Sightings Articles
Liberal Judaism in Decline by Martin E. Marty
“Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink: Struggling for Relevance and Funding” headlined the prime story by Josh Nathan-Kazis, in the newspaper Forward. A prime column follows it a week later, as Dana Evan Kaplan writes on ...
February 28, 2011
Secular Revolutions, Religious Landscapes by Shatha Almutawa
While the Middle East uprisings have not revolved around religion, faith has not been absent from Arab scenes of protest in the last two months. God and scripture are invoked by revolutionaries and those who oppose them for the simple reason that Ara...
February 24, 2011
A Bishop's Defense of Government by Martin E. Marty
Belgian sociologist of religion Henri Desroche once observed three functions of religion in society. Religion normally attests a society when it is in the business of “affirming.” There and then it serves an integrating function. That’s normal: think...
February 21, 2011
What Were the Ulama Doing in Tahrir Square? Al-Azhar and the Narrative of Resistance to Oppression by Malika Zeghal
Over the course of the Egyptian uprising, religious scholars in and beyond Egypt have taken positions against or in favor of the revolution. The dividing line between their views depends on the relationship of the ulama with state authorities in the ...
February 17, 2011
Revolution by Martin E. Marty
“C’est une révolte,” said King Louis XVI to his messenger about events on July 14, 1789. “Non, Sire, C’est une révolution,” the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt corrected him. With this exchange Hannah Arendt pointed to a difference between a revolt...
February 14, 2011
Imigration and Indigenous Theology by Colin Bossen
I did not go to jail expecting to meet a theologian. But jail was where I met Tupac Enrique Acosta. Tupac, like me, was arrested in front of one of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s offices for protesting against Arizona's anti-immigrant law SB1070 on Ju...
February 10, 2011
Christian Evolutions by Martin E. Marty
Ever since 1859 anyone could start fights by breathing a single word: “evolution,” on which Charles Darwin held the patent. The conflicts were billed as “science vs. religion,” but it has been clear for 152 years that some schools of scientists oppos...
February 7, 2011
The Haiti Earthquake One Year Later: A Survey of Religious Disaster Relief by Jonathan C. Bergman
On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti just sixteen miles outside the capital city, Port-au-Prince. The quake left approximately 200,000 dead, more than a million displaced, and an infrastructure in tatters....
February 3, 2011
Church Mortgages and Forclosures by Martin E. Marty
“Churches Find End Is Nigh” is the kind of headline which should produce ennui. One expects to read under it of the 1900th annual prediction of the end of the world. But, read on: the subhead portends an article on “Ends” which are current and real: ...
January 31, 2011
Good Sufi, Bad Muslims by Omid Safi
One of the lower points in the Park51 Center controversy was the comment by New York Governor David Paterson: “This group who has put this mosque together, they are known as the Sufi Muslims. This is not like the Shiites…They’re almost like a hybrid,...