Sightings Articles
Religiosecular Meditations — Martin E. Marty
"Religiosecular": I've been trying to patent what in one article long ago I called a "neologistic barbarism" to cover the reality that the world, "our" world, is all the time growing manifestly both more religious and more secular (using all kinds of...
June 19, 2006
Clean Enough for Yuppies to Drink: Deepa Mehta Filters Ganges Water — William Elison
Long before its U.S. release this spring, Water, Deepa Mehta's movie about Hindu widows living in seclusion on the banks of the Ganges, had already become a cause célèbre. Mehta is based in Canada, and her films, which rely on international financing...
June 15, 2006
Christianity in Canada — Martin E. Marty
The DEW (Distant Early Warning) signal of Cold War days may have a religious successor, which we in the U.S. will notice as the Canadian border becomes newly relevant. For context: I call the global area west of Poland, across western Europe and thro...
June 12, 2006
Lords of Kobol, Hear My Prayer: Religion and Faith on Battlestar Galactica
The Sci-Fi Channel's blockbuster show Battlestar Galactica has received heaps of praise from virtually all quarters. The show centers on the conflict in a faraway galaxy between humans and Cylons, a race of artificial, and often humanoid, beings firs...
June 8, 2006
Pro-Life Progressivism — Martin E. Marty
"Pro-Life Progressivism" must sound as oxymoronic to some citizens as "Pro-Choice Conservatism" must sound to others. That's the fix we're in, and have been, since 1973, after Roe v. Wade, when defining groups often found it feasible to organize peop...
June 5, 2006
Intelligent Watches — Richard A. Rosengarten
While Cardinal Schoenborn and the Roman Catholic Church's astronomer have officially indicated that it is possible to accept the science of evolution while remaining in good standing with the Church, the idea of intelligent design persists in at leas...
June 1, 2006
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
Julia Sweeney Says 'Ha!' — Matthew Baldwin
Many people remember Julia Sweeney as a performer on "Saturday Night Live," where she became famous playing an ambiguously gendered office dweeb named "Pat." But, burned out on improv, in 1994 Sweeney quit SNL and moved from New York back to Los Ange...
May 25, 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
Yoga and Fundamentalist Christianity — Monica Byrne
Laurette Willis lives with her husband on a beautiful ranch in the Ozark foothills of northeastern Oklahoma. A self-identified fundamentalist Christian, she believes in salvation by grace, accepting Jesus as her personal Savior, and the infallibility...