Nation

This issue of A Public Witness examines the political attacks on Warnock’s faith during this campaign and his previous run, and also considers similar attacks on King. This rhetoric exposes how some preachers and politicians supporting the dominant power structures seek to excommunicate the Black church as not really Christian.

Two significant abolitionists are subjects of a twin set of documentaries, "Becoming Frederick Douglass" and "Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom," co-productions of Maryland Public Television and Firelight Films and released by PBS this month (October).

Since early last year, the ReAwaken America Tour has carried its message of a country under siege to tens of thousands of people in 15 cities and towns. The tour serves as a traveling roadshow and recruiting tool for an ascendant Christian nationalist movement that's wrapped itself in God, patriotism, and politics and has grown in power and influence inside the Republican Party.

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 Public Witness, we look at Walker’s religious campaign strategy and his record of dishonesty to consider the danger of churches fumbling their moral witness.

“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 in Walla Walla, Washington, appeared on the beloved, long-running trivia competition Sept. 26-30, winning four straight episodes and $79,098.

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 staffers they had to leave. But Word&Way found photos and videos shared on social media by attendees that give insights into the campaign event.

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.