Sightings Articles

Gazing upward at a grey church and red cross against a blue sky with scattered clouds

Evangelicalism | Protestantism | ecumenism

Protestants and American National Destiny

In the latter half of the 20th century, conservative evangelical churches flourished by providing a safe harbor for white Americans who wanted to be counted as Christian while avoiding challenges that mainline leaders insisted must be faced....

December 8, 2022

Christianity | Evangelicalism | Protestantism

In Search of a Rectification of Names

After eighty years, the college fellowship that I attended as an undergraduate at Princeton has altered its name. “Princeton Evangelical Fellowship” is gone, replaced by “Princeton Christian Fellowship.” I was not surprised or annoyed. The original t...

October 26, 2017

Eboo Patel | Friedrich Schleiermacher | Interfaith Youth Core | Martin Luther | Muslim ban | Protestantism | religious identity | white fragility

Religious Identity Hiding under the Cloak of White Fragility

As we continue to wrestle with whether or not President Trump’s now frozen executive order on immigration constitutes a “Muslim ban”—whether in its original or in its revised form—the American public is faced with another question: what exactly makes...

March 30, 2017

Germany | WW II | democratization | Protestantism | Karl Barth | Richard Brickner | National Socialism | militarism | spirit of humanity

The Role of Religion in the Growth of Democracy in Germany

Over the next few weeks, Germany will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the peaceful revolution that re-unified the nation’s western and eastern halves and transformed the former Soviet-bloc German Democratic Republic into a free and democratic socie...

October 30, 2014