Search for "Alaska Airlines 800-299-7264 Customer Service Toll-Free Number"

Community Organizing and Symbolic Electioneering

By Laura R. Olson

…r a new phenomenon nor a rare one, so any discussion of faith-based social service delivery by either political party must include community organizers. Saul Alinsky initiated the idea of faith-based community organizing in the 1930s, challenging people in impoverished urban areas to address their neighborhoods’ various socioeconomic and crime-related challenges themselves — in partnership with local religious leaders, who had the wherewithal to l…

Almost-Blockbuster Netflix Series ‘The Family’ Exposes a Christian Network Whose God Is Power

By Peter Laarman

…was able to do. While always professing Christian ideals of selflessness, service, and fellowship they created a readily available platform for use by various dictators and haters and murderers of whatever stripe and whatever faith. This is quite an achievement, you have to admit. In an early sequence, Jeff Sharlet is vetted to join a kind of Christian frat house called Ivanwald, essentially a youth indoctrination center maintained by The Fellows…

A Solstice Devotional for the Faithless in Trump’s America

By Sunnivie Brydum

…hristmas Eve service at my family’s Lutheran church was always my favorite service of the year. The candles, the carols, and the quiet reverence soothed my soul, even as I drove myself and my little sister across town to switch between our divorced parents’ homes at the stroke of midnight. These days, neither of us goes to church, and my mother’s Pagan practices feel like the closest reflection of my own knotted spiritual beliefs. And while I seek…

Judge Halts “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Discharges

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…led Tuesday that the policy “infringes the fundamental rights” of military service members and prospective service members and violates their rights to due process and freedom of speech. Her ruling bars the Pentagon from enforcing or applying the policy and orders the military to immediately suspend and discontinue any investigations, discharges or other proceedings related to potential violations of the law. Alexander Nicholson, executive directo…

The “Religious Freedom” Issue That May Cost the Accused Boston Bomber His Life

By Anthony Santoro

…ty. This tends to exclude members of particular faith traditions from jury service, as the Death Penalty Information center noted in 2005: “Catholics who have heeded their Church’s call to end the death penalty” are among those “believers of all stripes who… will not be able to serve even in the guilt-innocence phase of the trial.” (DPIC, “Blind Justice,” 6,) On January 8, the Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty echoed…

The Right Wing Slant on Religious Freedom is a Slippery Slope

By Frederick Clarkson

…stereotyping. We assert the right of all religions and their adherents to freedom from legal, economic, and social discrimination.” The good news for proponents of authentic religious freedom for all is that there’s a throughline from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison’s core idea of religious freedom to the values of Emma Anne Stephens, Tate Keuler, and Natalia Del Pino and the United Methodist Church’s Book of Discipline. The Founders believed…

How Religion Shapes Sex Discrimination at Wal-Mart

By Joanna Brooks

…recognition for the work of service performed by these women both a home and at Wal-Mart—is a perennially important concern for everyone who works. Many of the Dukes women who embraced the company’s Christian identity would also say that there is no contradiction between honoring service and paying and promoting service employees fairly. I assume that’s what many Christian Wal-Mart employees hope to achieve in this suit, alongside their non-evang…

Egypt Goes After Gays to Silence Islamist Critics; South Africa’s ‘Open Mosque’ is Closed; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s for the teaching of sex education. A few months ago, the National Health Service board for Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Scotland’s largest, opposed a draft guidance that would allow teachers and students to opt out on the grounds of “conscience,” saying it could undermine the whole purpose of providing sex education. On Sunday, the director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service, Michael McGrath, published an op ed in the Scotsman making the c…

Homophobia an “Atrocity,” LDS Bishop Tells Gay Mormon Conference

By Joanna Brooks

…he Saturday closing session and speak on Sunday at the interdenominational service. What did you hope to say? I had prepared something to say but then one of the organizers of the event said the theme of this service is “finding peace” or “how do you find peace.” So, I chucked my talk and spoke from the heart. That’s a fine Mormon tradition. Yes. President Boyd Packer said prepare, prepare, prepare, and then chuck your notes, and let the Spirit gu…

“Godly Or Bad?”: The Return of Ted Haggard

By J. Terry Todd

…t—evangelical practice itself is arguably one source of that cult. Evangelicals have always tended to invest the preacher and his words with central importance, an importance that has too often been wielded not just in the service of the Lord but also in the service of the preacher’s own power. And that, of course, is a risky set-up when it comes to sex—a sign that supposedly godly lives can turn into a living hell, right here, right now….