Sightings Articles

Two skeletons facing each other against a purple and orange backdrop

Halloween | Rituals | Symbolism

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
back to school image

Rituals | church attendance | American church

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
Biden Oath

political religion | Rituals | Community

The Blessed Return of Going Through the Motions

President Biden's inauguration and the rituals of normalcy

February 4, 2021
Candle burning at both ends

Rituals | Spirituality | capitalism | secularism

The Meanings that Make Us

The limits of creative agency in ritual

September 24, 2020

Technology | Spirituality | Rituals

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 | human dignity | Rituals | Spirituality

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. | contested humanity | Ethel Lance | Emanuel AME Church | Alexander Stephens | Louis Farrakhan | Gaspar Yanga | Cheryl Townsend Gilkes | James Baldwin | Rituals | forgiveness

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...

January 14, 2016