News

The return to in-person school in many communities across the country means many houses of worship are grappling with whether children — especially those under 12 who do not have access to a COVID-19 vaccine — should be exposed to adults, vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Indiana University’s Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture recently held an online mini-conference examining “White Christian Nationalism in the United States.” Two separate panels sought to understand this potent and problematic cultural identity.

Pope Francis issued a message on Wednesday encouraging Catholics to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, calling it “an act of love,” as part of a global effort to reduce the onslaught of the pandemic and convince vaccine skeptics.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we consider the failure of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan amid the unfolding humanitarian crisis. And we offer some lessons we hope Christians will consider from this war miscast as a crusade. 

In a pathbreaking decision, the Rev. Gina Stewart has been elected as the first woman president of the Lott Carey Baptist Foreign Mission Society, marking the first time a female has been chosen for the highest post of a Black Baptist organization. 

As most Americans absorbed the shock of the Taliban’s full takeover of Afghanistan over the weekend, officials at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service followed the rapidly deteriorating situation with resignation, knowing it could have gone differently.

Across the nation’s deeply-religious Bible Belt, a region beset by soaring infection rates from the fast-spreading delta variant of the virus, churches and pastors are both helping and hurting in the campaign to get people vaccinated against COVID-19.

A Texas death-row inmate has sued state prison officials to allow his pastor to lay hands on him as he dies from a lethal injection. John Henry Ramirez, 37, is scheduled to be put to death in the Texas death chamber on Sept. 8.

A national nonprofit group of professors devoted to academic freedom, shared governance, and quality higher education, recently argued that Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar, Missouri, is not an institution where academic freedom can be expected.

In this issue of A Public Witness, we borrow a principle from economics to help Christians consider the cost of our attention being absorbed by scandals that must be addressed or frivolous issues that should be ignored.