Search for "cheap airline tickets that u can make a monthly payment on phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…at Fuller Theological Seminary, where the NAR’s founder, C. Peter Wagner, taught in the 1990s. We’ll probably come back to Wagner several times during this conversation, but to get us going, what is the NAR, and how did Wagner come to found this movement? What is Wagner’s background? Is he a theologian? A missionary? An entrepreneur? Anthea Butler: Yes, I was a Master’s student at Fuller working the switchboard part-time, and the number one phon…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…mentary (based on his book The Roots of Obama’s Rage) with my 19-year-old daughter, Chassé. As someone who is now a secular progressive single mom of seven kids, five of whom live at home, I wouldn’t normally choose to spend our family’s perpetually-insufficient income to see this Obama-bashing movie, let alone take along one of my kids. But we went because I wanted to see the movie that our former church, a central Nebraska Salvation Army congreg…

How Much Did Jesus Care About Sex?

By Peter Laarman

…e Church. Follow Jesus, you may have noticed that Rod Dreher’s surrebuttal makes strategic use of the most famous work of a much-revered figure, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dreher quotes The Cost of Discipleship to make the point that following Christ (discipleship) means you cannot pick and choose which parts of Christ’s teachings to follow, and that Christ himself was clear enough on the need to lay aside carnality in order to live close to God. Citing…

Episcopal Church Assault Data Reveals the Dark Side of Inclusive Christianity

By Charlotte Dalwood

…taking place from July 8-11, they’ll be asked to consider a proposed overhaul to the church’s sexual violence prevention policy. Currently, Episcopal canon law requires those preparing for ordination to demonstrate competencies in the “prevention of sexual misconduct.” The proposed changes would strike that requirement. Instead, ordinands would need to demonstrate the loftier-sounding, but more nebulous, ability to “form communities that understa…

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

By Michael Schulson

…of meditation are not necessarily equivalent to hair-and-nail care. Answer number two: the non-religious bit aside, those kinds of places already exist, and they are called temples. Rinzler and Burrows came up with a third answer, which is why they’re now the owners of a much-buzzed-about new business in Greenwich Village, whereas I’m still a freelance journalist, hustling for gigs. Rinzler and Burrow’s new meditation studio, MNDFL, is just a bloc…

Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

By Rachel Wagner

…prayers and liturgy. But as religious texts go digital, they acquire new qualities. What are the new forms that sacred texts are taking? And what are the implications of these transformations? For many religious folk, digital technologies are viewed mainly as tools for communication and preservation. In 2002, Pope John Paul II announced at the World Communications Day that: While the Internet can never replace that profound experience of God whic…

Power Up: Turn Off the Cell Phone

By Daniel Schultz

…inted out the desktop computer in his new office, responded “Oh, that will make a nice doorstop.” He’d never learned to type, much less use a PC. His father apparently had given him the advice that if he took a job with typing as one of the duties, he’d always be stuck in that sort of position. Never start in the mailroom, etc. I hated that guy. Anyway, this Bloomberg piece on power players eschewing the use of cell phones strikes me as of a piece…

“Saints Are Only Human”: Leaving the Church, But Heeding this Pope’s Lessons

By Elizabeth Colmant Estes

…via loudspeaker, that the Roman Catholic Church has made and continues to make mistakes. “Saints are only human,” a voice proclaimed during a pre-Mass program that acknowledged the objections of Native Americans to the canonization of Junipero Serra, the first Hispanic saint. “All the church’s saints are sinners,” the voice said. “That is the point.” In a scene from Dante’s Purgatorio, massive crowds inched through security checkpoints beneath a…

We Went Through Amoris Laetitia Section by Section So You Wouldn’t Have To

By Anthony Adams

…s, Catholics have anticipated Amoris Laetitia. Nobody expected it would actually open the door to same-sex marriage in the Catholic Church, but many hoped it would allow divorced and remarried Catholics to openly receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. In the way Francis weighs his options and considers various points of view before making any decision, he reminds me of The Fiddler on the Roof’s Tevye. Torn between family and tradition, the farme…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…I lived in Cairo. That was 1981. Egypt is just across the water from the Saudi Arabian peninsula so it occurred 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…