Sightings Articles
A Letter from Ground Zero -- Stephan Bouman
One way to treat the public role of "private" or "congregational" religion in a moment such as this one is through close-ups. I chose this e-mail because it is just such a close-up. It is from our friend Stephen Bouman, bishop of the Evangelical Luth...
September 13, 2001
Problems and Solutions in Theological Education -- Martin E. Marty
The classic professions, medicine, law, and religion, have long had distinctive cultures. One shared element of these cultures is the desire among physicians, lawyers, and clerics to assess their respective professional cultures, to look for trends, ...
September 10, 2001
Giving Christians Credit -- Jonathan Ebel
One needs to go no further than the mailbox to notice the current strength of the credit card industry. Offers for new cards pour in daily. Last week, Newsweek subscribers read the cover story "Maxed Out," a discussion of credit card spending and the...
August 29, 2001
Reflecting on Public School Teachers and Religion -- Martin E. Marty
Hoping to remove some uncertainty from discussions of the legal place of religion in public schools, Clifford Mayes and Scott Ellis Ferrin published a study of public school teachers' "views about the place of religion and spirituality in the classro...
August 27, 2001
The Simpsons through the Lens of Faith -- Mark I. Pinsky
George Bush the Elder once denounced it; his wife Barbara called it dumb. Former Education Secretary William Bennett questioned its values. For more than a decade The Simpsons has generated its share of criticism. Many consider the show to be abrasiv...
August 23, 2001
Faith-based Energy Policies -- Martin E. Marty
Bjorn Lomborg of Denmark will get good press in the coming weeks for his new book The Skeptical Environmentalist. Like many born-again-to-a-cause sorts, he is motivated by revenge on his own intellectual past as a self-described left-wing Greenpeacer...
August 20, 2001
God and Business -- James K. Wellman, Jr.
"God and Business" was the title of Fortune's July ninth cover story. Two years ago Business Week led with a similar article, "Religion in the Workplace." Both examine the changing place of religion in business or, using the preferred term, spiritual...
August 8, 2001
Drama and the Divine -- Martin E. Marty
Sighting evidences of religion in the theater is not difficult these days, if Celia Wren's report in the New York Times, 29 July 2001, is accurate. Finding audiences that do not squirm when religion does show up, or finding actors who feel comfortabl...
August 6, 2001
Is Faith Fungible? -- Sheila Seuss Kennedy
One of the enduring complaints leveled by culture warriors is that religion has been ejected from the public square, that people of faith have been marginalized by a liberal elite more concerned with tolerance than Truth. The recurrent attempts to...
August 1, 2001
Two Pictures of American Religion
The front page of the Chicago Tribune Metro section for July fifth shows two pictures of religion in America that capture well its ambivalence as a public force. The first story concerns Hindu leader Mata Amritandandamayi. The accompanying co...