Sightings Articles
Unitarians, Mormons, and Southern Baptists: Observations from Salt Lake City -- Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Unitarian Universalists, who were in Salt Lake City recently for their annual meeting, could not have presented a more distinct counterpoint to the state's dominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the ...
July 19, 1999
Pluralism in the Military -- Martin E. Marty
"Well, if you're not Catholic, or Protestant, or Hebrew, what in blazes are you?" an army sergeant barked to "some theologically precise recruit (probably a high-church Episcopalian) who insisted he was neither Catholic or Protestant or Jewish." So r...
July 15, 1999
Religion Reporting How To -- Martin E. Marty
Many hundreds of the many thousands who receive "Sightings" are themselves "sighters." That is, as talk show hosts, editors, reporters, writers, public relationists, advertisers, educators, and more, they let us know that they and we together are w...
July 13, 1999
The Invisible Organization: Religion and Politics in Cyberspace -- Martin E. Marty
The World Church of the Creator, the white supremacist movement that helped impel Benjamin Smith to go on a hate-crime murdering spree, propagated itself online. Like many other hate groups, it has had a Web site, and like so many others, it promotes...
July 9, 1999
A New Temple or a Vacant Lot? Mormons Consider Symbols of the Past -- Peggy Fletcher Stack
On Easter Sunday, Mormon President Gordon B. Hinckley announced to an astonished crowd of believers in Salt Lake City and thousands more watching via satellite that the church was going to rebuild a temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. Nauvoo is now a sleepy ...
July 7, 1999
Looking to the Left: Religious Attitudes in Periodicals on the Left -- Martin E. Marty
Attempting to trace religious attitudes in magazines that are decisively on the left is difficult, chiefly because there are so few surviving periodicals over on that side. On the right one can do sightings in the NATIONAL REVIEW, the AMERICAN SPECTA...
June 30, 1999
Religion Books on the Millenium -- Martin E. Marty
A score of years ago predictors about predictors predicted that the year 2000 would see many books by apocalypse-minded Christians who would date and picture the second coming of Christ around 2000. Much has happened since then. Some of the Christi...
June 28, 1999
Wiccans in the Constitutional Spotlight -- Martin E. Marty
Americans take turns appraising the relative dangerousness or unrespectability of religion after religion. Most recently Representative Bob Barr of Georgia turned on the lights when he discovered that Wiccans had the right to worship on military ba...
June 24, 1999
What Do Evangelicals Believe? -- Edith Blumhofer
What do evangelicals believe? Is it possible to lay bare the doctrines that stand at modern evangelicalism's core? As evangelicals become more adept in the arena of public life, the beliefs that animate them assume greater public relevance. While it ...
June 23, 1999
The Serbian Orthodox Church: Responses and Identity -- Martin E. Marty
Isolating American religion from the global scene is impossible in these times. The Serbian Orthodox Church in the United States, for instance, has been much in the news, both for its links with Serbia--at least in memory and sentiment--and for Ser...