Search for "Spirit Airlines 1 800-299-7264 My Reservations"

How Robert Bellah (1927-2013) Changed the Study of Religion

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…gion in China, Japan, Islamic societies, and the United States published in 1970 in his book of essays, Beyond Belief, illustrates that point. In his 1967 essay in Daedalus on “Civil Religion,” Bellah founded a whole new enterprise for religious studies scholars: probing the political significance of religious ideas and the religious significance of political ones. In this case it was Emile Durkheim that Bellah evoked, taking up Durkheim’s notion…

Robert Bellah’s Powerful Legacy: A Mixed Blessing for Religious Studies?

By Ivan Strenski

…national ideal “which would lead to a revitalization of the revolutionary spirit of the young republic, so that Americans would once again attract the hope and love of its citizens”? Bellah is invested, even piously so, in American civil religion, and feels called to rally us in its behalf. Habits of the Heart simply intensifies the image of Bellah’s pastoral concern for the moral health of the republic, threatened as it is by impoverishing indiv…

Emanuel’s Pulse: A Plea for Black Church–LGBTIQ Solidarity

By J. Kameron Carter

…uel’s Pulse: Pulse / cardiovascular movement / on the dance floor / sacred spirit’s thumb and strum / now under cardiac / arrest’s / storm and stress / Pulse’s Emanuel / a metaphysical condition of holy ghostliness on the dance floor / feel the beat / breath’s percussive rhythm / pulsation’s respiration / its aspirational inhalation / its exasperational exhalation / Emanuel’s Pulse, a “pneumatic pact“ In Charleston and now Orlando, last year was t…

They’re Not Coming Back: The Religiously Unaffiliated and the Post-Religious Era

By Kaya Oakes

…tion instead of a church, mosque or schul, the links between understanding spirituality as the work of the spirit, or of the soul, become less and less meaningful. So what’s behind this newest set of numbers? Reasons people list for leaving religion remain about the same as they were in the Pew survey, but with some striking differences. Those who have “stopped believing” in a tradition’s teachings are now at 60 percent, those from families that w…

Irish PM Scathing Denunciation of Vatican

By Anthea Butler

…inality at its doorstep. When historians write about this era of the church 100 years from now, the Church will be a shell of what it once was, with liturgies appropriate for the 21st century not the 16th; its relevance diminished, and only the docile and brainwashed sitting in its pews and leading the church’s institutions. The prophetic voice of the Catholic Church has been silenced through the shameful and shameless behavior of leadership who a…

Religion and Gender Trouble in the Black Arts: Remembering Toni Cade Bambara’s The Black Woman

By Josef Sorett

…the scores of other clergy who took up the topic of Black Power during the 1960s. Father Divine was certainly different from most of the models of spiritual integrity (i.e., Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X) celebrated during the 1960s. It must have been odd for readers to find Father Divine on the pages of The Black Woman in 1970, the same year that Toni Cade took the additional name Bambara as an homage to her African heritage. He was not, by any measu…

LGBT Mormons Ask in Historic Temple: “If they could just see us, don’t you think they would change their minds?”

By Joanna Brooks

…s Burning”—the very hymn our ancestors sang to dedicate the Kirtland temple 175 years ago, in 1836, on a day when, as the folklore goes, neighboring villages reported seeing a cloud of fire hovering over Kirtland. Standing in the sunlit white interiors of the temple, Liam, a young gay LDS man who had travelled all the way from London just to take part in the conference, wept openly. His mind was on the leadership of his Church, the Church of Jesus…

An Historic Meeting: African and African Diaspora Women Convene in Ghana for First-Ever Religion Conference

By Rosetta E. Ross

…s and powers that put religion to use in service of empire. During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s African-descended women (including Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Brigilia Bam, Musimbi Kanyoro [from Africa], and Katie G. Cannon and Jacquelyn Grant [from the United States]) joined other women of color from Asia, Central and South America, and Austraila-Oceana in shaping and broadening liberation theologies—and especially in challenging the patriarch…

#SorryNotSorry: What U.S. Christian Denominations Teach About Homosexuality

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

… American Baptist Churches USA (Mainline Protestant) Members (as of 2009): 1,310,505 In 1992, the American Baptist Churches USA General Board affirmed a one-sentence resolution on homosexuality: “American Baptist Resolution on Homosexuality”: “We affirm that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” In 2005, the board added the same language to its official identity statement. 54% of members believe homosexuality sho…

Donald Trump Scares LGBT People Worldwide and More, in This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…advocacy for LGBT Human Rights continues on a number of fronts. On November 18, an effort by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation moved an amendment that would strip language regarding sexual orientation and gender identity from a resolution regarding “extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.” More from OutRight Action International: Today [November 18], the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has voted to maint…