News

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. 

Princeton Theological Seminary’s board has unanimously voted to dissociate the name of enslaver and anti-abolitionist Samuel Miller from the school’s chapel.

Senior Editor Beau Underwood interviews Lindsey Braun, pastor of education and faith formation at Plymouth Church in Des Moines, Iowa, for the latest installment of our “Behind the Pulpit” series intended to pull back the curtain on the minister’s life.

With so many ideological strands animating the far-right — including racism, antisemitism, and fervent nationalism — a shared affinity for Christian Nationalism has come to serve as a unifying element, scholars of extremism say. And as Christian Nationalism’s presence grows, experts are concerned it could expand extremism’s influence over other, more moderate conservative politicians and groups. 

A Republican-dominated South Dakota House committee on Friday rejected Gov. Kristi Noem’s proposal to require public schools to have a moment of silence to start the day. The Republican governor first billed the proposal at a conservative Christian conference in Iowa last year as “putting prayer back in schools.”

In a recent speech the pope revived his criticism of rich countries that force their values on poorer nations, erasing their local cultures and traditions. Francis’s thinking, experts say, can be traced back to his days in Argentina, where, as Jorge Bergoglio, he led the Archdiocese of Bueno Aires.