Sightings Articles
Five Religious Approaches to Thinking about Meat Eating — Carol J. Adams
When one introduces the topic of the ethics of meat eating, a debate about religion will often follow. Scriptural texts will be invoked either for or against the practice. In short order, the diets of the Buddha, Mohammed, or Jesus will be considered...
July 19, 2012
The Liberalization of Judaism: Redefining Religion in Israel? — Marc H. Ellis
Recent articles in the Israeli and American Jewish press heralded or opposed the recent Israeli Supreme Court ruling that opens up aspects of Israeli religious life to the more liberal streams of organized Judaism. Most American Jews seem to welcome ...
July 12, 2012
Marrying in the New York Times — Martin E. Marty
Picture an archaeologist or anthropologist centuries from now coming across a Sunday New York Times from our times. He or she might wonder what light the relic would throw on tribal customs like marrying in 2012. (We are assuming that marriage will s...
July 9, 2012
A "Justice General Assembly" for Unitarian Universalists — Dan McKanan
Delegates to this year's Unitarian Universalist General Assembly tried something new. Together with local partners in Phoenix, Arizona, they convened a "Justice General Assembly" challenging the human rights abuses inherent in the United States immig...
July 5, 2012
The Year 2000? — Martin E. Marty
"Forecaster of the Future, Is Dead at 81" headlines the obituary of Anthony J. Wiener in the New York Times. He and Herman Kahn in 1967 co-authored The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years, a book much favored by then...
July 2, 2012
Translating the Trinity for Muslims — Sarah Yardney
An online consortium for ministry to Muslims, Biblical Missiology, has accused Wycliffe Bible Translators of dismantling the Trinity, the Christian doctrine that God is three persons in one, in their translations of the Bible for Muslims. They claim ...
June 28, 2012
Southern Baptist Decline — Martin E. Marty
The two "big kids on the block" of American denominationalism are making front-page and prime-time news this early summer in ways which crowd out other stories of events and trends in most other groups. Only the Mormons are in competition for the spo...
June 25, 2012
Meat: An Ethical Challenge for Theologians
Last month the New York Times Magazine ran a contest inviting essayists to argue for eating meat. According to Ariel Kaminer, the Times' Ethicist, the five contest judges are "some of the strongest ethical critics of meat, or at least of the way we c...
June 20, 2012
Lonely Priest — Martin E. Marty
Surveys, statistics, data, graphs, and trend studies have their place when we look at and analyze the "church life" (and "synagogue life," and all the rest) that makes up a major part of "public religion," (our weekly topic) in American life. They te...
June 18, 2012
Adiaphora
At about 11 p.m on May 27, a preacher in West Virginia named Randall "Mack" Wolford passed away from a rattlesnake bite he had sustained that afternoon. Wolford was a widely known advocate of serpent handling, practiced by a handful of Appalachian Pe...