Sightings Articles
Was It Kavanaugh’s Guilty Conscience, or His Karma?
Surely, for those who are aware that Brett Kavanaugh was a key architect—one of the main authors—of the Starr Report, the following was one of the richest moments in this recent spectacle of hypocrisies: “This is a circus. The consequences will ...
October 25, 2018
Mute Religion
The title “Sightings” might lead readers to imagine that these columns are solely interested in visual appearances of religions, say, placards at protests, in the cinema or theater, and so forth. But today we ponder the auditory “appearance” of relig...
October 22, 2018
The Art of Prayer Meets the Prayer of Art
Both art and prayer invite us to assume unconventional or inconvenient postures that demand we orient ourselves differently. ...
October 18, 2018
Native Sons? Of Gilded and Guilty Ages in the Windy City
Ed. Note: Both the Monday and Thursday columns this week feature current and recent exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago. Stay tuned for Cynthia Lindner's reflections on the James Webb installation, "Prayer," currently on display at the Art In...
October 15, 2018
New Managing Editor
The Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School is pleased to introduce Joel A. Brown as the ninth Managing Editor of Sightings. His predecessor, Brett Colasacco, graduated with a PhD in r...
October 14, 2018
Religion in Crazy Rich Asians?
Ed. Note: This column contains spoilers. Crazy Rich Asians, a 2018 film directed by Jon M. Chu, has garnered a lot of praise from audience members and movie critics. Both commend it for its casting of Asian actors in roles that go beyond the Kung ...
October 11, 2018
Really Big Sins
“This sounds like a flip answer,” said Lutheran Pastor Jan Erickson-Pearson, “but why does [clerical sexual abuse] still happen? Sin.” That was in 2002, but headlines still on occasion use the same three-letter theological word to explain the phenome...
October 8, 2018
On Academic Time
Addressing new students at the Divinity School during orientation this year, Dean David Nirenberg talked about the university as a place in which it is possible, even necessary, to live in a different kind of time. Academe is fueled by the exploratio...
October 4, 2018
Commoveo Ille Sit
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October 3, 2018
Looking Back on My Run-in with Censorship in India
Ed. Note: The author has discussed other aspects of the story of her publishing experiences in India in The New York Review of Books (“India: Censorship by the Batra Brigade,” May 8, 2014); Sightings (“Prelude to Censorship: The Toleration of Blasphe...