Search for "cheap airline tickets to st.paul minnesota phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Paranormal Vodka, Exorcists and a Demonic Doll: Welcome to Paracon, Based on the Work of the Demon-Hunters Who Inspired the ‘Conjuring’ Series

By Eric Harrelson and Joseph P. Laycock

…’t just happen, it has to be invited. This happens in what he calls the first stage of possession, or Encroachment: “First occurs the encroachment—or permission—stage, where a negative spirit is given access to a human being through either voluntary means (satanic rituals) or involuntary means (curses).” Those voluntary means include things like visiting a psychic, playing with a Ouija board, or otherwise “dabbling in the occult.” The cult surroun…

Spiritual Unplugging, Or What to Do When There is Wifi at the Ashram

By Matt Hamilton

…s, political campaigns and interviews with high-ranking officials. The priest stands in for God. The journalist stands in for the community at-large. The latter just felt more honest. Coming back to a spiritual community felt familiar, yes, by which I mean dishonest, delusional, disingenuous. But I kept those reservations at bay. I meditated at dawn for 90 minutes. I heeded the silence imposed during breakfast. I dutifully attended lectures on med…

Two people on a podium with a board that reads "Project 2025 kills democracy"

Project 2025: How Trump Loyalists and Right-Wing Leaders Are Paving a Fast Road to Fascism

By Peter Montgomery

…so indicates a movement-level, ideological shift away from a libertarian mistrust of government power and toward an authoritarian view of government power being used ruthlessly—whether as a righteous force wielded to advance a “biblical worldview” or turned against an “administrative state” supposedly captured by a radical Marxist left. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who endorsed Trump after suspending his own presidential campaign just before the…

Pop-Culture Angels Are More Than Just Embarrassing Kitsch

By Ed Simon

…ty so popular in the Victorian Era. Angels populate greeting cards for Christmas and Easter, baptisms and first communions, confirmations and funerals, as well as for health, as in this example. They’re distinctly non-denominational, non-theological, and in a strange way non-religious, a cipher intending to signify happiness and goodness more than any doctrinal affirmation. That these qualities are associated with Whiteness is telling, if not surp…

Rand Paul Is Not Anti-Authority

By Sarah Posner

…ck Conway questions Rand Paul’s.” As I wrote before, Conway’s ad didn’t question Paul’s Christianity, it questioned his respect for religion. Even if Aqua Buddha was basically a fraternity prank, something Greg Sargent confirmed with the woman who first revealed it to him and Zengerle, it stands in stark contrast to Paul’s authoritarian moralizing today. As the woman told Sargent, “My whole point in sharing [the episode] was that Randy used to be…

God and the Gay Christian: An Interview with Matthew Vines

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…d not feeling any hatred, it’s still producing and multiplying sin. This doesn’t mean LGBT people and affirming Christians are sinless. It means that we all have constant struggles, sins of omission and commission, and we all must keep working toward that image of God….

The Political Strategist’s Conversion that Led to Ron Paul’s New Faithiness

By Sarah Posner

…(Lane did not respond to requests for comment.) Wead, though, “dusted off” Paul’s statement of faith, which he says the candidate wrote himself, and put it on the Facebook page. It reads, in part (emphasis in original): My faith is a deeply private issue to me, and I don’t speak on it in great detail during my speeches because I want to avoid any appearance of exploiting it for political gain. Let me be very clear here: I have accepted Jesus Chri…

MN Lawmaker: “How Many Gay People Does God Have to Make?”

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…meline may be a bit on the lengthy side. To win civil rights, one of the last steps is to make it shameful to be against the rights of the group fighting for recognition. It became shameful to support slavery, shameful to support Jim Crow laws, and shameful to openly discriminate against women (though pay disparities persist). Even young Republicans piled on against the amendment. 24-year-old Madeline Koch, who identified herself as a straight Rep…

Pentecostal Prayer Gangs: New Film Documents Religion in a Brazilian Prison

By Nick Street

…on some of the facets of Pentecostalism that have helped to make it the fastest growing religious movement in the world. I spoke to Andrew this week, on the eve of the film’s Los Angeles premiere, about what it was like to spend time behind bars and how he became part of the lives of the men whose stories he tells in his film. How did you end up spending two weeks in a Brazilian prison? I was conducting research for my dissertation; honestly, I h…

LifeSite Complains that Local Boy Scout Chapter is Not Homophobic Enough

By Katie Toth

…priest “alarmed.” Rev. John Echert, pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in South St. Paul, Minnesota, told LSN that he immediately broke his church’s ties with the Twin Cities group, and announced the rupture to his congregation, after learning the group had permitted open homosexuality “for years.” Although the split was amicable, he said, he was alarmed not to have known about the Council’s divergence from national policy earlier. While LifeSite repea…