Sightings Articles
Muslims and Mormons in America by Martin E. Marty
“Americans Feel Warmest Toward Jews, Mainline Protestants, and Catholics” was a much-discussed headline in last year’s much-discussed American Grace, a survey-rich book on paradoxes in American religious life. The subtitle was How Religion Divides an...
August 8, 2011
"Clearly, this is not a pacifist God we serve"
These words were posted by Joseph Farah on WorldNetDaily.com at 1:00 a.m. on November 26, 2001, in the aftermath of 9/11. The full column, “The Bible and self-defense,” presented a battery of biblical evidence, from Old and New Testaments, for why Ch...
August 4, 2011
Breivik’s Christianity -- Martin E. Marty
Sightings returns to work after a month away. Start with a timely quiz. Q: What do the following have in common? Anders Behring Breivik, killer of scores of innocents in Norway; assassins Lee Harvey Oswald (JFK) and Sirhan Sirhan (RFK); serial k...
August 1, 2011
The National Religious Campaign against Torture by Sidney Callahan
For many Christians a banner reading “Torture Is A Moral Issue” does not begin to describe torture's inherent evil. Nevertheless when our affluent Roman Catholic parish erected a “Torture Is Wrong” banner on the church lawn, some parishioners complai...
June 30, 2011
The Secularization of the Cross by Martin E. Marty
Weekly, year in and year out, we sight new evidence that defining what is “religious” and what is “secular” remains difficult in the United States. One way to trace some attempts is to read The Humanist, as we often do. “Cross Purposes,” in the curre...
June 27, 2011
Why Did Kuwaiti Islamists Divorce the Government? by Mona Kareem
As a country that has an elected parliament but not an elected prime minister, Kuwait is a paradox. In the course of the Arab spring, Kuwait has witnessed sit-ins, rallies, and protests against Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammed Al-Sabah. Polit...
June 23, 2011
Generation Wandering by Matin E. Marty
Backlash against the hyper-institutionalism of religious organizations in the 1950s led first to revolt (“the sixties”) and the birth of a lifestyle summarized in the mantra, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual.” Today some returnees are nervy enou...
June 20, 2011
The French Ban on Full-Face Veils
Of course, I’m at home (laughter). Who else’s (country) am I in? I feel at home. I have my family here, we live, we eat, we cry, we laugh, we suffer, we don’t suffer. Some people are pl...
June 16, 2011
Attitudes Towards Abortion among American Religious Groups by Martin E. Marty
Life is short, and if you want to spend what’s left of it examining the results of the latest poll of attitudes towards abortion, follow the link to the Public Religion Research Institute and receive the unsummarized set of findings. If you have othe...
June 13, 2011
Shrine Destruction in Bahrain by Michael Sells
Governments and non-government forces destroy houses of worship in order to marginalize, silence, or eliminate peoples associated with the shrines and to efface visual and tangible reminders of the targeted traditions. Although shrine destruction is ...