Sightings Articles
Exclusion — Martin E. Marty
"Exclusion," Carl Sandburg once said, was the ugliest word in the English language. Two kinds of exclusion appear in the sightings we do every week. It's important to keep them apart. In the first, particular religious communities welcome only the...
April 21, 2003
Shock and Awe — James L. Evans
I admit to being a bit offended by the U.S. military's use of the words shock and awe to describe the bombing campaign which began the war with Iraq. Not shock so much, since obviously the stunning effect of explosives is part of the process of defea...
April 17, 2003
Paris Perspective — Martin E. Marty
Five days in Paris left me and the entire Marty-Party (five of us) refreshed, thanks to our attendance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, conducted by friend John Nelson at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We cannot profess expertise about what the “French” ...
April 14, 2003
Wedge of Light — David Riihimaki
In "The Varieties of Wounding Experience [Sightings, February 27]," Jeremy Biles, drawing on William James, asserts that wounds strike us from a place prior to logic and outside the limits of our control. Architect Daniel Libeskind's winning proposal...
April 10, 2003
A Jesus Sighting — Martin E. Marty
A policy statement from your Monday morning contributor to Sightings: we are not going to talk about religion-and-the-war every week. There is plenty to talk about, and we won't close our eyes and ears to it. Note: this is not opting out for commerci...
April 7, 2003
Emergence — Martin E. Marty
Most Americans spent their wartime Sunday eight days ago doing mainly ordinary things: going to church, not going to church, spending time with the children, reading, watching TV. Many others did extraordinary things, far from media and the public ey...
March 31, 2003
Redrawing the Line on Faith-Based Initiatives — Arthur E. Farnsley II
No matter how you interpret the separation of church and state, it is clear that the president's new faith-based initiatives cross an old, well-established line. The question is not whether religious groups can get government money: they can and have...
March 27, 2003
Attesting, Contesting, and Protesting — Martin E. Marty
Sociologist Henri Desroche in Jacob and the Angel* offered "a triptych corresponding to three functions" of religion in society: "attesting," "contesting," "protesting." A self-affirming society that confirms its own existence has religion "attesting...
March 24, 2003
Freedom Fries — Spencer Dew
Recently, a restaurant in North Carolina changed the name of french fries on their menu to "freedom fries," a response to ongoing French resistance to the American and British push for war in Iraq. The restaurant owners described the change as a patr...
March 20, 2003
Strong Religion — Martin E. Marty
Sightings does not normally do book reviews, I cannot write jacket blurbs for books, and we editors have to be careful when we "have an interest." This is not a review of Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World, but it treats th...