Sightings Articles
Resident Aliens
the fast-changing world of religious life and publishing today....
September 22, 2014
I Survived a Short Term Mission Trip to Honduras! -- Brian Howell
This past summer, as I waited for my plane in Tegucigalpa, I browsed one of the airport’s many gift shops looking for something for my 14-year-old son and found, among the soccer jerseys and dried toads, a bright orange T-shirt emblazoned with a colo...
September 18, 2014
Hillsong -- Martin E. Marty
“Hillsong.” Never heard of Hillsong, the Australian Pentecostal megachurch? Readers of the New York Times have no excuse to be in the dark, thanks to the (Sept. 9) headlined story, “Megachurch with a Beat Lures a Young Flock.” The Times’ main reli...
September 15, 2014
Thirteen Years Later: Hearing Music on September 11 -- Joyce Shin
Like many people who were old enough to understand what was happening, I can recall exactly where I was and what I was doing when news reached me of the events in New York City on September 11, 2001. I was attending a monthly meeting in the Chaplai...
September 11, 2014
Drift Away -- Martin E. Marty
Smart-crack responses will not get one very far. Thus, when asked, “Are you a member of the organized church?” I can look at the chaos of polities and answer, “No, I am a Lutheran.” Then: “Do you believe in institutional religion?” I can answer, “may...
September 8, 2014
South Korea's Catholic Church: Poster Child for a Fresh Pontificate — Timothy S. Lee
When Pope Francis visited South Korea in mid-August, he participated in the Sixth Asian Youth Day, consoled parents of teenagers who had perished in a capsized ferry, expressed solidarity with women who had been forced into sexual bondage by the Japa...
September 4, 2014
Ferguson — Martin E. Marty
I am back to “sighting” for Sightings, after what the editor called an August “hiatus” and this scribe called a Summer “sabbatical.” Pleased to hear that we were missed, we are discussing whether (or not) to publish relentlessly through all the weeks...
September 1, 2014
GRACE against sex abuse — Martin E. Marty
GRACE acronates “Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.” Its story is well told in Kathryn Joyce’s “By Grace Alone,” an article in American Prospect (May/June; see “Sources,” below). Please read it, since it offers background and detai...
July 28, 2014
Myanmar: Buddhist-Muslim Tensions — David I. Steinberg
The Rohingya Muslim group on the Myanmar (Burma) side of the Bangladesh-Myanmar frontier are probably the most deprived people in East Asia; their plight is constantly in the international media, their conditions compelling (see Note below). These 80...