Sightings Articles
Radical Freedom in the Kingdom of Sweets — Spencer Dew
Each December we find ourselves “one Nutcracker nearer to death,” as Richard Buckle observed. This fairytale ballet, with its pantomime, its ballroom dancing, and its Orientalist divertissements tacked onto a story about a dream voyage to a benign m...
December 17, 2009
Decline in Conservative Churches — Martin E. Marty
Religion-in-public news last week featured a Pew poll that demonstrated how many Americans mix faiths. More on that in some other week. This week’s stories raise a screech question: Will there long be faiths to mix in America? “Faiths” here means...
December 14, 2009
Decline in Conservative Churches — Martin E. Marty
Religion-in-public news last week featured a Pew poll that demonstrated how many Americans mix faiths. More on that in some other week. This week’s stories raise a screech question: Will there long be faiths to mix in America? “Faiths” here means...
December 14, 2009
Soldiering, Memory, and the Faiths of Americans — Jonathan Ebel
The Reverend Peter Gomes and evangelist Bradlee Dean have very little in common. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School and the pastor of Harvard’s Memorial Church. Dean is the founder and leader of You Can Ru...
December 10, 2009
The Prosperity Gospel and the Financial Crisis — Martin E. Marty
To explain my disappearance during November: I was enjoying and lecturing on an “Around the World in a Private Jet” tour with alumni from several schools. Machu Picchu, Tibet, and other high points were high points on our 33,000-mile odyssey. Now I...
December 7, 2009
Faith and Science: At War No More — Martin Davis
Since Galileo first turned his telescope skyward, faith communities and science leaders have routinely clashed. But scientists committed to climate change are finding a partner, not an enemy, in faith. In early December, the world’s powers are me...
December 3, 2009
The Velvet Prophet: Vaclav Havel and his Message of Responsibility
This week marks the twenty-year anniversary of the beginning of the “Velvet Revolution” (or the “Gentle Revolution” as referred to by the Slovaks), which led to the rapid demise of the totalitarian regime in Czechoslovakia. On November 17, 1989 in P...
November 19, 2009
Penitents Compete and the Future of Turkish Secularism — Joseph Laycock
Recently Turkish television station Kanal T announced a new game show in which representatives from four different world religions will try to convert atheists. The show’s title Tövbekarlar Yarisiyor translates roughly asPenitents Compete. Each epi...
November 16, 2009
Religion-Based Arguments in Juvenile Life Without Parole Cases — Joan Gottschall
Those interested in the intersection of religious values and public policy, and particularly criminal justice policy, should take note of a brief filed this past summer in the Supreme Court of the United States in the joined cases of Graham v. Florid...
November 12, 2009
A New Ecumenism — Gregory Syler
Rome’s October 20th announcement that it will open the door for former Anglicans to join the Catholic Church led some to respond with suspicion, seeing the move as a conservative commentary on Anglican problems. That morning’s AP release, for instan...