Search for "Delta Airlines 800-299-7264 Business Class Flight Booking"

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…s that taught pastors not to get “sidetracked in controversy.” Instead, my classes taught me that it was theologian Karl Barth that counseled pastors to use both the Bible and the newspaper in their preaching, but Osteen will have none of that. Anything that might get in the way of a happy story, or a story about how God wants you to be happy and be the best “you” you can be, won’t make the cut in an Osteen sermon. Outside of the walls of Lakewood…

Oscar-Nominated Ajami Depicts Reality of Second-Class Citizenship for Arab Israelis

By Meghan McCarty

…sted on the specificity of the film’s depiction of Israeli Arabs as second-class citizens. He pulled it out of the Toronto Film Festival’s “City to City” program, which focused on Tel Aviv, because he objected to the official Israeli promotion of the film as an image of multicultural coexistence in Israel (the film was shown in the festival’s world cinema screenings). In an interview with Al Jazeera English, Copti said that Israel “tokenized Pale…

Why “Family Values” Defined Conservative Christianity (and Why “Religious Liberty” Has Replaced it)

By Eric C. Miller

…d a diversity of issues that mattered specifically to conservative, middle-class, white, evangelical Christians? That’s exactly right. While I talk mostly about gender, certain assumptions about race and class were part of pro-family politics. Christian schools are a perfect example of this. A 1975 school brochure advertised, ‘we have no hippies’ and ‘you can tell our boys from our girls without a medical examination.’ During the late 1960s and th…

Watching Preachers’ Daughters Right After the Boston Bombings While Teaching a Class on Augustine’s Confessions

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…, and specifically, reading Augustine’s Confessions with my Intro Theology class this week. Internet, I love Augustine Confessions. I love, love, love, love Augustine’s Confessions. I love it even when I want to throw it across the room and curse. It’s a complicated love, and I’m not entirely sure where it comes from. But one reason I love Augustine is because he’s thoroughly haunted by the stupidity, callousness, and intractability of human cruel…

Claiming That ‘We Birthed a Nation From Nothing’ CNN’s Rick Santorum Gives a Master Class in Christian Nationalism: An Open Letter to CNN

By Andrew L. Seidel

…as Nancy Isenberg observed in White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. But other colonies are more representative of the principles on which America was founded, especially New Amsterdam, which would become New York City. And when our founders looked back at the Pilgrims and Puritans, they saw theocracies and persecution. The popular myth regurgitated by Santorum, your senior political commentator, claims those theocracies as…

“Burka Avenger”: Pakistan’s Middle Class Gets a Feminist Cartoon

By M. Sophia Newman

…t between 2005 and 2011. The show could have the same effect in Pakistan, particularly if public interest stays strong. (The creators, Unicorn Black Productions, have said on Facebook, “We are blown away by the overwhelming response.”) By promoting middle-class values to the Pakistanis who do see the show, “Burka Avenger” might make the show’s tagline a real promise to Pakistan’s Islamist minority: “Don’t mess with the lady in black.” In any case,…

Peter King, Visit My Class

By Hussein Rashid

…ken time from his busy schedule of watching 1999 TV and attended one of my classes. In fact, he should consider this an open invitation. One of the things I urge my students to engage in is evidence-based argumentation. Look at a piece of information, evaluate its source, and try to understand how others consider that source. With that in mind, King should know that not only has the personal opinion of Kabbani been debunked as a factual statement,…

Who is Mat Staver, Counsel for Anti-Gay Activist Against Suit from Uganda?

By Sarah Posner

…te,” in order to get a good grade. “It was obvious by the substance of the class during the semester the answer that they wanted,” said one of the students. “The majority of people that I am acquainted with who did get As wrote that because it was expected of them.” One of the students who got an A said, “I told them she needed to engage in civil disobedience and seriously consider leaving the country,” adding, “I knew what I needed to write.” Giv…

Still Trying to Get Creationism into Science Classes

By Lauri Lebo

…ingston Parish decided to hold off on introducing creationism into biology class for the current school year. But it has appointed a staff committee to look at ways to introduce it for the 2011-12 school year. So it’s a bit early at this point to speculate whether Louisiana and the Livingston Parish School District will be the site of the next constitutional test case of the Discovery Institute’s latest brand of creationism. But the echoes of Dove…

Double Helix: Who’s Your Daddy?

By Arri Eisen

…e fact that most of us have learned all of our science (even in the formal classroom) in a social-spiritual vacuum, as a set of disconnected facts and not as the integral part of life and society they are. It’s the vacuum that fills the vast gap between the accelerating science and technology we are accumulating and ethical and spiritual, even practical, strategies for dealing with it. One of the tens of thousands of people estimated to employ the…