Sightings Articles
Women and American Religion — Catherine A. Brekus
What difference does it make to include women's stories in our narratives of American religious history? This is the question that more than 40 historians will consider at an upcoming conference on Women and American Religion: Reimagining the Past...
October 2, 2003
Religious Pluralism — Martin E. Marty
"Pluralism" is a word with plural meanings. In America it refers mainly to the way citizens live with a polity and with practices that recognize diversity and assure civil peace in the face of it. However, in theology in recent years there is also a ...
September 29, 2003
Cracking the Da Vinci Code
Besieged by requests for my reaction to The Da Vinci Code, I finally decided to sit down and read it over the weekend. It was a quick romp, largely fun to read, if rather predictable and preachy. This is a good airplane book, a novelistic thriller th...
September 24, 2003
Do-gooders — Martin E. Marty
Sightings sights surveys. Opinion polls are attractive to social scientists, who are attractive to us. They provide one means at least of measuring what people think and do on the "public religion" front. All surveys are flawed, but we won't go into ...
September 22, 2003
Religion and Scholarship — Brian Britt
While national attention focused on Alabama and a granite monument of the Ten Commandments, a recent Washington state court case exposed government confusion over the academic study of religion. In Locke v. Davey, a student (Davey) at Northwest Colle...
September 18, 2003
Jewish America — Martin E. Marty
Go to www.jewishdatabank.org to consult the National Jewish Population's latest, much-publicized survey and you will have access to the same data Sightings has. The United Jewish Communities people, who count many Jewish federations under their umbre...
September 15, 2003
Freedom's Rise — Jon Pahl
Not prone to patriotic sentiment, I was surprised to be nearly moved to tears when I first visited the new National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The museum, located on the Independence Mall near the Liberty Bell and dedicated on the 4th of Ju...
September 11, 2003
Wolfe's Religion Today — Martin E. Marty
"Anything anybody can say about America is true," said 60's countercultural figure Emmett Grogan. "Anything anybody can say about American religion is true," an 00's figurer about culture could also say. Whoever monitors the scene weekly, as Sighting...
September 8, 2003
More Priests, Fewer Clergy: A Catholic Proposal — Joseph F. Byrnes
In the June 3, 1981 entry of Father Alexander Schmemann's Journals (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY, 2000) the renowned Orthodox priest and teacher wrote, "More and more often I think that the priesthood should not be a profession; that ...
September 4, 2003
Religion News 101 — Martin E. Marty
"Homosexual bishops? How long before we see pedophile bishops, necrophile Deans of Cathedrals and cannibalistic Archdeacons?" Those questions come from a Wall Street Journal op-ed (August 28) by an Anglican-ist from London. Sharing the same page is a...