Sightings Articles
Taking God's Name in Vain — James L. Evans
After a long legal journey, the Supreme Court has finally heard Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, better known as the "Under God" case. A decision is expected later this spring. The particulars are well known: avowed atheist Michael New...
April 29, 2004
Behind the Count — Martin E. Marty
This week: a little essay on statistics and surveys. When I joined the Christian Century staff forty-eight years ago, the editors used to joke about how, when they were bored or the Letters to the Editor file was slim, they could evoke responses from...
April 26, 2004
The Anabaptist Colloquium — Adam Darlage
Tucked away about thirty miles southeast of South Bend, Indiana, sits Goshen College. Home of the Mennonite Historical Library (MHL) and the site where Harold S. Bender founded the Mennonite Quarterly Review (MQR) in 1927, it is regarded by many as t...
April 22, 2004
Compassion and Generation Next — Martin E. Marty
It cannot be lost on us academics, theologians, and other scholars that when it comes to "town meeting time" on campuses, the audiences are made up predominantly of older people. When I visit a campus, I meet a goodly number of alert and concerned st...
April 19, 2004
Tru-Envy? —Jon Pahl
I saw the first dandelion in my lawn yesterday, and today two advertisements for lawn care companies arrived in my mail-box. Call it a coincidence, but for many in America, such a conjunction of signs would be the trigger of a largely unconscious rel...
April 15, 2004
Muslim Youth Today —Martin E. Marty
Not in recent memory have "Christianity" and "Judaism" received more media attention than this year in Holy Week and during Passover. Magazine cover stories, television programs, films, and newspapers gave attention to Jesus, to Jewish meanings and p...
April 12, 2004
Mystically Correct — Seth Sanders
The Passion of the Christ has jolted Aramaic from peaceful senescence to play for the largest audience in its history. As a Semitic philologist who studied with the same teacher as the movie's translator, Father William Fulco, I wondered how Aramaic ...
April 8, 2004
Wilken's Sneak Peek — Martin E. Marty
No, I am not guilty of plagiarism or piracy, but I may be guilty of promotion: while the gist and meat of this column come directly from someone else's, Sightings will give full credit. So, no plagiarism. Promotion? Guilty. The column is "The ABC ...
April 5, 2004
Emergent Conversation — Brian McLaren
Martin Marty recently wrote a helpful review of the first of two Emergent conventions (www.emergentconvention.com) being held in 2004 (Sightings, March 22), concurrently with (but separate from) the National Pastors Conference. As a participant in th...
April 1, 2004
Prophetic Learning —Martin E. Marty
Sightings sees so many things that we who write it are not easily surprised by what we read. Surprised I was, however, by the penultimate paragraph and punch line in a David Brooks op-ed (New York Times, March 22), which seemed to be leading to a pit...