Search for "best time for cheap airline tickets in a day phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Pope Praises ‘Complementarity’ & Resists Gay Ambassador; Irish Religious Leaders Spar Over Marriage; Colombian Atty Gen Cites ‘Bogus’ Study Opposing Adoption; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…liamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution on Wednesday, April 22, calling on Member States to respect and protect transgender people against discrimination and to facilitate self-determination. Human Rights Watch called it “a much needed roadmap for a region in which at least 33 countries still require humiliating and invasive procedures as a precondition for legal gender recognition.” Vatican: Pope praises male-female ‘com…

The Contested Religious Powers of Baseball on Display in Cuba

By Sean O'Neil

…against pockets of hate, “This is our f—ing city!” Hence, for much of Tuesday’s monumental matchup between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays, Obama was an enthusiastic fan, exchanging pleasant smiles with his neighbor, President Raul Castro. If baseball can re-enchant our frenetic lives with a temporal frame that encourages deep reflection on the “blessings” of the American experience, what happens when the sport symbolically mediate…

Mormon Women Knock at the Door, Are Turned Away

By Holly Welker

…Mormon women gathered in downtown Salt Lake City on a sunny but crisp Saturday afternoon in order to seek admission to the priesthood session of the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Calling itself Ordain Women, the group had already requested and been denied tickets to Saturday evening’s male-only priesthood session. Nonetheless the women and their allies walked to the Tabernacle on Temple Square t…

Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

By Ed Simon

…!,” between a blurry “photo” and a pull quote informing readers that the “FAA launches top secret investigation into incident.” To those who dismiss any sort of faith in angels, they belong to a category that also includes ghosts and UFO abductions, clairvoyance and Sasquatch. There are reasons for such dismissals, of course. Many pop cultural representations of angels borrow extensively from Victorian sentimentalism. Such angels are on sale at re…

Blame Series Bonus: Why We Want That Dish For Free, an Uncut Interview with Bertram Malle

By Andrew Aghapour

…Your Fault, a series on blame in contemporary society by RD’s The Cubit. AA: Is it fair to say that the psychological mechanisms we use for blaming are tuned for judging human individuals? BM: Yes. Because that’s the only place, and the only context, in which we can actually learn this. The way my research group has thought for a while about how blame emerges developmentally and gets refined in the course of growing up in a community, is really…

Paranormal Vodka, Exorcists and a Demonic Doll: Welcome to Paracon, Based on the Work of the Demon-Hunters Who Inspired the ‘Conjuring’ Series

By Eric Harrelson and Joseph P. Laycock

…England Society for Psychic Research (NESPR) Seekers of the Supernatural Paracon as part of our research for our book The Exorcist Effect (named for a phenomenon we discussed in these pages after the release of Conjuring 3). I certainly didn’t expect the crowd. The Paracon, held the weekend before Halloween, is based around the work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the famous demon-hunting couple whose case files are the basis of the billion-dollar Con…

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

By Matt Hamilton

…cs and religion. The reporting would come later, however. First came three days in an ashram, and I hoped for a 72-hour hiatus from the compulsion to connect. But this ashram sold wifi. Monks rested their keys and cellphones on the table during meals. And during yoga on the first night, our yogi took pictures with her phone as we attempted the warrior pose. Was I back in Los Angeles? Why wasn’t this different? The staff—all devotees of the Ananda…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…ervation. In 2002, Pope John Paul II announced at the World Communications Day that: While the Internet can never replace that profound experience of God which only the living, liturgical and sacramental life of the Church can offer, it can certainly provide a unique supplement and support in both preparing for the encounter with Christ in community, and sustaining the new believer in the journey of faith which then begins. Indeed, Pope John Paul…

How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

By Peter Laarman

…e loophole Sullivan gives himself on the matter of sexual freedom is the characteristic heresy of progressive Christians: “It is to progressive Christianity as the heresy of the prosperity gospel, or nationalism, is to conservative American Christianity.” Just two points about this. First, it has not been my experience that progressive Christians are blind to the problems of a hypersexualized culture or that they/we are saying libertinism is accep…

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…ook chronicled what he termed the “move of the Holy Spirit” in the world today, and that the healing and deliverance ministries of Pentecostalism would reform the church. Wagner is not a theologian—and this is an important point—because much of what he is teaching is not filtered through systematic theology, or any other creed or doctrine. Rather, it is from the realm of the “Holy Spirit” and is “spirit-led” or derives from “divine revelation.” Th…