Sightings Articles
God’s Commission: Evangelical Finance in Suburbia
Evangelical megachurches in suburban Chicagoland have faced serious challenges of late, and none more notable than the recent fall of Bill Hybels at South Barrington’s Willow Creek Community Church—a pastor and his flock fairly credited with paradigm...
June 2, 2019
Are Calls for Policy Change the New #ThoughtsAndPrayers?
“Lockdown.” To a parent, perhaps no word induces more panic. Last Wednesday (May 22), I received a text alert that my son’s elementary school was going on lockdown. A second alert from the University of Chicago Office of Safety and Security advised a...
May 30, 2019
Politics and Priestcraft: Oh, Where’s Our Voltaire?
In our postmodern, global, and increasingly divided society, few thin threads of shared conviction seem to bind us together. One of those spindly threads has been a rejection by many people of our Enlightenment heritage, which fueled democratic revo...
May 27, 2019
On the Trail of Millennial Religion with Detective Pikachu
Ed. Note: Warning: This column contains major spoilers for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. The recent film, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019), is the latest cinematic addition to the Pokémon series, the multimedia entertainment franchise that exploded ...
May 23, 2019
Rachel Held Evans, Gone and Soon Forgotten?
Christian feminist author Rachel Held Evans inspired fervent love (and fervent opposition) in her decade of public wrestling with faith. Her shocking death at age 37 prompted those who loved her to gather in the place where most of them met her, the...
May 16, 2019
Exemplars, If Not Saints
one way of finding relief from the attention given to the high and mighty this turn around the sun...
May 13, 2019
“And a Child Shall Lead Them”
Recently, eight teenagers went through confirmation classes at a United Methodist Church in Omaha, Nebraska, and when the time came for them to join the church, they said thanks, but no thanks. Instead, on Easter Sunday, they read a letter to their c...
May 9, 2019
Mormonism’s LGBTQ Prophetic Voices
Last weekend, Matt Easton came out as a “gay son of God” in his valedictorian speech at Brigham Young University’s (BYU) graduation ceremony. A video of his coming out went viral, receiving coverage by the national and international press. It might s...
May 6, 2019
The Cartoon and the Rabbi
Last Thursday, the international print edition of The New York Times published a cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog, with a human head and an unusually large nose, being walked by—or, perhaps, walking—President Donal...