Sightings Articles
Building Moral Values -- Martin E. Marty
Right-wing talk shows are not part of my "hearings," so they do not usually make these "sightings." Still, I found something relevant in "QT," Zay N. Smith's column of quotes in the Chicago Sun-Times (March 21). Under the heading "Is a Justice of the...
March 27, 2006
Resisting "Theocracy" -- Martin E. Marty
In his new book, Baptizing America, Rabbi James Rudin speaks of a developing American "Christocracy." Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy, writes about a developing "theocracy." Rudin is a moderate and Phillips has carefully detailed his own odysse...
March 20, 2006
Protestantism and Power -- Martin E. Marty
"Lessons of the old mainline for the new mainline" headlines the guest column in the conservative-to-moderate Christianity Today (March 2006). Speaking up for the "old" is Jason Byassee, a youngish editor of the moderate-to-liberal Christian Century....
March 13, 2006
Counterculture Shock -- Martin E. Marty
The Chicago Reader lets me assess the young adult culture weekly; the free newspaper in your city will give you access to the same. Please be patient while, for effect, I string together words and images at the heart of that culture. You'd expect to ...
March 6, 2006
Doubting Dennett -- Martin E. Marty
Last year it was Sam Harris's The End of Faith; this year it is Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon that sets out to rally the anti-religious, and serves to fire up some defenders of religion. Neither lacks notice...
February 27, 2006
Hoping in Pope Benedict XVI -- Martin E. Marty
You don't need Sightings to find cartoons in Denmark or hunting accidents in Texas, so let's turn this week to a subject too small to make the front pages, namely Roman Catholicism. It's on my mind in part because a subscriber forwarded me a critique...
February 20, 2006
Evangelical Ecology -- Martin E. Marty
Two cheers for the evangelicals who disturbed the peace and drew headlines this week with the "Evangelical Climate Initiative." Why two and not three? I've often been told that if people outside the evangelical camp favor a faction inside it, this ca...
February 13, 2006
Bonhoeffer Now -- Martin E. Marty
"Bonhoeffer Was Wrong," screams a headline in the National Catholic Reporter, atop an article by Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. (January 27). For balance, then, should we also read "Schroth Is Right"? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by Hitler and company one...
February 6, 2006
Textbook Cases -- Martin E. Marty
Historians, to whose company I belong, are often taught to feel irrelevant. Survey after survey shows that most citizens know appallingly little about the past, including "their" past, the past on the basis of which they make decisions. Whether the f...
January 30, 2006
Celebrating Carter -- Martin E. Marty
In weekly Sightings and biweekly "M.E.M.O" and Context, my regular outlets, readers may have noticed that I very rarely "do" presidents, especially sitting ones. Today an ex-president comes into periscope range, since it's exactly a quarter of a cent...