Home - Word&Way
logo
mobile-logo

Featured

RNS found at least 25 immigrant pastors were detained, deported or otherwise separated from their churches. While Rev. Esdras Paredes ministers via video, his congregation sells tamales to raise funds and prays for a miracle.

Pope Leo XIV once again stressed that God does not promote war and called for the protection of human dignity and life, during the last day of his papal visit to France on Monday (Sept. 28).

The group, which included a religious adviser to Trump, sent a letter to Trump officials — an unusual instance of evangelical leaders urging the administration to change course.

No posts were found.

Videos

Church

A national, faith-based movement called “Guns to Gardens” has the goal of getting guns off the streets and giving people a safe way to dispose of them.

As a Christian minister with a Muslim father and a mother of Jewish heritage, Bishop Adam Shoemaker hopes to use his background to facilitate more reconciliation, integration, and 'the understanding that we are inextricably linked.'

Eighty religious plaintiffs from 11 major faith traditions have joined lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s immigration policies, according to a tracker developed by RNS with the Law, Rights, and Religion Project.

Nation

Trump administration lawyers have argued a key component of the IRS political campaign activity ban (also often called the “Johnson Amendment”) should not apply to churches. They've asked an appeals court to overturn a lower court decision dismissing a lawsuit challenging the ban.

The Trump administration set the refugee cap for 2027 at 17,500, the same as this year. That would make it the second year in a row of historically low admissions — made up primarily of White South Africans.

For some conservative Christian fans of C.S. Lewis's 'Chronicles of Narnia,' the idea of God being portrayed as a lion is fine. As long as he sounds like a guy.

World

Radicalized by COVID-19 and anger over immigration, right-wing pastors like Tobias Riemenschneider in Germany hope to gain followers by promoting conservative Christian views and politics. They have looked to religious right leaders and conservative influencers in the US for inspiration.

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party scored a pivotal victory for the far-right in Germany, an outcome churches fiercely fought to prevent. Their inability to stop it and the spread of the party’s anti-immigrant agenda expose a deeper rift in communities in which churches were a check on right-wing extremism.

The AfD may gain power on Sept. 6 in Saxony-Anhalt, posing a direct threat to refugees and the German churches that serve them. Inspired by past resistance in East Germany, faith leaders are doing everything they can to stand in the way of the far-right group.

Editorials

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor responds to Doug Wilson’s defense of Pete Hegseth holding Christian worship services in the Pentagon, including the one Wilson preached at earlier this month.

After President Donald Trump rambled, lied, and cursed for 77 minutes at the National Prayer Breakfast, a prominent Christian musician went to the piano to bless it.

In 1845, a group of pro-slavery Baptists created the Southern Baptist Convention to defend enslavers serving as missionaries. One hundred and eighty years later, SBC leaders defend a pastor serving as an ICE leader. Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor reflects on this through line.

Word&Way Voices

Youssef discussed his 52 years of ministry, Christians in the Middle East, and preparation for a major commemoration in 2030: the 2,000th anniversary of the baptism of Jesus at Bethany Beyond the Jordan.

Real solidarity with the Palestinian church asks us to choose between institutional comfort and the kind of justice the gospel actually demands, the disruptive kind, the kind that costs something — as the Church of England recently discovered.

Rodney Kennedy writes about religious issues and character matters in the the U.S. Senate race in Texas between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness features an interview with Kristin Kobes Du Mez about her new book 'Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made.'

The head of the U.S. military — who has Crusader imagery tattooed on his body and the cover of his Bible — spent the anniversary promising divine violence.

This issue of A Public Witness takes you through some of the highlights (or, uh, lowlights) of faith appeals at President Donald Trump’s ‘midterm convention.’

Sign up to receive full essays in your inbox!

Recent Episodes

Books

This updated edition includes a chapter on the intersections between LGBTQIA identity and neurodivergence and extra attention to how churches can respond to the assault on diversity and transgender rights in the current political climate.

Native American author Randy Woodley traces how a brown man from Nazareth who never lost his connection to the whole community of creation became the poster child for empire-building and environmental destruction.

Tony Jones has crafted a sweeping work of literary historical fiction that follows Constantine the Great from boyhood to his father’s deathbed — not the saint of legend, but the morally compromised, spiritually restless, utterly human man.

In this forthcoming new release, journalist and author Sarah Stankorb puts women’s voices and experiences of American Christianity front and center.