Sightings Articles
Pakistan's Ahmadi Religious Minority: Attacked, Impoverished and Ghettoized
On May 28, 2010, in Lahore, Pakistan, armed men opened indiscriminate fire at worshippers offering Friday prayers. They killed about 100 people. After media outlets broke the news of this gruesome act of violence against ‘Muslims’ offering namaz in a...
May 12, 2016
Mega-Morality
The scope Sightings uses can be “tele-” (with a focus on the global) or “micro-” (for scoping on things close-up.) Today we focus on the parochial, a word related to “parish,” because often the most revealing themes of religion occur on that local an...
May 9, 2016
The Berned-Over District
Writing from Rochester, NY, a week ahead of the recent New York Democratic Presidential primary, D. D. Guttenplan likened the fervor surrounding Bernie Sanders’s political moment to the Protestant religious revivals that consumed that same region in ...
May 5, 2016
Hilary Putnam (1926-2016): A Philosopher of Science's Late-Life Return to His Native Judaism
Students and scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines will be familiar with Hilary Putnam. Born in Chicago, in 1926, to secular-Jewish parents who championed Communism, a political cause he likewise espoused for much of his life, Putnam tur...
April 28, 2016
Pornography and Prince
“Pornography” had been the planned Sightings topic today, thanks to a column in Christian Headlines (April 20) by best-selling author and radio broadcaster Eric Metaxas. He celebrated the fact that “wonder of wonders, America’s leading news sources” ...
April 25, 2016
France's Incomplete Citizens and Why Some Put Islam First
The aftermath of last year's Paris terrorist attacks. ...
April 21, 2016
Religion Coverage
No writer about religion has reason to complain that too little has been happening in “the world of religion.” ...
April 18, 2016
Conscience
“Surprised!” is the rarest response of almost everyone to the long-awaited papal document on the joy of love (Amoris Laetitia). So devotedly had Pope Francis and Catholic episcopal leadership pondered and worked on the new 256-page document on the fa...
April 11, 2016
Explained: Religion, the Birth-Control Controversy and the Supreme Court
The facts are complicated, hard for the press to report....