By taking a step back, we can see a critical issue beyond the media’s focus in this latest Herschel Walker controversy. And this story is less about Walker and more about the churches helping him run down the electoral field. So, in this issue of
“A priest, a truck driver, and a grandma walk into a game show.” It’s not the set-up to a joke, but rather to one of the five “Jeopardy!” episodes in which the Rev. David Sibley appeared last week. Sibley, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church
The Native American International Caucus, which advocates for Native Americans both inside and outside of the UMC, is calling on lawmakers to get rid of Columbus Day. To replace the federal holiday, which this year falls on Oct. 10, the caucus is asking Congress to
On the morning after an explosive news report that Senate hopeful Herschel Walker paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, the Georgia Republican attended a closed prayer event at First Baptist Church in Atlanta. Journalists who showed up at the church were told by church
Although Doug Mastriano stands out for his extreme embrace of Christian Nationalist ideas, his co-opting of Esther 4:14 for his campaign is actually fairly standard campaign fare. So, in this issue of A Public Witness, we listen to the Esther moments showing up all the
Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Theology and the Star Wars Universe" edited by Benjamin D. Espinoza. This book is part of a larger series of academic studies that explore the relationship between theology/religion and pop culture. The idea here is to invite a series of religion
Liz Cooledge Jenkins unpacks the hypocrisy in voicing support for Iranian women who protest oppressive patriarchy in their context while remaining strangely silent about oppressive patriarchy — and even hostile to those who speak up against it — in our own U.S. context. People in
Though many congregations in the U.S. are relatively homogeneous, others are sharply divided. In some cases, divisions are becoming more pronounced as midterm election season heats up, leaving clergy to keep the peace while still meeting the spiritual needs of all of their members.
When it comes to memorializing the nation’s Civil War legacy, Americans are nearly evenly divided over whether to preserve Confederate symbols, memorials, and statues, according to a new Public Religion Research Institute survey. The country’s divisions over the legacy of the Confederacy are bigger than
In this edition of A Public Witness, we take a look at Samford University’s past and find that its current justifications for excluding other Christians from campus rest on a revisionist whitewashing of its own history. After naming Samford’s struggle to face the ghosts in