Search for "cheap airline tickets from melbourne international airport to washington dc international airport phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Does Record Number of Religious “Nones” Mean Decline of Religiosity?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…an religiosity—about religion as it is lived in the United States today? A number of what I would see as problems in the Pew report suggest to me that our growing fixation with religion-by-the-numbers may be distracting us from richer, more nuanced understandings of American religious practice. Wanted: A Community that Doesn’t Share My Beliefs and Values Take the demographic category of “Nones” itself. The Pew report notes the difficulty with sur…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…

Of God, But Not God: A Methodist Minister Speaks About Church’s Refusal to Open Its Doors to LGBT

By Joel Pitney

…ere not companionship-based. They were economic arrangements. Okay, that’s number 1. Number 2, let’s say that your wife didn’t provide you with a male offspring. A man could take another wife and another wife and another wife until one of them did. This is the “sanctity of marriage” that is being protected. Are you kidding me? Wow. Okay, so that’s Old Testament. Then along comes Jesus. Well for those of us who follow Jesus, I always like to point…

RD News Round-Up—Nov. 4, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…tive Council for National Policy is currently headed by Steve Baldwin. The Washington, D.C.-based operation had $1,690,914 in revenue in 2007. Americans United points out on its website that there are a number of other important religious right organizations to be aware of, including Gary Bauer’s American Values, Rick Scarborough’s Vision America, and Lou Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. An expanded version of the Church & State story is av…

Creators of Missing Lowe’s Ad Tell All

By Hussein Rashid

…another that just transcends the screen. Putting a label on it would just cheapen it. Plus Riz is such a huge sex symbol to the gay Muslim community that if it came out he actually has a brilliant and sexy wife, it would totally ruin our international sales in Iran and the Emirates. RM: We wanted to offend as many people in the commercial as we possibly could. A homosexual Muslim couple putting up Christmas lights after buying caulk from Lowe’s w…

Jerusalem Countdown: Christian Zionists and the New Israeli Government

By Bill Berkowitz

…s movements in America. It hosts a yearly July Washington-Israel Summit in Washington DC, and a biannual solidarity summit in Israel. During an interview last year, Glenn Beck asked Hagee: “You had several meetings with fairly prominent individuals. You’ve met with Benjamin Netanyahu. Have you had enough conversations with these people to tell them that you believe that we’re living in the end times, and what is their reaction?” Hagee replied that…

RDNews: Oct 20, 2008

By Bill Berkowitz

…back former Promise Keepers executive and current PK board member Raleigh Washington to serve as president.” A few years after its founding, the Denver, Colorado-based Promise Keepers experienced an extraordinary growth spurt, drawing tens of thousands of men to rallies in football stadiums and sports arenas across the country. As attendance at its rallies grew—278,000 in 1994, 738,000 in 1995 and more than a million in 1996—so did its revenues….

Welcome to the Shari’ah Conspiracy Theory Industry

By Sarah Posner

…d probably should not be relied upon. There is indeed a loose coordinating international structure for the Muslim Brotherhood, but it has no real authority over the chapters.” But that hasn’t stopped Gaffney, who said recently, “It is now public knowledge that nearly every major Muslim organization in the United States is actually controlled by the MB or a derivative organization. Consequently, most of the Muslim-American groups of any prominence…

Dispatches From the Rhodian Shore: A (Tough) Love Letter to Religious Studies

By Todd LeVasseur

…t by a long shot. Rather, in concluding their analysis of climate data, an international group of scientists write, “We have summarized predictions of a ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health, and climate-disruption upheavals (including looming massive migrations) and resource conflicts this century…we contend that only a realistic appreciation of the colossal challenges facing the international community might allow it to chart a les…

Response to Daniel Philpott: the Politics of Religious Freedom

By Elizabeth Shakman Hurd

…learning from our colleagues and exploring these complex histories over a number of years, we have found that religious liberty is not a single, stable principle existing outside of history, as it is often depicted (particularly in policy circles in North America and Europe and by many academics invested in promoting religious freedom). It is, rather, an inescapably context-bound, polyvalent concept unfolding within divergent histories in differi…