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
Several students, faculty, and staff held a protest outside an event being held by Samford’s Office of Spiritual Life. The protest requested that LGBTQ-affirming churches be welcome at the ministry fair, that the school approve a gay/straight alliance, and that the school pass anti-discrimination policy
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
An interfaith group of activists and religious advocates voiced concerns about the rise of Christian nationalism on Wednesday, arguing the ideology is a threat to democracy during a briefing on Capitol Hill. Speakers at the hourlong briefing outlined what they said were specific threats posed
Clergy from across the country have joined the leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign in calling on Congress to vote on issues related to fair wages, voting rights, and poverty reduction ahead of the midterm elections. The letters were the latest plea by the movement
Darron LaMonte Edwards writes that while there are many pathways to success through education, most of those pathways for Black and Brown students still have roadblocks and only a select few can tread that path. We are almost in 2023 and it still feels like
To the world, Harper Lee was aloof to the point of being unknowable, an obsessively private person who spent most of her life avoiding the public gaze despite writing one of the best-selling books ever, To Kill a Mockingbird. To Wayne Flynt, the Alabama-born author was
Rev. Dr. Michael Woolf argues that while much of the criticism of recent political stunts using immigrants has rightfully focused on the deception and cruelty, Christians ought to take it one step further: these American politicians have not only trafficked vulnerable Venezuelans, they have trafficked
No one will deny that America’s immigration system is overburdened and in need of serious reform. But misleading migrants and sending them where resources to help them are both in shorter supply and less readily obtained is impossible to reconcile with the basic tenets of