Sightings Articles

unraveling flag

American religion | culture wars | 9/11 | sociology of religion

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
war on women protest

culture wars | sociology of religion | American public | political religion

Don't You Know There's a War On?

Thirty years after its publication, Culture Wars remains an essential guide to American politics.

September 17, 2021
lil nas x and shoe

culture wars | pop culture | Race and religion | LGBTQ | evil | music

Justice and the Devil in America

A controversy around the symbolisms of evil conceals the hardening of America's heart

April 26, 2021
Warnock

Black Church | liberation theology | political partisanship | culture wars

Raphael Warnock and the Ongoing Legacy of Black Liberation Theology

The myth of a monolithic Black theology at the heart of political scare tactics

April 5, 2021
Bathsheba mourning Uriah

Hebrew Bible | Biblical narratives | slavery | culture wars

Imagining History without Heroes and Villains

What the Hebrew Bible can teach Americans about reckoning with the fallenness of our nation's founders

September 14, 2020

culture wars | gun legislation | gun violence

Souls and the Guns of America

“Guns and the Soul of America” is the title of an important recent column by David Brooks (The New York Times, October 6th). Sightings writers do not claim to be experts on guns, but something or other about “souls” shows up in most of our semiweekly...

October 9, 2017

fundamentalism | social issues | culture wars | John Kerry | peace-making | religious freedom | stewardship of the earth | human good | community-building

Religion in Global Affairs

When in the 1980s Scott Appleby and I were first chartered to deal with one particular public expression of religion, the complex of militant fundamentalisms, we were confronted with a global scene for which we were not prepared. We soon found out al...

May 2, 2016

Dallin Oaks | culture wars | religious liberty | Mormons | Quorum of Twelve Apostles | Kim Davis | same-sex marriage

Mormon Options on "Church" and "State"

“I hate war!” was a clear denunciation voiced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1936. He was talking about real war five years before he had to lead the United States in the most destructive war in history. There are lesser wars in ...

October 26, 2015

Catholicism | culture wars | globalization | GLBTQ rights | global church

Christians Fighting Christians

Cynics, but not only cynics, like to observe, not always inaccurately, that Christians are never happy unless they are fighting—each other. Certainly, their scriptures have notes of militancy. Most of these signal fighting—evils at a distance or evil...

October 19, 2015

culture wars | David Brooks | Benedict Option | Christian conservatives | fundamentalism

Culture Wars About Culture Wars

“The Next Culture War,” a New York Times op-ed (June 30) by David Brooks, set off one of the high-level debates of this summer, and will be in the news for some time to come.   Brooks models a civil approach to controversy in his Friday night, on-c...

July 20, 2015