Sightings Articles
A Midrash on the Apocalypse
Ed. Note: Spoiler Alert: Details from the sixth and final episode of the recent television adaptation of Good Omens lie ahead. (On the seventh episode, Neil Gaiman rested.) The satiric television series Good Omens has been both praised and ce...
July 11, 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
On the Trail of Millennial Religion with Detective Pikachu
Ed. Note: Warning: This column contains major spoilers for Pokémon: Detective Pikachu. The recent film, Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019), is the latest cinematic addition to the Pokémon series, the multimedia entertainment franchise that ex...
May 23, 2019
Fyre Festival's Spiritual "Hype"
Fyre Festival was supposed to be “the cultural experience of the decade.” The brainchild of Billy McFarland, CEO of Fyre Media, Inc., and promoted by the rapper Ja Rule, Fyre Festival was sold as a “luxury music festival” to take place in Spring 2017...
April 1, 2019
Kondo and Kuyō: Disposal as a Religious Experience?
What's religious (and what's not) about KonMari?...
February 14, 2019
“It Is Music That Lifts Us Up from the Earth at the Very Moment of Death”: On the Transcendence of the Popular
Editor's Note: This essay is the final installment in our six-part series on religion and popular music. The previous issues were "The Broken Grace of Leonard Cohen" by Paul DeCamp (April 13); "Being Hip-Hop, Being Job, and Being" by Julian DeShazier...
September 14, 2017
Finding Evidence: Bruce Springsteen's Procession from Religion to Faith
Editor's Note: This is the fifth issue in our continuing series of essays on religion and popular music. For the previous installments, see "The Broken Grace of Leonard Cohen" by Paul DeCamp; "Being Hip-Hop, Being Job, and Being" by Julian "J.Kwest" ...