Sightings Articles
Taking the Unitarian Universalist Diversity Crisis Seriously
How did the Unitarian Universalist Association, a merger of two most liberal church bodies, escape notice in this column for two decades or so? Since it made big news (given its small size), it has received national attention for the past month, a no...
May 15, 2017
The Meaning of Religious Exemptions
Governmental recognition of religious liberty is a pressing issue in our current politics. The 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act states that a generally applicable federal statute may not substantially burden “a person’s exercise of religion” un...
May 11, 2017
How Life Should End
It was not hard for Sightings to spot a topic of importance this week. “How life ends: Death is inevitable. A bad death is not” was on the cover of The Economist (April 29th). Inside were stories with headlines like “How to have a better death” and “...
May 8, 2017
Being Hip-Hop, Being Job, and Being
Editor's Note: Today's issue is the second in a series of Sightings (perhaps we should say "Hearings," or "Listenings") on the manifold ways in which popular music intersects with religion. Be sure to check out the first installment, Paul DeCamp's "T...
May 4, 2017
"Shocking" News on Worship and the Public
The focus of Sightings is on the “public,” as in “public religion,” a concept which often leads to discussion of “church and state” affairs or “religion and public life.” The “private religion” of the sanctuary and temple does not often make news. Ye...
May 1, 2017
Religio-Secular... Again
A thesis about religion in American public life, which is Sightings’s interest: the “secularization thesis” is helpful when one is explaining change in religious institutions, practices, ideas, and influence. But it has its limits. The presumably con...
April 24, 2017
The Front National and the "Religion" of Ethnic Nationalism
The radical right is increasingly mainstream throughout Europe. Sarah de Lange notes how, since the 1990s, radical right-wing parties have joined coalition governments in Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, and...
April 20, 2017
Generosity Revisited
Sightings on Mondays cites books, but is not a book-reviewing publication. It does not often revisit previously published columns. We are not to advertise forthcoming events or products, including books. Though we seem to be tied up now in italicized...
April 17, 2017
The Broken Grace of Leonard Cohen
Editor's Note: The deaths of David Bowie, Prince, and Leonard Cohen; the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Bob Dylan; the public feud between then-President-elect Trump and the cast and creators of Hamilton; and other recent events have all served to un...