Sightings Articles
Sandfly Witness — Martin E. Marty
Where are the protesting and dissenting voices of the church? We often hear that question asked, sometimes tauntingly, sometimes plaintively. Decades ago, Catholic, Jewish, Mainline, and sometimes Evangelical religious leaders were up front in demons...
March 15, 2004
Faith in Practice — Martin E. Marty
"Problematize" is not in my dictionary and is inelegant, but you can figure out what it means and might know that theologians sometimes use it. Example: they/we have problematized "narrative" and "conversation." An old cartoon in the New Yorker shows...
March 8, 2004
The Hard Middle — Martin E. Marty
"Sensible Center Is Lost in Gay Marriage Debate" headlines a column by Cokie and Steven Roberts, who have the misfortune of not having been born or having developed as ideologues. Their approach is rare in these days when politically the fire-power a...
March 1, 2004
Habitat for Humanity — Martin E. Marty
Someone once suggested that the two greatest inventions in American history are Alcoholics Anonymous and ice cream cones. As half-serious as that proposer must have been, I'd add Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI). Ordinarily we do our sightin...
February 23, 2004
Tracking the Nones — Martin E. Marty
For exactly fifty years I have been tracking the "infidel" (also "free-thinker," "atheist," "secular humanist") in America, beginning with a dissertation on "The Uses of Infidelity" and an early book, The Infidel. I had expected to find a large but s...
February 16, 2004
Not My Passion — Martin E. Marty
Call this column "Gibson's Passion Not My Passion" or "Sightings Fails to Sight Gibson's Passion." It's a preemptive response to reader and media requests for comment on the forthcoming film, to which so much attention is being given, and about which...
February 9, 2004
Hispanic America — Martin E. Marty
We at Sightings are often surprised by the responses we get. We read them all, but do not have the resources to write personal responses. We did not foresee the many reactions to last week's column on the violence of sundering conflicts in the church...
February 2, 2004
Conflict and Consolation — Martin E. Marty
Devoted as Sightings authors are to the craft of religion newswriting, we know that there is inevitable distortion when religion-as-news as opposed to religion-in-features dominates. We also know that congregations, parishes, movements, and denominat...
January 26, 2004
Remembering Martin Luther King — Martin E. Marty
Our house has always remembered Martin Luther and Martin Luther King. Our children sometimes confused the two. Son John's teacher once advised me to confront our six-year-old about his fibbing. "He claimed to have spent a week in a dormitory with Mar...
January 19, 2004
Polis — Martin E. Marty
No metropolis makes our mission of "sighting" religion in public life easier than Indianapolis. Decades ago, the BBC, for their classic world-religion TV series "The Long Search," chose the U.S. for its Protestant program (with me as the American con...