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An Open Letter to CEO Jeff Smisek On United Airlines’ Blasphemous Safety Video

By Austin Dacey

…nstrumentation had been replaced by the sheen of digital keyboards. By the time the music reached the third measure, I sensed the dawning of something even more hideous. The melody disappeared entirely to make way for the announcer’s voiceover—“Please make sure your phone and all electronics are switched off and stowed”—as a single chord hovered to a simple four-beat pulse in the fashion of light pop radio. Gone were the jaunty, urbane syncopation…

Invited by Allah

By Amina Wadud

…w what that mark is and the extent of my detainment varies but I am always searched. Whenever I would enter in Indonesia, having done so at least 15 times in the year and half I lived there, I could see the computers as the passport is swiped and it reads “No known alerts.” I still hover over the counter as they swipe, wondering if the “alert” from the US side or the “fatwas” from various parties, will one day appear there and I will be stopped fr…

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster

…s a philosophy student, a grad student, a PhD. I did very well, was at the best colleges, best universities— Harvard, Yale—and I was willing to undertake preparing myself to teach such a course. Philosophers generally don’t want to come anywhere near that kind of stuff—nor did I. But I honorably tried to prepare myself. It meant I had to read theologians, Christian writers like St. Augustine—whom I had hated. You see in my book where I talk about…

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…

The Religious Implications of Nudity

By Steve A. Wiggins

…side my waistband. Embodiment is a theological issue of some currency. Sometimes it is treated as if it were a women’s issue, but we all share this—at times frightening—humanity. We only want those we trust most intimately to see us naked. To touch us in certain places. Several years ago I lost a secure seminary teaching job for being too liberal. My academic career never recovered (just try to explain that to a search committee repeatedly asking,…

American Muslim Community Must Search its Soul After Orlando Massacre

By Omar Sarwar

…n to this internal criticism of one’s community is that it’s not the right time for it—we should at least wait until the sadness, anger, and hysteria surrounding “radical Islam” have subsided before taking our own people to task. But how are we to know when Islamophobia has reached a level tolerable enough for us to talk honestly about socially regressive attitudes within the American Muslim community? The reality is that homophobia in the America…

Bishops Search for Condoms in Cookie Boxes

By Mary E. Hunt

…a former Girl Scout. History will record that in 2012 the Girl Scouts and nuns were living values the bishops could only mouth while they searched in vain for condoms in the cookie boxes….

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

By Peter Montgomery

…– called homonationalism – deeply shocks those who see the nationalist sentiments sweeping Europe as a threat that could erode hard-fought freedoms, not protect them. “It is true that terror attacks and religious extremists brought huge publicity to Marine Le Pen. And she profits from this. She profits from people’s fear,” Yannick Fredefon, a gay Paris resident, said. One factor that explains the new wave of LGBT support is that many Le Pen voter…

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

By Daniel Silliman

…medical treatment. He was 42. Coots was pastor of a snake-handling church of 30, in Middlesboro, Ky., and the subject of a reality TV show called Snake Salvation. He was well aware of the risks of handling snakes: Coots’best friend died of snake poison in 1998 and Coots himself had been bitten nine times, one bite permanently disfiguring his right hand. “If I quite taking up serpents,”Coots explained, “I would die and go to hell.”…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…farms down to Mexico, putting small farmers out of business. And while the number of undocumented border crossers is down, Brother David says, it will be virtually impossible to eliminate them as long as the opportunities for jobs exist. As we continue to search for people along the road, Millsap complains that no politician wants to acknowledge these deaths: “Most of the people dying down here aren’t criminals,” he said. “They’re coming here to w…