Sightings Articles
Twilight of the Icons — Jeremy Biles
Among contemporary America's many media spectacles, professional wrestling is perhaps the most spectacular. Indeed, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the most prominent "all-star" wrestling outlet, can hardly be matched for its sheer grandiloquenc...
October 23, 2003
Does Religion Make a Difference? — Martin E. Marty
Social scientists and news people who report on religion often get asked whether they are "pro" or "con" religion, or pro or con this or that religion. If they are fair-minded, as we expect them to be, they report on the highs and lows, the ups and d...
October 20, 2003
Proximities: Old and New — Michael A. Johnson
In the aftermath of September 11th, journalists and commentators are often at a loss to describe the complex interaction of religion, culture, and current events. As "moderns," it was assumed that we could describe events using the value-neutral voca...
October 16, 2003
Evangelicals: Right and Might — Martin E. Marty
Business and commerce may represent the most secular sector of our common life, but the daily paper that covers business and commerce has "got religion." Especially on Fridays, the Wall Street Journal notices faith and the faiths, and we like to moni...
October 13, 2003
The New Freedom of Public Religion — John Witte, Jr.
Thomas Jefferson's metaphor of "a wall of separation between church and state" has become for many the source and summary of American religious freedom. Indeed, many within and beyond these borders think Jefferson's words are enshrined in the First A...
October 9, 2003
Catholic Rogues — Martin E. Marty
The New Anti-Catholicism, a book by Philip Jenkins, (Oxford) is occasioning some finger-pointing. Who is guilty? Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, Fundamentalist Protestants, Pentecostal Protestants, and African-American Protestants. Jus...
October 6, 2003
Women and American Religion — Catherine A. Brekus
What difference does it make to include women's stories in our narratives of American religious history? This is the question that more than 40 historians will consider at an upcoming conference on Women and American Religion: Reimagining the Past...
October 2, 2003
Religious Pluralism — Martin E. Marty
"Pluralism" is a word with plural meanings. In America it refers mainly to the way citizens live with a polity and with practices that recognize diversity and assure civil peace in the face of it. However, in theology in recent years there is also a ...
September 29, 2003
Cracking the Da Vinci Code
Besieged by requests for my reaction to The Da Vinci Code, I finally decided to sit down and read it over the weekend. It was a quick romp, largely fun to read, if rather predictable and preachy. This is a good airplane book, a novelistic thriller th...
September 24, 2003
Do-gooders — Martin E. Marty
Sightings sights surveys. Opinion polls are attractive to social scientists, who are attractive to us. They provide one means at least of measuring what people think and do on the "public religion" front. All surveys are flawed, but we won't go into ...