Sightings Articles
Giving USA by Martin E. Marty
The Chronicle of Philanthropy chronicles – you guessed it – philanthropy, and in the June 17th issue reports on Giving USA for 2009. While the category of religion may not always overwhelm casual readers of trend-reports, religious giving is much wa...
June 21, 2010
Who is jewish Enough for Anglo-Jewish Schools? by Heather Miller Rubens
On June 11, London’s Jewish Chronicle ran the provocative headline: “Jewish girl’s King David place goes to non-Jew.” This breaking news is the latest incident in the Anglo-Jewish community’s struggle to establish a means of identifying their own th...
June 17, 2010
Chosen People by Martin E. Marty
The grand theological themes don’t fade or disappear from headlines or prime time. “Being chosen,” as in the case of biblical or modern Israel, is the grand theological theme today. My clippings and blog-printout file bulges with records of renewed...
June 14, 2010
The Persecution of Religious Minorities in Iraq by Shatha Almutawa
About a thousand years ago, a group of Iraqi philosophers in Basra wrote a dialogue between a Muslim in hell and a Muslim in heaven. The Muslim in heaven asked the Muslim in hell what he had done that led him to hell. The Muslim in hell responded t...
June 10, 2010
Decline in the Megachurches by Martin E. Marty
Schadenfreude, or rejoicing in others’ misfortunes, is abundantly evident in responses, blogged and otherwise, to the bad/sad news about the decline of the famed Crystal Cathedral, a megachurch founded in the mid-1950s in California. Publicity has b...
June 7, 2010
Saint Gilbert of Battersea by Ian Gerdon
You’ve never seen a blockbuster movie based on a book by G.K. Chesterton. Perhaps you’ve stumbled across one of the many television adaptations of his Father Brown mysteries; and if you’re fortunate enough to live in Chicago, maybe you saw last fall...
June 3, 2010
The Faith-based Initiative and Congregational Change by Martin E. Marty
“Did the Faith-based Initiative Change Congregations?” asked astute sociologists of religion Bob Wineberg and Mark Chaves last April. The answer: No. Chaves, based at Duke University, follows up with a revision in The Christian Century (June 1), “...
May 31, 2010
The New Religion of Body Improvement by Jeremy Biles
“The worldwide pursuit of body improvement has become like a new religion,” says photographer Zed Nelson in the introduction to his latest book, Love Me. His photos therein depict in loving, lurid detail evidences of bodily fanaticism around the glo...
May 27, 2010
Supply and Demand of Professional Ministers by Martin E. Marty
Public prayer, the kind Americans fight over a good deal, was not on the favorite “to-do” list of the Jesus of the Gospels. Just the opposite. He is heard saying: Don’t call attention to your praying in public. Go home and shut the door. Public ...
May 24, 2010
"Let the Night Roar with It": Dark Tourism at Jonestown by Brian Collins
The title of this essay is a quote from the last recorded sermon of the Revered Jim Jones. The speech was accompanied by an exultant ululation from him and his people – a penultimate act of defiance against the U.S. government emissaries they believ...