Sightings Articles
Jim Wallis on Morals and Values by Martin E. Marty
In 1957, young Harvard-bred historian Timothy Smith, of the Church of the Nazarene, knocked a lot of us budding ordinary historians – secular, “mainstream,” and whatnot – off our library stools with his book Revivalism and Social Reform. We had been...
February 1, 2010
The Robertson Paradox by Martin E. Marty
Jeffrey Weiss, who blogs at Politics Daily, sent an e-query to some of us e-columnists, or at least to me, supplementing his blog-list. He raised enough good questions to merit a response. Revisiting the by-now-over-visited tragicomedy of televange...
January 25, 2010
Is the Devil a Black Man? by Spencer Dew
In what has now become a much-circulated clip, Pat Robertson makes sense of the catastrophic Haitian earthquake as the latest in a string of curses delivered by God to Haiti’s people. Robertson’s interpretation of this catastrophe, whether we find i...
January 21, 2010
True Stories by Martin E. Marty
You know the old joke: When someone absolutely diabolical died, the rabbi asked if anyone wanted to say anything about him at the funeral. No one dared, as there was nothing nice to say. Eventually one stood up and said, “His brother was even wors...
January 18, 2010
The Sacred and the Sartorial by Courtney Wilder
At first blush, the blog Beauty Tips for Ministers does not seem like a hotbed of feminist theology of the body. Written primarily, though not exclusively, for women, the blog includes posts on a wide range of topics related to clergy and their profe...
January 14, 2010
Persecuted by Martin E. Marty
Christians, who through the centuries have often been persecutors, in our time often are persecutees. Those of us who try to keep an eye on and have a heart for suffering Christians have to log horror stories weekly. In just a few January days we w...
January 11, 2010
Our Savage God Revisited: The Case of Manson by Brian Collins
The year that just came to its close marked the 40th anniversary of the murders committed by Charles Manson's "Family," and three related events renewed interest in the crimes and the figure behind them. In November a 41-year-old Los Angeles man mad...
January 7, 2010
Farewell to Peter Steinfels by Martin E. Marty
Peter Steinfels on Saturday ended a twenty-year run as a columnist in the New York Times, signing off his “Beliefs” column, which was born January 6, 1990. He describes his reasoning about the departure in the January 2nd edition of the paper, which...
January 4, 2010
Searching for God — Martin E. Marty
Last week Sightings looked at bearish signs on the front where religion is practiced (a bit less) in post-Christendom. This week instead of a bear we’ll note the chameleon-like character of religious commitment, or semi-commitment in the same part o...