Sightings Articles
Worldlings -- Martin E. Marty
"If you can't lick 'em, join 'em" could well have been the motto for CPs, conservative Protestants ["you"], in their relation to the world and the surrounding culture, especially popular culture ["'em"], during the past sixty years. Historians, and s...
October 14, 2002
Dissenting Clergy -- Martin E. Marty
These days and weeks U. S. citizens are largely bystanders as the administration most fatefully ponders a religion-laden set of questions as to the when, how and why of attacking Iraq. No longer are religious leaders silent, as they seemed to be week...
October 7, 2002
Cell Groups -- Martin E. Marty
Let’s take Prison Fellowship Ministries’ (PFM) word for it: they say, and they may well be able to back it up, that they have a good record of retraining, resituating, and preventing reimprisonment of convicts with whom they work in Texas. Also worki...
September 30, 2002
Catholic Stance -- Martin E. Marty
The Catholic one-fourth of America is easy to find when one does "Sightings." Catholic sociologists and polltakers are bringing to view attitudes, opinions, and stances that range far beyond anything that can be comprehended in the current crisis. Wi...
September 16, 2002
Chronicle -- Martin E. Marty
HYPERLINK "http://www.chronicle.com" The Chronicle of Higher Education, which gives ever more coverage to religion in the academy, gives space to it in its September 6 issue, "One Year Later." Samples: Kenneth W. Hearlson, a political science profes...
September 9, 2002
Your Two Cents -- Martin E. Marty
The two Sightings reporting on reservations about or criticisms of war with Iraq drew by far the largest response in the history of this e-mail column. By design, every one of my columns fits on one printed page. This time I’ll go on longer, to give ...
September 3, 2002
More Voices Seldom Heard -- Martin E. Marty
Next month in Nebraska I am to speak on non-violence -- domestic and international -- and education. While researching, I did a quick mental canvass. It is hard to think of any media coverage of religious witness against war in Iraq. Before the G...
August 19, 2002
Voices Seldom Heard -- Martin E. Marty
Last week we mentioned how rare have been the reported-on voices of religious figures questioning the potential war against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Also rarely reported on are religious questionings of American responses after 9/11. Maybe there have ...
August 13, 2002
Ironies of the American Present -- Martin E. Marty
"Reinhold Niebuhr, where are you now when we need you?" in effect asks David Brooks, a not unastute correspondent in The Atlantic Monthly (September, 2002). He beckons the ghost of the towering Protestant theologian and social critic of a half centur...
August 5, 2002
Facing the Fallout -- Martin E. Marty
Stories about the sexual abuse crisis in Catholicism have moved from the "feeding frenzy" to the "facing fallout" stages. Headlines announcing continued Wall Street traumas have not quite crowded priest-and-bishop news from the public eye. A sampling...