Sightings Articles

Redefining Redlining on Chicago’s Southside
The tulips in Amanda Williams' art installation enact for residents who live in or pass through the area that tenacious double effect of urban redlining: the mark of the past is never entirely erased....
June 15, 2023

Did the Anabaptist Reformers “Win”?
Editor's Note: Those in the Chicago area are invited to join the Divinity School today at 4:30 pm in Swift Hall's third-floor lecture room for "Just Reaction: Religion, Ethics, and the Nuclear Age," part of a series of events reflecting on the 75th a...
November 27, 2017

Calvin, for a Change
Recovering, as many of us will and must, from massive doses of Lutherana—after media, scholars, and the pious both among them and beyond their range are doing following October 31 observances—we at Sightings do our scanning of headlines, twisting of ...
November 13, 2017

Luther Goes Global
This week most Lutherans, many Protestants, and not a few “general public” participants will turn the page from observances of the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation. Some church figures—pastors, choir directors, tour leaders, etc.—confess...
November 6, 2017

Repent!
Last Monday the Sightings editor republished a “classic” column from a previous century, specifically from 1999. What was I doing that kept me from writing and presenting a fresh item? One answer could be: I was sinning, so I would have something tha...
October 30, 2017

Reformation Jostlings
On this day, 499 years ago, a friar proposed 95 theses for debate and “posted” them (in today’s world and words), meaning he mailed them to his superior, the Archbishop of Mainz, and/or nailed them to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Wh...
October 31, 2016

Heresy and Popes
Popes have been interested in heresy and heretics for centuries, and language linking “papacy” and “heresy” continues to prosper down into our own day. The language root of “heresy” connects with “to choose,” and the heretic is someone who, in the ...
June 13, 2016

A Reply to Jean-Luc Marion’s “After ‘Charlie Hebdo,’ Islam Must Critique Itself” -- Bruce Lincoln and Anthony C. Yu
Our University of Chicago colleague, Jean-Luc Marion, Andrew Thomas Greely and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies, wrote a passionate response to the horrific attacks in Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris this past January (see Sight...