Sightings Articles
The Affair of the Sausages and Religious Freedom
Five hundred years ago today, some Swiss people ate sausages. This was a major event in the history of Christianity.
March 8, 2022
In the Name of ‘Religious Liberty,’ Roger Severino Wants to Feed U.S. Christians to the (COVID-19) Lions
How COVID-19 reveals the dangers of misunderstanding and abusing 'religious liberty'
June 1, 2020
Conscience: Its Use and Abuse
How John Henry Newman helps us guard against the political abuse of conscience for religious beliefs
December 5, 2019
Diet and Free Exercise
How do religious beliefs decide what prisoners and patients eat? Two recent court cases in Virginia pit religious diets against the need to serve diverse populations in public institutions. In one case, a prison inmate has requested kosher food, whi...
June 13, 2019
Defining Religion
Sightings is commissioned to deal with “religion in/and public life,” an assignment that prompts me to spend time on the concept of “the public.” Doing so is problematic, even risky, but still simple compared to the corollary burden: “define ‘religio...
May 16, 2016
Religion in Global Affairs
When in the 1980s Scott Appleby and I were first chartered to deal with one particular public expression of religion, the complex of militant fundamentalisms, we were confronted with a global scene for which we were not prepared. We soon found out al...
May 2, 2016
Change in Church and State Relations
Last Monday’s Sightings observed and celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of official Roman Catholicism’s documentable change, at the Second Vatican Council, in concepts and practices of religious freedom. Robert Cushman of Duke University, a Protesta...
December 14, 2015
"Religious Freedom" After 50 Years?
December 7th: Sightings notes the date because fifty years ago today, by a vote of 2,308 to 70, the “Council Fathers” at the Second Vatican Council voted to promulgate Dignitatis Humanae, “On the Dignity of the Human Person.” Regarded as one of th...
December 7, 2015
Religion Unites and Divides -- Martin E. Marty
“ISIS CRISIS.” . . . “EBOLA CRISIS” . . . “ECONOMIC WORRIES” . . . Headlines about these and others point to realities which often have religious dimensions. One of them is posed in a featured interview with Jodi Picoult, the novelist author of Leavi...