Search for "best day of the week to buy cheap airline tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Denying Darwin: Another Peculiar American Institution

By Lauri Lebo

…main divided. Interestingly enough, we are also celebrating the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln, who presided over an even more torn-apart nation, and who ended that other peculiar institution of ours, one even more divisive than our present battles over religion and science. Fundamentalist Fervor According to Ron Numbers, in his book The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, the rise of Christian fundamentalism in Ame…

The Tyranny of Politeness

By Daniel C. Maguire

…woman! Jesus never had a chance to grow up as a sycophant. And now in our day, another impolite and bloodied prophet, John Lewis, has rattled the timbers of political propriety. He denounced the new president as lacking legitimacy. Even liberals who rushed to his defense missed his point, confusing legal and moral legitimacy. Legal legitimacy is always subordinate to the judgement of moral legitimacy. Slavery, after all, was legally legitimate: A…

Honey, I Shrunk the Church: The Vatican Manages Sexual Abuse, Canonization and the Nuns

By Mary E. Hunt

…tured the kyriarchal church doing as it pleased—clergy dolling up in their best duds, bureaucrats putting the current pope through his paces to be sure that he’s really what the cardinals elected him to be—namely, a “company” man in every sense of the term (The Society of Jesus, of which he is a member, was called “The Company of Jesus” by its founder Ignatius). It was a time to fill hotels and buses with pilgrims, many from Poland, who favor a mo…

This is not a Religion Column: Biblical Capitalism

By Jeff Sharlet

…sing to a nation battered by unfettered capitalism that it “Repeal a Law a Day.” The most influential of these businessmen for God was a Norwegian immigrant named Abraham Vereide, founder of an annual ritual of piety and politics that survives to this day, the National Prayer Breakfast. In 1935, Vereide created a “fellowship” of Christian businessmen bound together by the idea that God hates government regulation because it interferes with a belie…

10 Noteworthy Yoga Developments to Recall in 2015

By Andrea R. Jain

…the nature of God, the nature of the Self, and the nature of the human body. 10. Yoga “UN-Bound” In his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly on September 27, 2014, Narendra Modi called for June 21 to serve as International Yoga Day. Nearly two hundred countries, including the United States, Canada, and China, expressed their support for the proposition, and, on December 11, 2014, the General Assembly approved by consensus a resolut…

Creationism Makes Its Mark

By Lauri Lebo

…, raised blisters, kept their son awake that night, and lasted for several weeks. At first glance, they saw the mark as a religious emblem. But their first concern was less about religion and more about what they considered to be a case of a teacher injuring their son. Their accusations and their resulting lawsuit against the district have brought them criticism. A sign posted in a yard near their house read, “The student goes. We Support Mr. Fres…

At Moms for Liberty Summit, ‘Mama Bears’ Declare Spiritual War on the ‘Radical Left’

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ad expressed interest in a DeSantis ticket in conversations earlier in the day, the ecstasy that swept the room when Trump appeared on stage felt different than even some standing ovations other candidates got. The crowd moaned and booed when he declared that “the Left” “wants to impose their sick creed of woke communism onto every man woman and child,” and roared in agreement, when he said, in response to accusations of domestic terrorism and inc…

Peter Berger, Sociology’s Defender of God (1929-2017)

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…lay behind the fractured constructions of reality that provide us with the day-to-day world around us. The book that makes the best connection between religion and the social construction of reality is likely The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Social Theory of Religion. His regard for religion as a cultural resource for thinking of ultimate matters led him to become a well-known defender of religion. His prominence as a champion for God rose during…

God Wants You to Work Harder, and to Stop Complaining

By James Dennis LoRusso

…ader,” written by Irish poet and priest John O’Donohue. Likewise, once the day’s scheduled sessions and events were complete, participants would again meet to hear final thoughts from one of the conference organizers, followed by another closing inspiration. Such practices bestowed a structure on the conference, and transported the proceedings outside standard space and time and into the realm of the sacred, toward holy significance. The participa…

Muslim Women “Warriors”

By Frances Kissling

…er the Dalai Lama has been considering reviving the tradition, but as of today, no final decision has been made. Muslim women—and feminists—are following a different and complicated path. This was brought home last month when I participated in a five day international conference in Malaysia which brought together 250 women from 47 countries, many of them predominantly Muslim with strong links between religion and state. The conference launched the…