Search for "cheapes rate one way airline tickets from dayton oh to jacksonville nc phone number 1-800-299-7264"

False Saviors: Trump, Cruz, and the Gospel of the Quick Fix

By Marcia Pally

…e class, once the largest, is the majority no longer; median middle class income has dropped 4% since 2000; four middle income jobs that accounted for 60% of employment in 1979 accounted for only 46% by 2012; and the number of persons not in the labor force is growing. While some are getting richer, the numbers tell us, middle income earners are hobbled by shrinking purchasing power, disappearing job opportunities, and increasingly out-of-reach ed…

Yet Another Survey Shows ‘Nones’ Growth at Record Levels

By Elizabeth Drescher

…ost recent General Social Survey (GSS), which has tracked religious preference since 1972, when a mere 5% of Americans self-identified as religiously unaffiliated. The report reinforces October 2012 findings by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life on the rapid growth in the population of Nones, especially among adults under age 30. According to the report, the demographic tipping point in religious unaffiliation occurred in the 1990s, when the…

Renovating Marriage, One Gay Couple at a Time

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ose marriage equality on religious grounds. For them, I point to a growing number of religious leaders who also understand that gays and lesbians can do a lot to “redefine” marriage in beneficial ways. Rev. Ed Bacon, who leads the 4,000 member All Saints Church in Pasadena, Calif., told Oprah Winfrey this past weekend that marriage would be “enriched” by same-sex couples. I’ve never had a straight couple come to me and say, ‘My marriage is in trou…

Not a ‘Weenie-A** Lodge’: James Ray Trial Begins

By Johnny P. Flynn

…ss, and fifteen were reported to be suffering ill effects. In spite of the number of people who experienced difficulties during each of the eight fifteen-minute rounds, Ray contends he did not know that there were problems. In fact, Ray is accused of ignoring the pleas of those who wanted out; in one case an individual went out through the side of the sweat lodge to escape the heat. The prosecution played tapes of Ray before the sweat saying, “It’…

First U.S. Visit of the Virgin Mary Confirmed in Wisconsin

By Lewis Wallace

…ted the mainstreaming of strains of Catholicism ranging from the entire Franciscan order (St. Francis started his career as something of a controversial rogue) to veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Latin America (a single goatherd saw her in the hills in 1531). The Basilica at Guadalupe is now a site that draws over 10 million visitors per year, making it the second-most visited church in the world after the Vatican. Drawing the Line at Cani…

Indonesian Court Rejects Religious Conservatives’ Bid To Criminalize Gay Sex; More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…human lives. Hate crimes, bullying and violence are the disastrous consequences of this encouragement of homophobia.” Servin notes that President Horacio Cartes, months before his 2013 election, “compared gay people to monkeys and said he would rather shoot himself in the testicles before his son married a man.” Romania: Report on ‘traditional values’ alliance with U.S. groups to oppose LGBT rights Sian Norris reports for Open Democracy’s 50.50 on…

Are You There God? It’s Us, Googling

By Michael Schulson

…elated to the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, church and prayer are all highly concentrated in the Bible Belt. They rise on Sunday everywhere.” Other patterns are more jarring: “Relative to the rest of the country, for every search I looked at, retirement communities search more about hell,” he writes. Each month, on average, 422 people in the US ask Google “Why did God make me ugly?” and 103 ask “Why did God make me black?” The most common God-related…

Can the Catholic Church Survive Trump?

By Patricia Miller

…s occurred around the time the administrative staff of the bishops’ conference was infiltrated by political operatives affiliated with organizations like the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Alliance Defending Freedom, and the Family Defense Council. Working in tandem with the highest profile culture warriors like Baltimore’s Archbishop Lori and New York’s Cardinal Dolan, they helped steer the more confrontational posture of the U.S. bishops…

A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…through education and other incentives. Over time, India’s social fabric incorporated Muslim and Christian norms, and ironically, many Hindu leaders embraced some of those norms in an attempt to re-interpret their religious scriptures from a modernist perspective. As a result, Hinduism itself became interpreted as more rigid and doctrinarian than its scriptural roots, and generations of Indians became Christianized (though not necessarily Christi…

And What of the Non-Jewish Jews?

By Shaul Magid

…en’t Jewish by religion, yet consider themselves Jewish. Reasons for this include the fact that Jesus was Jewish, because of Jewish ancestry generations ago, a Jewish spouse, Jewish friends etc. In terms of numbers, Jews by religion or no religion make up 2.2% of the U.S. population, but if you add “People with a Jewish affinity” it rises to 2.7%, so that this category of people who are not considered Jews by the Jewish community but identify as J…