Search Results for:

airline cheap international ticket phone number 1-800-299-7264

Corporations Have Consciences and Contraceptives Are Cheap: Hobby Lobby at the Supreme Court

At oral argument in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties, Inc. v. Sebelius this morning, the Supreme Court justices spent a great deal of time questioning the lawyers in the case about whether corporations have a religious conscience, and whether Congress intended to protect it when enacting the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). What was most striking, though, was how all three female justices, Sonia So…

Read More

Invited by Allah

…to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to the famou…

Read More

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

…good move. When I got to the lobby another something told me to dig out my phone and check it for messages. Sure enough, I had one from an unfamiliar number. A woman’s voice said Bedi was still sleeping, exhausted from the previous day’s overseas flight, and needed to reschedule our interview for that afternoon. I called the number back, convinced the opportunity was lost. “I’m here at the hotel now, but I’m booked solid this afternoon—” “Hold on,…

Read More

International “Religious Freedom” Agenda Will Only Embolden ISIS

…fail to register at all, languishing beneath the threshold of national and international recognition as scarce resources go to rescuing persecuted religionists and defending faith communities that have broken through the threshold of international religio-political recognition. As I argue in Beyond Religious Freedom, these selection dynamics cannot be mitigated with a more diverse and sophisticated understanding of religion or religious community….

Read More

Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

…self-interrogation boiled, my hand extended to the right. I reached for my phone, but I found nothing. At first I laughed at my instinct, my muscle memory. The phone, with its glowing screen, gave me solace and control. But I was tied to my cushion for another hour, and in this ashram for another day, so email would have to wait. I panicked. My heart raced. Would my editor be asking for me? Would a reply from that politician’s secretary sit unansw…

Read More

Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

…y from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at reduced price; cheap wares for cheap faith. It would be an error, however, to fully dismiss pop culture angels. Despite the fact that representations of angels in film and television, comics and music, paperback novels and posters, are filtered through market concerns, such pop culture can still speak to human meaning—and because of that they merit our attention. Besides, the bulk of art…

Read More

I Miss Tina Fey

…half. There were still probably 80 empty seats, and it was clear that some number of attendees had free tickets. The largest financial supporter of the event was a local news/talk radio station and its representatives were the only media allowed in. As I arrived with my Religion Dispatches press badge they stopped me before I even got to the door. I chatted with an AP reporter and he said AP had been trying for weeks to gain media access—but that…

Read More

Call it ‘Christian Globalism’: A Reporter’s Guide to the New Apostolic Reformation, Part III

…n to advance their view; in the end, it will be top down. Some significant international networks ● Apostle Ché Ahn’s California-based Harvest International Ministry (HIM) claims “more than 25,000 affiliated ministries and organizations in 65 nations,” and seeks to advance the Kingdom “by equipping leaders, multiplying churches, evangelizing, and bringing revival and reformation to the nations.” Unlike more patient revolutionaries, he wants to acc…

Read More

Anti-LGBT Culture Warriors On The March; More in Global LGBT Recap

…g themselves as defenders of people being persecuted for their faith. “ADF International has a presence at every major international institution on the planet,” says Executive Director Paul Coleman. In the video, ADF International’s Director of UN Advocacy Elyssa Kor criticizes the United Nations for trying to force countries to champion “false rights, false obligations that really go against their national, their traditional cultures, their relig…

Read More

For International Human Rights Day, a Snapshot of LGBT Rights from the Vatican to Cape Town

…bal gathering of LGBTIQ activists in New York sponsored by OutRight Action International, formerly known as the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, activists urged the Trump administration to continue support for local human rights activists. Jessica Stern, Outright’s executive director, said that the extent of international progress on LGBT human rights would not have been achieved without “powerful” American engagement. In a p…

Read More