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

A Catholic’s Eulogy for the Harvard “Black Mass” Controversy

By Craig A. Ford Jr.

…nto the “black mass” would have revealed that this is actually a symbol in search of a reality. Boston University professor David Frankfurter, in his award-winning 2006 book Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History, argues that, when we apply the most rigorous standard of historical scholarship to allegations of Satanic evil conspiracies and rituals like that of the “black mass,” we find that “no evidence has ever…

Christian Terrorism Comes to Milwaukee

By Mark Juergensmeyer

…religious struggle provides an imagined arena of conflict for warriors in search of a role. It appeals to former soldiers abandoned by wars that have come to an end, and it appeals to want-to-be warriors like Page. Some of the best known jihadi terrorists were part of the 1980s Afghan struggle of the Muslim mujahidin against the Soviet occupation. Osama bin Laden went to the battlefield to establish a guest house for foreign Muslim fighters drawn…

Jay Bakker on LGBT Justice and the Demands of Grace

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…k at what Ken Silva’s written, he’s got it so it gets him up in the Google search. He’s very smart on how he runs his website. To me, it’s just really hateful stuff and not worthy of even listening to. If someone I respect or someone I really know wants to say something about me, I’ll sit down and listen. To have people talk about you who won’t even show their face or you’ve never met before and wants to write about how horrible you are, there’s n…

For Love or Threat: Pro-Life Prayer Includes Names, Photos of Abortion-Rights Advocates

By Alana Massey

…interactions have been part of a respectful ongoing dialogue when she’s researching pieces about PLAL activities, despite her disagreement with their mission and tactics. “By calling me a ‘pro-choice journalist’ I think that they were actually trying to make it understood that this wasn’t meant to be, at least towards me, a thing of harassment. I think that in a lot of ways they really, honestly, genuinely mean that people should pray for me caus…

Taking It to the Streets: Anonymous vs. Scientology

By Gabriel Mckee

…e bombing campaign made Scientology’s main Web site the top result for the search term “dangerous cult.” In conjunction with this, leaked Scientology materials have been increasingly available online—most recently Revolt in the Stars, a 1975 novella/screenplay by L. Ron Hubbard containing Scientology’s rumored creation story about nuclear weapons, volcanoes, and the galactic warlord Xenu. Revolt has been available online for some time, but the cur…

The Threat to Democracy Runs Deep, But Mathematics Could Address the Abominable State of Representation and Voting

By Ismar Volić

…ood of its fleeing youth, who barely glance in the rearview mirror as they search for a better life elsewhere. Traces of what led to Bosnia’s demise are unnervingly apparent in the United States. Our political system is a knotted web of malfunctioning processes that propagate and amplify the perils to democracy from every direction. Our elections elevate candidates who don’t represent the true will of the people and the distorted agenda that resul…

A Whole New Ball Game: New Book Rethinks the History of Religion in Sport

By Daniel Grano

…or two about calling it Sport and Negative Theology, which would have been search-friendly but also would have been pretty boring and overly technical. How do you feel about the cover? I’m thrilled with it! It features a series of photographs of a runner taken by Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was famous for his innovations in high-speed photography, and is often credited as the inventor of the moving image. Athletic motion (that of horses, acrobat…

Popesplaining: Women Remain “Strawberries” in Francis’s Book on Happiness

By Kaya Oakes

…pull bits and pieces from. Divided into subsections with titles like “Your Search For a Meaningful Life” and “They Who Pray Live Serenely,” this is Francis in pastoral mode rather than theological mode. For American readers, however, the question of whether we even know how to be happy remains. And books like this also beg the question of whether or not religion can make us happy in the first place. Gen Xers like myself have increasingly turned aw…

The Fitna Debacle: Extremists Gone Wild

By Andrea Useem

…trial of British Muslim men who allegedly planned to blow up transatlantic airlines sound as chilling as anything in Wilders’ film. The problem with the movie, then, is not the clips themselves, but the spin Wilders puts on them, arguing that Qur’anic verses are to blame, and that all Islamic faith is paired with a violent lust to conquer the world. Wilders calls on Muslims to tear “hateful verses” out of the Qur’an. In fact, Muslim reformers have…

God is a Terrifying Monster, and Other Takeaways from the Study of Vampires in Pop Culture

By Jess Peacock

…vampire becomes a lens through which to view death, questions of evil, the search for transcendent meaning, and where exactly God fits into it all. Did you have a specific audience in mind when writing? I did, but I also felt like I was walking a conceptual tightrope while writing the book, as I wanted it to be accessible to both an academic and a general audience. My hope is that fans of both the horror genre as well as students of religious stud…