Sightings Articles
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YouVersion: Digitizing, Mobilizing, and Consuming the Word of God -- Sara-Jo Swiatek
This past July, the popular mobile Bible app, YouVersion, was featured in a New York Times article, cleverly titled “In the Beginning Was the Word; Now the Word Is on an App.” The article appeared shortly after YouVersion reached 100 million download...
November 21, 2013
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Church Snakes and State Law -- Martin E. Marty
“Asserting a God-Given Right to Snakes” is the kind of headline which can grab attention in the midst of news-of-the-week about the Affordable Care Act, the catastrophic typhoon in the Philippines, and other beckoners for public notice. (The New York...
November 18, 2013
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Jean Bethke Elshtain and Religion: The Scholar Who Would Not Be Constrained (1941-2013) -- Debra Erickson
Jean Bethke Elshtain was an unusual scholar of religion. ...
November 14, 2013
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State Sanctioned Prayer -- Martin E. Marty
Let us pray: “in the name of the one who came, and died, and rose again that we might have eternal life—Jesus Christ our Lord—Amen.” Thus Dr. Robert Jeffress, “pastor of the 11,000 member First Baptist in Dallas, Texas, and daily radio broadc...
November 11, 2013
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Alas, Poor Vatican II! I Knew It Well
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church. Why is Vatican II, as some have nicknamed it, still relevant today? Vatican II marked a liberal, soul-searching openness of the Roman Catholic Chur...
November 7, 2013
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Mormons and Native Americans -- Martin E. Marty
Good news for readers who are weary of some subjects which are naturally covered in Sightings: here is a story about some Native Americans and about Mormons who work among them. It concerns the efforts by certain Latter-day Saints to serve the people...
November 4, 2013
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Hispanic Muslims? An In-depth Look at a Little Known but Growing U.S. Minority — Ken Chitwood
In the early 1990s, the media took notice of the estimated 40,000-200,000 Hispanic Muslims living in the U.S. and started to chronicle their stories and their “reversions” (the preferred term of Hispanic Muslims who view conversion as a return to His...
October 31, 2013
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Evangelical Pullback/Retreat - Martin E. Marty
The public is getting used to headlines like these: “Evangelical Leader Preaches Pullback from Culture Wars” and “Southern Baptists Sounding Full-scale Retreat in Culture War?” The former is from The Wall Street Journal and the latter from Renew Amer...
October 28, 2013
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Christian or Not, Ghanaians Continue to Rely on Traditional Healers - Alice Brown
Ghana is a predominately Christian country, with only a small fraction of the population following “traditional” religious practices. According to a 2010 census, 71 percent of Ghana’s 25 million people identify themselves as Christian, while only 5 p...
October 24, 2013
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Thanksgiving and Secularization — Martin E. Marty
Having had enough of talk about Congress and the Affordable Care Act and “default,” let’s look ahead, not back. I propose a glance at the calendar, with Thanksgiving Day several weeks off. It is in the news already because Macy’s stores, one of which...