Search for "cheap airline tickets from peoria il phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Bill Gates’ Comments on Covid-19 Vaccine Enflame ‘Mark of the Beast’ Worries in Some Christian Circles

By Christopher James Blythe

…to the conclusion that Gates had inadvertently let on that vaccines were killing or sterilizing unsuspecting recipients. Gates clarified, even before this statement, that evidence suggests that by reducing child mortality rates through vaccines, families would plan for fewer children and thus reduce global populations. Gates has also tried to clarify his reference to “digital certificates,” which he explained referred “to efforts to create an ope…

Pious White Reformers and Race, Then and Now

By Peter Laarman

…ricans, by 1810 the term was also being applied to Native Americans. And while a number of enlightened whites believed that the natives of this continent had nobler natures than white people, the problem (again) was that they had been rendered dependent and degraded via their corrupting interactions with lower-class Europeans. Absent an aggressive program of “civilizing” these people, they could not be permitted to remain living cheek-by-jowl with…

RDPulpit: Israel in Gaza: Right but not Smart

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

…Healing Israel/Palestine (North Atlantic Books, 2003). Yet Israel, as the militarily superior power, ought to take the first steps to end this conflict once and for all. It could do that at any time by making the following moves: 1. Implementing a massive Marshall Plan in Gaza and in the West Bank to end poverty and unemployment, rebuild all that has been destroyed of the Palestinian infrastructure, and encourage investment in a new Palestinian ec…

Trump’s Pathological Devotion to Border Walls Isn’t Political, It’s Theological

By Alana Massey

…tioned a border wall, but it was his most portentous delivery to date. “I will build a great wall—and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me—and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” It was the kind of doomed proclamation an Old Testament king or emperor might have made, unaware in all his pride that neither God nor his messenge…

Atheists Ignore Islamophobia at their Peril

By Chris Stedman

…ptance for atheists in the United States without also hoping that society will similarly embrace other communities, it’s also selfish. Atheists who remain silent about Islamophobia aren’t just missing out on a strategic opportunity to highlight the parallels between their own experiences and those of other disenfranchised religious minorities—they’re opting out of an opportunity to do what is right, to take the moral high road, and to demonstrate…

Record Numbers Voted for More Death and More Racism; Can We Really Just Come Together as a Nation?

By Peter Laarman

…f. Commentators who have been saying for some time that we’re already embroiled in a slow-rolling civil war have got it mostly right. And today’s secessionists very much resemble those of the 1850s inasmuch as they adamantly reject the idea that all are created equal, that everyone counts, and that we have a responsibility to create more, not less, opportunity for all of our neighbors to flourish in safety. They have seceded from civil society. We…

Why the Church is Struggling to Hold Onto Millennial Catholics

By Kaya Oakes

…y ignored some of its teachings on sexual issues (the increasingly smaller number of children born to Catholic families is empirical evidence of that)—their Catholicism may have always been a self-defined identity rather than a strident one. My So-Called Catholic Life Some Catholic millennials, however, cleave tightly to church teachings, and because many come from loosely Catholic homes, much of their faith formation takes place when they are col…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and publishable by up to 14 years in jail. A number of laws have attempted to punish homosexuality with more severe consequences including death, but those bills have folded under international pressure. While activists say the foundation of the bill is fundamentally discriminatory, they also say that successful lobbying campaigns have helped introduce possible amendments that strip the bill of its restrictive b…

Church and State in Japan: The Case of the Yasukuni Shrine

By Mark R. Mullins

…postwar legal framework, one might assume that those among the bereaved families who wished to have a family member enshrined would indicate this to Yasukuni and request that the ritual be conducted. In fact, however, Yasukuni Shrine officials contacted the Ministry of Health and Welfare—without consulting any families—to request assistance in the preparation of lists for all of the war dead so that enshrinement rituals could be completed. After t…

Mormonism’s Black Issues

By Joanna Brooks

…worded defense of “the ancient order” of marriage against the “alleged ‘civil right’ of same-gender couples to enjoy the privileges of marriage.” Elder Oaks recalled expressions of outrage directed at Mormons and acts of vandalism against Mormon temples and wardhouses committed after the November 2008 passage of Proposition 8 outlawing same-sex marriage in California. (Mormons, who make up 2% of California’s population, contributed more than 50% o…