Sightings Articles
Moral Indignation and Reflections on Evangelicalism
The embrace of Herschel Walker by Georgia's white evangelicals reveals the betrayal of values once publicly espoused.
October 20, 2022
Toppling History?
A reflection on the debate about Confederate monuments and the enduring truths that ought to guide us
July 15, 2020
Protest and the Raging Messianic
How do our responses to pestilence and protest reflect the value of human life in our religious imagination?
June 5, 2020
#TheLateUnpleasantness
The war came, again, in August, this time in the guise of what The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb dubbed “The Battle of Charlottesville.” Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” hopped their basket and marched on the Lawn of the University of Virginia on the eveni...
September 28, 2017
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
Love Your Enemies: Moral Absurdity or Genius?
The Autumn 1942 issue of Christianity and Society published an article by Reinhold Niebuhr that began: “In times of social and political conflict there are always Christians who obscure the very genius of the New Testament conception of love by their...
July 13, 2017
For Southern Baptists, a Sudden Awakening and Turn on the “Alt-Right”
In a classic essay on “Denominationalism,” Sidney E. Mead observed that “[t]he denomination, unlike the traditional forms of the church, is not primarily confessional, and it is certainly not territorial. Rather it is purposive.” When Mead published ...
June 19, 2017
Dylann Roof, the Radicalization of the Alt-Right, and Ritualized Racial Violence
Dylann S. Roof, the self-professed white supremacist known infamously as the “Charleston church shooter,” was convicted last month of killing nine black churchgoers at (Mother) Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolin...
January 12, 2017
An Event to Celebrate
September 24, 2016, marked one of the most significant moments in America’s history when its first African American president, Barack Obama, opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the nation’s mall in Washington, D.C. T...
November 10, 2016
We gon' be alright: Rap and Reggae as Black Sacred Space
Celebrated hip hop rapper Kendrick Lamar and his album, “To Pimp a Butterfly,” are poised to make history at Monday’s 58th Grammy awards. Giving voice to the underside of Black communities in which marginalized persons seek to establish a sense of id...