Search for "cheap airline tickets from belgrade to new york phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

By Michael Schulson

…e romance with Eastern spirituality,” Michelle Goldberg wrote last year on newyorker.com. “For well over a century,” she continued, “business-minded Americans have been transforming Hindu and Buddhist contemplative practices into an unlikely prosperity gospel.” Prosperity gospels and contemporary mindfulness practice share a profound belief in the power of the mind. Redirect your faith, prosperity gospel preachers claim, and you will be rewarded w…

A Meditation on Shopping and Desire

By Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado

…ds and advertisements that tell us our life is not enough without that new phone, that new gadget, that new dress. And yet the minute you purchase your phone or laptop, it is obsolete. Every six months, fashion editors tell us our entire closet is out—our clothing is disposable. Shopping is not only a lifestyle, it is a form of entertainment. Whether it is infomercials and shopping networks or makeover shows, we not only shop, we watch people shop…

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…esigner marries during NY Fashion Week The Times of Israel reported on the New York wedding of Israeli fashion designer Idan Cohen to his partner Elad Borenstein during New York Fashion Week. “Homosexuals cannot legally marry their same-sex partners in Israel,” notes the Times. “Civil marriage does not exist in the country, where the solemnization of marriage is entirely controlled by the state rabbinate, and homosexual unions are not in themselve…

Are Evangelical Films Destined to Leave Secular Audiences Behind?

By Daniel Silliman

…ider audience, selling millions of copies and reaching the top slot of the New York Times bestseller list. The films should be able to appeal to anyone who liked a good thriller, which would require higher production values, actors known more for their acting than their religious commitments, and a real understanding of the business of movies. The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court. Paul Lalonde got the rights to make the movie again and…

The Faith that Faith Produced

By Haroon Moghul

…ou’ll read an excerpt below—has surprised me, too. I wish I could find my airline companion and give him this book, to surprise him, too—in a good way. (I would accept Lakers tickets in lieu of apologies, but I think that particular era is done.) This whole book is a result of a profound evolution, and needs to be seen as such. American Muslims have gone through a lot over the last few decades. We were never the caricature Islamophobes made us ou…

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

By Sarah Posner

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…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…nline, call imams live on television shows, and even access imams via cell phones to receive new fatwas (religious rulings) for questions they may have. The recent proliferation of people claiming to have credentials to issue fatwas has created confusion and frustration among some Muslims (IOL Technology). Who should decide, if anyone, what authoritative texts should be accessible, and to whom—when anyone with an internet hookup and a laptop can f…

Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

By Andrew Aghapour

…n teach us about Ferguson Watch filmmaker Dean Peterson’s short video of a New York City subway stairwell: When the video was posted three years ago, it prompted this jewel of an observation by Metafilter user James Bording: “On its own, when you see one person slip, you automatically assume that person slipped, was clumsy or not playing attention. But when you look at the aggregate, you realize that the failure isn’t on the individual at all, rat…

Belize Overturns Sodomy Law Defended by Religious Right, Ugandan Officials Will Continue to Suppress Gay Groups, And More on the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ommunity shattered by government campaign of entrapment and harassment The New York Times’ Liam Stack reports, “Gay and Transgender Egyptians, Harassed and Entrapped, Are Driven Underground.” The story contrasts the “period of unaccustomed freedom” for LGBT Egyptians in the final days of Hosni Mubarak’s government with a crackdown by the military government that “has shattered what had been an increasingly vibrant and visible community.” Between t…

‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa Receives Threats; ‘Blood Test’ for ‘Degeneratism’: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family. Elisabetta Povoledo wrote in the New York Times that “in Francis’s new, more forgiving church, these otherwise familiar domestic arrangements were not considered an impediment.” No same-sex couples were included. Vatican watchers said the public marriages, the first by a pope since 2000, were meant to send a message, something Francis has done previously to soften the church’s image on social issues. Durin…