find cheap airline tickets anywhere 3/31 – 4/7 phone number 1-800-299-7264 | Search Results | Religion Dispatches

“Real” Evangelicals Don’t Support Trump? Not So Fast…

By Neil J. Young

…als argue that at least part of that is due to the divided field where anti-Trump voters can choose from a number of alternatives. But that interpretation only underscores the larger point: Trump is still the one candidate who coalesces the largest number of evangelicals—even the weekly churchgoers—around him. Those numbers would likely shift should Trump face a two-man race with Ted Cruz. But if survey data still show what they have revealed so f…

Aliens in America

By Amir Hussain

…slims had household incomes above $75,000 (as compared to 28 percent of non-Muslims) and 24 percent of American Muslims had graduated from university or done graduate studies (as compared to 25 percent of non-Muslims). This negative portrayal in spite of the facts is not surprising. Very few Muslims are involved in the television industry. Kamran Pasha, who was a producer for Sleeper Cell, is one of the few. Not surprisingly, it was Sleeper Cell t…

Refusal of Interracial Couple Shows How Slippery the Slope of LGBTQ Refusal Really Is

By Heron Greenesmith

…n, compared to 70% of Americans overall. There aren’t current data on state-by-state support for interracial marriage, but while 18% of all newly married people in urban areas are married to someone of a different race, only 3% of newlyweds in Jackson, Mississippi are married to someone of a different race, the lowest percentage in the country. And the Mississippi Clarion Ledger reported earlier this year that the overall growth in number of inter…

Pope Francis Praised for ‘Civil Unions’ Comment, But Justice Begins at Home—In the Vatican

By Mary E. Hunt

…ivil unions was in the new documentary “Franceso” directed by Russian prize-winning, Emmy-nominated director Evgeny Afineevsky. It reads: “Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it. What we have to have is a civil union law—that way they are legally covered. I supported that.” I highly recommend the film—the theology less so, t…

Secularism in the US is Larger, More Diverse and More Dynamic Than Ever, But You Wouldn’t Know it From the Media

By Chrissy Stroop

…ted fact that the social and political polarization that pervades these not-so-United States is asymmetric and significantly worse on the political Right. Not coincidentally, that side of the proverbial aisle consists largely of the conservative, mostly white Christians from whom the newly nonreligious are fleeing. These same conservative Christians, directly encouraged by their defeated president and a host of powerful Republican leaders, attempt…

Oklahoma Bill Would Violate Basic Freedoms, Rewrite the Ten Commandments

By Andrew L. Seidel

…the many differences between various Jewish and Christian sects in how to number and interpret these different sets of commandments. All of this I explain in my book, The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American. Seemingly small differences are magnified because Christianity has historically claimed to possess ultimate truth, so any deviation from an absolute truth is significant. Minor variations are further magnified by, as James…

Harry Reid vs. Islamic Cultural Center

By Joanna Brooks

…pokesman, after Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle demanded he take a position on the matter. It’s not a proud day for freedom of religion when a prominent member of the number two most disliked major religion in America effectively sides against a honest project by the number one most disliked major religion in America. Especially when Mormons have just recently come through our own years-long struggle to build an LDS temple in Cent…

New Report: Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

By Mark A. Chancey

…tory. One teacher’s treatment of Genesis focused on ways to reconcile young-earth and old-earth theories by suggesting that each of the six days was unusually long, or that a lengthy gap elapsed between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2-3. Another teacher’s resource materials included a religious tract claiming that NASA had discovered a missing day in time that proved Joshua 10’s story of the sun standing still. One district’s slideshow on archaeology’s verifi…

Contrary to Claims of Anti-Trans Muslims, LGBTQ+ Acceptance is Widespread in the History of Islam

By Ali Olomi

…erance of gender ambiguity and non-conformity in Islamic cultures went hand-in-hand with broader acceptance of homoeroticism. Texts like Ali ibn Nasir al-Katib’s Jawami al-Ladhdha, Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani’s Kitab al-Aghani, and the Tunisian, Ahmad al-Tifashi’s Nuz’ha al-‘Albab attest to the widespread acceptance of same-sex desire as natural. Homoeroticism is a common element in much of Persian and Arabic poetry where youthful males are often the…

The Catholic-Evangelical (Non-)Coalition

By Patricia Miller

…isunderstood this “coalition” continues to be. Vox.com’s anti-gay apologist-in-residence Brandon Ambrosino, whose supposed expertise is “culture and religion,” seems surprised to find that Catholics and Evangelicals “might be less politically aligned than is otherwise thought,” with Catholics more closely “aligned with liberal values than Evangelicals.” But these numbers shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has bothered to looked at Catholic…