Search for "how do i get cheap airline tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Did the Pope Embrace the Prosperity Gospel?

By Sarah Posner

…ng prosperity gospel televangelist Kenneth Copeland, a popular American religious figure whose theology and lifestyle is directly at odds with the Pope’s. The meeting was not the humble Pope’s first encounter with the self-anointed bishops of bling. In February, he recorded a video message for a Copeland conference, in which he called for unity among Christian faiths, saying that “misunderstandings throughout history” have separated them, and addi…

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

By Alda Balthrop-Lewis

…has had no shortage of apologists. Jonathan Malesic salvages Thoreau’s political vision, defending his Puritanical sparseness when it came to clothing and furniture not as the quirks of a joyless curmudgeon, but as a means through which he might carve out more free time to think, to wrestle with the moral questions. Jedediah Purdy gives a nod to Thoreau’s legacy as a “genuine American weirdo” and reclaims Thoreau as someone who, far from retreati…

Are Atheists Taking 1st Amendment Suits Too Far?

By Gordon Haber

…tions are quietly making their way through the system. The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) is a group of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics” with a Scientology-esque fondness for litigation. Recently the FFRF has gone after the so-called “parsonage exemption,” which allows clergy to forego paying taxes on income used for housing. Last year the FFRF sued the IRS, claiming that the exemption privileges clergy over laypersons and is thus uncon…

Conservative Christians Oppose New ‘Inter-Religious’ University

By Philip Clayton

…aught national attention on June 9 with the announcement of a new inter-religious university. Beginning in the fall, students at this Methodist seminary will study side by side with students from the Academy of Jewish Religion in Los Angeles and the Islamic Center of Southern California. The San Diego Jewish Journal calls it “the world’s first multi-religious graduate school.” Of course, Claremont is not alone. Hartford Seminary boasts the Macdona…

Boy Scout “Perversion Files” Raise Questions about Abuse in Mormon Contexts

By Joanna Brooks

…rpetrators maintained by the Boy Scouts of America from 1959 to 1985 are raising new questions about the relationship between the LDS Church and the BSA. Since 1918, the Church has partnered with the BSA, hosting scout troops in most of its United States congregations. (The New York Times profiled the LDS-BSA relationship—including the experience of gay LDS Boy Scouts impacted by BSA’s LGBT discrimination policies—this week.) Today, a whopping 3…

Colorado’s Personhood Initiative Fails—For Now

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

Colorado’s fetal personhood ballot initiative petition failed to get enough valid signatures, and so the measure will not appear on the ballot, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced this morning. According to the Denver Post, some of the signatures were deemed invalid, so the petition was found to have only 85,800 valid signatures—305 signatures short of the required 86,105. Jennifer Mason, speaking for Personhood Colorado, said tha…

US Archbishop and Vatican-Appointed “Overseer” Attends Annual Meeting of Women Religious

By Emily Baxter

…at this year’s annual conference of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the organization representing 80 percent of the United States’ Catholic sisters. This year’s meeting, held in Orlando, Florida, was made up of 825 nuns and only three priests, one of whom was Seattle’s Archbishop J. Peter Sartain—the official charged by the Vatican with overseeing the LCWR following last year’s harsh assessment of American nuns. The Vatican…

Are School Districts Getting the Message on Government-Sponsored Prayer?

By Lauri Lebo

…es came out yesterday about school districts ending government-endorsed religious observances because they recognize that they would probably lose a costly First Amendment battle. Could it be that in the wake of the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, in which the Dover school district had to pay $1 million in legal fees for trying to force intelligent design into science class in violation of the Constitution, other school districts around the countr…

Reading Beinart and Lerner as Gaza Burns

By Ira Chernus

…Books (November 22, 2011) It’s a great time to be an Jewish American activist working for Middle East peace. I know that sounds strange. Israel is once again devastating Gaza. The Palestinian death toll is rising steadily. Even the more liberal Jewish-American groups like the Reform movement and J Street were at least initially sympathetic to Israel’s attack on Gaza, despite the fact that the attack (no doubt intentionally) destroyed a real cha…

Norway Massacre Suspect Anders Behring Breivik, Hitler, & the Jerusalem Post Editorial

By Sarah Posner

Anders Behring Breivik’s extensive document “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” has a subsection entitled, “The great Satan, his cult and the Jews,” contained within a broader section headlined, “The Conservative Revolution – the only Solution for free Europeans.” Breivik’s manifesto is described by Chip Berlet, an expert on right-wing extremism, as stating “that ‘Political Correctness’ should be called ‘Cultural Marxism’ and is the r…