Sightings Articles
An Irrelevant War?
Thursday the United States observed the centennial of its entry into World War I, a move which, historians like to say, “changed everything.” The nation lost 116,000 troops while nine million lives were lost worldwide. The map of Europe was reconfigu...
April 10, 2017
Anthropological Confusion, Epistemological Failure: Mainstream Media and Moderate, Orthodox Christians
A recent article on conservative trolls among the roiling White House press corps in The New Yorker can stand for a general ferment of fear and confusion among the Mainstream Media (MSM) in this era of Trumpian turmoil. What has happened to the good ...
April 6, 2017
Niebuhr and the Situation
Millennials are often accused of whatever particular accusers want to assign to their victims of choice. One charge, among so many others, is that they do not know or care about history. Teachers of undergraduates note how frequently they find their ...
April 3, 2017
Religious Identity Hiding under the Cloak of White Fragility
As we continue to wrestle with whether or not President Trump’s now frozen executive order on immigration constitutes a “Muslim ban”—whether in its original or in its revised form—the American public is faced with another question: what exactly makes...
March 30, 2017
Not Wishy-Washy
“Watered-down,” “characterless,” “irresolute,” “sapless,” “bland,” “namby-pamby,” and “diluted,” are some synonyms for “wishy-washy,” a word some critics say I use too often when I write about or discuss what is unproductive in interfaith (and other ...
March 27, 2017
Humanities Endangered
Editor's note: We will be off this Thursday for the University's spring interim. See you next week! In and after the present chaos, should our republic survive as a republic, wounded but responsible citizens will need to assess what they lost and ...
March 20, 2017
Of Islam and the Public Square: The Role of the Classroom
An opinion poll showing 31% of Americans feel safer because of the travel ban placed on seven Muslim-majority countries (since reduced to six)—with another 41% expressing no particular opinion—is reflective of the obscure, if not fearsome, image of I...
March 16, 2017
Transitioning Out of Mediocrity
Cisgender dysphoria, transgender identity, etc., were not part of my formal curriculum in theology or religious studies, which ended at 3:00 p.m. on graduation day, December 14th, 1956. The earliest known use of the term “transgender” was in 1974, an...
March 13, 2017
Look for the Jews
Various news outlets have addressed the fact that the U.S. president’s published statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day intentionally omits specific reference either to Jews or to anti-Semitism. It does honor “the victims, survivors...
March 9, 2017
Alien Citizens
NOT BREAKING NEWS! Overdosed on “Breaking News,” which in the case of religion usually means news of clerical sex scandals, parochial embezzlements, or stories of some Evangelicals acting unevangelically, Sightings sometimes likes to train its sights...