Search for "Alaska Airlines 800-299-7264 Customer Service Toll-Free Number"

Pope’s ‘Joy of Love’ Brings Little Joy To LGBT Catholics; Gay Atheist Malaysian Granted Refugee Status In Canada; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…minalization of consensual gay sex in Morocco. South Africa: Even in ‘Born Free’ Generation, Black Lesbians Face Violence The BBC ran a report this week on anti-LGBT violence in South Africa, telling the story of a lesbian woman who was a member of the “born free generation” – born in 1994, the year apartheid ended – and who was murdered and mutiliated in December. In a country where crime rates in general are high, black lesbians in poor township…

Is Pope Francis Yogaphobic?

By Andrea R. Jain

…lity courses, yoga courses, or zen courses, but none of those things would free the person to be like a child of God. Only the Holy Spirit, according to Francis, has the power to break the hardness of the heart and make it docile toward God and free to love. Given the frequent Catholic and evangelical yogaphobic moments in recent history, I asked myself if the Pope’s remarks were yogaphobic, but I concluded that yogaphobia did not appear to be at…

Republicans To Get Free “Spiritual, Historical” Trips to Israel

By Sarah Posner

…ining sustainable freedom is righteousness — the same virtue that produced freedom — what is the greatest threat to freedom? Unrighteousness. America has left God.” Lane also aims to persuade 1,000 pastors to run for political office. Lane has already taken Rand Paul to Israel, after which the Kentucky Republican said, “Absolutely we stand with Israel. What I think we should do is announce to the world — and I think it is pretty well known — that…

Why I Boycotted a Conference at Brigham Young University

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…place in a university. Although I am not an expert in issues of religious freedom in American higher education, I do not know of many attempts to prohibit the free expression of thought. It would be as if a university expelled a student for accepting the scientific account of evolution, or if another university expelled a student for voting Democrat. Perhaps such cases exist, but I would be opposed to them as well. And if a religious organization…

Gordon Gekko Gets God: The Heritage Foundation of Theology

By Peter Laarman

…e the facts of chemistry or astronomy. But too many Christian leaders feel free to ignore the basic facts of economics. Indeed. Or the Bible. Richards uses the old false dichotomy technique to make his case that free-market capitalism is fully consistent with Jesus’ teachings and Christian tradition. He wants to save us from believing either that private accumulation is “bad” and causes much of the world’s suffering, or that “God wants you to pros…

Pulitzer-Prize Winning Historian’s Latest Reveals the Problem with Today’s ‘Religious Freedom’

By Andrew L. Seidel

…storical summation, described by Rakove thusly: “Disestablishment promoted free exercise, and free exercise made establishment superfluous.” Beyond Belief recounts this history, and, while Rakove touches on the present, his focus is the past. But it’s impossible to read Beyond Belief and not notice that, in their desperation to “make America great again” Trump, Pence, and the other Christian nationalist politicians and judges have turned this simp…

Free Yiddish Lessons, Vacation Liberty School, and Brangelina’s Universalism: The Week in Religion, Poetically

By Michael J. Altman

…s it getting too expensive to be Jewish? Well, Tablet Magazine is offering free Yiddish lessons every Friday. A group of conservatives have launched a pro-Israel, anti-Obama organization called The Emergency Committee for Israel. Meanwhile, J Street, a pro-Israel group that favors a two state solution, is calling on Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner to investigate American groups sponsoring Israeli settlements. But have no fear, the Presbyterians…

How the Abortion Debate Turned the Christian Right On To Liberal Arguments… and Birthed the Religious Freedom Industry

By Eric C. Miller

…m the right concerns same-sex marriage. How did they settle on a religious freedom frame? Even prior to Obergefell v. Hodges, religious freedom arguments were being advanced by conservative Christians who disapproved of same-sex marriage. For example, several state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) were put into motion in 2014 and early 2015 in part to try and protect religious objectors. Immediately after the Obergefell decision, th…

Christian Morality vs. Free Markets: The Constants of a Conservative

By Eric C. Miller

…rdline traditionalist Brent Bozell posed to early fusionists in the 1960s: freedom or virtue? Is it more important to exercise freedom of choice regardless of the moral outcome, or is it more important that an individual’s choices align with traditional moral dictates? Some scholars have suggested that liberal arguments, such as those touting rights and freedoms, are politically useful for hardline religious candidates because they allow them to a…

New York City a Glenn Beck Radio Free Zone (for now)

By Joanna Brooks

…es, at least momentarily, the boroughs of New York City a Glenn Beck radio free zone. (Word has it syndicators are looking for a new outlet.) Perhaps Beck’s self-styled turn to the prophetic last summer and fall—which included forays into the world of Black theology and the mysteries of the Bat Creek Stone, as well as his lachrymose and prayer-scented DC Rally in August —didn’t go over so well with hardboiled conservatives in the City? Beck’s tel…