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 Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:59:20 -0600 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss OmniUpdate (OU Publish) http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0128.shtml Avatar, James Cameron's high-budget blockbuster, is on track to become the highest grossing film of all time. This two and a half hour saga tells the tale of the Na'vi, a race of blue skinned aliens with a pre-industrial culture. Their planet, Pandora, is home to an ecosystem that has achieved a kind of sentience, and which the Na'vi revere as a deity. The Na'vi way of life is interrupted by human strip-miners, who have come to Pandora in search of a mineral with the unlikely name "unobtanium." Joseph Laycock Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:59:03 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0125.shtml Jeffrey Weiss, who blogs at Politics Daily, sent an e-query to some of us e-columnists, or at least to me, supplementing his blog-list. He raised enough good questions to merit a response. Revisiting the by-now-over-visited tragicomedy of televangelist Pat Robertson on Haitians and the Devil, Weiss wanted to discuss a "paradox:" "From Jon Stewart (a secular Jew, for goodness sakes, who quoted Bible verses on the Daily Show) to the pastor of First Baptist Dallas in Newsweek to, well, you in Sightings, the range of people who have weighed in is impressive." Why a paradox? Martin E. Marty Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:58:14 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0118.shtml You know the old joke: When someone absolutely diabolical died, the rabbi asked if anyone wanted to say anything about him at the funeral. No one dared, as there was nothing nice to say. Eventually one stood up and said, "His brother was even worse." Was anyone worse than Pat Robertson, who credited the earthquake in Haiti to "true story" of the Haitians having "made a pact with the devil"? Say something nice about Robertson now? Martin E. Marty Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:36:12 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0114.shtml At first blush, the blog Beauty Tips for Ministers does not seem like a hotbed of feminist theology of the body. Written primarily, though not exclusively, for women, the blog includes posts on a wide range of topics related to clergy and their professional dress, including how to discern between attractive, trendy shoes and those that are too sexy for ministry, the difficulties of achieving professional-looking hair, what constitutes good makeup, and how clergy should dress for weddings. The advice is practical, the commentary is very funny, and the images are consistently good. Courtney Wilder Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:35:08 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0111.shtml Christians, who through the centuries have often been persecutors, in our time often are persecutees. Those of us who try to keep an eye on and have a heart for suffering Christians have to log horror stories weekly. In just a few January days we were made mindful of three Christian churches bombed in Malaysia; eight Coptic Christians shot dead in Egypt; persecution of house-church Christians in China; and Christians suffering even unto death in some Indian provinces. What, then, do we make of commentator Brit Hume, journalist Andree Seu, and columnist Cal Thomas complaining of persecutions inflicted on them and fellow Christians in the United States? Martin E. Marty Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:34:17 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2010/0107.shtml The year that just came to its close marked the 40th anniversary of the murders committed by Charles Manson's "Family," and three related events renewed interest in the crimes and the figure behind them. In November a 41-year-old Los Angeles man made news when he learned that Manson was his biological father. In September former Family member Susan Atkins died of brain cancer in prison after being denied a compassionate release. And in March the latest incarnation of Manson's shape-shifting face was revealed when a new file photo of the 74-year-old prisoner was released to the public. Brian Collins Thu, 21 Jan 2010 09:33:27 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1221.shtml Peter Steinfels on Saturday ended a twenty-year run as a columnist in the New York Times, signing off his "Beliefs" column, which was born January 6, 1990. He describes his reasoning about the departure in the January 2nd edition of the paper, which we presume most Sightings readers have seen, and which all can find on the internet. His has been an amazing run, and we - his readers and colleagues as columnists or religion reporters - will miss him and his standard-setting work. I want to lift out only one line of that column, and take off from there with some turn-of-the-year reflections on our business. Martin E. Marty Tue, 5 Jan 2010 07:06:30 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1221.shtml Last week Sightings looked at bearish signs on the front where religion is practiced (a bit less) in post-Christendom. This week instead of a bear we'll note the chameleon-like character of religious commitment, or semi-commitment in the same part of the world. Our source, the survey of the week, came from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a reliable surveyor. It was much noted and commented upon; we'll pick up on one of the best of these comments, in the December 11th Wall Street Journal, from Boston University professor Stephen Prothero, who can also be called reliable as well as perceptive. Martin E. Marty Tue, 5 Jan 2010 07:05:40 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1217.shtml Each December we find ourselves "one Nutcracker nearer to death," as Richard Buckle observed. This fairytale ballet, with its pantomime, its ballroom dancing, and its Orientalist divertissements tacked onto a story about a dream voyage to a benign monarchy of sweets, is aimed chiefly at children or, as the saying goes, the child within us all. But - to echo Edwin Denby, who, in his excellent essay on this ballet, asked "Has the action anything to do with Christmas?" - does The Nutcracker's treatment of childhood have some religious content? "Nowadays, with psychoanalysis practically a household remedy, grown-ups take the nonsense of fairy tales more seriously than children," Denby wrote in 1944, quickly rattling through consequential elements of the ballet: A mysteriously alluring one-eyed bachelor gives a prepubescent girl a gift of male figure, a nutcracker, quickly envied and broken by her brother... Well, you know the rest, or have sat through it as it spins around on stage. Yet the dream scenes that follow fast on the Christmas party do not seem to echo the contemporary culture of commercialization, with its embrace of the child's experience of Christmas as that of gifts expected and received. Might there be some deeper message? Spencer Dew Tue, 5 Jan 2010 07:04:46 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1214.shtml Religion-in-public news last week featured a Pew poll that demonstrated how many Americans mix faiths. More on that in some other week. This week's stories raise a screech question: Will there long be faiths to mix in America? "Faiths" here means bodies of believers, gathered in communities such as congregations. Has the United States begun to follow the overall pattern of decline in membership, attendance, activity, support, and visibility that is so patent in, say, Western Europe? Martin E. Marty Tue, 5 Jan 2010 07:03:56 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1210.shtml The Reverend Peter Gomes and evangelist Bradlee Dean have very little in common. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and the pastor of Harvard's Memorial Church. Dean is the founder and leader of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, a ministry that stages character education assemblies in public high schools in the upper-Midwest and across the nation. Gomes' services feature the voices of Harvard's University Choir. Dean's gatherings are often punctuated by the hard-driving rap-core music of the band Junkyard Prophet in which he plays the drums. In terms of their political and social views, a vast chasm separates Gomes on the left from Dean on the extreme right. Yet both men took time this past Veterans Day to preside over services that conjured the ghosts of war. Jonathan Ebel Tue, 5 Jan 2010 07:02:33 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1207.shtml To explain my disappearance during November: I was enjoying and lecturing on an "Around the World in a Private Jet" tour with alumni from several schools. Machu Picchu, Tibet, and other high points were high points on our 33,000-mile odyssey. Now I am glad to be back issuing Sightings on "Public Religion in America" themes. Martin E. Marty Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:16:52 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1203.shtml Since Galileo first turned his telescope skyward, faith communities and science leaders have routinely clashed. But scientists committed to climate change are finding a partner, not an enemy, in faith. Martin Davis Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:15:50 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1119.shtml This week marks the twenty-year anniversary of the beginning of the "Velvet Revolution" (or the "Gentle Revolution" as referred to by the Slovaks), which led to the rapid demise of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia. On November 17, 1989 in Prague, a heavily armed riot police squad harshly suppressed a peaceful student demonstration that commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the killing of the Czech medical student Ján Opletal by the occupying Nazi forces. This event supplied the needed spark that lit the flames of courage and hope for non-violent political protests across the country. Ten days later, hundreds of thousands of Czech and Slovak citizens gathered in city squares to participate in a two-hour nationwide general strike that called for the abolishment of the leading role of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Before the year was over, the Communist leaders relinquished their grip on power, and Czechoslovakia has embarked on a challenging journey towards a democratic future. Lubomir Martin Ondrasek Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:58:16 -0600 http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/sightings/archive_2009/1116.shtml Recently Turkish television station Kanal T announced a new game show in which representatives from four different world religions will try to convert atheists. The show's title Tövbekarlar Yarisiyor translates roughly as Penitents Compete. Each episode features ten atheists who have been screened to ensure they are not secretly faithful. Audiences can then watch a Muslim imam, a Jewish rabbi, a Greek Orthodox priest, and a Buddhist monk attempt to bring them into the respective fold. Any atheist who experiences a conversion wins an all-expense-paid pilgrimage to a holy site of the newfound faith: Mecca, Jerusalem, or Tibet. (Producers follow new converts to ensure the pilgrimage does not become a free holiday.) Penitents Compete is the brainchild of Seyhan Soylu, a transsexual pop figure who goes by the nickname "Sisi." Soylu has said of the show, "We are giving the biggest prize in the world, the gift of belief in God." Needless to say, Penitents Compete has aroused ire as well as curiosity from both atheists and believers around the world. Many see the show as disrespectful to religion while others see it as an indictment of atheism. However, the motivation for Penitents Compete may simply be a curiosity about religion, conversion, and pluralism. Joseph Laycock Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:56:42 -0600