Search for "best airline tickets cheap phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Open Carry Racism: The Right Wing Fever Dream that Predates Trump

By Jason C. Bivins

…ers of which refuse to do so. Get Out may never have been fated to win the Best Picture Oscar, but it’s still the movie that best answers the question how did we get here? while pointing to the “black mold” in the basement. But what needs to be acknowledged is that while Trump is truly exceptional in his disregard for laws, norms, and institutions, he’s also a recognizable product of a half-century’s con game. Significantly, it was with Ronald Rea…

RDPulpit: You Lost the Debate

By Mary E. Hunt

…of unfettered market capitalism, private property, or the common good. At best we hear a plea for an amorphous middle class, while the poor simply fade from view. We missed a chance for careful structural analysis of how the economy works, who profits and who loses. Now is the time to use our economic knowledge to provide for everyone, not revel in the ignorance of Joe Six-Pack about some mysterious system that is beyond us all. No one risks a go…

Election Reporters: Here’s Why Simply Descriptors Like ‘Christians’ Can Have Enormous Consequences

By Daniel Schultz

…For a lot of reasons, conservative Christians tend to own the cultural megaphone today. (Most important among them: conservative judges endorsing extremist conservative Christian arguments.) So I don’t expect the average person to understand all the nuances. But journalists covering national politics, especially those on the Trump beat, need to do better. Here’s why. First of all, it’s a matter of accuracy. As Sarah Posner points out on Bluesky, t…

No, THIS is the Real Christianity…

By Ira Chernus

…is Harold Meyerson’s column, “Hard-Liners for Jesus.” Meyerson, one of the best mainstream pundits out there, charges that there is a huge gap between the teachings of the gospels and the preachings of the “Gospel’s Own Party.” The GOPers tout the old-time religion while violating its biblical precepts, or—to be more exact—the particular biblical precepts that Meyerson approves. He has an easy time finding contradictions between Republican policie…

What the Hell is Wrong With Us? A Muslim Response to America’s Failure to Change

By Haroon Moghul

…ask the reader of the Qur’an, over and over again, to reflect, to use her best judgment, to make her best effort, and to learn from others? If the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, was the last Prophet—and Islam certainly insists on as much—then everything he communicated has to be universal enough to be meaningful but flexible enough to reflect the nuances and characteristics of different experiences. This is one thing a lot of people don’t u…

Take the Van Gogh Challenge: Doctor Who Part VII

By Gabriel Mckee

…primarily about describing the world as it is (although it should take our best understanding of the natural world into account), but about depicting the world as it could be, and transforming it into that better vision of reality. And of course, when religion takes a harmful view of the future, it can often contribute to bringing about a minor apocalypse. This episode ended with the Doctor and Amy not having managed to prevent Van Gogh’s suicide,…

New Book on Trump and Evangelicals Gets it Mostly Right

By Greg Carey

…tories within evangelicalism. Fea repeatedly notes evangelicals’ mixed (at best) history with respect to race relations. He devotes nine pages to the history of racial fear in the evangelical South, but he never gets messy with the most telling factor: that no other religious group even remotely approaches white evangelicals’ preference for Trump. Race proved one of the most decisive predictors of Trump support, and white evangelicals were the mos…

How “Mindfulness” Lost Its Mind

By Thomas Joiner

….g., health, education) but: a) it is no miraculous panacea even under the best of conditions; and b) it can be pernicious when mixed with a focus on the self; selflessness is part of the essence of mindfulness, and self-focus perverts it. Regarding its being a panacea, I show in the book how even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness is overhyped. Regarding the pernicious effects of self-focus, those are general in a species that…

Aliens, Nanobots, & Microbes: The Science of Secular Apocalypse

By Michael Schulson

…o had kids. A lot of them are very open to debate. And so we went out on a number of occasions and had two or three drinks and talked about the ethics of having a kid. There are legitimate questions to be asked, just at an existential level, about whether it’s right to bring something into the world that will suffer—and also experience pleasure—but will suffer and eventually perish. Let’s imagine the best world we can imagine. Is it right to bring…

Repent, Hillary: Trump’s Evangelical Backers Play the Sin Card

By Hollis Phelps

…er told us how to vote, he gave us all the good common sense to choose the best leaders.” It’s important to emphasize that best doesn’t mean perfect, as Abraham, Moses, and David would remind us. The assumption of God’s providence, however, doesn’t work both ways—that is, it can’t be positively applied to Trump’s presumed opponent, Hillary Clinton. That may seem inconsistent, at least on the surface: if God chooses imperfect people, then can’t God…