Sightings Articles
Stop Asking What the Bible Means to the President
A historian of the bible in America reflects on what Trump’s recent photo-op in front of St. John’s Church does (and doesn’t) mean...
June 8, 2020
Adiaphora
At about 11 p.m on May 27, a preacher in West Virginia named Randall "Mack" Wolford passed away from a rattlesnake bite he had sustained that afternoon. Wolford was a widely known advocate of serpent handling, practiced by a handful of Appalachian Pe...
June 14, 2012
Days of Disappointment
The Colorado Springs Gazette reported last July that a local woman had placed ads on ten bus-stop benches alerting passersby that Jesus Christ will return to earth on May 21, 2011. The woman is a believer in the eschatological calculations of one Har...
October 21, 2010
Here Be Nephites
The Book of Mormon is widely viewed as the quintessentially American scripture of a quintessentially American faith, but in strictly geographical terms this designation is more complicated than it might first appear. The Book’s modern manifestation ...
April 29, 2010
Look at this Tangle of Thorns
Almost two weeks ago, Texas authorities raided the sprawling ranch of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Acting on a call from a sixteen-year-old girl inside the compound who said she was being abused by her fifty-year-ol...
April 17, 2008
Lords of Kobol, Hear My Prayer: Religion and Faith on Battlestar Galactica
The Sci-Fi Channel's blockbuster show Battlestar Galactica has received heaps of praise from virtually all quarters. The show centers on the conflict in a faraway galaxy between humans and Cylons, a race of artificial, and often humanoid, beings firs...
June 8, 2006
Why Is It So Hard to Talk about Mormons?
It seems nearly impossible for those in the public discourse to talk evenly about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Commentators are given to hyperbole (the growth of Mormonism is "one of the great events in the history of religion," s...
January 26, 2006
I See Dead People
Body Worlds, an exhibit featuring over 200 preserved pieces of deceased human beings, opened in February at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. In addition to the sundry fragments, there are two dozen human individuals preserved whole, for the ...