Search for "cheap airline tickets from california to maui hi phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Dieting, Sex, Jesus: The Body as Moral Battleground

By Lynne Gerber

…lk about them? And how do fat people navigate the highly moralized webs within which they live their lives? I wanted to contribute to a critical analysis of fatness in American culture. But I didn’t want to focus just on fatness. I was very aware of how difficult it is for most people to develop and maintain a critical perspective on this issue, especially when words like “health,” “morbidity,” and “death” are raised; words that are often halt cri…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…eighborhoods, sometimes experiencing significant attrition in their membership numbers and finances, and sometimes choosing to relocate altogether. Even institutionally resourceful congregations that remain in high-poverty neighborhoods have increasingly faced great difficulties in their efforts to connect culturally, interpersonally, and programmatically to their immediate neighborhoods. In a 2003 study of interactions between churches and impove…

The Wrong Emperor: Why Ralph Reed’s New Pro-Trump Book Distorts the Bible to Cast the President as Tiberius

By Tony Keddie

…imidate his opponents in the Senate. He was also a sexual deviant and pedophile. This is to whom Paul appealed for assistance … because he took his rights as a Roman citizen seriously and treated them as sacred and inviolate. Because of Paul’s faithfulness, the message of salvation through Jesus Christ reached the court of Caesar, and the Bible records that many in the emperor’s household came to faith in Christ (Philippians 4:22).” “If Paul could…

American Sin: Why Pope Francis’ Mercy is Not Our Mercy

By Kaya Oakes

…ison for his whole life rather than trying to rehabilitate him and helping him find his place in society.” For all his talk of sinfulness, however, Francis’ vision of the church is of one that is actively forgiving. “The church does not exist to condemn people but to bring about an encounter with the visceral love of God’s mercy,” he tells Tornielli, and in order for that to happen, it must “go outside and look for people where they live, where th…

It’s Bring Your Gun to Church Day

By Bill Berkowitz

…r of the new book, “You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence but You Can’t Make Him Think,” published by WND Books, has challenged scholar and bestselling author Richard Dawkins to a debate. Comfort promises to give $10,000 to Dawkins, or a children’s-related charity, regardless of who wins the contest. “Richard Dawkins is arguably the most famous living atheist, now that Anthony Flew doubted his doubts and backslid,” said Comfort, co-host, along with…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…world. So, too, the renaming of Abram as Abraham (Gen. 17:1-14) expresses his new, covenantal relationship to God and marks the future trajectory of his lineage. Indeed, in many religions, choosing a name that expresses a close coherence between self-identity and religious identity and affiliation (or having one conferred) is a defining ritual feature, as in the Sikh Nam Karam ceremony for naming a child according to the first letter of a sacred…

Catholic Leaders Offer Criticism, Support to Boxer Pacquiao After Anti-Gay Comments…

By Peter Montgomery

…mmon antagonist in the conservative religious right of the United States. While this group continues to oppose public policies in the U.S. “that would benefit low-income people, which we think would also benefit black and brown people,” they are also working against LGBTI rights abroad because they feel they have lost the culture war at home…. TFAM is currently working in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo,…

Pope Denounces Gender Colonization; Indonesian Court Considers Islamist Request To Criminalize Homosexuality; Egypt’s Grand Mufti Says No One Has Right to Harm Homosexuals; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the persons and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this terrible! In a conversation with Pope Benedict, who is in good health and very perceptive, he said to me: “Holiness, this is the age of sin against God the Creator”. He is very perceptive…

New Research Links Spiritual-Not-Religious to Mental Disorder

By Elizabeth Drescher

…sychologically difficult even for those who might wish to participate. In this light seems something of a stretch to suggest that disengagement with organized religion causes mental health difficulties. Someone with an obsessive-compulsive disorder may avoid settings in which apparently random, spontaneous actions take place—as is often the case in praise- and witness-driven evangelical services. Or someone with one or another form of autism may s…

What Irish Marriage Vote Means for Catholic Church; The Lonely Fight for Equality in Belize; Progress and Backlash in Tunisia; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…tect them.” In another story from Tunisia, human rights attorney Wahid Ferchichi says Article 230 of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes homosexuality, is in conflict with the January 2014 Constitution’s protections for freedom and individual rights. Israel: Editorial says Israelis ‘ready to follow Ireland’s lead’ An editorial in Haaretz this week declared, “Israelis are ready to follow Ireland’s lead and legalize gay marriage.” The result of th…