News

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.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Pathways to Hindu-Christian Dialogue" by Anantanand Rambachan. This book provides an accessible foundation for Hindu-Christian relations that are often underdeveloped. Rambachan outlines barriers to relationships and understanding that both communities present to the other which can potentially be overcome through trust building and fruitful conversations.

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell offers her thoughts on how the church's model of the larger group tending to the few in need was swept away during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our pastors were like skippers left on ships trying to throw out as many lifelines as they could while keeping the whole ship from going down and rescuing their own families. But now it's time to turn back to the boat and give each other some grace.

The community-based air quality monitoring initiative, AirWatch St. Louis, has been keeping track of what’s in the city’s air since December 2021. Low-cost sensors are placed on the roofs of Metropolitan Congregations United churches spread throughout the city to measure particulate matter, a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. Through the new digital map, the data collected is publicly viewable.

Houses of worship on Martha's Vineyard have long worked together to meet the needs of their neighbors. So they were ready to spring into action when refugees arrived unexpectedly after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday flew two planes of immigrants to Martha's Vineyard, escalating a tactic by Republican governors to draw attention to what they consider to be the Biden administration's failed border policies.

Mastriano’s dispute with his Lutheran constituents shows he’s willing to reject the voices of other Christians, particularly views often expressed by moderate and liberal Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and others known collectively as “mainline” denominations. Although not as dominant as they once were, white mainline Protestants are nonetheless equal to the number of white evangelicals in Pennsylvania.

Given the growing public conversation about Christian Nationalism and divergent understandings of the meaning of the term, in this edition of A Public Witness we learn from scholars studying Christian Nationalism in order to consider what we actually know about this dangerous ideology. Then we hear the witness of committed followers of Jesus denouncing the “Christianity” that animates this belief system. Finally, we suggest practical ways of joining the growing pushback against the false prophets spreading this bad news.

A group of United Methodist bishops in Africa announced Thursday that it will no longer work with the Africa Initiative or the Wesleyan Covenant Association, accusing the groups of spreading misinformation. The bishops claim the Africa Initiative, which was formed in 2008 to give African clergy and laity a stronger voice in the global denomination, has “lost its original goal of helping The United Methodist Church in Africa.”

Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy makes the case that if ever a Bible story reads like our national mythology, it’s Jesus’s story of the rich farmer in Luke 12. In America, we don’t recognize the farmer's actions as greed — we call it a vision, a game plan, a business strategy, good sense. Kennedy suggests that this means we have lost the ability to see how greed possesses our lives.

Fuller Theological Seminary, the nation’s largest interdenominational seminary, has chosen as its new president David Emmanuel Goatley, the first Black person to hold the office. Goatley comes to Fuller from Duke Divinity School, where he was hired in 2018 to direct the Office of Black Church Studies and to teach theology. He will take the helm at Fuller in January.