Search for "search for airline tickets cheap phone number 1-800-299-7264"

It’s Theology, Not Baseball: Misunderstanding Iraq’s Sectarian Conflicts

By Amyn B. Sajoo

…are actively fostered. Not all the converted will journey to war-zones in search of martyrdom. Most will be content to exercise their new-found contempt for “deviants” — particularly those closest to home, such as the Ahmadiyya, Alevi, Baha’i, Shi’a, and Yazidi —in acts of organized domestic rage. There is plenty of encouragement for that “low-intensity” domestic jihad in official legislation in countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran, whe…

I Always Knew Santa Was Make-Believe: A Retired Pastor on Losing Her Faith

By Anne Grant

…them, the child’s eyes and mouth popped open. Laughter riffled the air. He searched upward for his parents. But they were laughing and never met his startled gaze. I recalled that boy’s alarm when my husband, Phil, and I tried to tell friends that our beliefs had changed. “What beliefs?” “God.” Startled silence. Jaws dropped, eyes wide. “You can’t mean that,” one said. Phil and I were ordained ministers. I had accepted Jesus as my Savior when I wa…

E-vangelism: Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Blog-Ranking

By Pauline Hope Cheong

…lture and anchoring cyberfaith back to local parishes. There are a growing number of social networking sites that have been constructed to incorporate religious themes, and that regulate online behaviors to specifically comply with interpretations of God’s word. These “faith-based MySpaces” allow users to exchange prayer requests, share favorite praise music, faith-related videos and photographs, and to find potential significant others. But users…

I’m Too Sexy for My Church: Will a Thriving Singles Scene Renew American Catholicism?

By Megan Sweas

…nd moral beliefs. Most secular dating sites allow you to list yourself and search others by religion, but there are dating services that cater specifically to Christians, Jews, or Muslims. And, of course, there are many shades of “Catholic.” St. Monica parishioner Molly Harrington, who isn’t involved in YMA’s dating scene, signed up for CatholicMatch.com during Lent one year. The site asks users whether they accept the church’s teachings on seven…

Avatar: A Subversive Reading of the Bible?

By Kwok Pui-lan

…th an interesting twist. In that familiar story, Joshua sends two spies to search out the city of Jericho. The spies enter a Canaanite prostitute Rahab’s house. When the king of Jericho orders Rahab to surrender them, Rahab hides them and saves their lives. Rahab makes a pact with the spies and asks them to spare her and her family when Jericho falls. In Avatar, planet Pandora is not only a land of milk and honey, but also has a large reserve of a…

The Collapse of the American Jewish Center

By Sarah Posner

…murdered, but still ginned up emotions, in Israel and the diaspora, for a search the government knew was futile to find them alive. The Jewish Daily Forward’s J.J. Goldberg has meticulously documented the series of events leading up to an “unnecessary war” that “nobody wanted.” The government claim to be searching for the three kidnapped students, was, Goldberg wrote, “simply put, a lie.” The institutional reaction, its critics further charge, fa…

Historical “GOTCHA!” and the Planned Parenthood Sting

By Tom Davis

…. One of the more dubious practices of modern journalism is the relentless search to catch a politician in a mistake, a statement that implies a racial or ethnic prejudice (however faint), or just a stupid remark. When a prominent figure is nailed in such a manner, the implication is that that person’s true character has now been revealed. A candidacy or a lifetime reputation can be ignored. Unfortunately, this practice can negate decades of achie…

Mormon Group Digging for Scriptural City of Zarahemla in Iowa is a Portrait of Religious Nationalism

By Hanna Seariac

…esearch Group (HRG) which has taken to the cornfields of Montrose, Iowa in search of Zarahemla, a city frequently mentioned in the Book of Mormon. From the coverage one might reasonably conclude that a Latter-day Saint group is simply seeking to find corroboration for their scriptures—which is certainly the case—but lurking beneath the surface is something quite a bit darker. The HRG is one of several groups that believes in what’s known as the He…

Excerpt: The Christian Roots of Zionism

By Shalom Goldman

…Ashley-Cooper) wrote that Palestine was ‘‘a country without a nation’’ in search of ‘‘a nation without a country.’’ He made this observation during the Crimean War, when the continued viability of the Ottoman Empire came into question. With the weakening of the Ottoman Empire, continued Turkish rule in Palestine came into question. In Shaftesbury’s view, first expressed two decades before the Crimean War, Christians needed to support a Jewish res…

Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion

By Mara Einstein

…of my job was to stay on top of popular trends. One day in the piles of research on my desk, there was a packet of articles about trends in religion—baby boomers going back to church, the advent of megachurches, religious institutions exploring the online space, and so on. That’s what got me started questioning if there was a corollary between my personal religious search, which was scattershot and expensive, and broader trends within our mass-ma…