Sightings Articles
The Prosperity (Anti-)Gospel
Pastor Rick Henderson’s name may not be familiar to many readers, but he recently preached a sermon and wrote a report which he hopes will reach publics new to his chosen theme. In a recent blast mediated through The Huffington Post, he gets our atte...
July 23, 2018
Martha Nussbaum Faces Our Fears
“Our summer of fear” was a headline that greeted us one day this week. It captioned Christopher Borrelli’s published “conversation with Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum” (Chicago Tribune, July 9). The other three dailies which arrived the same mor...
July 16, 2018
The Morality of Mister Rogers
Sightings deadlines arrive around weekends. As a public service in these dark times, we at the Center like to help spread some Sabbath cheer, a TGIF—“Thank God It’s Friday”-like—relief from the drabness-cum-terror which colors, or discolors, so much ...
July 9, 2018
"Kill the Indian in the Child"
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has verified reports and testimony by survivors—they do not call themselves “graduates” or “alumni”—of First Nations schools, whose mission had long been announced: “kill the Indian in the child.” Fol...
July 2, 2018
Catholic Identity: A Balancing Act?
Early in my writing career I set out to describe a certain posture or pose, and chose—pretentiously, I admit—to speak of an “equilibristic stance.” The article which included this ungainly phrase was then translated into German, where it appeared, au...
June 24, 2018
But Who's Counting?
The “Global North” is where most Sightings readers live. In his new book Crusade and Jihad (Yale, 2018), historian William R. Polk includes in this neighborhood China, Russia, Europe, Britain, and America, plus, presumably, “et cetera.” His subtitle ...
June 18, 2018
Fifty Years after Humanae Vitae, Is Opposition to Birth Control a Lost Cause?
Summer 1968: Breaking News—Fury Greets Catholic Condemnation of Contraception in Humanae vitae. Summer 2018: Breaking News—Apathy Greets Fiftieth Anniversary of Humanae vitae. Fifty summers ago, Catholics and their fellow believers and fellow c...
June 11, 2018
Sing, Choirs of... Atheists?
Since Sightings sights theisms, it must also pay attention to alternatives to them in our pluralistic culture. These include non-, a-, anti-, counter-, para-, et cetera. One thing we’ve never written about is “sung” atheism. That changes today, becau...
June 4, 2018
Too Many Liberals in the Liberal Arts?
Sightings on Mondays is conceived of as being politically nonpartisan, so it is rare to feature the words “Republican” and “Democrat” as we do this week. The terms sneak in here because they are key to the main point of our source today, an article t...
May 21, 2018
Jimmy Carter (and Hope) in the News
“True evangelical hope,” a headline in the current (May 23) Christian Century, drew and held my attention this week. It signaled an interview by Elizabeth Palmer with President Jimmy Carter. They got right to the point of “evangelical” issues and con...