Sightings Articles
In Memory of Steven Collins
Steven Collins (1951-2018) was Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities in the University of Chicago’s Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and in the Divinity School’s History of Religions program. A world-renowned scholar of t...
March 1, 2018
Cultural Disintegration
“Cultural disintegration” is a useful description of what commentators and publics consistently witness these years. Left and right, liberal and conservative, male and female (etc.), old and young, all observe and chronicle the signs of it. The histo...
February 26, 2018
A Life So Forcefully Lived
Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is. Howe...
February 22, 2018
Evangelical Identity Crises
The champion among contenders for a “crisis” of experience and identity these years is American evangelicalism, which was born from the crises of the eighteenth century, and has been part of the Protestant package ever since. Polls, the press, and fo...
February 19, 2018
How the Rabbi Ties His Shoes
Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is. Howe...
February 15, 2018
Faith and Enlightenment in Dark Times
Tomorrow, Viking will publish Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, from which The Wall Street Journal ran an adapted excerpt on Saturday. To counter the profound gloom which is both fashionable and ...
February 12, 2018
Marty, Teacher
Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is. Howe...
February 8, 2018
The Great Notice-er
Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is. Howe...
February 5, 2018
A Glacial Sense of Time
Editor’s Note: This month we are celebrating both the twentieth anniversary of the Martin Marty Center and the ninetieth birthday of Martin Marty. Marty would say that our focus ought to be on the Center, not on him, and for the most part it is. Howe...
February 1, 2018
Biblical Translation Leads to Tussles, Clashes
One scholar, N. T. Wright, reviewing another, David Bentley Hart, prompted a response from the latter that the former’s writing was a “catalogue of complaints” by someone whose work “suffers from a dangerous combination of the conventional and the id...