Sightings Articles
Rastafari Theology, Reggae Music, and the Postcolonial Legacy of Bob Marley — Juan M. Floyd-Thomas
In the legendary song, “Get Up, Stand Up,” it is virtually impossible to forget the chorus: Get up, stand up—stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up—don't give up the fight! In these lyrics Bob Marley offers a resounding critique of traditi...
December 16, 2010
Microfinance — Martin E. Marty
Sightings has no difficulty focusing on microfinance, which manages to be in the news, for better or worse, more days than not. Nonprofit microfinance is one of the biggest stories of religion-in-action around the world. If it deals mainly with the “...
December 13, 2010
The Shtetl Strongman — Sarah Imhoff
Nothing telegraphs nostalgia quite like sepia tones. The new children’s book Zishe the Strongman paints the life of an early twentieth-century Jewish entertainer with equal parts longing and joy. Based on the real life strongman Siegmund Breitbart, Z...
December 9, 2010
Oklahoma’s Shariah Law Ban — Martin E. Marty
In late November Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange issued a permanent injunction on the “Oklahoma shariah law ban” leaving Oklahoma at least temporarily unsaved by the “Save our State” Question 755. The constitutional amendment had been approved by 70% of t...
December 6, 2010
Making Violence Buddhist — Benjamin Schonthal
In a recent Sightings column Martin E. Marty drew attention to a feature of Buddhism that many Americans find startling: there are Buddhist texts that seem to legitimate war. Marty’s observation contravenes a commonly-held belief that Buddhism is exc...
December 2, 2010
Celebrating 400 Years of the King James Bible — Martin E. Marty
Thanksgiving weekend gave those who live off or for the media an excuse to slow down, turn off some signals, and settle back to football, turkey, and family—or to shop. For those who keep the Christian calendar, yesterday was also a significant chang...
November 29, 2010
Buddhism and Violence — Martin E. Marty
Buddhism and Islam came off as the two “faith communities” to whom other Americans feel least warm, according to a Faith Matters survey of 2007. Robert Putnam and David Campbell ponder this in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which...
November 22, 2010
The Emerging Evangelicals — Jenny Rae Armstrong
The recent GOP rebound has been regarded by many as a victory belonging to rifle-toting, SUV driving, born-again Christians. But to oversimplify evangelicals in this manner is to ignore a growing rift within their ranks. Few mainstream evangelicals h...
November 18, 2010
Global Warming and American Christianity — Martin E. Marty
Those who long recognized that the public has to take a long view, should it wish to address global warming, learned in the recent election that they have to take a longer view. The Tea Party, which makes its first appearance in Sightings today, mass...
November 15, 2010
Religion vs. Fiction in Egypt — M. Lynx Qualey
Two years ago, a relatively unknown Egyptian professor of Arabic and Islamic studies took home the second annual International Prize for Arabic Fiction—or “Arabic Booker”—for his novel Azazel. It was only while in his forties that Dr. Youssef Zied...