Search for "cheap airline tickets from dom. rep. phone number 1-800-299-7264"

Presidential Debate: We Are All Socialists Now

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…eard this evening was rolled out here, in the first five minutes, as point number two. And Senator McCain repeated it all evening long, lest we miss it. He now proposes a state-sponsored re-definition of the current housing market, such that the federal government will buy up an enormous number of imminent foreclosures (how?), mandate a new evaluation of the real value of these homes (how?), then enable homeowners to re-negotiate their current mor…

The Religious Mourning of ‘Saint’ Kobe Bryant Continues

By Terry Shoemaker

…year’s All-Star game, one team wore Kobe’s number 24, while the other wore number 2, Gianna’s uniform number. The MVP award, given this year to Los Angeles Clippers’ star forward Kawhi Leonard, was renamed permanently for Kobe Bryant. Pregame and half-time shows centered on Kobe, his family, and his impact on the sport of basketball and society. The collective grief and bereavement displayed by fans and players alike not only demonstrate the power…

New Poll Finds “Growing Appetite” for Mixing Religion and Politics

By Sarah Posner

…0 among the religion-is-positive respondents, and up nine points among the Republicans and Republican leaners. Sixty-eight percent of white evangelicals believe there has been too little religious talk from politicians, by far the largest percentage of any religious group. By contrast, though, only 32% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners believed there was “too little” religious talk, a figure that has held steady since 2010. Twenty five percent o…

The Benedict Opt-Out: Why Christian Self-Isolation Won’t Work

By Kaya Oakes

…n will help parents to keep their children faithful. Given the statistical number of Nones among Millennials and Gen X and the seemingly unpreventable increase in those numbers, these children, like Emily, or the children of many homeschooling parents, will eventually encounter peers who are not religiously affiliated. Given the way technology works, they will also inevitably find a way to expose themselves to popular culture. And the question rem…

Are Muslims Nuts?

By Haroon Moghul

…yday life. So extreme is this sense of alarm and danger that a significant number of Republicans now believe that the president is a secret Muslim, and sits in the Oval Office to enable the realization of Islamic law in the West. One must be seriously and actively disconnected from reality to presume that this could be the case, but there you have it. On a recent drive through northeastern Pennsylvania, I heard a talk radio host make exactly this…

Conversion Story #643 (not a real number)

By Amina Wadud

These days, when ever you say you are Muslim by choice, you get people asking about your conversion. Mostly they want to know why. This curiosity comes equally from those who are already Muslim and those who are not. I used to tell the same basic steps—although I hardly think my own individual door lights up any bulbs of excitement. Maybe because no lightbulbs went off for me either. I was a seeker. I was raised in a loving Christian environment…

RDPulpit: I Am Not A Number: Gays and Lesbians and Opinion Polls

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…jority of young evangelicals support either marriage or civil unions.” The numbers remain in line with other recent polls, like one commissioned by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)—and I’ll admit my friend Debra Haffner has every right to be encouraged by these statistics—but I can’t get over my anger that my life even has to be the subject of constant polling. Why does the temperature of the populace have to be taken about…

Paul the Pluralist: Jesus’ Number Two Was Not a Christian

By Pamela Eisenbaum

…pecifically faith in Jesus. Religion predicated on salvation by “works” is represented by Judaism. Within this paradigm, Judaism and Christianity are antithetical religions, with Judaism being the bad and most primitive kind and Christianity being the good and most evolved form. Thus, built into the supposedly Pauline idea of “justification by faith” is an implicit anti-Judaism—a big problem for the Protestant theology that is founded on this read…

Sharing Many of the Same Flaws as its Subject ‘The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill’ Podcast Puts Blame Anywhere But Where It Belongs

By Jessica Johnson

…ys Mark was the first Internet age megachurch celebrity pastor and leading number one podcasts, number one sermon downloads, those kinds of things. So what that did is, elevated Mark to the stratosphere so quickly, whereas you might think…typically they may take 20-30 years of faithful ministry, but the Internet just propelled things with such rapidity, and the Internet only sees how you speak, that’s all the Internet is, it’s all about verbal art…

Gays Losing Value to “Value Voters”?

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…en though opposition to same-sex marriage seems to be cooling its heels at number three, it’s presence is still felt in just about all aspects of the “value voters” belief system. With abortion remaining at the number one spot, it’s clear that all things sexual continue to occupy the minds of those who seem the most opposed to anyone actually having sex. It’s interesting to view the “value voter” summit in juxtaposition with a new survey conducted…