Sightings Articles
Parable of the Times
Editor’s Note: This is the third article in our continuing series on religion and science fiction (both terms capaciously defined). Read the first two pieces in this series—Audrey Thompson’s “‘Cross’-examining the Biblical Witness in War for the Plan...
January 25, 2018
Pope Francis Fallible?
Between or after sessions at Vatican II, a circle of us “guests” were conversing with—which meant “listening to”—the Pope. (How’s that for name-dropping on a wintry day?) In one exchange, as my late colleague Robert M. Grant recalled it, the Pope mis...
January 22, 2018
Trump and the Inward Light
The U.S. president’s unilateral decision in December 2017 to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel understandably precipitated a storm of protest in the world of Realpolitik, and was immediately condemned almost unanimously by the United Natio...
January 18, 2018
Civil Religion and Civil Battles
In the time that’s elapsed since Sightings published my essay “Redefining the American Civil Religion” (October 6, 2017), it seems that positions of those on both ends of the political spectrum have hardened, while those in the center have become eve...
January 18, 2018
Trumpism Redux
Editor’s Introduction In the summer and fall of 2016, during the run-up to the U.S. presidential election, Sightings published a series of essays on the Trump phenomenon, or “Trumpism” (if such a thing can in fact be defined), and what it revealed...
January 18, 2018
Intense Religion and Donald Trump
Many people were surprised when Donald Trump became U.S. president, considering him a long-shot candidate with a message more suited to the past than the present. But despite, and in some ways because of, social change, intensely religious Americans ...
January 18, 2018
Moody and Moody
Trying to do some justice to some aspects of some parts of American public life, namely the religious, keeps many scholars and reporters busy, and provides a vocation for some of us. At Sightings we recognize that it is not hard to sight headlined or...
January 15, 2018
Where the Millennials Are
In his Sightings column published on Monday, December 11, Martin Marty invites readers to attend to the “movements in the hearts” of millennials, rather than settling for obvious interpretations about their reputed absence from our pews: “Hard news a...
January 11, 2018
Tales of the Religious and the Secular
Setting our sights for another year of Sightings poses our colleagues, counselors, staff, and many presumed readers-to-be at the juncture of realities code-named “religious” and “secular.” We have learned and will continue to learn how difficult it i...
January 8, 2018
How I Failed J. Z. Smith
Editor’s Note: Jonathan Z. Smith, the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, passed away on December 30, 2017. I first heard about Jonathan Z. Smith on the second day of my secon...