News

Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to recognize a 36-hour truce throughout Ukraine during the Orthodox Christmas holiday weekend. Russia’s gesture comes almost 11 months into the invasion that has cost more than 6,000 civilian lives.

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting at the request of the Palestinians and other Islamic and non-Islamic nations to protest the visit of an ultranationalist Israeli Cabinet minister to a flashpoint Jerusalem holy site and demand an end to Israeli extremist provocations and respect for the historic status quo at the site revered by Muslims and Jews.

This issue of A Public Witness will introduce you to the controversial career of Catholic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò before looking at his role in a post-election crusade. Then it will consider the danger of the new call to fast and pray for the Jan. 6 defendants.

The religious makeup of the new Congress bucks the trends seen in American religious life, a new report finds. The Pew Research Center says the Senate and House members are “largely untouched” by the continuing increase in the share of those who say they do not have a religious affiliation.

As the second anniversary of the insurrection arrives later this week, we are still grappling with what happened that day. So in this issue of A Public Witness, Brian Kaylor looks at the efforts of activists to baptize their political movement and what this teaches us about claiming God’s name.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Better Religion: A Primer for Interreligious Peacebuilding" by John D. Barton. This book provides a set of tools that can help us move toward a greater understanding of one another without jettisoning the distinctiveness of our faith traditions.

The delays are just the latest frustration for former students who have publicly accused the school of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. The school, which has been subject to intense social media pressure from activists and at least 20 lawsuits, remains open and has vehemently denied allegations of wrongdoing.

When Americans picture a chaplain, many of them likely think of someone like Father Mulcahy, the Irish American priest who cared for Korean War soldiers in the classic TV show “M.A.S.H.” The reality is much more complex.

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who will be remembered for being the first head of the Roman Catholic Church to resign in 600 years, died on Saturday (Dec. 31) at his home at the Vatican.

Historian and former denominational executive Lee Spitzer spent years researching for his new book Sympathy, Solidarity, and Silence: Three European Baptist Responses to the Holocaust. The book tells inspiring and disappointing stories of how Baptists in England, France, and Germany reacted to Hitler, the Holocaust, and the war’s refugees.