News

Alejandro Clemente González was talking with an electrician while preparing for weekend services at Cuba's most important Baptist church when an enormous explosion shook the building and shattered the 19th century dome towering far above the pews. 

Interfaith leaders, including a top White House official, gathered at Georgetown University on Tuesday to affirm engagement across faiths and urge more multireligious action to enhance democracy and diminish polarization.

Bishop Vashti McKenzie, a recently retired bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, has been named the interim president and general secretary of the National Council of Churches, the ecumenical organization announced Tuesday. McKenzie succeeds Jim Winkler.

A new report on critical race theory only added fuel to the dispute that has engulfed the Christian college. Stakeholders for Grove City College in Pennsylvania have both celebrated and balked at the report and its listed “remedial actions.”

In this issue of A Public Witness, we look at the few protests at churches that actually occurred over the weekend. Then we recall more significant political protests in sanctuaries in the past before considering what all of this might portend for free speech in sacred spaces during this charged cultural moment.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar by Luke Timothy Johnson. The book serves as a memoir about the life of a scholar, written both for potential academics and for those who wonder what it is like to live a life committed to research, teaching, and writing.

As scholars of fundamentalism and creationism, we have visited the Ark Encounter multiple times. What we find particularly striking about Ark Encounter is that it is a tourist site devoted to emphasizing — with great specificity — the wrathful nature of God and the eternal damnation that awaits unrepentant sinners.

Critics say the college’s Racial Reconciliation Commission’s report is flawed, making it an inadequate foundation for conversations about the school’s past and future.

The European Union is reportedly considering the prospect of imposing sanctions on Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, as part of a larger package designed to weaken Russia in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Satanic Temple is requesting to fly a flag over Boston City Hall after the U.S. Supreme Court this week ruled the city violated the free speech rights of a conservative activist seeking to fly a Christian flag outside the downtown building.