Sightings Articles
The Prosperity (Anti-)Gospel
Pastor Rick Henderson’s name may not be familiar to many readers, but he recently preached a sermon and wrote a report which he hopes will reach publics new to his chosen theme. In a recent blast mediated through The Huffington Post, he gets our atte...
July 23, 2018
More Patriarchy, Less #MeToo?
A Huffington Post headline this past spring was arresting: “Evangelical Pastor Claims Traditional Gender Roles Can Prevent Sexual Abuse.” Carol Kuruville reported that “John Piper, an influential Baptist author and speaker and chancellor of a Christi...
July 19, 2018
Martha Nussbaum Faces Our Fears
“Our summer of fear” was a headline that greeted us one day this week. It captioned Christopher Borrelli’s published “conversation with Chicago philosopher Martha Nussbaum” (Chicago Tribune, July 9). The other three dailies which arrived the same mor...
July 16, 2018
How Facebook Is Transforming Religion
Editor’s Note: Sightings is pleased to bring you this follow-up to a previous column by the same author, “Social Media and Sin” (April 5), which was one of our best-received pieces of the past academic year. It addresses topics that are discussed in ...
July 12, 2018
The Morality of Mister Rogers
Sightings deadlines arrive around weekends. As a public service in these dark times, we at the Center like to help spread some Sabbath cheer, a TGIF—“Thank God It’s Friday”-like—relief from the drabness-cum-terror which colors, or discolors, so much ...
July 9, 2018
Cruelty Is a Swamp Thing
Both William Paca of Maryland and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia signed the United States Declaration of Independence; both owned slaves; and both died believing that the musculature of American liberty—sinewed over self-evident truths and sound laws—w...
July 5, 2018
"Kill the Indian in the Child"
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has verified reports and testimony by survivors—they do not call themselves “graduates” or “alumni”—of First Nations schools, whose mission had long been announced: “kill the Indian in the child.” Fol...
July 2, 2018
The Expanded Spelling of "koinonia"
Though as an Indian I take a certain pride in the accomplishments of Indian American children, I generally do not follow closely the spelling bee contests where they emerge as winners in most years. Still, I could not help but take notice when fourte...
June 28, 2018
Catholic Identity: A Balancing Act?
Early in my writing career I set out to describe a certain posture or pose, and chose—pretentiously, I admit—to speak of an “equilibristic stance.” The article which included this ungainly phrase was then translated into German, where it appeared, au...
June 24, 2018
The Apostle and the AG
Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the Trump administration’s then policy of separating children from their parents at the southwestern border of the United States in a speech in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on June 14. Within that speech he made a brie...