Sightings Articles
The Enhancing Life Project
The Enhancing Life Project has explored an essential aspiration of human beings that moves persons and communities into the future. ...
July 27, 2017
Finding Evidence: Bruce Springsteen's Procession from Religion to Faith
Editor's Note: This is the fifth issue in our continuing series of essays on religion and popular music. For the previous installments, see "The Broken Grace of Leonard Cohen" by Paul DeCamp; "Being Hip-Hop, Being Job, and Being" by Julian "J.Kwest" ...
July 20, 2017
Ayn Rand Mugged
Ayn Rand, in the years of her prime, told Playboy her overarching philosophy was that “man exists for his own sake, that the pursuit of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself to others, nor sacrifice others...
July 17, 2017
Love Your Enemies: Moral Absurdity or Genius?
The Autumn 1942 issue of Christianity and Society published an article by Reinhold Niebuhr that began: “In times of social and political conflict there are always Christians who obscure the very genius of the New Testament conception of love by their...
July 13, 2017
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
Disability Theology and the Healthcare Debate
Amidst many developing political news stories this summer, one of the most important in terms of policy is Congress’s ongoing attempt to reform healthcare and health insurance access in the United States. Disability rights activists have been vigilan...
July 6, 2017
The Precarious Vision of Peter Berger
The death of Peter Berger in Boston on June 27 prompts the usual bounty of obituaries and a plethora of deserved reminiscences and tributes. One of my own most vivid recollections of Berger concerns an event which David Martin, his British peer in th...
July 3, 2017
A Church That Believes Your Stories Are Sacred
The woman at the mic is recounting the story of how she lost her virginity after the age of 40. She’s described her discovery of masturbation within the confines of her evangelical childhood home. Now she’s narrating the flirting that turned into sex...
June 29, 2017
Pastors and Political Choice
“Your Rabbi? Probably a Democrat. Your Baptist Pastor? Probably a Republican. Your Priest? Who Knows.” This grabbing headline atop a recent New York Times story by Kevin Quealy promised a splashing wade into the controversial waters marked “politics ...
June 26, 2017
Of Music and Martyrdom
Editor's Note: This is the fourth issue in our ongoing series of essays on religion and music. For the previous installments, see Paul DeCamp, "The Broken Grace of Leonard Cohen"; Julian "J.Kwest" DeShazier, "Being Hip-Hop, Being Job, and Being"; and...