Search for "dirt cheap airline tickets last minute phone number 1-800-299-7264"

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

By Daniel Silliman

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…

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

By Peter Montgomery

…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…

Shukr: Gratitude

By Amina Wadud

…it came immediately upon the heels of the birth of my second grandson. One minute we were on the phone and I was describing the birth event and sharing photos on Facebook. The next day, she went to bed, coughed once, and then breathed no more. She was 44. I thought about her when I read in the Qur’an how “every soul will have its taste of death.” So gentle was her moment of passing, and yet so painful has been these few months without her here to…

A Truly Fearless Human Being: Rev. Howard Moody, 1921-2012

By Tom Davis

…e truly obscene ought not to be slick-paper nudity, nor the vulgarities of dirty old or young literati, nor even ‘weirdo’ films showing transvestite orgies or male genitalia. What is obscene is that material, whether sexual or not, that has as its basic motivation and purpose the degradation, debasement and dehumanizing of persons. The dirtiest word in the English language is not ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ in the mouth of a tragic shaman, but the word ‘NIGG…

On Eve of Sudan Split Clashes Continue

By Ashley Makar

…trying to leave Abyei are stranded in the rain. The only way south is via dirt roads. William went north, to get an education. “They can break your leg, but they can’t break your mind,” he told me. First, he studied Arabic in Khartoum, so he could learn to protect himself from the Sudanese army and the Misseriya. Then, like thousands of displaced Sudanese, William migrated to Egypt, hoping to be resettled to the West by the UN refugee agency in C…

Pride Month & Prejudice; ‘Worrisome Time’ For LGBT People; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ortion. Both initiatives are strongly opposed by the Catholic Church and a number of news sites drew attention to the camera’s focus on the sour face of Santiago’s Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati when Bachelet mentioned them. Russia: French president pushes Putin on abuse of Chechen gays French President Emmanuel Macron urged Russia’s Vladimir Putin to ensure the safety of LGBT people in Chechnya, where gay men have been subjected to a campaign of deten…

Saving Teens from Obama: When Bible Study Goes Wrong

By Vyckie Garrison

…waste American money to buy their expensive oil when we could have our own cheap oil?” “Why is he trying to make rich people poor?” “How is it right to punish rich people for working hard and realizing the American Dream?” It was late on a Friday night and I was tired, so I half-heartedly responded by explaining that there are other factors to consider in every charged question she’d been armed with. But I wondered, “Why the hell was the Salvation…

Burning Man: Religious Event or Sheer Hedonism?

By Lee Gilmore

…llar annual budget is funded almost exclusively by ticket sales, and these tickets are not cheap (ranging this year, for example, from $210-$300 depending on time of purchase). This pays for the basic infrastructure as well as expenses like a hefty per-person/per-day use fee charged by the Bureau of Land Management. In addition, a significant portion of each year’s budget is set aside to fund many of the large-scale art installations various parti…

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

By Sarah Posner

…gations to not be that interested, or the issues too complex, for a thirty minute sermon. Even the leaders of less traditional communities, like Kleinbaum’s, say that achieving the space for constructive dialogue is hard work, demanding diligence and intentionality that must be maintained not only by clergy, but by lay leaders and congregants as well. Several rabbis said the best approach was to bring in speakers of varying perspectives, and to en…

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…