Search for "El Al Israel Airlines Flight 800-299-7264 Booking Phone Number Reservations Toll Free"

Renovating Marriage, One Gay Couple at a Time

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…ike Lifeway, have found that 50% of those who identified “born-again, evangelical or fundamentalist Christian,” believe legal support for such unions is inevitable. Overall, 64% of those asked said same-sex marriage would become legal across the U.S. By the way, not everyone in Atlanta was pleased that it was mainly gays and lesbians who spearheaded the rehabbing craze in their city; afterward, however, they seemed quite happy to pay twice the pri…

Sacred&Profane: The Living Dead

By Gary Laderman

…s we enter the homestretch of this long, drawn out, exasperating presidential election, and make the passage into the winter season via the traditional time to remember, honor, and fear wandering spirits, it seems perfectly natural to dwell on the ghostly dead who haunt us today in this political season—what some have labeled the season of the witch. Surely this reorientation to mortal and immortal matters is not surprising considering this electi…

Pop Culture Yogi B. K. S. Iyengar Dead at 95

By Andrea R. Jain

…oners of tantra, to the counterculture of Transcendentalism and metaphysical religion, to the counterculture of proponents of physical culture. It wasn’t until the 1960s that it no longer opposed prevailing cultural norms and became readily available to the masses. The 1960s proved to be the ideal time for the global dissemination of yoga, since it witnessed the British-American counterculture and the lifting of immigration restrictions to much…

Will Iowa’s Abortion Ban Respect Religious Freedom?

By Christine Ryan

…of whether they’re mandatory in any religious tradition or derive from formal religious doctrine. After all, no religious text prohibits adherents from providing contraception in a healthcare insurance plan for employees. As such, while Jewish plaintiffs have been at the forefront of challenging abortion restrictions on religious freedom grounds—assuming a significant burden in doing so—a religious right to abortion isn’t limited to those who can…

Mormon Rejection of Trump Embarrassing for Evangelicals?

By Neil J. Young

…of Trump also serves to further magnify Trump’s strange success among evangelical voters. While the evangelical magazine Christianity Today recently pointed out that the majority of evangelicals aren’t supporting Trump, that doesn’t change the fact that in the Southern Bible states where Trump has won he has done so in part by capturing the largest share of evangelical voters in the state. Trump nearly doubled Cruz’s share of evangelicals in the A…

Can Expelled Teach Us a Thing or Two?

By Arri Eisen

…t of me thinks that reviewing Ben Stein’s new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, is stooping to a level I probably shouldn’t. But then I recall my scientist colleagues who have employed similar reasoning to avoid the evolution/creation conversation, and that this avoidance may have indirectly led to the production of such movies in the first place. It turns out that the movie has much to teach us—though certainly not in the way the pr…

American Christianity Is Changing Fast: Five Stories to Watch in 2016

By Richard Flory

…ile LGBT evangelicals cheered on the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage, evangelical institutions lobbied for the passage of “religious freedom” laws that would allow them to discriminate. When President Obama mouthed platitudes during the funeral of the slain Rev. Clementa Pinckney at Emanuel AME, activist Bree Newsome took it upon herself to scale a flagpole and take down an instrument of hate and bigotry. Pope Francis is a rock star, but Americans…

What Do ‘The Christians’ Believe? Easter Reflections from a Non-Christian

By Gary Laderman

…not by much—of Christian communities in America affects politics, ecumenical relations, and inter-religious dialogue remains to be seen, but American Christianity today belies any notion of common ground or uniformity. Maybe it really is inaccurate to speak about “the Christians” or assume that those who self identify as “Christian” think alike or act in the same way—an inaccuracy, I would hasten to add, that exists in the same manner when speaki…

The Faith Outreach Canard

By Sarah Posner

…a 14 point drop in White Protestant support, 14 point drop with White evangelicals, and a whopping 20 point decline with Catholics. But there are two major problems with this argument: first, it’s factually inaccurate — the numbers are simply wrong. While Democrats experienced significant losses compared to the last mid-term election in 2006, which was a good year for Democrats across the board, Sapp overstates the losses by a factor of two. The a…

The American Media’s Longterm Ambivalence About the Papacy

By Peter Manseau

…f institutional Catholic events like the Second Vatican Council and the papal elections of John XXIII and Paul VI. With its focus on visual storytelling, Life was able to make human interest stories of events Time covered as “world affairs.” Only Life made mention of what the bishops ordered for dinner when Vatican II’s sessions overflowed to Roman restaurants. Despite the spread of sole, bass, and shrimp on display in one Life photograph, the cap…