Sightings Articles
“The Higher Law”: Tracing the Color Lines with Charles Chesnutt
Charles Chesnutt’s novel "The Marrow of Tradition" indexes the ongoing persistence of racism and the recourse to a color-blind “higher law” based putatively on ability rather than race....
October 19, 2023
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
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
Ritualized racial violence...
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...