Search for "American Airlines 1800-299-7264 New Flight Booking"

Top Five (Less Sensational, But More Dangerous) Things to Remember About Pat Robertson (1930-2023)

By Mark Hulsether

…wn as The Family Channel. This story has two morals: The first is that Fox News and Robertson’s “news” deserve about the same degree of respect from journalists. Second, critics have raised questions about the legality of financial transactions related to Robertson’s business empire. Although at this point there’s no way to determine how well these accusations would hold up in court, we can easily imagine more diligent investigations. 3) Robertson…

Reverend Billy For Mayor: Is He For Real?

By Nathan Schneider

…erform, Lanier took him out to lunch and said, remembers Talen, “We need a new kind of American preacher.” Lanier convinced him that in order to speak relevantly to American politics and society, one has to understand its religion. They watched sermons together and studied “existential Christianity”‚ the historical Jesus, ancient Gnostics, and Continental philosophy. They learned the styles of televangelists like Billy Graham and Jimmy Swaggart. “…

Toni Morrison, Prophet of America’s Demons (1931-2019)

By Ed Simon

…our names in favor of the saccharine sweet myths of American greatness and American goodness and American sinlessness. Sometimes Morrison is simply categorized as an “African-American writer”—and she was that of course. But in addition to being a black writer, Morrison was an author of blackness. An author of whiteness too. Her 1992 book, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, is one of the most astute literary critical readi…

No Space for American Islam?

By Mark Bergen

…ainst what proponents of the center are setting out to create: a space for American Islam. Park51 is a proposal, unprecedented in its scope, for an Islamic center turned outward. Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), was involved in its inception through the Cordoba Initiative. She describes it as a hub for Islam’s next step into the national religious fabric. (Khan sits on the Advisory Council of Re…

Electionpocalypse, Part II: The Mythical Jewish Vote

By Sarah Posner

…rly, all Israelis—view Obama as an almost villainous character. “No Jewish American,” the American-born writer Barry Rubin says in the video, “should vote for Obama on the belief that he’s a great friend of Israel.” You should think about, the narrator tells you, “whether Obama will really have Israel’s back when the chips are down.” Mark Zell, co-chair of Republicans Abroad-Israel, recently told reporter Roee Ruttenberg, “in the United States, th…

Thanksgiving Reveals More About Us Than About 17th Century Events

By Ed Simon

…signed to incorporate pluralistic understandings of what it means to be an American. That’s purposeful; for supposedly being about New England Puritans and their (semi) apocryphal meal with local Indians, Thanksgiving only became a national holiday following the Civil War. Central to the day are less events that happened in the 17th century than the ever-regenerative work of constructing what exactly it means to be an American. Like anything relig…

Black Media Fails Its LGBTQ Community

By Rev. Irene Monroe

…onth for the first time in the history of the Bay State Banner, an African American newspaper in Greater Boston, an article appeared on black queer culture titled “Pride, Family values shine in Hub’s gay black culture.” Why now? Because Katherine Patrick, the daughter of our governor, Deval Patrick, who’s the second African American to be elected governor in the U.S., came out. The media attention surrounding her coming out finally underscored the…

High Holidays Watch: Seth Rogen’s Latest Highlights the ‘American Pickle’ of Living with Death

By Shaul Magid

…inundated with death counts occupying the top right corner of almost every news screen. It reminds me of listening, as a young adolescent, to the nightly news in the early 1970s as the anchor duly reported the number of US soldiers killed in Vietnam. After a while we became numb to the numbers. We bantered during the reportage, or got up to get a drink, either because we couldn’t bear to hear it, or because it became meaningless. Numbers are the e…

Islam is as American as…

By Peter Manseau

…ents in North Carolina, I offered a few thoughts on Twitter about just how American Islam is. Islam is as American as basketball. pic.twitter.com/O6IcSkxvy1 — peter manseau (@petermanseau) February 11, 2015 Islam is as American as dancing with dad at your wedding. pic.twitter.com/HZL7fRzWFC — peter manseau (@petermanseau) February 11, 2015 Islam is as American as pride and ambition. pic.twitter.com/ghycpAaTXo — peter manseau (@petermanseau) Februa…

Will This Relic Change Our Whole View of Early American History?

By Ed Simon

…ed with skepticism. To depart from a solely Protestant conception of early American religious identity doesn’t require the discovery of crypto-Catholicism in Jamestown—interesting though it would be. Secondary education in the U.S. may still emphasize a Protestant triumphalist version of early American history focusing on the mythopoetic significance of Plymouth Rock and the pilgrims to the exclusion of others, but academics working across discipl…