Nation

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 time in our politics today. Then we look in our Bibles to see what the passage actually teaches before offering a warning about the political misuse of this popular verse.

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 to protect LGBTQ students. Advocates say that while Samford’s anti-LGBTQ stance might not be new, its rejection of ecumenism is.

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 geography – they exist in all parts of the country and can best be predicted by party affiliation, race, and religion.

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 its proverbial closet, we look at attempts by other Christian institutions of higher education to exorcize similar demons.

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 by Christian nationalism, a fusion of faith and national identity that swelled during the tenure of former President Donald Trump.

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 that has since 2018 modeled itself on the campaign started by Martin Luther King Jr. that focused on what King called the “three evils” of racism, poverty, and militarism.

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 we are enduring the struggle W.E.B. Du Bois was addressing in 1903. And this is why every school district should have an equity plan.

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 his friend, Nelle.

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 Christ. Jesus not only identifies with the poor, vulnerable, and imprisoned – Jesus is these people.

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 the Christian faith, which demand that all humans be treated with respect and compassion regardless of their nationality or citizenship.