Sightings Articles
Worldlings -- Martin E. Marty
"If you can't lick 'em, join 'em" could well have been the motto for CPs, conservative Protestants ["you"], in their relation to the world and the surrounding culture, especially popular culture ["'em"], during the past sixty years. Historians, and s...
October 14, 2002
Courting Vouchers -- Dan Malotky
This past summer, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the school voucher program, based on the pilot in inner-city Cleveland, did not constitute the establishment of religion and thus affirmed its constitutionality. The Supreme Court's ruling should not...
October 10, 2002
Dissenting Clergy -- Martin E. Marty
These days and weeks U. S. citizens are largely bystanders as the administration most fatefully ponders a religion-laden set of questions as to the when, how and why of attacking Iraq. No longer are religious leaders silent, as they seemed to be week...
October 7, 2002
Animal Prayers -- Mark Jerome Walters
Several winters ago I spent the night in a tiny koa-wood cabin in the cloud forests of Mauna Loa, as a thunderstorm swept over the 13,600 foot volcano. The windowpanes pulsed electric blue through the night. The next morning I stood outside and gazed...
October 3, 2002
Cell Groups -- Martin E. Marty
Let’s take Prison Fellowship Ministries’ (PFM) word for it: they say, and they may well be able to back it up, that they have a good record of retraining, resituating, and preventing reimprisonment of convicts with whom they work in Texas. Also worki...
September 30, 2002
“The Next Christianity,” A Reply -- Jon Pahl
A secular form of apocalyptic mythologizing, an anachronistic analogy, and debilitating denial make Philip Jenkins’ “The Next Christianity” a poor piece of public prophecy. The basic logic of the piece is a syllogism: a “supernaturalist” Christianity...
September 27, 2002
Christianity Past, Present, and Next -- Jonathan Ebel
Over the past twelve months, Islam has been the religion of concern in the American media. The scandals of the Catholic and Baptist Churches have taken some attention away, but understandably journalists have been assessing the role of Islam in local...
September 25, 2002
Dear Christian -- Lloyd W. Rodgers
Last week in West Georgia, the highly publicized Republican run-off for U.S. House District 11 raised valid questions regarding the public's perception of religion and politics. At the urging of Republican leadership and, one assumes, after a time of...
September 19, 2002
Catholic Stance -- Martin E. Marty
The Catholic one-fourth of America is easy to find when one does "Sightings." Catholic sociologists and polltakers are bringing to view attitudes, opinions, and stances that range far beyond anything that can be comprehended in the current crisis. Wi...
September 16, 2002
9/11: Light and Shadow -- Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez
Yesterday was a solemn time of remembrance and mourning in our nation, the first anniversary of September 11, 2001. Bells, and silence, tolled from the three disaster sites in Pennsylvania, Washington, and New York, and in ceremonies across the U.S. ...