Sightings Articles
Mary Douglas and the Ritual of Halloween
Halloween typifies the kinds of symbolic rituals present in our fragmented experience of modern life.
October 31, 2022
Beginning Again... and Again... and Again
We hoped that “Back to School” rituals might turn the page, but beginnings are never as straightforward and uncomplicated as we wish they could be.
September 30, 2021
The Blessed Return of Going Through the Motions
President Biden's inauguration and the rituals of normalcy
February 4, 2021
Theologizing Virtual Reality
Dead chickens should not garner the attention of the United States Supreme Court. You would think not, but you'd be wrong. In 1946, United States v. Causby went before the Supreme Court. Dead chickens—and modern technology—were at the center of t...
July 25, 2019
Euthanasia, Dignity, and “Spirituality Lite”
Those (of us) who value the ethical but are not ethicists have good reason to pay attention to those philosophers, theologians, and, yes, ethicists, whose vocation it is to deal with values, whether these have to do with ordinary problems and dilemma...
July 10, 2017
Martin Luther King Jr. "Nonviolence Is the Sword That Heals
“I forgive you.” At the hearing for Dylann Roof, the daughter of Ethel Lance, one of the people Roof killed, told him: “I will never talk to her ever again, never be able to hold her again. I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. You hurt me, y...