Sightings Articles
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
Something Rotten in the State of Denmark
The recent decision by the Danish parliament to ban the burka and niqab was not as severe as its most vocal proponents desired. Prison time will not be a mandatory punishment, for instance. Nor is the law as wide-ranging as many Danes, including thos...
June 14, 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
Religion Professors Become Flashpoint in Campus Culture Wars
Editor’s Note: Last week, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the story of Dr. Alison Downie, an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, who earlier this year became a target of righ...
June 7, 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
A Public Theologian from "Atheist" Czechia: Tomáš Halík Turns Seventy
Czech theologian, sociologist, and Catholic priest Tomáš Halík (born June 1, 1948) will soon become a septuagenarian. By any measure, Halík has lived a remarkable life that has helped intellectually and spiritually shape a great number of people from...
May 31, 2018
The Achievement of James H. Cone
James Hal Cone (August 5, 1938 – April 28, 2018), the Bill and Judith Moyers Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, has done what few have accomplished in human history. He developed a new acade...
May 24, 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
Photographing Faith
Today’s issue of Sightings is by Lauren Pond, a documentary photographer who specializes in religion and faith. You can read her essay—and see examples of her extraordinary work—here. Lauren will be speaking about her book, Test of Faith: Signs, S...
May 17, 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...