Sightings Articles
The Case of the Missing Matzo — Nora Rubel
"Are you ready for Christmas?" This seasonal query used to be one of my mother's pet peeves. The idea that from the day after Thanksgiving—and sometimes as early as the day after Halloween—shops would be stocked with yuletide treasures. How long does...
April 24, 2008
An Islamless World — Martin E. Marty
An early deadline prevents our commenting on the papal visit, the religious theme of the week. So, another topic: Last week we sighted the hard-to-miss, politically-minded preacher Rod Parsley of Ohio, who wants the Christian United States to wage wa...
April 21, 2008
Look at this Tangle of Thorns
Almost two weeks ago, Texas authorities raided the sprawling ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Acting on a call from a sixteen-year-old girl inside the compound who said she was being abused by her fifty-year-ol...
April 17, 2008
Rod Parsley on Islam — Martin E. Marty
William Franklin Graham famously called Islam a wicked and evil religion, but I don't think he called for its extinction through violence, as in war. Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo, a wild politician, did call for the bombing of Mecca to shatter t...
April 14, 2008
Polemics in Cyberspace — Adam Darlage
The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century has been credited by Reformation scholars as an important factor behind the success of sixteenth-century Church reformers. The impact of the new technology was nowhere more apparent than in...
April 10, 2008
The Pope on Immigration — Martin E. Marty
Pope Benedict XVI's U.S. visit next week during an election year will find him cast, willy nilly, in a political role. The chiding of Catholic voters, bishops and priests, and politicians who do not make enough of churchly anti-abortion positions wil...
April 7, 2008
Blood, Oil, and Prophets — Spencer Dew
The bludgeoning conclusion of Paul Thomas Anderson's much-lauded, Oscar-nominated film There Will Be Blood, which will be released next week on DVD, features a preacher forced to renounce his faith in God and admit charlatanry. Offering a mythic visi...
April 3, 2008
Conversion — Martin E. Marty
Many sincere religious changings occur through inter-faith marriages or after quiet searches, while the publicized, stormier versions of conversion produce what their left-behind communities call "apostates." The difference shows up terminologically;...
March 31, 2008
Brett Favre, Catholic Hero — Joseph Kip Kosek
Earlier this month, legendary Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre announced his retirement after seventeen years in the NFL. He walked away holding most of the major records at his position, and as much as any athlete of his time he attracted n...
March 27, 2008
Public Preaching — Martin E. Marty
Public Pulpits by friend Steven M. Tipton of Emory is a timely, historically-informed analysis of "Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life." The "pulpit" is largely metaphoric here, because Tipton's accent is on policy-m...