Search for "American Airlines 1800-299-7264 Customer Service Center"

Beyond Alarmism and Denial in the Dominionism Debate

By Anthea Butler

…n themselves. (Grassley’s staff also recommended that the Internal Revenue Service repeal its rule prohibiting electioneering by churches.) The Christian Nation at work. The second reason is Long managed to earn a lot of cash and cow his parishioners into submission. He accomplished this by combining dominionism, “spiritual authority,” and the God-blesses-those-who-enrich-me theology of the prosperity gospel. When I was reporting my book, I saw Lo…

Russian Orthodox Church Supports Referendum on Sodomy Laws

By Chrissy Stroop

…or which Okhlobystin—an ordained Orthodox priest on indefinite hiatus from service in the church—serves as creative director. As Global Voices Online’s Kevin Rothrock has pointed out, many in the liberal Russian blogosphere had until recently tended to regard Okhlobystin as only a charlatan and provocateur making outlandish statements as a form of performance art. His recent actions, however, are causing some of them to change their views and to s…

Pretty Girls Like Trap Church: A Movement at 2 Chainz’s Atlanta Pink House

By Anita Little

…ith other community organizers collaborated with 2 Chainz to host a church service that focused on local activism and social justice. “The trap” is typically a place where drugs are sold, but has more generally come to mean where people gather or where something is accomplished. Though in recent years, it’s become widely commodified and commercialized, trap culture has often signified a lifestyle of drug dealing, gangbanging, street violence and t…

Paul Schrader’s “First Reformed” Depicts Death Struggle Between Hope and Despair

By Peter Laarman

…there. The text that Michael has instructed Toller to use at his memorial service is the very last message for humanity that the Hebrew Bible attributes to God. As the Book of Job draws to a close, God rehearses the mysteries and wonders of the natural world and rebukes Job (and by extension all of us mortals) for our presumption of knowledge and control: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? (etc.)” And, as he plots a consumma…

Will Internet Kill Mormonism Too? Or Just Missionaries?

By Holly Welker

…lly rode my bike at least ten to 15 hours a week. Admittedly, the Referral Center Mission in Provo was created in part to “accommodate injured or disabled missionaries who’d have difficulty marching through neighborhoods”—Ryan Tucker, the missionary featured in the story, has muscular dystrophy. But even missionaries with limited mobility can benefit from a change of scenery and interactions with human beings they can see, hear and touch, and they…

Pope’s US Visit Provokes Intense Attention; New Vatican Book on Man-Woman Complementarity & New Int’l Report on Christian Role Models for LGBT Equality; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…s made a brief reference to the legalization of same-sex marriage that the American bishops have made a centerpiece of their public ministry and policy battles, with many of them casting the acceptance of gay relationships as the beginning of an era of exclusion and even persecution for Christians. Francis, as he has done in his speeches to church leaders throughout this visit, his first to the U.S., refused to take that bait. Without mentioning g…

Revelations from Family of Secrets (an addendum)

By Frederick Clarkson

…Champagne Unit” of the Texas Air National Guard in order to avoid military service that might send him to Vietnam; how he failed to fulfill that service; and how his failure was systematically covered-up and politically defused. Also covered are the allegations of how W. was an abuser of illegal drugs in addition to his apparently drinking problems as a young man. One important story from W.’s past that has long been rumored is confirmed in this b…

3 Reasons Catholic Bishops Are Holding Their Tongues on GOP Health Care Debacle

By Patricia Miller

…tion for faith-based adoption agencies to refuse to provide services to LGBT couples or individuals. The bishops also would love any GOP health reform plan to include a wide-ranging “conscience” clause that would allow health care providers to refuse to provide any service for moral or religious reasons, which could be used to deny services to LGBT patients or single mothers. When it comes to the Trump administration, the bishops have apparently d…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: Missing Voices

By Daniel Ramirez

…ealt to a community attempting, like other ethnic groups, to move into the American mainstream (the crucible of military service in World War II helped to overcome the setback). The draconian measures championed by some politicians and opinion shapers would repeat this wrenching experience for, among others, 3 million young U.S. citizens. As we flirt with legalized xenophobia and family disintegration, perhaps the silent shepherds will take up the…

Anti-Gay Celebration in Uganda; Weddings in England; ‘Francis Effect’ at the Vatican

By Peter Montgomery

…onal Law, which opposed cuts in international aid to NGOs providing social services. Scott Lively, the American pastor who has fomented anti-gay extremism is Africa, Russia, and Eastern Europe, was profiled last week by Inigo Gilmore at Britain’s Channel 4. In an interview, Lively repeated his earlier assertions that he has “mixed feelings” about Uganda’s law and angrily denounced as “propaganda” the suggestion that he had inflamed anti-gay hyster…