Sightings Articles
The Iraqi Fall of Saigon? — Jeffrey Kaplan
Forty years ago Americans were stunned by images of North Vietnamese tanks rolling into the heart of Saigon. The Vietnam War had bitterly divided the nation and cost 58,220 American lives. Responding to American public opinion, then President Gerald ...
June 19, 2014
Southern Baptists Waning — Martin E. Marty
Southern Baptists, present in every state of the union, outnumber Jews in the whole world. Only Roman Catholics outnumber them in the United States. Citizens who care little about religion and less about denominations have learned to watch the Sou...
June 16, 2014
Sitting with Farzana: Would She See What We See?
On May 27, 2014, another woman was murdered in Pakistan. ...
June 12, 2014
Trigger Warnings — Martin E. Marty
Trigger Warning! A few years ago you and I and most people would not have known what that headline meant. Now if you are a teacher, from elementary school through post-doctoral scholarly life, especially if you teach and study literature and all the ...
June 9, 2014
D-Day Seventy Years Later — Jeanne Bishop
The letter’s dateline read: “Yale University, New Haven, Conn., April 30, 1942.” The author was a 20-year-old Yale student, who, out of humility, prefers to remain unnamed. At 5’2”, he was shorter than the minimum height requirement for the U.S. ...
June 5, 2014
Roma — Martin E. Marty
Sightings usually sights religious news and trends with a metaphorical “naked eye.” No one needs a telescope or a microscope to spot most of our topics. Snappy headlines, prime time signals, and messages gone-viral call attention to them. This week, ...
June 2, 2014
Do We Have a Duty to Live? — Heike Springhart
On November 29, 1981, a story in the Chicago Tribune proclaimed: “Hans Küng, one of the world’s most important religious figures, is hero for some and heretic to others.”...
May 29, 2014
Phone Versus On-Line Honesty — Martin E. Marty
“What fresh hell is this?” was poet Dorothy Parker’s question when her phone or doorbell rang. Opinion-surveyors and telephone-pollsters may often be greeted by Parkeresque answerers, but data now suggests that many of the called choose to be nice to...
May 26, 2014
Hindu Nationalism — Martin E. Marty
The Monday editions of Sightings, which I write, usually focus on “public religion” in the United States, while Thursday’s postings, written by various contributors, frequently “go global.” Through the years, however, I have learned that treating Ame...