Sightings Articles
Give Me That Old-Time Atheism
Is there a new-er conversation about atheism brewing? And, if so, what might it offer religion?...
October 21, 2019
A Pilgrim and Her Progress
I’m not able not to read Jia Tolentino. Initially compelled just by her name, she has easily held my ongoing attention with a prose at once lyrical and smart, and a perspective apposite in its topics and utterly different from my own. She teaches me ...
June 17, 2019
The Epistemology of Frida's Closet
Frida Kahlo is once again the subject of a major exhibition....
April 15, 2019
The Bible as/and Literature
W. W. Norton & Company’s recent publication of Robert Alter’s The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary is at once a cultural accomplishment of a very high order, and an opportunity to think about the places and the spaces that “the Bible” occu...
February 18, 2019
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Civil Religion
Civil religion in America...
January 21, 2019
In Memoriam
“A man’s religion must not give the lie to the world in which he lives.”...
December 17, 2018
A Firm Purpose of Amendment
A dimension of our public life that is in one respect readily sighted yet in another perhaps too easily slighted is the repetitive nature of certain specific forms of violence and violation that disrupt civic life. Shootings in schools and various pu...
November 19, 2018
Native Sons? Of Gilded and Guilty Ages in the Windy City
Ed. Note: Both the Monday and Thursday columns this week feature current and recent exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago. Stay tuned for Cynthia Lindner's reflections on the James Webb installation, "Prayer," currently on display at the Art In...