Search for "lifehacker best site to find cheap airline tickets 2017 phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Please Reverend, Do Something About the Fat People

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…lem, except it’s not. Aside from its connection to health being tenuous at best, obesity seems to be leveling off. 5. It might be compelling if there were any safe and reliable way to permanently turn most fat people into thin people. But there seems not to be. Of the people that lose a lot of weight, the vast majority—like nearly all of them—gain it back. Many have a little extra weight to show for their troubles. Some have seriously screwed-up m…

This Is How You Lose Them: Why “Generation Z” Won’t Be Flocking To Churches Anytime Soon

By Anita Little

…h the demographic shift in multiracial marriages, we can expect increasing numbers of them to identify with more than one race. These trends are at odds with the racially heterogeneous nature of much of white evangelicalism (the mainline as well). A recent study found that white evangelical churches will sometimes employ “race tests,” a type of hazing meant to push out church members of color who can’t adhere to white cultural norms. How will evan…

Come Let Us Reason Together: A Response to Critics of Evangelical/Progressive Initiative

By Robert P. Jones

…God has put all parts of our body together in the way that God decided is best. —I Corinthians 12: 4—6, 17—18 (CEV) Third Way’s* recently released “Come Let Us Reason Together Governing Agenda” has sparked lively discussions about the policies it puts forward, but it has also cast in bold relief some tensions and factions in the growing chorus of voices that are politically progressive and religious. The two-year initiative set out to find common…

Inspired by the Anti-Abortion Movement and QAnon, Anti-Trans Rhetoric is a Blatant Call for Violence

By Annika Brockschmidt & Thomas Lecaque

…derism.” The latter claim is especially heinous, because in Texas, the opposite is the case: The governor had in fact asked Child Protective Services to investigate any families that provide their trans kids and teenagers access to the necessary gender-affirming medical care. Right-wing commentator Rod Dreher has increasingly focused on trans people over the past few months, spreading lies and hatred about trans people themselves and the medical p…

UPDATED: Turning Catholic School’s Anti-Mask Theology Into a Faith Argument is Just Fine With Religious Right (Even if it is Based on Garbage Theology)

By Daniel Schultz

…s a strategy making for great P.R. and fundraising, but it won’t do much to shift the political landscape, or the case before the Michigan courts. Sadly, not much will, given the intransigence of some people. Sometimes, as the Hebrew prophets knew, the best call is simply to get out of the way and announce the consequences to come. In this case, that probably means a whole bunch of people are going to die unnecessarily. As much as anyone might wis…

The Audacity of Melancholy: Race, Tragedy, and the Anguish of Progress

By Joseph Winters

…ve encouraged me throughout the writing process and my life. So I tried my best to be clear, accessible, and free of jargon while dealing with difficult authors and concepts. I don’t know if I was successful. Are you hoping to just inform readers? Entertain them? Piss them off? I suppose I am trying to be provocative, to please and disturb, to inform and unsettle. While I appreciate different styles of writing, I find most appealing writing format…

First Baptist Church, Sutherland Springs Texas

Can Government Solve The Evil Of Mass Shootings? A Response to Mollie Hemingway

By Daniel Schultz

…he dynamic that humans discern the form of government they think will work best, and God works with it. As it happens, our form of government is not distinct from the people it serves: the government is the people is the people of God, formed in God’s image, which makes the formation of government a godly, even sacramental, endeavor. God invites humans into the business of creation and re-creation. We suck at this work! Humans are selfish, stupid,…

Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Televangelism

By Jonathan L. Walton

…casting is new. Again, many regard it as a post-civil rights phenomenon at best, or the co-opting of the black church by the white religious right at worst. But the confluence of mass media and Afro-Protestantism dates back to religious race records of the 1920s and is as “authentically black” as James Brown. From prominent Pentecostal preachers like Leora Ross, F.W. McGee, and Mother Rosa Artimus Horn during the interwar period to C.L. Franklin a…

Three Cheers for Mormon Support of Same-Sex Legislation? Not So Fast

By Chrissy Stroop

…r their rights (to very little fanfare and often to dismissal or apathy at best), this provision bothers me deeply. In any case, RFMA is very much not the Equality Act, a bill that would provide sweeping non-discrimination protections for queer Americans that has languished in Congress for years. It’s a defensive piece of legislation, a protection of the status quo rather than a step forward. If America were truly a functional democracy, we could…

RDBook: Bernard Avishai’s The Hebrew Republic

By Mitchell Plitnick

…ic, Avishai takes this argument one step further, suggesting that Israel’s best hope for peace-and for a bright future—is to embrace European-style secular democracy, integrating its Arab citizens into a business-driven globalized economy. Israel and Europe Like many contemporary Israelis, Bernard Avishai deeply admires the European Union. Though Israel spent decades emulating the United States, in recent years, whether intentionally or not, Israe…