Sightings Articles
Drinking the Kool-Aid — Brian Britt
Thirty years have passed since the murder-suicide of over nine hundred members of Jim Jones's People's Temple, on November 18, 1978. A sign hanging in the pavilion of Jonestown at the time read, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to r...
November 20, 2008
Ten Commandments versus Seven Aphorisms — Martin E. Marty
After the year of campaign-bred obsession with the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, the Judicial bade for attention this week in ways that Sightings cannot fail to see or choose to neglect. "Justices Grapple..," began a ...
November 17, 2008
E Pluribus Obama
In the November 6th New York Times, photographer Matt Mendelsohn describes a restlessness that overcame him on election night, leading him to drive across the Potomac to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, "expecting to find a crowd and some news...
November 13, 2008
Base Rebuilding — Martin E. Marty
If you trust the blunt instrument of exit polls, you will have followed up after the presidential election by reading somewhat contradictory observations by experienced columnists. To put an old cliché to work, Naomi Schaefer Riley in the November 7...
November 10, 2008
A Busload of Unfaith — Daniel Sack
Once upon a time, as we historians say, religious communities spread their message through preaching. In this modern, media-saturated world, they use advertising. Mainline denominations create cute or earnest television campaigns. Lubavitcher Hasid...
November 6, 2008
Secular Religious Studies — Martin E. Marty
Stepping off the plane after a "busperson's holiday" in Finland-days I spent lecturing and listening at Abo Akademi and University and the University of Helsinki-I stepped into the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago. There...
November 3, 2008
'Gog' on the Move — John Howell
Those who followed early coverage of the 2008 Olympics will remember President Bush's interview with NBC's Bob Costas during which the two men discussed Russia's bombing of Georgia. Asked what he had said to Vladimir Putin during the opening ceremon...
October 30, 2008
Bringing the Campaign to Finland — Martin E. Marty
I am currently in Finland, where scholars at Turku and Helsinki asked me to address, among other topics, the role of religion in the American presidential campaign. Having done very different variations on that theme in the United States before I le...
October 27, 2008
Religion is Ridiculous? — David G. Meyers
Ridiculous, and worse. So say the new atheist books: In God is Not Great, Christopher Hitchens does not mince words, calling religion "violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to...
October 23, 2008
Monotheism, Polytheism, and Violence — Martin E. Marty
"Hindu Threat to Christians: Convert or Flee," Somini Sengupta's front page story in the October 12th New York Times, is part of one day's additions to my bulging clippings file on religiously-inspired terror, war, and violence, in the name of...(fil...