Search for "book cheap first class airline tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Unauthorized Catholic Immigrants will Renew a Christian America, Archbishop Says

By Marie Friedmann Marquardt

…before groups ranging from his Church’s most wealthy elites to the middle-class Knights of Columbus, urging them to reconsider their position on immigration reform. His strategy: to proclaim (as summarized by the Catholic News Agency) “Immigration helps recover the Christian Origins of America.” Really? Is the Archbishop of Los Angeles suggesting that immigrants will bring about some sort of Christian Establishment in the United States? Is he…

On Women’s Equality Day, Going Back to the Sacred Texts of Feminism

By Betty M. Bayer

…ll God’s people. The color of your skin, age, sexual orientation, economic class, or educational background does not matter to us. We understand that we are all children of God and God has blessed each of us with spiritual gifts.” That two religious institutions within minutes of one another see in their foundational histories the larger story of civil rights serves as a kind of aide-mémoire to both government and more general debate on relations…

Religion, Marriage, and Maine’s Tortured Soul

By Peter Montgomery

…e who claimed that at her public school she was made to feel like a second-class citizen for being straight. It seemed like a ludicrous assertion, so I asked filmmaker Joe Fox who told me that those teens were brought out to read their scripted statements, then declared off limits for follow-up questions. Question 1 also makes it clear that religion was a motivator for many people on the pro-equality side as well, documenting campaign events organ…

Humiliation and ‘Success’ in the Great Recession

By Peter Laarman

…bless while saving all of their real love for their buddies in the rentier class. Having one’s job “terminated” is very different from being struck by disease or death or natural disaster; religious leaders ought to respect the difference and not press a course of quiescence or acceptance in the face of blatant injustice. Word: A sanctified space for people struggling with work-related issues should not be just one thing and should not operate in…

Controversial “Bishop of the Poor” Dies at 86

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…le often caricatured as a “red bishop” who preached a communist message of class struggle that supported the armed Zapatistas, Bishop Ruiz consistently espoused a vision of nonviolence and peaceful mediation. In 1999 he founded the Father Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Centre and his life as a whole reminds us that the Latin American Church has been and still is the Church of the Poor. Bishops Ruiz’s death marks the passing of yet another pri…

Shari’ah (Panic) Threatens the Constitution

By Sarah Posner

…ers legitimates the whole creeping, toxic American system of providing one class of legal protections for some but not others: special laws for children of immigrants, special laws for people who might look like immigrants, different jails for those who seem too dangerous, special laws for people worthy of wiretapping, and special laws for corporations. After today it will be easier than ever to use words and slogans to invent classes of people wh…

Austrian Court Okays Head-Colander in Driver’s License: Is Pastafarianism Becoming a Religion?

By Joseph Laycock

…re far more than “two sides” regarding how the universe came to be. In his book Overcoming Inertia in School Reform (2002), Robert Murray Thomas suggested that teaching a biblical account of creation in a science class might be acceptable so long as it was part of a unit on comparative approaches to human origins where Genesis was read alongside other Abrahamic, Asian, and indigenous narratives. FSM became an internet sensation, drawing support pr…

Mark O. Hatfield and the Politics of an Earlier Era

By David R. Swartz

…end the war,” he was greeted enthusiastically. One-third of the graduating class, which cheered as the senator walked into the room, wore black bands to signify opposition to the war. Students in a balcony unfurled a banner that read, “Blessed are the peacemakers. We’re with you, Mark.” Hatfield’s speech, entitled “American Democracy and American Evangelicalism—New Perspectives,” returned the favor. Fuller’s mandate, Hatfield said, was to offer a…

How Evangelicals Pick Presidents

By Sarah Posner

…didn’t speak to them but rather from them, he was reviled by the corporate class. And the religious right leaders took their cues from those criticisms, and in many cases refused to give Huckabee the nod. I’ve suggested that Michele Bachmann may very well receive a similar treatment—she’s a “fine Christian gal,” but I have serious doubts that the GOP will nominate a woman at the top of the ticket. Perry, on the other hand, is emerging as a favorit…

Is Terry Jones the Death Rattle of the White Male Protestant?

By Gary Laderman

…ublic Religion Research Institute based on post-2010 election surveys, the number of white Protestants in America is projected to decline dramatically in the next fifty years. This is one of the most significant demographic shifts in American history. One can easily see how this might lead to more individuals like Jones entering the culture wars to battle against the perceived moral and mortal threats destroying their peculiar vision of Christian…