Search Results for:

cheap airline tickets for 16 year olds phone number 1-800-299-7264

New Reports Reveal Global Persecution of Nonbelievers

…atirizing religious rituals and sanctities and prophets” under articles 98, 160, and 161 of the Egyptian Penal Code. According to Egypt News Daily, the prosecution first sought to charge him in connection with disseminating Innocence of Muslims but when this accusation was proven false, they revised their strategy to target the content of Saber’s video blog. Though sentenced to three years and released on bail he was subsequently locked up due to…

Read More

Americans Say Religion is “Losing Influence”

…l inspiration, and social movements is a separate reality from the growing number of nones. Both need coverage. But the Gallup data raises questions that I’ve rarely seen addressed in recent years. What does faith look and feel like in flyover country? As a cub reporter, I wrote about the greying mainline, their internecine squabbles and financial woes. But thirty years later, they’re still standing. Did we get it wrong or did we just forget to lo…

Read More

The Real Goal of Pro-Life Movement Support for Scott Brown: Kill Health Care Reform

…f the Massachusetts Senate seat the late Ted Kennedy held for more than 40 years, the conservative movement is rejoicing over what it is characterizing as a “new” American revolution — a new tea party, if you will — emerging out of Massachusetts. The geography is rife with symbolism: the first shots of the 2010 revolution fired in the heart of blue America, potentially killing Kennedy’s life work and setting the stage for a Republican resurgence i…

Read More

Travolta Airlifts Scientology, Supplies, to Haiti

…pastoral care.” Their counseling services included promoting their hotline number on Fox News under the title “National Mental Health Assistance.” In 2002, Tom Cruise and executives from Scientology’s FASE (Foundation for the Advancement in Science and Education) launched “Downtown Medical” (also called “New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project”). This facility offered FDNY firefighters and other recovery workers the opportunity to partake i…

Read More

UPDATED: Religion Has Been Framed; Covering the Aga Khan’s Visit

…ant to make religion a source of conflict. I marvel at the fact that seven years after 9/11 the US media doesn’t understand how complicit it is in supporting this cycle of violence. A short course on Islam may have been a poor ROI before, but now it seems like a necessity. In England, an avowed atheist, writes almost 2 years after the London subway bombings that Islam is “an uplifting and happy faith.” While I don’t expect US journalists to adopt…

Read More

The New Age Fantasy of a Celtic Church that Revered Nature and the Divine Feminine Never Existed — So What?

…, an Episcopal priest at the Eucharist Church in San Francisco, wrote last year that while he’d long dismissed the holiday as “an excuse for people to get sloshed on green beer or talk about leprechauns and four leafed clovers,” he’s come to see St. Patrick’s Day as a “powerful means of enfleshing the gospel.” For Jones, his appreciation for the saint was inculcated in the community of which he’s a member, an ecumenical fellowship named after a tw…

Read More

Rise of Episcopal Village

…s shift in thinking are myriad and have only intensified since 2008 when a number of studies indicated that for the first time in US history, less than 50 percent of Americans classified themselves as “Christian.” Such shifts in church decline have been documented in the Church of England (UK) for decades. As reported by the Rev. Steve Hollinghurst, Researcher in Evangelism to Post-Christian Culture, the Sheffield Centre, Children’s Sunday school…

Read More

Ideology is More Than Skin Deep: Why I Can’t Get Along To Go Along

…der to bring them into the fold gently. This tantalizing idea fails on any number of levels. For example, a quick scan of history finds Pope Clement scolding the Corinthians for their argumentativeness 50 years or so after Paul wrote to them. So much for the ideal of unity. It also misrepresents the scriptural witness on conflict. On issue after issue throughout the Old and New Testaments, conflicts are not synthesized, not transformed, often not…

Read More

Missing the Anger for the Shoes

…feces smeared all over their floors and carpets, although I’m sure a great number of non-Muslims appreciate these artifacts from guests’ shoes. As mentioned previously, shoes are also used to discipline people. Belt-whuppins are difficult when men’s traditional garb does not include belts. Shoes/slippers/etc. are far more common. They are used to help “enlighten” insouciant, arrogant, oblivious, destructive, or otherwise socially maladjusted indiv…

Read More

Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone. It Felt Like There Were a Million Nazis.”

…alkanize this moment. What happened on Saturday has been happening for 400 years or more—we don’t need to single this out as some sort of unique moment. This is a catalyst for us, and we need to respond to it. That’s real. The other thing is, this is a personal plea to white clergy—we didn’t have the numbers. White clergy did not respond to this. https://www.facebook.com/publictheologian/photos/a.832371280191875.1073741829.832236016872068/13646766…

Read More