Sightings Articles
Trusting Olajuwon — Martin E. Marty
The interpreters at the Divinity School whence these Sightings issue cultivate "the hermeneutics of suspicion." In other words, they refine their anti-gullibility sensibilities. Such an approach is urgent in a time when there are legitimate reasons t...
February 21, 2005
Liberation or Betrayal? — Brent A. Smith
We live in an age and a country that struggles to distinguish partisan politics and social policy from religious values and proclamations. The legal recognition of gay marriage, for instance, is opposed by some for violating God's will and Old Testam...
February 17, 2005
Under Many Influences — Martin E. Marty
Charles E. Curran of Southern Methodist University asks a question people in his business and mine often get asked: "Where have all the dominant theologians gone?" (National Catholic Reporter, February 4, 2005). He notes that last year marked the cen...
February 14, 2005
More Than a Game — Joseph L. Price
More than any other single event in American sports culture, the Super Bowl enjoys the sanction of the government as a high holiday for American civil religion. In the final sequence of pre-game ceremonies last Sunday, two previous presidents, iden...
February 10, 2005
The Sound of No Hands Clapping — Martin E. Marty
We (Alexis de) Tocquevilleans enjoy that great French genius's enjoyment of the United States in the nineteenth century, and like to laud his laudatory comments on Democracy in America. Most praiseworthy was his praise of Americans for boundary-bre...
February 7, 2005
Myth and the War on Terror — Hugh Nicholson
"In desperate situations man will always have recourse to desperate means — and our present day political myths have been such a desperate means." Thus the philosopher Ernst Cassirer reflected on the then recent events of National Socialism in light ...
February 3, 2005
Club Evangelical — Martin E. Marty
James Madison, who had a thing or two to do with constitutional matters in the early republic, wanted a "line of separation" between "the rights of religion and the Civil authority." At a recent workshop where I elaborated on that theme, a colleague ...
January 31, 2005
A Place for Prayer? -- Michael Kessler
At the 2001 Presidential Inauguration, Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell's benediction concluded on a controversial note: "We respectfully submit this humble prayer in the name that's above all other names, Jesus, the Christ. Let all who agree say, 'Amen.'" Cal...
January 27, 2005
Proselytizing in Disaster — Martin E. Marty
By Saturday, January 22, the new dominating theme in the coverage of tsunami relief was the controversy over whether U.S.-based religious groups were using their aid efforts to "proselytize" and "exploit" the people to whom they were extending physic...
January 24, 2005
Extreme Makeover: Bible Edition -- Jeremy Biles
A recent CBS news article reported on "the biggest trend in making Christianity more mainstream": the "reshaping of the Bible into a contemporary format" ("Bible Magazines: Big Sellers," December 29, 2004). Thomas Nelson, Inc., is the vanguard of thi...