Sightings Articles
A Public Theology or a Theology of the Res Publica? — Rick Elgendy
Last week, Focus on the Family's James Dobson took issue with a 2006 speech made by Senator Barack Obama at a meeting of "Call to Renewal," a movement of politically activist Christians. A religious figure criticizing a presidential candidate is noth...
July 3, 2008
More Pew Findings — Martin E. Marty
In this business and with pleasure one cannot not comment on the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life surveys. They are the most ambitious and expansive polls and draw the most public attention. Chancy as all opinion polls are, these Pew products pr...
June 30, 2008
Post-Zionism or Post-Judaism? — Brian Britt
Two radically different new films, the American comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan and the Israeli dramaRestless, tell remarkably similar stories of Israeli soldier-assassins who start new lives in New York. By normalizing the image of soldiers and...
June 26, 2008
Cheers, not Sneers — Martin E. Marty
The Economist pays more and more attention to religion in world affairs. This time, "When Religions Talk" (June 14) deals with a topic which is often trivialized or treated with yawns, or, as here, partly faint—I think it is faint—condescension by th...
June 23, 2008
Confronting the Legacy of Native American Boarding Schools — Philip P. Arnold
Last February, Syracuse University hosted a screening of the 2007 film UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide and a public conversation with Kevin Annett. Reverend Annett started his first ministry for the United Church of Canada (UCC) on Va...
June 19, 2008
Returning to the Gospels — Martin E. Marty
"Public religion," Sightings' constant theme, includes "public theology." This week The Christian Century (June 12) offers a challenge on that theme from the Anglican Bishop of Durham, N. T. Wright, as noted a New Testament scholar as is being read a...
June 16, 2008
Jesus Is Just Alright — Brian Collins
Recently released on DVD, David Di Sabatino's 2005 documentary Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher tells the story of Lonnie Frisbee, a significant figure in the Jesus People Movement, a strain of evangelical Christianity that emerged fr...
June 12, 2008
Weaker Faith — Martin E. Marty
Four weeks ago Sightings picked up on a column in The Wall Street Journal by Alan Jacobs, whom I misnamed. His fan club quickly alerted me to his achievements. While I had read some of his columns in Books and Culture, his name evidently had not regi...
June 9, 2008
Transgenderism and Religious Narratives — Melissa Conroy
National Public Radio recently aired a series on children who suffer from what some psychologists call a gender identity disorder, also known as transgenderism. The children believe they have been born into the wrong biological body. It is not that t...
June 5, 2008
The Idolatry of America — Martin E. Marty
Let Damon Linker, author of The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege summarize Charles Marsh and hisWayward Christian Soldiers: Freeing the Gospel from Cultural Captivity: "A professor of religion at the University of Virginia and a devout evangelic...