Search for "delta airline cheap plan tickets phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Sarah Palin and the Politics of Victimization

By Randall Balmer

I read Going Rogue on an airplane while jetting across the continent to visit the author’s church, Wasilla Bible Church. I remember pulling the book surreptitiously out of my satchel and opening the cover with some mixture of dread and resignation, figuring that I might someday be able to make a case that the hours spent reading the book should count as a credit toward Purgatory. The autobiography was, as I suspected, pretty insubstantial, filled…

Note for Today

By Amina Wadud

…ps, dresses, and scarves. I feel like I need one more scarf. Not for sheer number, but for style; there are so many styles, and one has to decide what works best individually. I have my long prayer scarves that do not need any pins to be neatly kept in place. But they are really long, and I wish I had at least one as neat, but shorter. I want to be hands-free and secure at the same time. I have long rectangular shapes that get draped, and I will u…

Is the Satanic Temple Just an Elaborate Prank? 10 Questions for the Author of ‘Speak of the Devil’

By Joseph Laycock

…Most Americans claim to value tolerance and religious freedom. But talk is cheap, especially if you have never seriously thought about what these commitments might actually mean in a pluralistic society. I was disturbed to read some of TST’s Christian opponents openly renouncing religious freedom if it meant respecting the freedoms of Satanists. I also think TST is forcing the public to think more critically about what “religion” is. They are dire…

With Methodist LGBTQ Vote and GOP Support for Trump, White Protestantism Has Hit Bottom

By Peter Laarman

…ose reading of Scripture is cramped, at best. Seen in this context, it’s a cheap dodge for liberals within the UMC to blame churches and delegates from the Global South for the vote to retain (and even heighten) the denomination’s ban on all things queer. Yes, the UMC does have a much heavier Global South representation in its governance than any of the other “sisters”; fully 41% of the delegates in St. Louis represented churches outside of the Un…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…e of nationalism was emerging in individual states, the media explosion of cheap print caused a type of epistemic collapse where truth itself was uncertain. With such uncertainty, Europeans experienced the simultaneous birth and death pangs of two different eras, where medical historian John Waller claims that this dance phenomenon was a “hysterical reaction … one that could only have occurred in a culture steeped in a particular kind of supernatu…

Possible Heir to Dalai Lama Cleared of Corruption Charges

By Tsering Namgyal

…ong before the investigation was over. Many of them said he was a “Chinese plant” in India and a “Chinese agent” because he is the only Tibetan reincarnation to be recognized by both the China and the Dalai Lama, and he speaks Chinese, and he has a huge following amongst the Han Chinese diaspora. Journalists or stenographers? For Tibetans in India, this incident reveals the dilemma faced by Tibetans, subjects without citizenship, and it also shows…

Want a Slurpee with Your Birth Control?

By Patricia Miller

…er acting forms of birth control that insurance covers, such as IUDs and implants, that can cost upwards of $1,000 for initial insertion. Recent studies show that these types of birth control may well be the key to preventing unplanned pregnancies and breaking the cycle of poverty in populations that have a higher rate of unintended pregnancy, such as younger women and women of color. As usual, the Catholic bishops are tying to undercut support fo…

Lindsey Graham’s Lying “Eye-ranians”

By Haroon Moghul

…rd is a real American, because Bill Gates is American. Those of you using iPhones, by the way, are probably Iranians and should be detained or deported. Because Steve Jobs was part Syrian, and Syria is part Iranian, which means your iPhone auto-correct is lying to you. Come to think of it, how do we know Lindsey Graham is not lying to us? How do we know Lindsey Graham’s not an Iranian? What if he’s the Manchurian—or should I say Mazandaranian!—can…

Noah v. Kitschy Jesus: A Tale of Two Movies

By Jay Michaelson

…an’t quite pinpoint what all of these had in common, except that they were cheap, over-simplified, and kitschy. And thanks to Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, the Frankfurt School, and a legion of writers and musicians allergic to the cliché, I came to reject kitsch and its quasi-fascistic associations. Feel this way, think this way, act this way—no! It took another several years before I really understood that some people, perhaps most people,…

A Shining City: The Occupy Movement and the American Soul

By Elizabeth Drescher

…der dresses and ridiculously high-heeled shoes. They sipped from splits of cheap sparkling wine while their tuxedoed companions swilled the local brew, Budweiser—that, too, a faded American icon, sold off in 2008 to the Belgium-based multinational, InBev. No, of course, these were not the protesters who have begun to appear in more and more American cities, but keepers of the once-stable base of a certain version of the fabled American Dream: wedd…