News

Former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins said he is “heartbroken” that more of his fellow White evangelicals have not received the COVID-19 vaccines. He added that many White evangelicals have been “victimized by the misinformation and lies and conspiracies that are floating around, particularly on social media and some of it in cable news.”

In this issue of A Public Witness, we recite the ways the Lord’s Prayer has been co-opted at political rallies across the country. Then we meditate on what is happening and the inherent politics of the Lord’s Prayer.

An Oregon church is suing the coastal city of Brookings, arguing that an ordinance restricting the church’s meal program for the unhoused violates its right to religious freedom. St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon filed the lawsuit against the city on Jan. 28 in Oregon’s U.S. District Court.

Beijing was awarded the 2008 Summer Olympics, largely under the assumption that the Games would improve civil liberties in the country. There is no such talk now.

Tennessee pastor Willie McLaurin has been named interim president and CEO of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee, becoming the first African American to lead one of the denomination’s ministry entities in its more than 175-year history.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we open up the book on recent efforts to ban or deplatform unwanted perspectives. Then we turn the pages on the ways these efforts often backfire, proving to be a harmful approach for dealing with noxious opinions. 

Many Americans — some traditionally religious, some religiously unaffiliated — are increasingly communing spiritually through virtual reality, one of the many evolving spaces in the metaverse that have grown in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic.

Baptists in Western Ukraine have made plans to shelter fellow believers in the case of a Russian invasion at Ukraine’s eastern border, a Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary graduate who now leads a Baptist seminary in Ukraine told Baptist Press.

Pope Francis denounced fake news about COVID-19 and vaccines Friday, blasting the “distortion of reality based on fear” but also urging that people who believe such lies are helped to understand true scientific facts.

We kickoff with a look at the health-related controversies that have swirled around the NFL. We then ask for an official review from Christian thinkers past and present. Finally, we send up a Hail Mary that encourages followers of Jesus to think about their sports consumption more faithfully.