Sightings Articles

Rainbow Pride flag, transgender flag, and American flag

social justice | hypocrisy | holiday

Sightings and Sorrows of Religion

While religion should motivate efforts to alleviate hatred and dehumanization, it often finds itself wrapped up in these social evils....

June 22, 2023
burnt amazon forrest

environmentalism | political religion | social justice

Human Goods, Environmental Evils

The same mastery of nature (human and nonhuman) that has made civilization possible now imperils us....

June 16, 2022
desmund tutu street art

Desmond Tutu | social justice | global Christianity

The Revolutionary Joy of Desmond Tutu

There is a danger in softening Tutu’s legacy, but we make the same mistake in the opposite direction if we forget his contagious, all-embracing joy....

January 6, 2022
no justice no peace

social justice | Black Church | Martin Luther King Jr.

On Prophetic Rage

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a prophetic rage that rejected the status quo and strove for a just and loving community: we should too....

October 21, 2021
earth viewed from space

stewardship of the earth | environment | social justice | Coronavirus

Will There Be Life On Earth?

An Earth Day reflection on trusting our eyes...

April 22, 2021
Walden Revisited

Religion and Literature | america | social justice

Thoreau's Ethics of Delight

Walden's religious quest for justice in a life of simple pleasures...

March 11, 2021
Warnock speaking at Ebenezer Baptist

Black Church | political religion | social justice

Georgia's Senate Elections and the Life of the Black Church

Senator-elect Warnock's victory shows that the institution that led the fight for civil rights has just as much vitality as ever...

January 7, 2021
Pope Francis

Pope Francis | Catholicism | social justice | conservatism

Catholicism and its Disconnects

The most recent Papal encyclical highlights longstanding fault lines in contemporary Catholicism...

November 16, 2020
First labor day parade in New York City, 1882

working class | Social Gospel | social justice | Religious Left

Labor Sunday

How American clergy in the 1920s turned from solidarity with workers to the mythology of the Good Christian Businessman...

September 7, 2020

mission trips | social justice | post-colonialism | Christian tourism | spiritual experience | compassion | globalizing economy | pilgrimage

I Survived a Short Term Mission Trip to Honduras! -- Brian Howell

This past summer, as I waited for my plane in Tegucigalpa, I browsed one of the airport’s many gift shops looking for something for my 14-year-old son and found, among the soccer jerseys and dried toads, a bright orange T-shirt emblazoned with a colo...

September 18, 2014