Sightings Articles
Presidential Scriptures -- Martin E. Marty
No one needs binoculars to do sightings of religion in American public life when a new president comes into view. Presidents signal something of their and the nation's acknowledged needs and chosen images by bringing their clergy along to inaugurati...
January 22, 2001
Wicca and Equal Opportunity Criticism -- Martin E. Marty
When "high culture" folks -- the well-educated and the well-off -- knock" organized religion" and "the institutional church," they and the media they favor (and who favor them in turn) do tend to give a free ride to nonmainstream, New, New Age, non-W...
January 16, 2001
Mapping Religious Trends -- Martin E. Marty
The United States Census has not collected religious data since 1936. Some religious groups do not want to be numbered or to release numbers, so counting or not became a religious issue. The same census, however, reveals much about trends tha...
January 8, 2001
Why Silence about the Campaign? -- Martin E. Marty
Having barely mentioned here this year's presidential campaign, an explanation is in order. In part, the neglect is personal. I love politics but, for example, I've not "done" presidential politics in forty-plus years of weekly comment in *The Chr...
December 11, 2000
Is There a Religious Vote? -- Martin E. Marty
*Sightings* has chosen to keep blinders on concerning the overdone, overcovered, overtreated presidential election campaign, full of religious nuances and blatancies though it be. But as Auction Day -- a.k.a. Election Day -- nears, it is time to be r...
October 30, 2000
Spiritual Adultery? -- Martin E. Marty
Excommunication is very rare in American religious bodies. Can you think of an instance in which a lay person was ever excluded from membership? Yet the deputy managing editor of *World*, a representative magazine for conservative evangelicals, urges...
October 26, 2000
Declining Catechesis -- Martin E. Marty
How does secularization occur? What speeds up the process? Instead of pointing to some massive secular humanist conspiracy as the major cause, many social thinkers urge us to watch the subtle improvisations made by individuals and publics. *Sighti...
October 16, 2000
Wealth and Spirituality -- Martin E. Marty
We do our sightings in all kinds of corners of American life. Anyone who stays in a hotel receives, willy-nilly, *USA Today*. Whoever receives *USA Today* will find little colored graphs in the lower left-hand corner of a section page. Recently one d...
October 9, 2000
The Last Sightings from the Public Religions Project -- Martin E. Marty
Today and tomorrow the Public Religion Project holds a summary conference that effectively completes its three years of work. Then on Friday, those of us responsible for the Project, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, will close our office and hand...
September 22, 1999
Counting -- Martin E. Marty
Counting may not be the most exciting thing we do, and reading about counting may not give receivers of "Sightings" much to develop into editorials, talk-show topics, or lecture and sermon illustrations. But keeping track of news everywhere goes with...