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

The Incredible Shrinking Catholic Church

By Paul Gorrell

…urch is through the family, which is shaped by a sexual morality that is limited, exclusive, and onerous. Drawn together by this shared narrative, the church community is small, insular, and rigid in its political commitments and ethical expectations. Hauerwas’ church engages with the world by transforming its members, not by seeking to transform the ethics of its non-members. This is where the resemblance between Benedict and Hauerwas ends. While…

Turkish Police Move Against Activists Who Defied Pride Ban; And More in Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…has denied wanting to impose traditional religious values, saying he is committed to secularism. But he supports Turks’ right to express their religion more openly. June 25 was also the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan. Russia: European Court of Human Rights rules against anti-gay propaganda law The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia’s anti-gay “propaganda law” was a violation of the European Convention…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…ite Christian nationalist (and a true believer at that), part of a growing number who see right-wing reactionary Christianity, White supremacy, and authoritarian politics as an integral part of “real” American identity. Those who do not fall under it must submit, or be forced, if need be, through violence. Johnson was elected to the House of Representatives in 2016, after serving two years in the Louisiana state legislature. Before his time in Con…

The Next Big Religion Issue: Immigration

By Daniel Schultz

Judging by the number of items on the subject carried by Faith in Public Life’s news reel, immigration is the next item on the progressive faith agenda. Personally, I’d rather we kept an eye on financial reform as it shapes up in Congress, but nobody asks me. All the the churches are excited about immigration: you can’t go over to Sojourners without stumbling across at least one immigration-related story. Leaders of the Disciples of Christ and th…

“As Orthodox As They Come”: A Backstage Conversation With Rob Bell

By Andrew Aghapour and Michael Schulson

…ound in space, and there are levers and pulleys and buttons. I think for a number of people, atheism is simply the rejection of somebody sitting on a cloud somewhere with a beard who might intervene from time to time. I think quantum physics, the little I know, it just intuitively puts…sometimes a poet puts language on what you intuitively feel and sometimes a scientist goes, “Hey, it’s all kind of relationships of energy.” Oh, yes! I agree that q…

Episcopal Conference Lives Up to Episcopal Jokes

By Julie Ingersoll

…the height of the battling, that it was all not such a big deal, that the number of dissidents was actually quite small and that he thought his church would be better off once they were gone. Indeed, according to Wikipedia there are over 7,000 Episcopal congregations in the US with over 2 million members, though the significance of that number is unclear since, as the priest in the church where I was baptized once teased me: “when you’re baptiz…

Distant Churches and the Isolated Poor: Lessons from Katrina, Ten Years Later

By R. Drew Smith

…borhoods, sometimes experiencing significant attrition in their membership numbers and finances, and sometimes choosing to relocate altogether. Even institutionally resourceful congregations that remain in high-poverty neighborhoods have increasingly faced great difficulties in their efforts to connect culturally, interpersonally, and programmatically to their immediate neighborhoods. In a 2003 study of interactions between churches and impoverish…

With Election Takeaways Like ‘Too Transgender’ or ‘the US is Shifting Right,’ Dems are Determined to Learn the Wrong Lesson

By Chrissy Stroop

…tributed to Democratic-leaning demographics staying home. Democrats must admit that a significant proportion of voters, including many working-class voters, switched from voting Democratic in 2020 to voting Republican this year. This has been widely acknowledged, of course, but reducing this fact to a rightward shift in the working class runs the risk of yet again drawing the wrong lessons from an election. A large slice of American voters are not…

The Gospel of Contradiction: An Interview with Mary Gordon

By Nathan Schneider

…mmunity that I can lead them to more familiarity with a very great text. A number of times you bring up Thomas Jefferson’s abridgement of the Gospels. He seems to be someone who, in some ways, you’re identifying with but also making very different choices from. I don’t have the luxury of just snipping out the parts of the Bible I don’t like. Whereas I greatly admire Jefferson and the Enlightenment figures for their courage in blasting through so m…

A Twisted Love Story: How American Evangelicals Helped Make Putin’s Russia and How Russia Became the Darling of the American Right

By Katherine Kelaidis

…ese Americans with no historical ties to Orthodoxy, became a majority in a number of Orthodox jurisdictions in the United States and brought with them their cultural baggage—most importantly the Culture Wars. The changes were obvious and immediate, both in traditional Orthodox countries and in the diaspora. Of course, Orthodoxy has never been gay-affirming (despite John Boswell’s eloquent but unsubstantiated claims) and abortion had been cause for…