Search for "cheap airline tickets for service members phone number 1-800-299-7264"

More Mixed Signals from Pope Francis; Church of England Wrestles with Rifts; Faith Groups Lobby Pro & Con on Irish Referendum; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…e group did not get a private meeting with Pope Francis, but was given VIP tickets to the pope’s weekly audience in St. Peter’s square. Religion News Service reports that several bishops, including “San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone – point man or the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ battle against gay marriage – had written a letter to the Vatican on their behalf.” A group of LGBT Catholics from London who met up with the New Ways…

Yom Kippur Prayers for Corporate Atonement at Occupy Wall St.

By Sarah Posner

…e and was organized via social media? It’s definitely not the first Jewish service to take place at a protest, but a Kol Nidre service at an economic protest organized over Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook? Yes. Quite likely a first. It’s also super exciting to see such an incredible response. Kol Nidre is the evening service of the holiest Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur. These Aramaic words mean “all vows,” and in the Kol Nidre service the cantor recite…

Too Hot for Shul: Rabbis Seek Healthy Israel Dialogue After Gaza

By Sarah Posner

…Rosen told me. JVP, he said, is “agnostic” on Zionism, noting some of its members are Zionists. Nonetheless, he said, for many “joining JVP means crossing a kind of Rubicon.” But more people are crossing that Rubicon according to Rosen, who says that JVP’s membership is “growing explosively.” That same observation is also made—disquietedly—by rabbis who take issue with JVP’s positions. Some place at least part of the blame on the establishment’s…

Why Crux‘s Knights of Columbus “Partnership” is Problematic

By Kaya Oakes

…mpaigns in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington. In 2005, they printed 800,000 postcards in Canada “in a campaign that [argued] that the redefinition of marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would promote pedophilia, pornography and unsafe sex.” As Marianne Duddy-Burke of the LGBTQ Catholic organization Dignity USA commented in a press release, “The Knights are deeply invested in advancing a particular brand of Catholicism, and I am con…

An American Muslim Abroad, Or, Things I Saw in Dubai

By Haroon Moghul

…h buildings, starting right around the same time. Talk about luxury on the cheap; it’s hard to deny a feeling of similarity. (The tower is to the Burj as a certain toupee is to hair: might the Trump Tower inadvertently mimic an Islamic motif?) The regal twin palm trees in the foreground are the world’s tallest, at some 3,500 feet each. Recently a falling coconut crushed an entire apartment complex, punching a massive hole that has filled up with…

Is Army’s New “Humanist” Designation Just Semantic Hooey?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…h code is significant in a number of ways. First, for Bradley and Humanist service members, it means that their existential disposition and associated practices are designated in their military records with language not shaped primarily in opposition to traditional religious designations. “‘Atheist’ says only what I’m not,” Bradley explained. “‘Humanist is what I am. It is how I live my life. The principles of Humanism guide me through life’s chal…

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

By Nick Street

…es would talk to me and let me do interviews. There were times when I made phone calls to inmates’ family members to let then know that visiting times had changed, to save them a long trip to the prison. I also visited the families of inmates with pastors and other volunteers to bring food, sometimes a gift a child’s dad had made. I basically become part of the lives of the people whose lives I wanted to document. How did a project you undertook f…

Dispatch from Charlottesville: “It Was a War Zone. It Felt Like There Were a Million Nazis.”

By Sunnivie Brydum

…m were gathered outside the church. So in the middle of a peaceful worship service, a prayer service for the city of Charlottesville, I was unable to be present in the work that I had been brought in to do because of safety concerns. Along with that, a member of the so-called alt-right had infiltrated our worship service. And so there were lots of things happening at one time. Security became a real concern; not just for those of us who were in cl…

Recovering From Rejection: The Second Coming of Ted Haggard

By Wendy Norris

…rculated email, and on his blog. London reportedly told the Religious News Service of Haggard’s plans to hold prayer services, “When you think of the ethics of that, it, to me, just defies explanation.” Not to be left out of the media feeding frenzy, other high-profile pastors in the conservative evangelical Christian community quickly piled on. C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded the World Prayer Center with Haggard and is well known for the exorcism…

What’s More Frightening Than Snakes on a Plane?

By Devin Kuhn-Choi

…an ad in a local shop or community center. Last minute emergency? Call the airline right away to see about possibilities for accommodating your needs. Likewise, if one is ardently anti-abortion for moral reasons, rather than only focus on making it illegal, prevent it by limiting unwanted pregnancies: help ensure adequate, healthy sex education and contraception are available to those who need or want them. Work to make affordable, quality prenata…