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Baptist churches and missionaries in Poland have jumped in to help assist refugees from neighboring Ukraine fleeing the attacks from Russia. Some of those the Baptists have met coming out of Ukraine include Ukrainians the Polish Baptists met during summer camps in previous years.

Ed Litton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, announced Tuesday he will break with tradition and not seek a second term in the top convention role.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we listen to numerous calls for prayer from Christian leaders, denominations, and parachurch organizations. And we meditate on what it means to prophetically pray for peace instead of uttering generic calls that coddle the ones who broke the peace.

Metropolitan Epiphanius I of Ukraine, leader of the independent Orthodox Christian Church based in Kyiv, celebrated Ukrainians’ defense of his country against Russian invaders on Sunday while likening Russian President Vladimir Putin to the Antichrist and deriding the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

When Chicagoans gathered to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine on Thursday, hours after Russia launched a large-scale invasion of its western neighbor, they gathered on the steps in front of Sts. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church in the city’s Ukrainian Village neighborhood

In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, religious leaders prayed for peace and asked God to watch over civilians. This included various Christian groups in the U.S. and elsewhere.

This edition of A Public Witness looks at the troubling entanglement between the Russian government and the Russian Orthodox Church. For U.S Christians, this close association is a cautionary tale about the dangers of Christian Nationalism for both democracy and the vitality of our Christian witness.

More than a dozen faith leaders offered prayers for a peaceful resolution to the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine during an online vigil Wednesday hosted by the Episcopal Church and the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee has offered a public apology and a confidential monetary settlement to sexual abuse survivor Jennifer Lyell, who was mischaracterized by the denomination’s in-house news service when she decided to go public with her story in March 2019.

The tone of the midwinter Nashville gathering was in stark contrast to that of recent Executive Committee meetings, which were marked by sharp divides over issues such as race and politics and how to proceed with an investigation into the ways Baptist leaders have responded to the issue of sexual abuse.