Sightings Articles
Commonweal's "Bishops and Religious Liberty" — Martin E. Marty
"The Bishops and Religious Liberty," the cover topic in Commonweal this week, brings together opinion by six Catholics who know their way around and through issues of "church and state." What prompts the issue is the action by Roman Catholic bishops ...
June 11, 2012
The Voice and Media (Mis)Characterization — David B. Capes
Martin E. Marty's article "Annenberg Poll on Religion in the Media" brought to our attention a recent survey: "Most Americans Say Media Coverage of Religion Too Sensationalized." I saw that side of the media firsthand. On April 17 I was interviewed b...
June 7, 2012
The Gospel According to the Other Mary — Martin E. Marty
The scopes of Sightings, assigned to focus on “public religion,” often deal with religion in public affairs, particularly politics, economics, and the like. There one spots most media coverage of religion, but for many believers and onlookers the foc...
June 4, 2012
The Wrong Side of White by W. Paul Reeve
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) has consistently found itself on the wrong side of white. In a recent New York Times article, "Black Mormons and the Politics of Identity," an embedded video begins with a Times reporter com...
May 31, 2012
Father Andrew Greeley by Martin E. Marty
Sightings does not conventionally review books, but one book has been on my desk for months as a prompt for something on which I wanted to comment. This week, fortuitously, friend Kevin Christiano of Notre Dame, knowing of my interest in the subject,...
May 28, 2012
Whatever's Possessed Nicki Minaj? One Rapper's Riff on the Demonic by David Mihalyfy
Rapper Nicki Minaj's new album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded debuted at the top of the Billboard Charts and is still selling strong in its seventh week of release. Thanks to its success and its titular alter ego Roman Zolanski, the talented and audacio...
May 24, 2012
Whites in the Minority by Martin E. Marty
On May 17 the New York Time's headline read "Whites Account for Under Half of Births in U.S.; Tipping Point Reached; Implications for Politics, the Economy and a Nation's Identity." On the same day The Wall Street Journal underscored this "birth" the...
May 21, 2012
Beating the Drums of Orientalism by Zainab Saleh
The US occupation of Iraq, coupled with its attendant deployment of sectarianism as a political technology, has foreclosed the possibility of non-sectarian modes of seeing or critiquing political life in Iraq. In an article originally published by Th...
May 17, 2012
Jewish Values by Martin E. Marty
The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), alongside Gallup and Pew and other polling agencies--scored big this month. Right in the midst of the treated-as-cosmic discussion of "same-sex" marriage, a not-unnoticed media fest—PRRI released a poll ...
May 14, 2012
Spring Sprung in 1964
Next October Christian communities will begin a "year of faith" by marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council. That council took place astride the monumental ripsaw challenges to modern ecclesial life, and widely within the themat...