Search for "cheap airline tickets to orlando fl from ohare wi phone number 1-800-299-7264"

DeSantis is a No-Show, the Right’s ‘Secret Sauce,’ and Final Thoughts on Pray Vote Stand

By PRA Staff

…hout the three-day conference, appeals to seize political power were intertwined with direct and personal promises to soothe the deepest and most intimate wellsprings of vulnerability, suffering and insecurity felt by their followers in the audience. Sitting in those pews, I realized in a new way that millions of people across the US have been thoroughly conditioned to believe that ‘saving America’ (in essence, through instituting an exclusionary…

Catholic Bishops End Family Synod With Little To Say To Gays; World Congress of Families Has Plenty To Say, None of it Good; How Same-Sex Marriage Came to a Buddhist Temple in Japan; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…n its traditional strongholds like Europe, the U.S. and Latin America, the numbers are growing at a rapid pace in one part of the world known for its cultural hostility to gay rights: sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1980, the number of Catholics in Africa has grown by 238 percent. Perhaps more important, 70 percent of them attend Sunday Mass regularly, compared with just 29 percent in the Americas. Some countries with the fastest growth — Uganda, Nigeri…

Cruz and the Evangelical Illusion

By Sarah Posner

…the Post. “We brought them with no expectations and we were highly pleased with the number who decided Ted is the right man to be of the president of the U.S.” When judging these statements (particularly the words “very diverse,” “significant standing” and “the number”), keep in mind that Barton is known (among evangelicals) for playing fast and loose with facts. Three years ago, the evangelical publisher Thomas Nelson halted publication of one of…

Elephant Orphans and Ecological Spiritualities: An Earth Day Reflection

By Jacob J. Erickson

…of humans in the Anthropocene. And even where we might discern or intuit a kind of animal spirituality, emotion, ritual, memory—or a primordial binding of a kind of religious culture—those moments are utterly implicated in a human spiritual history of poaching, ivory trade, colonialism, human-wildlife farm conflicts, and big game hunting in Africa. With my hand still resting on this young elephant’s coarse skin, her forehead pressing into my palm…

None Means None (Not Atheist, Agnostic, Unbeliever…)

By Elizabeth Drescher

…. Or, maybe, reflection on how patterns of existential belief are changing within and beyond institutional religions. Yet Winston’s go-to source for context on the Pew studies is a University of Tampa sociologist, Ryan Cragun, whose quite respectable academic oeuvre focuses primarily on atheists and the otherwise nonreligious. (And Mormons. Go figure.) It certainly seems that Cragun’s work would provide helpful insight on the substantial minority…

Hell, in Rob Bell’s Own Words: State of Belief Radio

By The Editors

…in extraordinary suffering; I’ve seen people in settings around the world with nothing, with a dollar a day to live on with joy. And faith should be about joy. It should be about living in this big, beautiful, mysterious, exotic world and finding joy in it, in spite of the suffering and the brokenness and the misery. There is joy here. For me, I happen to really love creating things, I love writing books, I love exploring ideas, I love presenting…

Pussy Riot Members Sentenced to 2 Years for Offending Russian Orthodox Church

By The Editors

…s better than stoning.” I would like you to think carefully about the following reflection by Montaigne from his Essays written in the 16th century. He wrote: “You are holding your opinions in too high a regard if you burn people alive for them.” Is it worth accusing people and putting them in jail on the basis of totally unfounded conjectures by the prosecution? Since in actual fact we never were, and are not, motivated by religious hatred and ho…

National Review’s Kevin Williamson Comes Out Against Daughters, Misunderstands Science

By Sarah Morice-Brubaker

…curious scientific fact (explained in evolutionary biology by the Trivers-Willard hypothesis — Willard, notice) that high-status animals tend to have more male offspring than female offspring, which holds true across many species, from red deer to mink to Homo sap. The offspring of rich families are statistically biased in favor of sons — the children of the general population are 51 percent male and 49 percent female, but the children of the For…

The End (of Religion) is Near, Scientists Say

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ful activity bubble to the surface. Lost in the debate is the large and growing number of thoughtful people who self-identify as “spiritual, but not religious” (that is, as non-affiliated), an admittedly complex phrase than doesn’t allow for easy analysis either. But, as has been frequently noted on RD, religion is highly dispersed in the modern period; it’s not going away, it’s just going elsewhere. Sometimes the “spiritual, but not religious” pe…

Catholic Church Bans Gay Film: This Week’s Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…osexuality with execution on Twitter. There have also been reports of a growing number of hate crimes targeting people perceived as LGBT in the country. The biggest shift in the politics of the issue, however, was a call last week from the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) movement for the government to crackdown on LGBT rights. The NU claims tens of millions of members and is described as the world’s largest Muslim organization, but was founded in large part…