Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell offers her thoughts on how the church's model of the larger group tending to the few in need was swept away during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our pastors were like skippers left on ships trying to throw out as many lifelines as
The community-based air quality monitoring initiative, AirWatch St. Louis, has been keeping track of what’s in the city’s air since December 2021. Low-cost sensors are placed on the roofs of Metropolitan Congregations United churches spread throughout the city to measure particulate matter, a mixture of
Houses of worship on Martha's Vineyard have long worked together to meet the needs of their neighbors. So they were ready to spring into action when refugees arrived unexpectedly after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday flew two planes of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, escalating
Mastriano’s dispute with his Lutheran constituents shows he’s willing to reject the voices of other Christians, particularly views often expressed by moderate and liberal Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and others known collectively as “mainline” denominations. Although not as dominant as they once were, white mainline Protestants
Given the growing public conversation about Christian Nationalism and divergent understandings of the meaning of the term, in this edition of A Public Witness we learn from scholars studying Christian Nationalism in order to consider what we actually know about this dangerous ideology. Then we
Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy makes the case that if ever a Bible story reads like our national mythology, it’s Jesus’s story of the rich farmer in Luke 12. In America, we don’t recognize the farmer's actions as greed — we call it a vision, a
In this issue of A Public Witness, we dust off our old Steven Curtis Chapman cassette tapes to consider the different testimony he offers about faith and even Jan. 6 in light of “The Great Adventure” serving as an anthem for Doug Mastriano’s campaign. Then
Fuller Theological Seminary, the nation’s largest interdenominational seminary, has chosen as its new president David Emmanuel Goatley, the first Black person to hold the office. Goatley comes to Fuller from Duke Divinity School, where he was hired in 2018 to direct the Office of Black
Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age" by Dale C. Allison Jr. This book seeks to help those who have had spiritual experiences that are not easily explained by sorting these occurances out instead of demythologizing our faith. This combines
Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn discusses why her congregation felt it was time to revisit the practice of having an American flag in the front of their worship space after the insurrection of January 6, 2021. As a pastor, she has become increasingly convinced that we, as