Search for "Spirit Airlines 800-299-7264 Reservations Cheap Plane Tickets "

They’re Not Coming Back: The Religiously Unaffiliated and the Post-Religious Era

By Kaya Oakes

…tion instead of a church, mosque or schul, the links between understanding spirituality as the work of the spirit, or of the soul, become less and less meaningful. And as traditions rooted in Asian culture and tradition are stripped of their religious roots and are co-opted as one-size-fits-all “spirituality,” the term itself is so vague as to be nearly useless. Seen in this light, the designation “spiritual but not religious” does not mean much o…

Weeks After Turkey’s Failed Coup, Thousands Have Been Arrested Over a Book

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…inciples of social service, religious inclusiveness and an entrepreneurial spirit that matches the modern values of many educated Muslims. Gulen has requested that his ideas rather than his name should be promoted, so although the network of supporters is sometimes described in the press as the Gulen movement, his followers usually refer to themselves as part of the movement for “hizmet,” or social service. When Erdogan came to power as prime mini…

I Met God, She’s Black: An Exhibit Makes the Black Female Body a Temple

By Anita Little

…told me before the exhibit that politics cannot sustain itself without the spirit. These political movements that are happening are very important, but the undercurrent of these movements is a desire to change the spiritual consciousness of the community first and the society second. When black women decide to heal, the community heals, and then the society heals. Oftentimes, we’re at the forefront of political and cultural change. There is a need…

The Queerness of Christian Ethics: A Conversation with Rev. Elizabeth Edman

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…talk about developing a bulletproof faith—which has everything to do with spiritual survival. Yet one of the ways you talk about surviving is in understanding your own value. Then when someone comes at you, show them the dignity and respect they ought to be showing you. One could say we’re “forced into” living this way as a matter of survival, but the truth is we’ve gotten really good at it. I’ve seen us treat each other that way again and again…

#SorryNotSorry: What U.S. Christian Denominations Teach About Homosexuality

By Stephanie Russell-Kraft

…o change one’s biological sexual identity are all symptomatic of a broader spiritual disorder that threatens the family, the government, and the church.” 26% of members believe homosexuality should be accepted by society. Presbyterian Church USA (Mainline Protestant) Members (as of 2010): 2,675,873 As of June, 2014 the Book of Order now reads that marriage is defined as a covenant “between two people, traditionally between a man and a woman.” In…

Sacred Geography: A Queer Latino Theological Response to Orlando

By Xiomara Verenice Cervantes-Gómez

…d traversed dangerous landscapes just to get there in the first place. The Spirit lived and carried through each and every one of us. We emerged from the shadows we worshipped in to survive and to be storytellers about our journeys. These are our sacred spaces. I watch the media tripping over how to describe this tragedy, anxiously going back and forth between “terrorism” and “hate crime.” (When many of us know, all too well, that it is “terrorism…

5 Reasons That Cartoons Are the 21st Century’s Great Metaphysical Playground

By Ilana E. Strauss

…hishi, which is set in a world where a man named Ginko solves Shinto-esque spirit-related problems So what makes the medium so ideally suited to metaphysical musing? I can think of at least five reasons: 1. There are no physical limitations. You can make cartoon characters grow, shrink, turn into things, toss around the Sun like a football—whatever you want. Any thought experiment that can be visualized can be animated. For instance, in one episod…

Cafeteria Christianity in the Age of Social Media: What’s Old Is New Again

By Kate Blanchard

…xplain why some of us submit to the whole shebang and others don’t. In the spirit of gross oversimplification, I blame not social media but Constantinian Catholicism—not for intra-religious diversity, but for the idea that life should be any other way. Before 325 CE there existed a vast network of small clusters of pagan and Jewish Christians around the Mediterranean, mostly meeting in people’s homes, sharing a collection of related but not unifor…

Why It’s Heresy to Read the Bible Literally: An Interview with John Shelby Spong

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…us. When Elijah ascends into heaven he sends a double portion of his human spirit onto his human disciple. When Jesus ascends into heaven he sends the infinite power of God’s holy spirit on the whole gathered community sufficient to last through all of time. You’ve got to see the connections between these stories before they make sense. It gives you an alternative to biblical fundamentalism. That’s not original to the text. We imposed fundamentali…

How a Mormon Spring Break Ritual Came to Include a Whole Lot of “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama”

By Spencer Dew

…y urge the crowd to take the “knowledge” he offers them “in a nonsectarian spirit,” he nonetheless compares his position to that of a Mormon missionary, offering his gospel to those who have not yet accepted the truth. Despite explicit and emphatic reiteration of the metaphysics believed to be at play in the acts and the theology upon which such metaphysics are predicated, the Festival of Colors remains a popular event for Mormons. How such distin…