go to a non-denominational church service after the game? When I politely told him I was a Hindu and not interested, he left me—in mid-set—and walked away. The weights fell on my chest, and as I felt the oxygen leave my body, I turned the barbell enough to ask for help. A person nearby came over to help lift the weights off. That memory resurfaced when I read Kamesh Sankaran’s “The Humbling of a Proud Hindu…

Lying in the Name of the War Lord: Jane Roe’s Fake ‘Conversion’ is a Feature Not a Bug of the Extreme Christian Right

By Frederick Clarkson

…in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, admitted that her 1995 conversion to evangelical Christianity was not only fraudulent, but that she was paid by antiabortion leader Rev. Phillip “Flip” Benham with the complicity of others. “I was the big fish,” she said. “I think it was a mutual thing. I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say, and that’s what I’d say.” The documentary reports…

Even if Biden Wins Will We Reckon With ‘Virtuous Republic Syndrome,’ the Persistent Belief that America is a Blessed Nation?

By Peter Laarman

…flunkies? Why has immigration basically been shut down? Why is the postal service being gutted when mail-in ballots will likely determine the election? Why is the white-dominated GOP stuffing the federal court system with judges and justices who will maintain white power for the foreseeable future? Pundits who keep deploring how polarized our politics have become routinely miss the real point, which is how a racialized Republican Party maintains…

‘God Made Them Male and Female…and Eunuch’: Why the Biblical Case For Binary Gender Isn’t So… Biblical

By Tony Keddie

…especially for transgender—people in employment, health care, and military service. Mark and Matthew present Jesus’s teaching as a narrowly defined discussion pertaining to the interpretation of a law in Deuteronomy. The texts don’t reject gay marriage; they don’t even address it. Hard-nosed conservative leaders persist in reciting verses from Leviticus and Matthew as God’s Word—and the final word—on the issue. Matthew 19:3–6, for instance, remain…

How U.S. Conservatives Conjured the Jesus of Their Dreams

By Peter Laarman

…eping socialism. Fifield’s contribution overlapped with the equally useful service to corporate power supplied by Abraham Vereide, union-busting founder of The Family (a.k.a. The Fellowship), the shadowy network behind the National Prayer Breakfast that Jeff Sharlet has documented so well. It hardly needs saying that the Trump family’s favorite minister—the positive thinking (and also union-hating!) Norman Vincent Peale—was also very much part of…

Why the Media and Democrats Should Reject the Christian Right’s Pearl-Clutching and Address Problematic Religious Views

By Chrissy Stroop

…rismatic renewal” that began in 1967. People of Praise assigns its members spiritual leaders; men are assigned “heads” and women are assigned “woman leaders” (formerly “handmaids”). In the case of a married woman, this leader is automatically her husband. Meanwhile, Barrett’s far-right bona fides are not in question. She is an acolyte of the late arch-conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but influential right-wingers are already…

Before We Scold DeSean Jackson and Others For Anti-Semitism We Need To Talk About ‘Chosenness’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…endants” of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel—rose to prominence in the 19th century. Anglo-Israelism would go through various manifestations with one of the most prominent advocates, Herbert W. Armstrong, starting the Worldwide Church of God in the 1960s, which served as the foundation of the white supremacist Christian Identity movement during the second half of the 20th century. While it’s easy for organizations such as the Southern Poverty…

Exclusive: Why Did Chicago Public Schools Just Quietly Drop Transcendental Meditation?

By Aryeh Siegel

…t in response that the puja ceremony is exactly the same today as it was in 1977, and that the establishment clause has not changed, Roth responded, “In the nearly 40 years since the 1979 court case you cite, tens of thousands of students have learned to meditate as part of voluntary Quiet Time programs with the full support of school boards and parents.” That may be strictly true, but given what we’re learning about the Chicago case, that support…

On the Erasure of Whiteness in Responses to Convicted Pedophile Jan Joosten, a White Man

By Jae Han

…ul white male scholar, Jan Joosten, had downloaded over 27,000 pictures and 1,000 videos of child pornography over a period of at least six years. Some of these victims were children “originaires d’Asie ou des pays de l’Est” (originating in Asia or Eastern countries). Which is to say that they’re marked as non-white Asian children. We don’t know the proportion of Asian victims to non-Asians, but no other ethnic or national marker is mentioned. We…