Search Results for:

cheap airline tickets from dallas to addis ababa phone number 1-800-299-7264

Burning Down the Temple: Religion and Irony in Black Rock City

…een working feverishly to finish their projects but had put off purchasing tickets were left out in the cold. It was a different scene in 1997 when I first came to Burning Man and only waited briefly at the entrance as a “Greeter” cast a cursory glance at my car. But the Greeters’ enthusiastic reception remained the same. These Greeters, a dusty naked couple, asked me to get out of my car and embraced me, shouting “Welcome Home!” I had crossed the…

Read More

An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

…ual recompense. In the video message that was played before my last United Airlines flight, you expressed your desire to greet each and every passenger; you invited us to sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight. If I could greet you now, I would want to know: were you unaware of the monstrosity that was about to follow? There, rising above the hiss of the pressurized air, as the video monitors snapped to the image of an engorged sun bursting from be…

Read More

Invited by Allah

…ccurred to me it would be a very easy to make hajj from there. I bought an airline ticket and was in contact with the family of one of my graduate school friends. They would pick me up from the airport and host me during my stay and the days of ritual. Nice plan. So I went to the embassy to get the visa and was denied because (as an American) I needed proof that I was Muslim. How do I prove I have been a practicing Muslim for a decade? I went to t…

Read More

Refusing the Monsters on Maple Street: A First-Person Commentary from the Mass Hysteria at JFK

…alse—swept through the terminals, sending passengers, law-enforcement, and airline workers scrambling for cover and eventually onto the tarmac. The responding authorities found neither shooters nor evidence of any shots fired. The most likely explanation offered for the panic was that the cheering of Olympics fans for Usain Bolt’s performance in the 100 meters sounded like gunfire. In an episode titled “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” from

Read More

Gingrich Downplays Adelson Money, Stokes Fear of “Second Holocaust” at Florida Church

…ughter Bella was hospitalized.) Organizers said they had distributed 1,800 tickets, and the pews in the church were nearly full, with several hundred, if not nearly a thousand people in attendance. Gingrich was the only candidate to appear; Staver, the “forum’s” moderator took pains to point out that they had invited the other candidates. Santorum and Ron Paul had commitments outside of Florida. Mitt Romney, the candidate Staver and other leaders…

Read More

What’s Missing From Popular Discussions of Today’s Christian Nationalism?

…ing Mike Pence. But one difference between the gatherings in Kissimmee and Dallas has to do with the certainty of payoffs. Whether the tax cuts, budget cuts, and non-regulation of markets that are the reliable outcome of Republican politics will work to the benefit of the diverse crowd that gathered in Kissimmee is doubtful. That they will serve the interests of the extravagantly rich attendees of the Ziklag Group gathering, on the other hand, is…

Read More

#BlackLivesMatterStill: We Cannot Let Anyone Else Define Our Movement

…night. Five police officers serving under the Dallas Police Department and Dallas Area Rapid Transit Police were murdered. Two civilians and seven more police officers were wounded. The officers were assassinated because they were police officers, because they were police officers serving at a #BlackLivesMatter protest, which was itself protesting the non-judicial police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. According to police sources,…

Read More

Texas Pastor: Christians Claiming “Religious Persecution” Are Actually Just “Selfish”

…tor at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, did in his Monday column for the Dallas Morning News. Despite the conservative and legal hand-wringing, it’s not actually hard to tell the difference between “religious persecution and selfishness,” he writes. He asks readers (particularly Christians who may be quick to side with “religious” business-owners who don’t want to serve LGBTQ people) to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. It’s a simple, classic…

Read More

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

…married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warned that those who do would face “consequences.” From a March 1 story: In spite of the church rulin…

Read More

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…

Read More