Sightings Articles
When the Private is Political by Caryn D. Riswold
Who imagined that the hot political topic in Spring 2012 would be contraception? That Rush Limbaugh would flame back into relevance for demanding that a Georgetown law student provide him and his buddies with sex tapes? That a religious organization ...
March 29, 2012
The Kingdom of Heaven and the IRS by Martin E. Marty
A Gentile (as in Russell P. Gentile) is the most recent, perhaps most earnest, certainly the boldest claimant, on the government and religion news front in the winter just past. While others have protested along the line of "separation of church and ...
March 26, 2012
Patriarchy's Persistent Bastion? Religion by Felice Lifshitz
In a March 8 Washington Post article ("Feminism's Final Frontier? Religion"), Lisa Miller predicted that American women would soon abandon the Republican party in droves, just as they are reportedly quitting conservative Christian churches in histori...
March 22, 2012
Sic Transit by Martin E. Marty
"Public religion," the rubric for these e-columns and the Center which issues them, often gets reduced to "religion and politics," but "public" has a broader reach. Included are, for example, the arts, education, and—yes!—dealing with God and church ...
March 19, 2012
Believing, Belonging, and Laughing in Little Mosque on the Prairie
The Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie is running its sixth and final season. The show first aired on the CBC (Canada's national broadcasting network) in 2007, drawing record numbers of viewers for a domestically produced show. The setting ...
March 15, 2012
Sighting Religion and Politics by Martin E. Marty
Almost fifty times a year the weekly Sightings by Martin E. Marty appears. Almost every time it is based on documentation from print or digital or electronic media: newspapers, blogs, films, etc. This week is different, not because our attempt to tre...
March 12, 2012
An American's Qur'an by Jonathan M. Bloom
Sandow Birk's American Qur'an project is the exception that proves the rule: for some fourteen hundred years manuscripts and—more recently—printed editions of the Qur'an have always been written in Arabic and have never been illustrated. Birk, an Ame...
March 8, 2012
Revelation by Martin E. Marty
The weekend just past found some of the oldest things in Western religion to be the subject of newest concern and debate. One instance: a book of the Christian Bible, the Apocalypse or Revelation of St. John, which is the main review in The New Yorke...
March 5, 2012
Matisyahu's Chasidic Reggae-Rap at the Boundaries of a Performative Israel by Meredisth Aska McBride
The Jewish reggae-rap-rock artist Matisyahu has recently been in the news for what may seem like a trivial reason: formerly a staunch Chasid, he appeared in public with his hair and beard completely shaven, saying that he no longer affiliates with Ch...
March 1, 2012
What Are the Jews? — Martin E. Marty
"What exactly are the Jews?" You'd think "we'd" know after their 350 years in America. "What are the Jews?" You'd think top Jewish scholars would know. You'd think Jews would know. No one is sure. Maybe anti-Semites think they know, but . . . . Top J...