News

Lawyer and activist Bryan Stevenson challenged Baptists from around the world to be truth-tellers about racial injustices. He spoke to a special session of the Baptist World Alliance’s annual gathering on Thursday.

Michael Flynn, a former military general implicated in helping foment the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, has a text he hopes preachers will utilize for sermons. The U.S. Constitution.

A fact-finding commission of the Episcopal Church will research the history of the denomination’s role in operating boarding schools for Native American children — part of a system the church now acknowledges was rooted in White Supremacy and caused generations of trauma.

As the Baptist World Alliance’s annual gathering opened this week in person for the first time since 2019, Baptists from around the country came together at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, for a weeklong meeting focused on “standing for racial justice.”

In this edition of A Public Witness, we audit the conservative evangelical organizations now claiming the banner of “church” for tax purposes. Finally, we argue this tax scam harms the Christian witness as it undermines core theology about what it means to be a church.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews What Is My Calling?: A Biblical and Theological Exploration of Christian Identity by William W. Klein and Daniel J. Steiner. The book’s message can be helpful for those who are struggling to make sense of their desire or inner compulsion to pursue vocational ministry because calling does not equal a job.

A prominent mainline Christian denomination plans to divest from five oil companies it believes are not doing enough to address climate change. The vote to divest from Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, and Valero Energy comes after years of debate in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

It is a scene that stirs hope — and relief — for Muslims around the world. One million pilgrims from across the globe amassed on Thursday in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia to perform the initial rites of the hajj, marking the largest Islamic pilgrimage since the coronavirus pandemic upended the annual event — a key pillar of Islam.

In this edition of A Public Witness, we study the reactionary views advanced by the president and other leaders of this small Christian college seeking to fundamentally change the face of American public education.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews A Curious Faith: The Questions God Asks, We Ask, and We Wish Someone Would Ask Us by Lore Ferguson Wilbert. The book is written from an evangelical perspective that is open to learning new things by asking and listing to faith questions, which requires letting go of easy answers.