Search for "Spirit Airlines 1 800-299-7264 Phone Number For Reservations"

America Does Not Have a Religious Identity

By Dennis J Goldford

…he Constitution of Religious Freedom, with the deliberate double meaning of 1) the Constitution as a charter of religious freedom, and 2) the act of constituting religious freedom, and Baylor came up with the clever subtitle, God, Politics, and the First Amendment. I was able to give my concluding chapter the title, “One Nation under Whose God?” How do you feel about the cover? I’m actually quite happy with it. Beyond being aesthetically attractiv…

Forty Years Ago, the Worst Mass Murder of LGBT People in the U.S.

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…o great lengths LGBT people have had to take to be able to worship both in spirit and in truth. The MCC, founded just a few short years before this tragedy, in 1968, by Rev. Troy Perry, has survived many acts of violence in its history, including a fire of “suspicious origin” that destroyed its Los Angeles headquarters in 1973. The denomination began for the simple reason that LGBT people were not welcome in mainstream congregations—not openly, an…

New Poll: ‘Faithful Catholics’ an Endangered Species

By Linda Woodhead

…itish Catholics under 50 now say “same-sex marriage is right” compared with 16% of over-60s, and support for a ban on abortion has fallen to 14% amongst under-40s compared from a quarter amongst over-60s. The result is a Britain in which “faithful Catholics” according to official teaching are now a rare and endangered species. If we measure them by the criteria of weekly churchgoing, certain belief in God, taking authority from religious sources,…

Illinois Bishop Greets Marriage Equality with Exorcism

By Peter Montgomery

…From the report in the Chicago Sun-Times: “I exorcise you, every unclean spirit, every power of darkness, every incursion of the infernal enemy, every diabolical legion, cohort, and faction, in the name and power of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paprocki said. “Be uprooted and put to flight from the Church of God from souls created in the image of God and redeemed by the precious blood of the divine lamb. “Dare no more, oh cunning serpent, to deceive…

Paul Crouch, Architect of Prosperity Gospel Televangelism, Dead at 79

By Sarah Posner

…ork, claiming her family covered up her rape by a TBN employee when she was 13 years old. The Orange County Register reported last year that Koper’s husband, Michael, filed documents in her lawsuit alleging that Jan and her son Matthew were celebrating that the elder Crouch—thought then to be on his deathbed—had signed a letter leaving them, not Paul Jr., in charge of the network. The Register, which closely follows the lawsuit against the network…

Religion without God: “Cults,” Pious Atheists, and Our Own Human Bodies

By S. Brent Rodriguez Plate

…fficial definition of religion: “I would describe religion in summary as a spiritual or non-secular belief system, held by a group of adherents, which claims to explain mankind’s place in the universe and relationship with the infinite.” His philosophical orientation misses much, and reveals that there is a long way to go for rethinking religion on pluralistic grounds. Toulson is still assuming that religion is a disembodied “belief system,” a set…

The Creepy Surveillance of Elf on a Shelf

By Kelly J. Baker

…agic plausible. Writing on Santa, Nathan Schneider argues that the holiday spirit is mostly based on the irrelevance of proof. Evidence does not matter because Santa. Adults all know that Santa does not exist, yet lying to children about him is cultural expectation. Try explaining to someone, anyone really, that you want to opt of St. Nick for your kids. To put it mildly, it does not go over well. (I might have been accused of child abuse.) There…

Pigging Out: What ‘Radically Unkosher’ Jewish Foodies Like Michael Pollan Are Missing

By Jonathan Schorsch

…donism), and biodynamic farmers, whose movement grew out of the explicitly spiritual work of Rudolph Steiner, are quite comfortable with spiritual, cosmological language. Scholar Melissa Caldwell points out that in Russia, “‘natural foods’ philosophies represent the natural environment as a source of sociability and spirituality,” and Russians feel nature “not only produces but also nourishes and protects the Russian nation.” Personal gardening is…

No to Church, Yes to Jesus?

By Elizabeth Drescher

…manists, and others among the religiously unaffiliated. Do Nones of a more spiritual leaning hunger for participation in religious and/or spiritual institutions that more boldly call for the sorts of practices Good Samaritan Jesus represents? Perhaps some do, but largely, not so much. Or, at least not in the ways religious organizations and religion researchers typically understand participation in religious institutions, in terms of sustained, ex…

Ex-Mormons Shouldn’t Proselytize Mormons… Really?

By Holly Welker

…ivity to truth and beauty or other things Mormons consider related to “the spirit”? The FM response acknowledges that believers might choose to “shun” their “‘spiritually dead’ loved ones” before complaining that Some new non-believers, on the other hand, sometimes wants to share their new-found “truth” with those they love in order to “get them out” of what they now mockingly refer to as “the cult”; in the process, they place unneeded stress and…