Sightings Articles
A Biblical Attack on the Capitol?
The alternative facts and faulty exegesis behind Evangelicals' "Biblical worldview."
January 14, 2021
Paula White and the Mainstreaming of American Pentecostalism
Trump's appointment of Paula White is an indicator of shifting lines within the Christian right
November 7, 2019
How Evangelicalism is Shaping College Football
Considering Evangelicalism's role in shaping the economy of college football.
September 26, 2019
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
Tangled in Apocalyptic Thought
President Donald Trump had a historic day on August 21, 2019. In less than twenty-four hours, he was declared “like the King of Israel” by conservative commentator (and Jewish convert to Christianity) Wayne Allen Root, and declared himself, in an ent...
September 2, 2019
A Pilgrim and Her Progress
I’m not able not to read Jia Tolentino. Initially compelled just by her name, she has easily held my ongoing attention with a prose at once lyrical and smart, and a perspective apposite in its topics and utterly different from my own. She teaches me ...
June 17, 2019
God’s Commission: Evangelical Finance in Suburbia
Evangelical megachurches in suburban Chicagoland have faced serious challenges of late, and none more notable than the recent fall of Bill Hybels at South Barrington’s Willow Creek Community Church—a pastor and his flock fairly credited with paradigm...
June 2, 2019
Who’s Running the Show?
Sightings columnists often write close-ups on news of the day or week. But sometimes they/we “sight” long-trending items. Today’s column is one of the latter. And it begins with my doctoral studies teacher, Sidney E. Mead, and an influential essay he...
April 8, 2019
On Gods and Kings
How are we to “sight” the always intricate, sometimes chaotic, and too often hidden relationship between religious convictions and political order? More often than not it requires piecing together a jigsaw puzzle with hints from hither and yon, in bo...
January 28, 2019
John Allen Chau’s Evangelical Errors
As a theologian who has done fieldwork in conflict zones and written on risk, my first response upon reading about John Allen Chau’s death at the hands of the Sentinelese people was anger. I do not want to squelch the anger, which seems to me to be r...