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In his first presidential address as president of the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, Bishop Thomas Bickerton called on conservative groups encouraging churches to leave the denomination to stop the negative rhetoric. He accused the Global Methodist Church and the Wesleyan Covenant Association of winning new churches to their movement with fear.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we take you backstage to meet the most influential Christian musician in the world of conservative political activism. Then we rewind to rehear Trump’s problematic relationship with 9/11 before considering the sour note of this mixture of worship and profane politics.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews What Do We Do When Nobody Is Listening?: Leading the Church in a Polarized Society by Robin W. Lovin. This book, written by a United Methodist minister and Christian ethicist, tackles the question of how churches should navigate the polarization that divides us politically because it also divides churches from one another and even small, local churches experience it.

Siddiqui lives in Atlanta and attends St. John’s Lutheran Church, but he grew up in New Jersey and was raised Muslim — like a “Christmas and Easter Muslim,” he joked. By the time he graduated college, he considered himself an atheist. Siddiqui said he doesn’t always get all the ELCA’s “in” jokes about hot dishes and Garrison Keillor but he hopes he’ll bring a different perspective that will be good to have at the table.

More than four decades after sexual abuse claims against a Catholic priest first made national headlines, spurring accusations, lawsuits, a series of newspaper investigations and billions in settlements, the DOJ is investigating a religious group’s handling of sexual crimes by clergy and church staff. This time, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is under investigation.

About 400 Ukrainian Baptist congregations have been lost in Russia’s war on Ukraine, said Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary President Yaroslav Pyzh, who is working to restore pastoral leadership to impacted cities.

An Arkansas state senator will be required to unblock critics from his social media accounts under a settlement a national atheists’ group said it reached with the state on Wednesday.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we look at what’s known about the new DOJ investigation, how people are responding in divergent ways, and what these responses illuminate about how Christians are thinking about issues of politics and legal accountability.

Symbolically and spiritually, the river is of mighty significance to many. Physically, the Lower Jordan River of today is a lot more meager than mighty. By the time it reaches the baptismal site, its dwindling water looks sluggish, a dull brownish green shade. Its decline is intertwined with the decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict and rivalry over precious water in a valley where so much is contested.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association is calling for churches to stop paying dues to regional annual conferences it believes are making disaffiliation for churches difficult to impossible amid the United Methodist Church’s slow-moving schism, largely over the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ members. Those apportionments fund bishops’ salaries and support the work of the mainline Protestant denomination around the world.