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While the organizing and hosting of monthly government worship services has been paused at DoL, such services continue at the Pentagon — and this trend has now spread to the Small Business Administration.

The commercialized American church has arrived at a form of religious life in which institutional maintenance and spiritual fidelity become indistinguishable, and where questioning the institution is easily recoded as questioning God.

Translating the Bible into Cherokee began early in the 19th century, shortly after Protestant missionaries arrived in the Cherokee Nation – centered mainly in what are now western North Carolina, north Georgia, and eastern Tennessee.

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Church

'This is one important step in our struggle for justice and my call to live out Jesus’s command to care for the captives,' said the Rev. Susie Hayward, who is cited in the legal case and was in court for the ruling.

U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell will hear Friday from attorneys for Minnesota branches of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the United Church of Christ, and a Catholic priest.

Fountain Street Church, founded in 1869 through the merger of two Baptist congregations, has a legacy of rejecting dogma and pushing the envelope.

Nation

A court of appeals ruling just overturned Supreme Court precedent on posting the Ten Commandments in public schools — and the majority opinion conscripted a legendary colonial Baptist figure who fought for church-state separation to justify their actions.

Notably absent from the lineup are representatives from other non-Christian faiths, such as Islam or Indigenous spiritual traditions, or leaders from mainline Christian or historically Black denominations.

The ruling sets up a potential clash at the U.S. Supreme Court over the issue in the future. Arkansas and Louisiana have passed similar laws, which have also been challenged in courts.

World

Historic Christian churches representing the predominantly Arab Christian community and mostly U.S. evangelicals who support Israel are at odds with each other.

The unusual statement marked the second time in recent months that members of the Catholic hierarchy have asserted their voice against a Trump administration many believe isn’t upholding the basic tenets of human dignity.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at criticism of the Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela by various Christian denominations and organizations, as well as pleas for peace by Venezuelan Christian leaders.

Editorials

During a recent debate in the Missouri Senate over a proposal to create rape and incest exemptions to Missouri’s abortion ban, one lawmaker argued against such exceptions by defaming God.

For the final devotional exploring Advent in a time of bloodshed in Israel, Brian Kaylor reflects on how Gaza is significant in a biblical story that doesn’t explicitly mention the place.

This devotional poses a question ringing through the ages: Will we choose to adopt the values of Herod or the way of Jesus?

Word&Way Voices

As Christmas nears, may we continue to not run away from seeing the injustices in our communities. But hold that in tension with the joy that we should all be feeling as we anticipate Jesus’s birth.

To launch our week reflecting on Advent in a time of soldiers in the streets, Rev. Jorge Bautista writes about getting shot in the face with a pepper round by a U.S. immigration agent while at a peaceful prayer vigil in Oakland, California.

Despite the tough-on-crime adage that prisoners enjoy 'three hots and a cot' during their time behind bars, this paints far too rosy a picture of the meager portions of low-quality and ultra-processed foods available.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness heads down to Georgia to consider the devil in the details of the race to determine who will be the next Republican nominee for governor.

This issue of A Public Witness considers the danger of letting government outlaw a religion and the warnings about who could be next on the target list after Muslims.

While organizers claim the government-run church services are for everyone, the March event particularly demonstrated that this was a program crafted by and intended for Catholics.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Leading Qur'anic scholar Gabriel Said Reynolds presents a revisionary account of how Islam emerged in dialogue with Christian traditions, challenging the dominant narrative that it came out of a predominantly pagan context.

Scholar Matthew Boedy exposes a dangerous plan driven by prosperity preachers, extremist politicians, and right-wing power brokers to destroy democracy and turn America into a Christian Nationalist state.

Beth Felker Jones offers a theologically grounded reflection on the beauty and complexity of the Protestant tradition, inviting a deeper understanding of Protestantism and its place in the broader Christian community.

In this book, Baptist theologian Myles Werntz explores the landscape of twentieth-century ecclesiology and shows how the four marks of the church were remade, contested, and reaffirmed in surprising ways.