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Given the questions about the event throughout its seven-decade history, the National Prayer Breakfast deserves greater attention. So in this issue of A Public Witness, Brian Kaylor recalls its history and recent controversies before considering what this year's new changes could mean.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "A Gift Grows in the Ghetto: Reimagining the Spiritual Lives of Black Men" by Jay-Paul Michael Hinds. This book reimagines the ghetto, a place of separation and abandonment, in terms of the wilderness that Ishmael experienced after Abraham expelled him and his mother from their home.

White conservative evangelicals, who make up most of the religious right movement, largely oppose government regulation to protect the environment, including efforts to curb human-caused climate change. Contrary to popular perception, however, this hasn’t always been the case.

Religious leaders reacted swiftly — with legislative appeals and collective grief — to the release of video footage of police officers beating Tyre Nichols, a Black man who died days after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee. Some questioned whether the video of the police beating of Nichols should be watched.

This year’s Super Bowl will feature a $20 million pair of pro-Jesus ads promoting the idea that Jesus "gets us," part of the larger He Gets Us campaign. Organizers hope to spend a billion dollars in the next three years to redeem Jesus’s brand.

This issue of A Public Witness explores three examples of impactful denominational resolutions to show why it matters when Christians decide to speak with one voice. The model resolutions include two statements decrying the historic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and a resolution about the war in Ukraine.

Fuentes’ reinstatement Tuesday morning came amid Twitter’s attempts to bring back users who had been banned before billionaire Musk’s Oct. 27 takeover, in an effort to reform what the new CEO and owner has described as inconsistent policies on hate speech.

The National Prayer Breakfast is under new management, distancing the decades-old event from the secretive organization that founded it after years of controversy and a scandal that showed the yearly gathering in the nation’s capital is vulnerable to espionage.

The faculty of Hamline University have called on President Fayneese Miller to resign, saying they no longer have faith in her ability to lead the St. Paul, Minnesota, school after what they see as the mishandling of a Muslim student’s complaint about an instructor showing a painting of the Prophet Muhammad.

Middle Collegiate, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is one of four Collegiate Churches of New York that sprung from a Reformed Church congregation in New Amsterdam founded in 1628, and they are considered the oldest continuous Protestant congregations in the Americas.