http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/ Sightings reports and comments on the role of religion in public life via e-mail twice a week to a readership of over 5,000. en-us Thu, 5 Nov 2009 07:44:28 -0600 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss OmniUpdate (OU Publish) http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1102.shtml Covering "public religion" is our assignment. To many, reporting on congregations and, worse, on "giving," looks private, personal, beside the public point. They should look again: By far the largest sector of charitable giving is to and through religious institutions. The hundreds of thousands of congregations, parishes, synagogues, mosques, and more, are the most widely and diversely represented of American voluntary agencies. They usually fly under the reportorial radar, but what their members think and do has enormous public influence, locally, nationally, and globally. We pay attention. Martin E. Marty Thu, 5 Nov 2009 07:44:10 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1029.shtml In his general audience in St. Peter's Square on October 14th, Pope Benedict gave an address in which he held up the twelfth-century monk and abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, as a model for contemporary Christians, lay and monastic, praising him for his ability to balance both contemplative spirituality and the demands and pressures of the world. Peter was an unusual choice. Though the pope associated him with the abbey's canonized abbots, quoting his papal predecessor Gregory VII that at Cluny, "there was not a single abbot who was not a saint," Peter in fact was never canonized. Why select him as a model over other Benedictine contemplative administrators, not least Saint Benedict himself, who could provide the same example of tranquility in the face of turmoil? What makes Peter stand out from his brethren at this moment in time? Lucy K. Pick Thu, 5 Nov 2009 07:43:16 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1026.shtml The top ecumenical - some are saying un- or anti-ecumenical - news of the year occurred October 20th with a Vatican announcement. Bypassing forty years of Anglican-Roman Catholic conversations-cum-negotiations and blindsiding Archbishop Rowan Williams, the head of the seventy-million-member Anglican Communion, Vatican officials announced that they were taking steps to receive Anglican (in the United States, Episcopal) clergy through conversion into the Roman Catholic priesthood. Headlines had it that Rome wanted to "lure," "attract," "bid for" or "woo" priests and congregations to make the drastic move, while the Vatican front man, as he fished for Anglicans, said he was not fishing for Anglicans. Martin E. Marty Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:59:46 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1022.shtml Last week's Sightings explored religion's horrific side, discussing a Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of videos showing animal deaths. The content of the videos under judgment ranges from demonstrations of hogs being killed by dogs (in hunting and training scenarios), to images of deadly dog-on-dog fights and sadistic acts such as setting puppies on fire and the sexually fetishistic crushing of kittens and bunnies, in addition to the insects that Sightings addressed. Repulsive and inhumane though such acts are, last week's Sightings argued that they should nonetheless be understood as expressions of a religious sensibility. Spencer Dew Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:55:47 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1019.shtml Sometimes we do our sightings and findings of religion-in-public-life themes among throwaway or incidental lines, writings or sayings which suddenly hit us with unexpected force. A seemingly banal one struck me, and provides the base for all charters which deal with health care in the United States. The sentence is so obvious it could have just lain there, inert and overlookable, but its reminder can strike consciences and should spur action. It leaped out in the first paragraph of Daniel Callahan's "America's Blind Spot: Health Care and the Common Good" in the October 9th Commonweal, as follows: Martin E. Marty Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:50:43 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1012.shtml Israel, its politics and policies and its religion(s) past and present, is the subject of so much pro and con (never neutral) comment in media, politics, and religious circles, that we could do enough sighting each week to fill this column. In such a complex scene, one trusts commentators who have won our trust already on other themes. Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis, in his American Judaism, writes the best history of the subject that I have seen, and is a respected participant in most projects which deal with American Judaism. I count him a wise and trusted friend. So when he writes from his sabbatical in Israel, I pay attention. And he does write, in the October 9th Forward, "After Utopia, Loving Israel." Martin E. Marty Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:54:36 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1015.shtml A previously obscure sect of sexual fetishism with enigmatic religious dimensions was exposed to the full light of the media last week, as the Supreme Court began deliberations on U.S. vs. Stevens. The case centers on a 1999 statute making it illegal to "create, sell, or possess 'any visual or auditory depiction' of 'animal cruelty' if the act of cruelty is itself illegal under either federal law or the law of the state in which the depiction occurred" (Lithwick). The Supreme Court is determining whether prohibiting such depictions would constitute an infringement on free speech rights. Jeremy Biles Fri, 16 Oct 2009 05:53:04 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1008.shtml One of the most popular biblical translations among evangelical conservatives is the New International Version. Introduced in 1978, and immediately endorsed by Billy Graham, the NIV has sold over 300 million copies. As of 2011 the NIV is scheduled for an update. Editors argue that as language changes, biblical translations need to change in order to reflect current usage. Some of the proposed changes, however, are creating a controversy among the conservative faithful. James L. Evans Fri, 9 Oct 2009 06:42:44 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1005.shtml Take one day, say Friday, October 2, in the life of what we should start calling "Evangelicaldom." One-fourth to one-third of Americans consider themselves "Evangelicals." Many are exemplary citizens and, let us say, exemplary Christians. Somewhere along the way millions among them, however, sought what they would call "earthly power," and won enough of it to dream of and work for "Evangelicaldom." That "-dom" signals "domain," as in old "Christendom" and modern "Islamdom." In it, any hints of traditional "otherworldliness" were forgotten, and the once least-worldly sector among us came to be among the most driven by commerce, markets, media, and politics. Martin E. Marty Mon, 5 Oct 2009 15:19:04 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1001.shtml Several of the greatest poets in the English tradition from the Renaissance onward have sought to replace God with the human imagination, a quest whose vehicle most of these poets have, unsurprisingly, envisioned as poetry itself. But George Santayana's definition of poetry as "religion without practical efficacy and without metaphysical illusion" may go some way toward explaining why poetry has decidedly failed to replace religion. The idea that poetry might usurp the traditional functions of religion was predicated upon the social and cultural authority of poetry as a bearer of value. Every discussion of poetry as it is practiced in the United States today must begin from an acknowledgment that it suffers from an impoverishment of such authority. Contemporary poetry is a tinny bickering among insomniacs crowded onto the head of a shrinking pin. Michael Robbins Fri, 2 Oct 2009 04:37:15 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/0928.shtml "Sightings" usually draws on secular news and opinion sources as part of its mission to deal with religion in American public life. However, religious periodicals and blogs deal as much with secular life as they do with ecclesiastical themes. For years I've hung out with and promoted products of the Religion Newswriters Association, "seculars who 'do' religion," and the various "religious" journalists who "do" secular public things. Martin E. Marty Fri, 2 Oct 2009 04:36:18 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/0917.shtml "Have you ever had a life-altering experience or an experience that changed your life?" I was stuck on question eight and still had fourteen to go. Seated across from me was a junior at Wellesley College, with a friendly gaze and a tone indicative of her interest. She was my partner at a training session for Lessons of a Lifetime(TM), an intergenerational program at the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington. How should I respond? Was the center point of my life when my brother taught me to read? My first trip to Jerusalem? Though I was only a college student at the time, I was recording my ethical will and wanted every answer to count. Joshua M. Z. Stanton Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:38:35 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/0921.shtml Tomorrow's (September 22) Christian Century cover features "Navigating the News." Assuming that many readers of Sightings read that magazine and wishing the rest of you did, I don't often reach to it for sightings of religious news and features. This time, let me do a kind of in-house column - "in-house" because I've been affiliated, from tyro through senior to "contributing" over fifty-four years, and depend on it still. The "Navigating" feature was to help us readers get some grasp on the workings of the people whose news-writing and opinion columns on "public religion" we read. Learning about it might help more of us navigate among the navigators. We'll skip my own short contribution and generalize about others. Martin E. Marty Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:39:25 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/0914.shtml While the staff took time away from the Center, this writer took a day off in Nebraska, after a year which included time spent in Prague, Helsinki, and Paris. In none of these four places did my dimming journalistic eye and ear detect massive and suicidal "self-loathing." According to Christopher Caldwell (of the Financial Times and the Weekly Standard), I should not expect to have found it in "my" Nebraska, because it has enough at least residual Christian vitality. But in his Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, Caldwell does find such loathing. Reviewer Stephen Holmes of NYU Law School nails Caldwell for his alarmism and contradictions, as he captions his review Chicken Little Goes to Europe in the September American Prospect. Martin E. Marty Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:48:09 -0500 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/0730.shtml Following the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Mike Seidman, law professor at Georgetown, argued that the proceedings revealed only the "official version" of the American judicial system: that "fidelity to uncontested legal principles dictates results." This simple claim, adopted by Sotomayor in her opening statements, funded most of the Senators' affirmations and critiques over the four days of the hearings. It even appeared in the form of a now-famous metaphor coined by then-Judge Roberts who said, "Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules. They apply them." The claim also exposed the deep effects of American religious anxiety on the theater of American justice as only our country's Supreme Court has the capacity to reveal. Ingrid Lilly Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:46:49 -0500