Sightings Articles

fan protest

Sports | pop culture | Community | Coronavirus | global church

A Community Near and Far

What the failure of the European Super League can teach religious communities...

May 20, 2021
Swinney

Evangelicalism | Sports

How Evangelicalism is Shaping College Football

Considering Evangelicalism's role in shaping the economy of college football....

September 26, 2019

Civil Religion | Fourth of July | Sports

Festivals of Forgetting

Perhaps more than other years, this July in the United States has been filled with festivals. President Trump’s excessive “Salute to America” was filled with jets, armored vehicles, marches, and a Presidential speech. Many have also enjoyed the mont...

July 22, 2019

pop culture | Sports

God in the Game

Stephen Versus the Game...

June 27, 2019

Sports

Sir Roger Bannister's "Miracle" on the Track

When the recently deceased Roger Bannister began running track and studying medicine at Oxford, the four-minute mile had become known as “trackdom’s Holy Grail.” The religious allusion here was hardly accidental. Instead, it framed the magnitude of t...

March 22, 2018

American Medical Association | football | NFL | Sports

Football Religion

The Monday Sightings is back, after a hiatus occasioned not by any lack of topics or scenes on which to focus but by the academic calendar at the University of Chicago, from which post we do our scanning, skimming, and probing. Surveying the places w...

September 11, 2017

Civil Religion | Colin Kaepernick | football | national anthem | NFL | Robert Bellah | Sports | Tim Tebow

Taking a Knee as Critical Civil Religion

What happens when we compare Colin Kaepernick to Tim Tebow? Here we have two professional football players “taking a knee” not for a coach’s huddle but to express personal convictions outside the boundaries of their sport. I understand how much th...

January 5, 2017

baseball | Chicago Cubs | collective effervescence | Durkheim | happiness | Sports | World Series

How Waiting 108 Years Makes the Good Life

For years, people have been asking me what I will do if the Chicago Cubs ever win the World Series. I don't actually know. The closest I've come to what that moment might be like was when the Cubs won the National League Division Series against the C...

October 27, 2016

Civil Religion | Colin Kaepernick | national anthem | NFL | Sports

Refusing to Stand: Can America's Civil Religion Tolerate Dissent?

49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the national anthem...

September 22, 2016

Sports | prayer

Oh God, Please Let My Team Win. Please. Amen.—Joseph L. Price

American sports fans are not alone in seeking God’s help. ...

July 17, 2014