News

A Christian pastor in western New York said he felt intimidated and harassed after the state’s attorney general, a Democrat, sent a letter saying she believed a planned far-right political event at his church this week could lead to racial violence.

A predominantly Black denomination and prominent union have joined forces in a new voter mobilization initiative ahead of the midterm elections. Reviving a partnership they had in the 1960s, the laborlab Convention and the AFL-CIO are launching a faith and labor alliance focused on battleground states.

In this edition of A Public Witness, we trace the evolution of CPAC. Then we examine the supposedly Christian practices and rhetoric that found expression deep in the heart of Texas, before testing the spirits of this witness.

When the Rev. Megan Rohrer was elected bishop of the ELCA’s Sierra Pacific Synod in 2021, the election was celebrated as a revolution in and outside of the denomination. But what followed is a "perfect storm" of charismatic personalities and a heightened awareness of racism, all brewing in one of the country’s whitest denominations.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence by Diana Butler Bass. This book is her attempt to free Jesus from the captivity she has experienced in life and in doing so invites us to do the same as a personal act of liberation.

We review a book each month at A Public Witness and for this installment, Beau Underwood examines and recommends Beth Allison Barr's The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. He also discusses some of the strong reaction to the book by Barr's opponents.

Two of the most influential evangelical Christian magazines in the country named new leaders last week. Russell Moore, the former Southern Baptist ethicist, was named editor in chief at Christianity Today. Lynn Vincent, a motorcycle-riding Navy veteran and New York Times best-selling author, was recently named executive editor at World Magazine.

Perkins, as much an organizer as a clergyman, was often one of the few Black leaders in predominantly white evangelical settings. Throughout his life, Perkins has overcome the deaths of loved ones and his onetime hatred of white people, who included police who took the life of his brother and, years later, nearly killed him.

The Christian flag that became the focus of a free speech legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court was raised — briefly — outside Boston City Hall on Wednesday to cheers and songs of praise. The flag-raising took place about three months after the Supreme Court ruled the city discriminated against a group's “religious viewpoint” in 2017.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we take off on an Australian adventure. We kick things off like kangaroos to discover the relationship between church and state for the Aussies. Then we curl up like koalas to reconsider the wild text known as the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer practice and the new debate around it offers fertile ground for thinking about faith and government.