Sightings Articles
The Cardinal and His Popes
The tension between Cardinal Burke and Pope Francis offers a window into the state of Roman Catholicism in the world and American religion....
December 13, 2023
Weary (and Wary) of Decisions, Opinions, and Polemics? Religious Wisdom Would Like a Word
Religion that is prescribed by a privileged few to control the lives of the many obfuscates human dignity, limits and cheapens life abundant, substitutes the trivial for the transcendent, and elevates a cruel justice that cannot admit its need for me...
July 1, 2022
The Power of Belief in Conspiracy Theories
People who subscribe to QAnon maintain that Donald Trump remains the “true” president... why would anyone believe this?...
December 17, 2021
On Social Dissolution: Lost Threads and Forgotten Dogmas
From passing conversations on the street to extended news commentaries on air and online, it is hard to miss the pervasive sense of social breakdown....
September 23, 2021
Loss and Continuation: Lessons from the Popol Vuh
An ancient Maya tradition on keeping those we've lost alive...
June 10, 2021
They Called Him Billy
Several years ago, my wife, Katherine, and I spent a week researching letters that Americans sent to the evangelist Billy Graham, who died in 2018 at age 99. One day we stumbled on an undiscovered cache of children’s messages. They provide a window i...
September 5, 2019
A Season of Myths
“Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (Götzendämmerung) This past week people in the USA entered the “season of myths” that runs from Thanksgiving through various religious holi...
November 26, 2018
Nonwhitesome Mormons
Mormons, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, represent only about two percent of the American people, but “everybody” knows something or other about them. Ask your neighbor to discuss the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)...
September 25, 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...