Search Results for:

800-299-7264 Jetblue Airlines Toll Free Number Flight Reservations

How Postwar Germany’s Witchcraft Trials Can Help Us Understand QAnon And Other Conspiracy Theories

…aft accusations did not involve carnal relations with the Devil, nocturnal flight, or being able to fall down stairs without sustaining injury. Though they imputed magical evildoing, the accusations mostly involved more mundane human problems, like suspicion, resentment, and festering doubt. This characteristic aligns with what anthropologists and historians who work on comparative witchcraft have made clear: that while witch fears can take quite…

Read More

RDBook: Apocalypse Without God

…n, in his post-presidential years, when he could wear a pink tie and speak freely. He was talking in just this way. His “schema,” to use your word, for understanding the world is one of interconnection and relationship, very much in the terms that you describe. Maybe I should send him a copy of the book; here as in so many areas lately he seems to have forgotten what he once knew Maybe you should. And that raises the question—Clinton isn’t talking…

Read More

Pope Francis Walks With LGBTQ People, One Step Forward, Big Steps Back

…oft-quoted statement about gay priests—“Who am I to judge?”—occurred on a flight back to Italy from Brazil. Most recently in Tblisi, Georgia, the pope referred to the “theory of gender” as a “great enemy to marriage today.” He added that “there is a global war to destroy marriage,” and that the weapons being used are a form of “idealogical colonization.” In the past, Francis has used that phrase to describe Western ideas being forced onto develop…

Read More

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: With Friends Like These, Who Needs Jihadis?

…d and sclerotic autocrats out of the way. There can be no progress without freedom. And there can be no freedom if we are stuck believing in people, like Hirsi Ali and her ilk, who don’t believe in the kinds of analysis that leave room for debate, discussion, and growth. I know from personal experience how hard it is to fight the mentality that produces and sustains extremism. Case in point: I don’t think Hirsi Ali is deliberately misrepresenting…

Read More

Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

…od’s best,” Osteen misses a very important point. Perhaps on his next long flight he can pull out his Bible and take a gander at Luke 16:19-31—the story of Lazarus and the rich man. Daily, the rich man ignored poor Lazarus, but when Lazarus died he was taken to “heaven” or a place of eternal comfort. The rich man’s fate in Hades was terrible, however, as he begged Abraham to “send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; f…

Read More

The “Nones” Are Here… And Have Been for Over 100 Years

…m, the question of the day was similar to ones being asked today: Can this flight from the churches be stopped? Chubb feared that these wayfarers on the frontier would “become individualists and isolationists so far as religion is concerned, each ‘going it alone.’” Chubb’s words, so similar to Robert Putnam’s “bowling alone,” resonate clearly today, and they offer a warning to those who bemoan what such high numbers of “nones” means for the future…

Read More

Coming Out on a Christian Campus, Then and Now

…a boy—that dunk in the cold baptistery during a gospel revival was more a flight from hell and from my growing sense of sexual difference than a spiritual conviction. After taking the bread and wine that Sunday at Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin’s Hyde Park, I couldn’t get up. I knelt at the altar rail and wept, shaking, still not believing in a God or a community that would accept me just as I am, rather than just how others wanted and…

Read More

Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided Explores the Dark Side of Positive Thinking

…ow it encourages victim-blaming, political complacency, and a culture-wide flight from realism. “The flip side of positivity is… a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: if your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must be because you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success,” writes Ehrenreich. “As the economy has brought more layoffs and financial turbulence to the middle class, the…

Read More

Moral Mondays: The Battle For Justice Cannot Be Waged Only in the Courts

On a warm day in July 2013, I found myself on the wrong end of a canceled flight out of RDU Airport. I used the opportunity to travel into downtown Raleigh to observe one of the early Moral Monday rallies at the State Capitol. The gathering was ostensibly called to protest the legislature’s newly gerrymandered district map – among the most tortured in the nation. I expected to find a group of committed, passionate citizens (mostly people of color…

Read More

Rick Warren Gives Pre-Inauguration Sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church

…hecking their watches, making sure that they wouldn’t miss their afternoon flights to Reagan National. Warren, the Goofy, Goateed High School English Teacher Finally, after more than two hours of tracing the path from the bus boycott to “Yes, we can,” it was Warren time. To his credit, Farris introduced Warren by addressing directly the controversies surrounding his stands against same-sex marriage and abortion. He noted that Warren’s stances on p…

Read More