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Religious Americans are unhappy with both political parties, Donald Trump, and the state of the country ahead of the midterms, according to Pew Research. The economy and the future of democracy top their concerns.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected the existence of a publicly funded Catholic charter school in the state in 2024, and a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court later upheld that decision.

From the founding fathers to the rise of Christian Nationalism, this new book from Michael E. Heyes reveals how America's centuries-long obsession with evil has shaped — and endangered — the United States.

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Videos

Church

This issue of A Public Witness drives over to the opening stop of the 2026 'The Vote Is Sacred Tour' at a Missouri church that’s seen firsthand the efforts this year to distort elections and dilute the voting power of Black communities.

'I am asking for your courage to love your neighbor, to respect the dignity of every human being, and now, to vote,' Budde says in the new ad, which references her headline-grabbing sermon to President Donald Trump last year.

Part of the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations, the facility — which will hold unaccompanied minors and families — is situated beside an airport that has become known as the country’s busiest hub for deportation flights.

Nation

The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected the existence of a publicly funded Catholic charter school in the state in 2024, and a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court later upheld that decision.

This issue of A Public Witness considers the claims that ‘the Bible says so’ and the diverse Christian voices opposing the snuff film planned by the Crusader leading the Pentagon.

'I don’t have words,' Martín Alonso Soto Hernandez said in Spanish while holding his wife and two children. 'Thank you so much for everything. I always, always stayed in prayer.'

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

For the second entry in our series on religion and AI, a biblical scholar and ethicist unpacks how technological advances are influencing how her students might choose bullet-pointed information over learning to seek and love the truth.

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.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness drives over to the opening stop of the 2026 'The Vote Is Sacred Tour' at a Missouri church that’s seen firsthand the efforts this year to distort elections and dilute the voting power of Black communities.

The defense secretary’s conscription of Isaiah 6:8’s ‘send me’ to promote military recruitment has also drawn rebukes from Christian Nationalist figures such as pastor/commentator Joel Webbon and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

A federal judge recently ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to report about any protected church where it has conducted an immigration enforcement action. But the agency told the court it had no idea how many incidents there may be, insisting it had no reasonable way to check its

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Recent Episodes

Books

Bradley Onishi’s new book details the rise of a class of ruling elites who seek to use religion and technology to replace democracy with authoritarian rule.

We're often disconnected from the places we inhabit — cut off from nature, our neighbors, people different from us, and a sense of rootedness. Ben Norquist and Brian Miller show how Christians can develop a redemptive imagination for place.

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.