Sightings Articles
Mary's Late Arrival to the United States by Joseph Laycock
On December 8, 2010, Our Lady of Good Help, a tiny shrine in Champion, Wisconsin, became the first Marian apparition site in the United States to receive official church approval. David L. Ricken, bishop of Green Bay, concluded a two-year investigati...
March 31, 2011
Muslims, Middle Schoolers, and Lawsuits — Joseph Laycock
In May, Wellesley Middle School took a class field trip to see the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury. The curriculum had previously included field trips to a synagogue as well as performances of gospel music and lectures by...
October 14, 2010
Modern Exorcism: Trading Autonomy for Demonology by Joseph Laycock
Last month, a feature in the online magazine Details told the story of Kevin Robinson, a gay teenager from Connecticut. Brought up in a Pentecostal household, Kevin first came out to his family when he was sixteen. His mother, refusing to accept ho...
July 8, 2010
Penitents Compete and the Future of Turkish Secularism — Joseph Laycock
Recently Turkish television station Kanal T announced a new game show in which representatives from four different world religions will try to convert atheists. The show’s title Tövbekarlar Yarisiyor translates roughly asPenitents Compete. Each epi...
November 16, 2009
Hyper-Muscular Christianity by Joseph Laycock
In Seattle, self-described "charismatic Calvinist" Mark Driscoll preaches that "Jesus is a pride fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand, and the willingness to make someone bleed. That is a guy I can worship...I cannot worship a guy...
February 19, 2009
The Creation Museum — Joseph Laycock
Last summer I took a road-trip to Kentucky to see the new Creation Museum. The twenty-seven million dollar museum was established by the Biblical apologist movement Answers in Genesis (AiG). The movement teaches that the earth is only six thousand ye...