Search for "cheap airline tickets to myrtle beach south carolina phone number 1-800-299-7264"

“Tonight I Am Ashamed to be a Baptist”

By Sarah Posner

…tion-camp language is shameful, whether used in 1930s Europe or 2012 North Carolina. UPDATE: Perhaps Leonard might also have some words for the Family Research Council’s honoring another North Carolina pastor, Ron Baity, with its 2012 Watchman Award. Via Towleroad, Jeremy Hooper has compiled videos of Baity implying gay people are “worse than maggots,” comparing them to murderers, saying that “God signs the death warrant of any nation” that permit…

Four Changes Evangelicals Must Make

By Richard Pierard

…rcefully. He certainly must understand that Land’s (and by implication the Southern Baptist Convention’s) endorsement of Mitt Romney undermined the Southern Baptist witness. He and his office are an embarrassment to the convention, attract unnecessary criticism, and contribute to the public image problem that hinders the ministry of the SBC. The convention could channel the money expended on its tarnished reputation to the International Mission Bo…

Billy Graham, Most Famous Religious Figure of 20th C, Dies at 99

By Randall Balmer

…e completing his studies at Florida Bible Institute, Graham was ordained a Southern Baptist minister. Feeling he needed still more education, however, he enrolled at Wheaton College in the western suburbs of Chicago. There he met, and eventually married, Ruth McCue Bell, daughter of missionaries to China, who had initially resisted the advances of the young preacher because he did not aspire to be a missionary. By the time he graduated from Wheato…

Pigging Out: What ‘Radically Unkosher’ Jewish Foodies Like Michael Pollan Are Missing

By Jonathan Schorsch

…barbecue, reveling in details about learning from the pit masters of North Carolina, perfecting the technique of crackling (making crispy pig skin), and inaugurating his own, now-annual, pig roast tradition in the front-yard fire pit. Pollan is hardly the only Jewish foodie with a pig fetish, though he’s certainly the most well known. Last year amateur chef Wesley Klein founded Baconery, an Upper West Side bakery featuring—what else?—bacon in ever…

Does Religion Still Matter?

By Haroon Moghul

…dinner, but didn’t know where to go get food. I was in balmy Durham, North Carolina, where the daytime high had been 86 degrees. Gorgeousness, unparalleled. See, I love the warm. Heat. Sunshine. It’s my New England childhood versus thousands of years of evolution, insofar as my ancestry goes back to the Indian subcontinent, which tends to the more kinetically active side of things. So I was like, ‘Should I go out and eat?’ Or, ‘should I stay in a…

Jesus Said Punch Up, Not Down: Why William Barber’s Attack on the Religious Right May Not Be What It Seems

By Daniel Schultz

…sshairs, like the Rev. Mark Creech of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, conveniently focus only on the first half of Barber’s critique—that the leaders were praying for the powerful—while omitting the second part, that they should have taken the cause of the poor up with POTUS. Barber expanded in an “open letter” at ThinkProgress, noting, among other things, that “The teachings of Jesus are clear about caring for the poor and the sick…

Why Don’t Republicans Want to Allow Pastors to Endorse from Pulpit?

By Daniel Silliman

…nt their pastors to be able to endorse political candidates. An increasing number of Americans say they want more religion in politics. Pew reports that nearly half of Americans say churches should express their views on political issues. There are still many who support the idea of separating church and politics, of course, but it’s not like this law is actually working. One doesn’t have to look further than Houston to find pastors engaged in pol…

The Journalist and the Bishops: CNS Editor Fired For Tweeting Opposition to LGBT Discrimination

By Patricia Miller

…nor signs bill over #bathroomwars,” in response to the controversial North Carolina law that would require transgender individuals to use bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate. He also tweeted his opposition to a proposed law in Tennesse, calling it “stupid,” and tweeted an article noting that “religious liberty has replaced gay marriage in GOP talking points, fooling no one.” The USCCB owns and runs the Catholic News Se…

What’s Behind the “Common Sense” Rhetoric of Bathroom Bill?

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…imilar logical twists took place earlier this month when participants in a South Carolina county’s school board meeting erupted in a spontaneous chorus of “Jesus Loves Me” in a response to one woman’s attempt to defend trans students’ rights to choose where they pee. Before the song, as the woman tried to ask what might happen to a child “born with both sexes,” another participant cut her off by asking “Do you believe in the word of God?” He then…

Culture Warriors Surrender, But Battles Rage On

By Patricia Miller

…waim offers statements by two prominent evangelicals, Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, to the effect that their “side lost the culture war.” And while some on the left may argue this is merely a “rhetorical pivot,” Swaim argues that “religious conservatives are rethinking their role in American society and politics.” Instead of…