Sightings Articles
Under God -- John P. Crossley
If the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the decision of its three-judge panel regarding the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, I believe the Supreme Court would do the nation a favor by refusing to hear the inevitable appeal. Th...
October 24, 2002
Pedagogy -- Martin E. Marty
Given the many and lively reactions to recent "Sightings" that report on the absence and then the presence of, and sometimes the conflict among, religious voices in respect to the impending Iraq War, let's talk this week about the nature and intentio...
October 21, 2002
Judeo-Christian Ethics -- Bill Gralnick
A few weeks ago, Sightings ran a piece on the efforts of Hebrew Christian groups to convert Jews ( HYPERLINK "http://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/archive_2002/0830.html" August 30, 2002). The commentary by Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez was made in the c...
October 17, 2002
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
Courting Vouchers -- Dan Malotky
This past summer, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the school voucher program, based on the pilot in inner-city Cleveland, did not constitute the establishment of religion and thus affirmed its constitutionality. The Supreme Court's ruling should not...
October 10, 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
Animal Prayers -- Mark Jerome Walters
Several winters ago I spent the night in a tiny koa-wood cabin in the cloud forests of Mauna Loa, as a thunderstorm swept over the 13,600 foot volcano. The windowpanes pulsed electric blue through the night. The next morning I stood outside and gazed...
October 3, 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
“The Next Christianity,” A Reply -- Jon Pahl
A secular form of apocalyptic mythologizing, an anachronistic analogy, and debilitating denial make Philip Jenkins’ “The Next Christianity” a poor piece of public prophecy. The basic logic of the piece is a syllogism: a “supernaturalist” Christianity...
September 27, 2002
Christianity Past, Present, and Next -- Jonathan Ebel
Over the past twelve months, Islam has been the religion of concern in the American media. The scandals of the Catholic and Baptist Churches have taken some attention away, but understandably journalists have been assessing the role of Islam in local...