Search for "best way to get cheap airline tickets today phone number 1-800-299-7264"

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

By Kaya Oakes

…ancis focus on his Easter message, and in the latest installment of “Papal Phone Calls,” Pope Francis called a sick seminarian and told him to “keep his chin up.” An analysis of the murder of a Congolese priest again focuses on anti-Christian attitudes and calls for a “new concept of martyrdom.” The focus of the site seems to be moving more toward being about Pope Francis and anti-Christian terrorism abroad, and less about the American church and…

“You’ve Never Met a Muslim”

By Hussein Rashid

…green and white for Eid—this year will be no different—but that will in no way reduce the sadness I will always feel when I look south on the anniversary of 9/11 and see the Tribute in Light where the World Trade Center once stood. As General Powell rightly said, there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim in this country. Being Muslim does not make me any less American. Haroon Moghul_________ How Far is it to Islam? We spent the first Monday eve…

Why The Book of Mormon (the Musical) is Awesomely Lame

By Jared Farmer

…of media tastemakers? It may be true that The Book of Mormon is the second-best musical début (behind American Idiot) on the Great White Way in recent memory, but that’s really not saying much. In a season devoted mainly to re-runs, revivals, and adaptations, The Book of Mormon stands out for being a first-run play with an original score and book. Also, while the musical adheres to 1950s Broadway conventions—tunefulness, campiness, and uplift—it’s…

Orthodox TV Channel Offers Gays One-Way Ticket Out of Russia; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…channels this week, Tsargrad TV called on gay people to compete for a one-way plane ticket overseas. “Just recently, California—the most liberal state in the USA by the way—proposed to facilitate the granting of green cards to Russian perverts,” said TV host Andrei Afanasyev. The channel regularly uses offensive terms to refer to LGBT people. “The staff of Tsargrad TV support this initiative. Moreover, we are ready to pay for a one-way ticket to…

The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia

By Kaya Oakes

…e, and I’d hear the tail end of a Dead set drifting down from the Greek, always, always, always with the same finale: “Sugar Magnolia.” My friends and I would start roaring with laughter at that “doo doo-doo” chorus, occasionally passing a pedestrian in tie dye or flowy skirts who couldn’t get a ticket, and we’d keep laughing as that person started his or her ridiculous spinning dance in middle of the street. That was their ritual, these Deadheads…

Waiting for Lightning to Strike: A Wobbly Agnostic among the Atheists

By Carolyn S. Briggs

…d to be a missionary—that was apparent, but I was going to do it in my own way. Still Angry about Galileo Nancy and I eat lunch at a noodle place in the kitschy neighborhood west of the Capitol. I am starved and I eat fast and furiously. I am aware that I’m uncharacteristically not using the best manners. Am I medicating with food—am I trying to fill the God-shaped vacuum? I laugh at myself then. Will the atheists at last bring me back to the fold…

Wichita, the Sequel: A Clinic Reopens at Ground Zero in America’s Fight over Abortion

By Kathryn Joyce

…was caught after the murder, fleeing halfway across the state, he had the phone number of an Operation Rescue leader on his dashboard—the tip of the iceberg in terms of the broader connections he’d built with anti-abortion extremists. The church, Roeder would later testify, emerged as the only place he could find a shot at Tiller, around the elaborate security measures the doctor had learned to follow at his clinic and home. “Justifiable homicide…

Death in the Desert: Riding With the Samaritans

By Lauri Lebo

…grants from their homes. They are pulled to the U.S. because of demand for cheap labor. One of the major pushes came in the ’90s with the passage of NAFTA, which opened the door to many agri-businesses to move 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…

How To Talk To “Nones” and Influence People: Rob Bell’s Transrational Experience

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford

…and the message, but actually hungry for both. When I spoke to Bell on the phone a couple weeks after the event in Durham, he told me, In some ways what I do is basic pastoring. It’s, you give people an idea, you let them respond to it, you give them another idea….it’s basic spiritual direction. Like the itinerant rabbi, the guru—not to say that I’m a guru—but there’s a long tradition [of that kind of work]. But so many people right now are rethin…

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…