Sightings Articles
The Transcendence of Religious Music -- Martin E. Marty
Religion in public life shows up not just in politics, but also in the concert hall. The week of Passover and Easter offers chances to assess it. A close-up sighting: this Wednesday at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel, the world...
April 9, 2001
Changing Religious Demographics -- Martin E. Marty
Various explanations are offered for religious change in the United States, among them "church growth" or "mainline apathy" or, on occasion, the devil. Sightings has no empirical data on the last of these causes, but one hears the others cited consta...
April 1, 2001
Young Clergy: Where Are They? -- Martin E. Marty
This week, like the last, Sightings becomes "Pointings." We point to the Alban Institute, which bills itself as "the premier source of learning for congregations and their leaders." An ecumenical, interfaith organization, the Alban Institute seeks to...
March 26, 2001
New Data on the Old Line -- Martin E. Marty
Today Sightings has it easy. In a time of free-floating spiritualities, we call your attention to a survey that should be useful to everyone related to "organized religion" or "the institutional church." Let the surveyors do the sighting, which they ...
March 19, 2001
Liberal Attacks and Counterattacks: Part 2 -- Martin E. Marty
Last week we listened in on an internal debate among voices on the political and religious left reacting in long letters to *The Nation* (March 12). Respondents took on author Ellen Willis, who had spoken up for "Freedom from Religion" (February 19)....
March 12, 2001
Liberal Attacks and Counterattacks -- Martin E. Marty
"Freedom from Religion." So Ellen Willis called her blast from the left against "faith-based" ventures and religion in public life in*The Nation* (February 19). Some notables from what survives on theleft blast her blast in a subsequent issue (Marc...
March 5, 2001
The Nature of Anti-Religious Sentiment -- Martin E. Marty
The current flap over blasphemous art at the Brooklyn Museum quickened this week's round of complaints that anti-Catholicism is rampant. Mailings arrive full of appeals for funds to fight anti-Catholicism through anti-defamation fronts. The A...
February 26, 2001
The Subordination of Church to State -- Martin E. Marty
Few citizens, we imagine and hope, enjoy seeing pictures of pastors being carted away from their church buildings by U.S. marshals. Yet they did see such images last week on screen or in print of the Reverend Greg J. Dixon being removed on wheels fr...
February 19, 2001
Mourning a Monsignor -- Martin E. Marty
Sighting religion in the public realm does not take one away from the organized church if one finds clerical leaders "out there" like the most public priest we have known, Chicago's Monsignor John "Jack" Egan. The best-known and most loved (a...
January 29, 2001
The Complications of Charitable Choice -- Martin E. Marty
This is the third time *Sightings* has gazed at "charitable choice "and "faith-based" ventures. Not necessarily the most urgent topic, it nevertheless can be revealing since people in both parties are on both sides. Some find pro and con arguments ...