Sightings Articles
Surveying Seminarians — Martin E. Marty
Over 200 Sightingses ago (January 7, 2002), I quoted the late Edward H. Levi, who, when he was president of the University of Chicago, told me, after I asked about the subject: "The profession of ministry is too important in our culture and society f...
May 29, 2006
The Trouble with Patrick Henry College — Martin E. Marty
"If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If in your bold creative way you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe." (That's G. K. Chesterton, of course.) I...
May 22, 2006
Chaplains in the War Zone — Martin E. Marty
During the next few years, as the war drags on in Iraq, there will be plenty of time to think through religious and ethical issues that do not follow quite the same track as that of the original just/unjust war debates. (Notice that few of the contro...
May 15, 2006
Where the Youth Are — Martin E. Marty
On principle we do not let Sightings act as a bulletin board for upcoming events or as an intentional advertiser. We have to wait for something to happen or to have been said before we can sight it. An implicit covenant with subscribers restrains us ...
May 8, 2006
Belief in the Best Sellers — Martin E. Marty
Don't believe the celebrators of "the good old days" in American religion, when "everyone was religious and religion was all over the public place." And don't believe the denigrators of "the good new days" who sulk because government will not do the ...
May 1, 2006
Belief in the Best Sellers — Martin E. Marty
Don't believe the celebrators of "the good old days" in American religion, when "everyone was religious and religion was all over the public place." And don't believe the denigrators of "the good new days" who sulk because government will not do the ...
May 1, 2006
Strauss and Judaism — Martin E. Marty
The Chronicle of Higher Education keeps paying attention to religion, a fact that many of us in academe cheer. The April 14 issue features Richard Wolin's discussion of Leo Strauss ("Leo Strauss, Judaism, and Liberalism"). Strauss on religion? Wasn't...
April 24, 2006
Remembering William Sloane Coffin — Martin E. Marty
Where are the Bill Coffins of today? That question comes up in most reflective comments on the death of William Sloane Coffin, Jr., the most celebrated and charismatic liberal Protestant preacher of the last half-century. Not long ago we responded to...
April 17, 2006
Wills's Jesus -- Martin E. Marty
"Jesus, Jesus and More Jesus ... Jesus is all the rage in the media these days," writes Lynn Garrett in Publishers Weekly Religion BookLine. She's right. You can save time by reading Garry Wills's terse What Jesus Meant, a typical Willsian "makes you...
April 10, 2006
Robinson and Mainline Protestantism -- Martin E. Marty
"A liberal," poet Robert Frost wrote, "is a man"—or a woman—"too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." My corollary observation: "Mainline Protestants are too complacent to make a defense or counterattack when chided or derided." Catholics ...