Search for "cheap airline ticket from ict to europe phone number 1-800-299-7264"

YOU Are Spiritual But Not Religious: The Secret Spiritual History of the Choose Your Own Adventure Books

By Daniel Silliman

…es make choices all the time. The history of our species is amazing: fire, numbers, alphabets or pictographic language, medicine, architecture, money and banking, art, music, laws etc. Choices got us there. We are still making choices both as individuals and societies. Not all of them are good—but, we can change the bad choices, we hope. The children’s series that Montgomery helped to create put readers in exactly that position, again and again. T…

UPDATED: Oklahoma Personhood Bill Not Dead…

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…enate even those who are otherwise staunchly opposed to abortion. With no victories to report—either in Mississippi and Oklahoma, for heaven’s sake!—the personhood movement faces an uncertain future. Others, though, are breathing a sigh of relief. Atlee Breland, of Parents Against Personhood (and past RD contributor) told me that her organization is “so pleased that the Oklahoma Legislature chose not to pass personhood legislation. The extraordina…

Trump’s “Muslim Ban” A Gift to Terrorists

By Ali Olomi

…d Trump and ISIS agree on this. It’s probably why ISIS celebrated Trump’s victory. For ISIS to thrive, it is essential to provoke America into a civilizational conflict. ISIS is, at best, a regional threat, but it has global aspirations. Through the use of terrorism, it can extend its reach and provoke fear and hatred in far more powerful countries. Terrorism is a political strategy. Our fixation on religion blinds us to its strategic use. Banning…

Religious Practices on Trial in Arizona: The Problem With “Experts”

By Johnny P. Flynn

…tions. American Indian inmates are required to follow rules which include pictures of sweat lodges built in the Lakota style, not Navajo, which is the tribal affiliation of a good number of inmates in the Arizona prison system (an amazing fact that is a story for another time). So, even though a non-Indian might be compelled to be put on trial for killing people with his “ceremony,” it is Native American religion which will be the defendant in thi…

Census Reveals Gay People are Shockingly… Normal

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

According to new census figures, the number of people reporting that they are living with a same-sex partner has risen 52 percent in the last decade. That’s almost 902,000 people who are living all across the United States. Even here in my own incredibly conservative state of South Carolina, the number of same-sex couples increased and a quarter of them are raising children. It’s those kinds of facts that have right-wing media like the Christian…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…not to … preventing birth.” But, as New York Times reports, under Trump a number of anti-contraception activists have been given prominent roles in the administration. They are moving not just to finalize a rule that would allow any entity to opt-out of the contraceptive mandate for any reason, which has long been on the bishops’ wish list, but have a history of attacking contraception in general. Katy Talento, who is now a White House domestic p…

A Post-Christian America? Not Quite—Though Devoutly to be Wished

By Peter Laarman

…say about Jon Meacham’s Newsweek piece on the fairly sharp fall-off in the number of Americans self-identifying as Christian (in the newly-released ARIS survey), this bloghead initially demurred. I mean, the amiable and well-informed Meacham said what I would have said: on balance, it’s a good thing that the various and dangerous forms of grievance associated with “Christian nation” thinking should now recede. It’s a good thing that more have come…

A ‘Pro-Life’ Buttigieg Ambush, Trump’s Corrupt Counsel, and More

By Daniel Schultz

…an. 24 that it was dropping plans to host a June 12 Graham event, citing a number of statements by the evangelist “which we consider to be incompatible with our values.” Lest you think this is strictly a Brit thing, the same article notes that Graham has also been met with protests in Florida. He’s taken the news in typical stride: In a statement to Newsweek Jan. 28, Graham said he believes he is facing discrimination because of his religious beli…

Demonized and Demonizing No More.

By Joanna Brooks

…d between atheists and religious communities. Of course, there are still a number of people who are, if not entirely resistant to the ideas in the book, at least deeply suspicious about or don’t see much value in them. One thing I find valuable about Faitheist is that it moves atheism away from the kind of polemic that ends up focusing on truth claims in a very literal way and so mirrors the religious fundamentalisms it would like to dismantle. A…

Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?

By Jay Michaelson

…to a fight in a bar, or behaves inappropriately with women, or commits any number of minor sins which ordinary people get away with every day—he lets down not only himself and his family, but his faith community and the Asian-American (and to some extent Asian) community as a whole, which currently views him as a hero. Can you imagine the pressure? And yet, so far at least, neither Tebow nor Lin has fallen. No crashed cars at three a.m., no extram…