Given Pete Hegseth’s insistence on co-opting a biblical term and employing it out of context as an insult against reporters doing their job, this issue of A Public Witness takes a look at the real Pharisees and the lesson the ‘secretary of war’ is missing.
Writing with an experienced teacher's gift for making history meaningful, J. Warren Smith explains the development of Christianity in terms of diverse efforts to make sense of intellectual and spiritual complexities within Scripture.
Membership fell by nearly 400,000 people, continuing a nearly two-decade decline in what is still the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.
After President Trump took office, a Presbyterian church retreated underground — abandoning their sanctuary for the basement in response to the administration’s decision to allow ICE officers to enter places of worship.
Join us as we celebrate five years of our ‘A Public Witness’ newsletter and highlight the best from the 115 pieces we’ve published over the past 12 months exploring the intersection of faith, culture, and politics.
‘Most — nearly all — serious historians agree that America was not founded as a Christian nation in any meaningful legal, philosophical, or constitutional sense,’ says the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
‘What might have been an abstract policy decision that's taking place in Washington now is actually impacting communities,’ said Walter Kim, head of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Many Christian leaders have criticized the report, saying it's narrowly focused on concerns of conservative evangelicals and obscures Trump’s own conflicts with other faith groups, including entire denominations.
This week, Rev. William Barber II gathered in front of the White House along with dozens of other clergy to protest the conflict that the Trump administration started against Iran.
Rev. Adam Hamilton has a national following among mainline Protestants, and he’s built his Church of the Resurrection over the past 35 years in the Kansas City area with about 22,000 members.