Sightings Articles
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Updating the American Spirit
The commencement season has commenced, and in some places ended, for this spring. Having read reports of or seen televised ceremonies, we in the public could find inspiration or reasons for despairing. In cases where the occasions at colleges and uni...
May 22, 2017
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Taking the Unitarian Universalist Diversity Crisis Seriously
How did the Unitarian Universalist Association, a merger of two most liberal church bodies, escape notice in this column for two decades or so? Since it made big news (given its small size), it has received national attention for the past month, a no...
May 15, 2017
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How Life Should End
It was not hard for Sightings to spot a topic of importance this week. “How life ends: Death is inevitable. A bad death is not” was on the cover of The Economist (April 29th). Inside were stories with headlines like “How to have a better death” and “...
May 8, 2017
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"Shocking" News on Worship and the Public
The focus of Sightings is on the “public,” as in “public religion,” a concept which often leads to discussion of “church and state” affairs or “religion and public life.” The “private religion” of the sanctuary and temple does not often make news. Ye...
May 1, 2017
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Religio-Secular... Again
A thesis about religion in American public life, which is Sightings’s interest: the “secularization thesis” is helpful when one is explaining change in religious institutions, practices, ideas, and influence. But it has its limits. The presumably con...
April 24, 2017
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Generosity Revisited
Sightings on Mondays cites books, but is not a book-reviewing publication. It does not often revisit previously published columns. We are not to advertise forthcoming events or products, including books. Though we seem to be tied up now in italicized...
April 17, 2017
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An Irrelevant War?
Thursday the United States observed the centennial of its entry into World War I, a move which, historians like to say, “changed everything.” The nation lost 116,000 troops while nine million lives were lost worldwide. The map of Europe was reconfigu...
April 10, 2017
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Niebuhr and the Situation
Millennials are often accused of whatever particular accusers want to assign to their victims of choice. One charge, among so many others, is that they do not know or care about history. Teachers of undergraduates note how frequently they find their ...
April 3, 2017
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Not Wishy-Washy
“Watered-down,” “characterless,” “irresolute,” “sapless,” “bland,” “namby-pamby,” and “diluted,” are some synonyms for “wishy-washy,” a word some critics say I use too often when I write about or discuss what is unproductive in interfaith (and other ...
March 27, 2017
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Humanities Endangered
Editor's note: We will be off this Thursday for the University's spring interim. See you next week! In and after the present chaos, should our republic survive as a republic, wounded but responsible citizens will need to assess what they lost and ...