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

End-Times Watcher Sees Satan in an Energy Drink

By William R. Black

…anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred and sixty-six.” The author of Revelation meant that 666 was a person’s name turned into a number via the Jewish numerological practice of gematria. Since every Hebrew letter was also a number, the letters of a name could be added up to produce that person’s number. Here’s an example of gematria using an alphabet we’re more famil…

The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…lism—ours is the only religious route you can take to get to God. That’s a really strange idea. Religion is not about truth, it’s about security. The sort of thing I’m presenting is never going to be the majority view but it’s going to be the minority point of view for those who are bold enough to look at life as it really is and not to need a narcotic to get through it but as something that gives them the strength to embrace the radical insecurit…

Can I Get Some Birth Control Pills With That Slushie?: Unpacking the Contraceptive Mandate Rollback

By Sunnivie Brydum

…sex, or that non-procreative sex is immoral, or that contraceptives aren’t really health care. So, what is the appropriate role of religious conviction when discussing health care—which relies on science that sometimes directly refutes those convictions? PM: Unfortunately, this was the question that the courts were really reluctant to dig into. The assumption seemed to be that the basis of the plaintiffs’ beliefs should go unquestioned, even if it…

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…an. To be sure, neither rape exceptions nor life-of-the-mother exceptions really make a lot of sense if you truly think that a fertilized embryo is a rights-bearing human being. But a life-of-the-mother exception, without a rape exception, gives a pretty clear picture of where the pregnant woman’s welfare fits into the picture. It’s saying, in essence: “Is being pregnant going to actually directly literally kill her? No? Oh, so it might just comp…

What Coverage of a Fatal Orthodox Baptism Reveals About Western Media

By Katherine Kelaidis

…mportant marker of Eastern Christian identity—particularly as increasingly numbers of Eastern Christians became the simultaneous targets of Western crusaders and Islamic conquerors. In this context, rigid adherence to liturgical customs became a means by which to assert and preserve identity in the face of colonization and oppression. Conversely, adherence to Christian practices abandoned by the Christian West—if not in the Middle Ages then certai…

What To Do When Fred Phelps Arrives in Your Neighborhood

By Susan Henking

…in overt ways. Cohocton is a small town, with a population in 2009 of about 800 people. It is in upstate New York. It is not my small town, nor is it likely yours; and yet each of these places is someone’s neighborhood. This time, it is only an hour away for me. Picketing as “The Workingman’s Means of Communication” On March 2, 2011, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in response to a series of prior decisions around Westboro Baptist Church’s pi…

Thoreau’s Ferocious Critique of Philanthropy Does Not Make Him “Selfish”

By Alda Balthrop-Lewis

…abwe, just as overlooked and beleaguered… Big companies have always sought cheaper labor, moving from North to South in the United States, looking for the hungriest, the most desperate, the least organized, the most exploitable. Press coverage of conditions in Apple’s factories in China has been anything but glowing. Yet when Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, says he’ll give his personal wealth to charities of his choice (many of them in Silicon Valley), he…

World Congress of Families Blessed By Georgian Orthodox Patriarch and George W. Bush; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…adrennial General Conference in Portland, Oregon. From May 10-20, more than 800 delegates will debate changes to church policy, including several that seek to lift longstanding bans on LGBT ministers and same-sex marriages. This is the first Methodist General Conference since the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015. LGBT-affirming Methodists have failed to change church policy, with the denomination’s numerical strength now in the south –…

Why #FreeBritney is an #Exvangelical Cause

By R.L. Stollar

Everyone knows Britney Spears. Her talent, popularity, and struggles with mental illness are ubiquitous. A widely celebrated artist dubbed “The Princess of Pop,” Spears has five No. 1 singles and six No. 1 albums. She’s sold 150 million records around the world. After a public episode of mental illness in 2008, Spears was assigned a conservator. Since 2008, she’s nonetheless conducted four world tours, recorded four albums, and performed 248 sold…

Conservative Christians Oppose New ‘Inter-Religious’ University

By Philip Clayton

…and administration deny that this will happen. But time will tell. What’s really at stake in the furor of criticism? What trends do they signal? Conservative schools that fight interreligious education isolate themselves behind higher and higher walls, rather like the walls U.S. embassies have to build to protect themselves from increasingly hostile populations. At stake, they say, is the unity of truth and the preservation of the historic Christ…