Sightings Articles
Celebrating 400 Years of the King James Bible — Martin E. Marty
Thanksgiving weekend gave those who live off or for the media an excuse to slow down, turn off some signals, and settle back to football, turkey, and family—or to shop. For those who keep the Christian calendar, yesterday was also a significant chang...
November 29, 2010
Buddhism and Violence — Martin E. Marty
Buddhism and Islam came off as the two “faith communities” to whom other Americans feel least warm, according to a Faith Matters survey of 2007. Robert Putnam and David Campbell ponder this in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which...
November 22, 2010
Global Warming and American Christianity — Martin E. Marty
Those who long recognized that the public has to take a long view, should it wish to address global warming, learned in the recent election that they have to take a longer view. The Tea Party, which makes its first appearance in Sightings today, mass...
November 15, 2010
Putnam and Campbell Highlights — Martin E. Marty
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, a book which Sightings glimpsed on October 18, is much on my mind and agenda. Authors Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell are not content with telephoned polls but believe very much in site-visit...
November 8, 2010
Putnam and Campbell Highlights — Martin E. Marty
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, a book which Sightings glimpsed on October 18, is much on my mind and agenda. Authors Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell are not content with telephoned polls but believe very much in site-visit...
November 8, 2010
Catholic Drift — Martin E. Marty
“Everybody’s talking” about data detailing decline of church and synagogue participation as revealed in a Pew Forum and by Putnam and Campbell in their new book American Grace. “Everybody” includes atheists, agnostics, “nones,” Protestants, Evangelic...
November 1, 2010
Christian Violence — Martin E. Marty
“Christians kill too!” is the topic this week as frightened and angry Americans keep raising the temperature of Islam-versus-Everyone-Else controversies. In his new book Christianity and Genocide in Rwanda, Timothy Longman writes that in three months...
October 25, 2010
American Grace — Martin E. Marty
American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell is the religion-and-culture blockbuster book this season. Awaited for several years, especially given Putnam’s prominence since he patented the concept captu...
October 18, 2010
Money Making and Money Giving — Martin E. Marty
Ungodly and godly money making and money giving are key topics while many Christian churches gear up for November as “stewardship month.” As they and others face “budget-setting time,” multiple items netted from the public press and the internet beck...
October 11, 2010
Religious Illiteracy in America — Martin E. Marty
The least surprising surprise—but the most commented-on—in the “U. S. Religious Knowledge Survey” issued by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life last Tuesday was picked up at once by Laurie Goodstein in The New York Times. As polls showed that t...