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In this issue of A Public Witness, we rewatch the plot twists as a state governor suggested there should be an unconstitutional religious test for office. Then before the credits roll, we reach the climax of our story with a lesson about faith and government service.

A team of scholars, faith leaders, and advocates unveiled an exhaustive new report Wednesday (Feb. 9) that documents in painstaking detail the role Christian Nationalism played in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and calling it an unsettling preview of things to come.

Between calculus and European history classes at a West Virginia public high school, 16-year-old Cameron Mays and his classmates were told by their teacher to go to an evangelical Christian revival assembly.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we count the fights over redistricting and the relative quietness from Christians amid this partisan fight. Then we map out what values Christians should push amid redistricting squabbles. 

Since at least the George Floyd summer of marches and demonstrations against police killings of unarmed Black men, evangelical leaders have been echoing the broader alarm about the divisions they say that wokeness, critical race theory, and other social justice ideas visit on American society.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has no “litmus test for appointments,” his spokeswoman said Friday, despite a statement earlier in the week indicating he would only nominate a state health director who shared his “Christian values.”

A report on churches and technology during the pandemic found that by offering online services, churches were able to expand their reach, often connecting with people outside their community or reconnecting with former members who had moved away. Even small congregations that had once struggled to reach outside the walls of the church were able to expand their reach.

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.