News

Thousands of clergy, union leaders, activists, and scholars rallied near the U.S. Capitol on Saturday at a march organized by the Poor People’s Campaign, calling on Congress to take action and address the plight of millions of Americans who struggle with poverty and low-income.

A state holiday in Texas since 1980, Juneteenth was on only eight states‘ official holiday calendars before the federal designation, with another nine adding it since last year. Faith leaders have long marked the holiday with interfaith marches and special church services.

Stephen Schneck, a prominent Catholic political activist and academic, has been appointed by President Joe Biden to serve on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal government panel dedicated to protecting religious minorities and other persecuted groups abroad.

In this edition of A Public Witness, we investigate the New York Times’s history of stirring religious conversations. Then we examine the surprisingly narrow perspectives regularly offered in the opinion section of the “old gray lady.”

After approving a series of reforms meant to address sexual abuse in their denomination, Southern Baptists at their national meeting approved a resolution apologizing to abuse survivors and asking for forgiveness. They also called on legislatures to create laws that make pastoral sexual misconduct a specific crime and punish those who prey on church members.

Pope Francis has taken another step to reign in new religious groups in the Catholic Church after their unregulated proliferation in recent decades led to abuses in governance that allowed spiritual and sexual misconduct to go unchecked.

The election was one of the closely watched aspects of the two-day meeting, during which messengers, or delegates, addressed a sexual abuse investigation. Barber received 61% of the votes in the second round of voting at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention on Tuesday evening, defeating Florida pastor Tom Ascol in a runoff election.

Sen. Raphael Warnock may have added a title to his name when he was elected to the U.S. Senate last year, but he says he remains first and foremost a preacher. Warnock spoke with Religion News Service about the influence of King on his life, the challenges of being a father to young children from afar, and how he finds sermon topics as he works in Washington.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews Churches and the Crisis of Decline: A Hopeful, Practical Ecclesiology for a Secular Age by Andrew Root. This book explores the question of what the church might look like in the future as it experiences a crisis of decline in the current secular age.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we both join with six other people to each suggest two books for your consideration. We hope you’ll find at least one good book to help in your own formation this summer.