News

Polls shows how dramatically church attendance fell during the worst of the pandemic last year, even as many say they are now returning to regular service attendance. Churches large and small have taken hits in attendance.

For Mark Lowry, almost every day is Christmas. Whenever the storyteller and singer takes the stage for a concert, he always closes the show with the same song — “Mary Did You Know?” — no matter what time of year it is.

After riding out the violent tornado that devastated their town in a tunnel under their church, Rev. Wes Fowler knew what to do next: glorify God amid the suffering, and serve those in need.

A spokesman for Christian churches in the Holy Land on Wednesday accused Israel of discriminating against Christian tourists during the normally busy Christmas holiday season.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we countdown the ways the war on Advent is taking off. And while many are accepting the ways of consumerism whole hog, we open up the doors of how the Gospel has a serious message for us in these seemingly absurd times. 

In a video released Tuesday, President Joe Biden spoke directly to the families of those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School nine years ago, saying the nation owed families of mass shootings “more than our prayers. We owe them action.”

For some in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the senior pastor must be a man, but staff and other pastoral roles can be filled by women. For others, pastoral duties, especially preaching, are limited to men, and women are only allowed to teach the Bible to other women and children.

Lawyers for Georgia Baptist pastor Mike Stone filed paperwork Thursday to voluntarily withdraw a complaint filed in federal court against Russell Moore, the former head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

A Roman Catholic diocese in Sicily publicly apologized to outraged parents after its bishop told a group of children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. The diocese said the bishop was trying to underline the true meaning of Christmas.

The newest album by The Porter’s Gate is a far cry from the peppy “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”-type Christmas tunes. Drawing heavily from biblical Scriptures and written with congregational worship in mind, Advent Songs is meant as a hope-filled response to 2021’s weighty realities.