Sightings Articles
Martyrdom by Martin E. Marty
Almost always Sightings takes off from a current text or image lifted from news and opinion sources. This week our “current” text is 1900 years old. It happened that Sunday I was to engage in a moonlighting vocation, namely preaching a sermon, some...
May 17, 2010
Ape Pieta by Christian Sheppard
Two new ethological studies tell us how chimpanzees grieve, raising doubts about the uniqueness of human mourning as well as, perhaps, the superfluity of religious practice. Laboratory scientists in Scotland have made unprecedented close observation...
May 13, 2010
Cuts in the Humanities
“Why Cuts in Humanities Teaching Pose a Threat to Democracy Itself” is the subhead for an article titled “Skills for Life” in the April 30th Times Literary Supplement, authored by the University of Chicago’s (and the world’s) Martha Nussbaum. Such h...
May 10, 2010
The Divine Auction by Neelima Shukla-Bhatt
On April 24, about one hundred images of Hindu deities were auctioned off at the site of the former Hindu Temple of Georgia in Norcross, GA. The images, made of precious metal or wood, which were earlier valued by the temple at $ 4.5 million, brough...
May 6, 2010
The Mojave Cross: Religious or Not? by Martin E. Marty
Days ago, the Supreme Court’s currently-standard 5-4 majority ruled that “the Mojave Cross,” a contested war memorial in the desert of California, may stand. The case itself is too complicated – it involved lower court rulings on a land transfer, an...
May 3, 2010
Here Be Nephites
The Book of Mormon is widely viewed as the quintessentially American scripture of a quintessentially American faith, but in strictly geographical terms this designation is more complicated than it might first appear. The Book’s modern manifestation ...
April 29, 2010
Israel's Holy War by Martin E. Marty
In eleven years of weekly Sightings I can’t find that I ever commented on “public religion” in Israel. The U. S. is usually in our sights, and we are aware of participation in or leadership of holy wars by Hindu militants, Muslim extremists, Buddhis...
April 26, 2010
The Supreme Court and the Transformation of Democratic Priorities by Barbra Barnett
As Martin Marty discussed in last Monday’s Sightings, John Paul Stevens is currently the only Protestant jurist on the United States Supreme Court and he has announced his retirement at the end of the current term. Of the eight remaining justices, s...
April 22, 2010
Protestants and the Supreme Court by Martin E. Marty
Score-keepers readying themselves for the forthcoming summer’s Armageddon-level Senate debates over the next Supreme Court appointment find plenty of skirmishing at the line of scrimmage before the first ball is snapped. One of the points of controv...
April 19, 2010
Coding Character: Religious Assemblies and Zoning Laws by Kristen Tobey
Several months ago in Gilbert, Arizona, a city code enforcement official noticed signs advertising church services to be held in private homes and sent a cease-and-desist letter to the pastor of the seven-member Oasis of Truth Church, pursuant to ite...