Search for "Spirit Airlines 1 800-299-7264 Ticket Reservations Number"

New Report: Muslim Terrorism a ‘Minuscule Threat’

By Hussein Rashid

…the span of a decade. Per annum, it is 0.001%. If we take a more realistic number of 4 million American Muslims, the numbers become 0.005% over a decade, or 0.0005% per year. Last year there were 14,000 homicides in the U.S., and with a population of 300,000,000, that’s about 0.0005% of the population are murderers. The report ends with this sage advice: “This study’s findings challenge Americans to be vigilant against the threat of homegrown terr…

Gambian Prez Rails Against Gay ‘Evil Empire’; Irish Priest Comes Out During Mass; Trans Talk on Tunisian TV Sparks Debate; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s identifying themselves as Catholics fell to 81 percent from 88 percent in 1997 and one in every 11 Catholics has considered leaving the church. Weekly church attendance among adults dropped to 37 percent in 2013 from 53 percent in 2006. There are signs that church attendance has ticked up in anticipation of the visit. “The line to a blockbuster movie? Hot selling concert? Celebrity autograph signing? Nope! It’s a Sunday Mass!,” said MJ Francisco…

“I Speak to God in Public”: Are Young Black Millennials Reclaiming a Theology of Resistance?

By Joshua L. Lazard

…ch of the research around trends—specifically with millennials born between 1981 and 1996—reveals a much more complex American landscape. The larger takeaway in the 2014 study was that the American church was losing members—and that became the sexy cover story. Lost in the weeds was the fact that affiliation with historically black denominations was more or less even (the loss was less than one full percentage point). And generally speaking, black…

Muslims in America, Fifty Years Later: New Poll Shows Pride and Optimism In the Face of Bias

By Edward E. Curtis IV

…rest of the Muslim world. The majority of Muslim Americans are Sunni, while 16% identify as Shi‘a, 14% say they are “just Muslim,” and 4% are members of smaller communities such as the Ahmadiyya movement and the Nation of Islam. The 2017 Pew poll also reveals that the more things have changed in Muslim America, the more they have stayed the same. Muslims faced a lot of suspicion and discrimination in 1967, just as they do in 2017. In 1967, the Nat…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…s, Jews, Mennonites, and Quakers. The first sanctuary was here in Tucson in 1985 at the Southside Presbyterian Church by the Rev. John Fife, who hung signs outside the church: “This is a Sanctuary for the Oppressed of Central America,” and “Immigration: do not profane the Sanctuary of God.” The church gave shelter to thousands fleeing the Central American death squads. In 1986, Fife was one of eight activists convicted on alien-smuggling charges a…

Dispelling the Zombie Myth of White Evangelical Support for Trump

By Robert P. Jones

…s who are not connected to churches. Let’s take each of these in turn. Myth 1: A Large and Growing Number of White Evangelical Protestants Do Not Attend Church The general assertion that church attendance has significantly declined among White evangelical Protestants is simply not supported by the evidence. In the general population, church attendance levels have indeed been dropping over the last few decades. However, church attendance levels amo…

The Family Research Council’s Mistaken Identity

By Sarah Posner

…adical far right, described in the FBI’s Project Megiddo report as “a vast number and variety of groups, such as survivalists, militias, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, Christian Identity churches, the AN and skinheads.” The report called Christian Identity “the most unifying theology for a number of these diverse groups and one widely adhered to by white supremacists. It is a belief system that provides its members with a religious basis for racism…

Bright-Sided Recalls Mark Twain’s Travails

By Michael A. Elliott

…from Eddy’s teaching that “there is no material world, only Thought, Mind, Spirit, Goodness, Love” to contemporary motivational coaches who preach a similar “mystical notion”: “the world is dissolved in Mind, Energy, and vibrations, all of which are potentially subject to our conscious control.” In both cases, the right kind of thinking is good for what ails you. Near the end of his career, Twain himself wrote a series of articles on Eddy and her…

Teilhard’s Legacy Can’t Be Reduced to Racism: A Response to John Slattery

By Joshua Canoza

…’s writings and judge for themselves. With Slattery, I recommend the early spiritual classics, “The Mass on the World” and The Divine Milieu. Among his later writings, “The Heart of Matter” provides an autobiographical explanation of his overall vision. Ursula King’s Spirit of Fire, the most recent biography of Teilhard, offers another entry point for those interested in learning about his singular life experiences. Teilhard is complex and not wit…

R.I.P. Pope John Paul’s “Contraceptive Mentality”: 1979–2014

By Patricia Miller

…that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible.” At the 1980 bishops’ synod, the last time the church officially grappled with “family” issues, Archbishop John Quinn, head of the U.S. bishops’ conference, urged a more nuanced approach to the contraception teaching that emphasized “greater pastoral insights” but was rebuked by John Paul. Now, it appears that “graduality” is back in, as is the idea of using pastoral practices to…