Search for "American Airlines 1800-299-7264 Reservations Phone Number"

Trump’s ‘Sh*thole Countries’ is Just a Cruder Term for What’s Been Said in American Churches for Generations

By Kathryn Gin Lum

…h I write about more in my forthcoming book, Heathen: Religion and Race in American History—helps to explain how Americans can see such different regions of the world as capable of being grouped together under the same heading, while seeing their own nation as categorically different and superior. Most Americans don’t talk about “heathens” anymore. But when Donald Trump talks about “shithole countries,” we know all too well what he means. It’s jus…

Obama’s Muslim Problem—And Ours

By William D. Hart

…ere enslaved Africans. There has been a renaissance of Islam among African Americans; indeed, African American Muslims are a large minority of the American Muslim population. Obama fumbled an opportunity to educate the American people, to complicate the image of who Muslims are, to accent their long, pre-Boston Tea Party, pre-revolutionary history in America. What better way to exemplify the new politics he claims to embody? Item: Two Muslim women…

“American Values” and “Standing With Israel”

By Sarah Posner

…at the construction could cause a rift between it and “even its closest allies.” The United States warned Israel it was sabotaging the peace process; Netanyahu in turn accused it of acting “against American values.” Ah, American values. John Cougar Mellencamp, the Beach Boys, the Benham brothers, and the great red dragon of Revelation as a driver of foreign policy….

The Best Books Media of 2008

By Jeff Sharlet

…elen Burroughs argue across some of the most tumultuous decades in African-American history over the responsibilities of churches and the effectiveness of African Americans’ religious commitments in the struggle for liberation. * * * Adele Oltman’s Sacred Mission, Wordly Ambition: Black Christian Nationalism in the Age of Jim Crow (University of Georgia) blooms from a careful, revelatory reconstruction of the spiritual and economic lives of black…

The Sacramental American Day of Thanks

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…re prominent then (so, too, was the disturbing implication that indigenous Americans were Canaanites, and thus fit for destruction). The Civil War provided the American civil religion with a new dimension of more explicitly Christian symbolism: the original sin of human enslavement was overcome only through the punitive bloodbath of civil war and the Christ-like sacrifice of the blood of the then-US President, Abraham Lincoln (Gary Laderman’s impo…

On Gaffney’s Radio Show, Rep. King Suggests Muslims Aren’t American

By Sarah Posner

…r for the benefit of House staffers, and spoke to a room of about 50 people. It surely is a deeply troubling development that King is cavorting with Gaffney and pontificating about the “Americanism” of American Muslims, in light of Gaffney’s agitation about fifth columns of shari’ah proponents bent on undermining the Constitution….

You Can Take The Boy Out of the Crack House: MyPillow CEO’s New Book Promo Has Deep Roots in American Christianity

By Daniel Schultz

…easy resale. Happy-faced entrepreneurial preachers have been a part of the American landscape since the first circuit riders hit the frontier villages. Even today, there’s no difference between Mike Lindell and a dozen televangelists, save a thousand milligrams of lithium. If you have any doubts about the commodification of the healing grace of God, google it for yourself. There’s a part of American Christianity that believes deeply and sincerely…

Atheist Monument: Proof of Unintelligent Design

By Gordon Haber

…a successful monument makes it hard to imagine its setting without it. The American Atheists monument fails on both counts. When granted the opportunity to memorialize atheism in a public place, American Atheists decided to install a bench. In one sense, this is a clever idea, in that it reflects the utilitarian impulse of American atheism. But a bench is also something that you put your butt on. And this particular bench is an eyesore. About five…

2010: What Did We Believe In?

By Gary Laderman

…ise the biblical creation myth to the level of a universal fact that every American, or at least every American student using Texas textbooks, must accept as truth. On the other hand, some biologists along with neuroscientists, psychologists, and other intellectuals see evolutionary theory and knowledge about the brain as a way to better understand that most basic of religious elements: morality. 8. Sports Values: Where do Americans get their mora…

No, I Don’t Owe My Yoga Mat to Vivekananda

By Andrea R. Jain

…ch writes about Vivekananda as though he reflected something mainstream in American culture: “His prescription for life was simple, and perfectly American: ‘work and worship.’” And she claims that Vivekananda’s popularity waned because America’s “baby boomers commandeered the yoga business.” First, Vivekananda was never “popular” in the sense that modern yoga became popularized in the late twentieth century. He certainly gained the attention of a…