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The executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society commemorates the 1776 Dissenters’ Petition of Ten Thousand Names and connects it to our religious freedom struggles today.

With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, Pete Hegseth’s job security is increasingly uncertain — meaning this could be the final Pentagon worship service.

Can we bypass the end times by becoming worthy of God’s love and presence — and does the Bible show that all prophecy is set in stone? Maybe we should ask Jonah.

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Videos

Church

‘We have to try to make it so big it can't be rigged,’ Michigan Baptist leader the Rev. James C. Perkins said of voter turnout efforts.

Hundreds of residents gathered for a community-wide re-dedication of the original First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, which was established in 1776 by enslaved and free African Americans in defiance of laws that prevented them from congregating.

The lawsuit, from Archbishop Mitchell Thomas Rozanski along with the Archdiocese of St. Louis, accused the Department of Homeland Security and ICE of instituting policies that violate 'core constitutional values.'

Nation

Securing public money for private education raises issues over church-state separation but fulfills a longstanding goal for Christian Nationalists like Doug Wilson, who founded the Association of Classical Christian Schools.

A survey released Tuesday (Oct. 20) found that Republicans and evangelicals increasingly see empathy as a danger that can lead society away from God. The survey found that more than half of Americans see President Trump as a threat to democracy.

While the idea of poll chaplains has been around for several years, 2026 will likely be different because there is widespread concern that the presence of federal immigration agents could create a chilling effect.

World

Amid surging kidnappings and attacks on communities and places of worship, faith leaders are forming partnerships aimed at countering religious division and building peace.

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.

Editorials

Editor-in-Chie Brian Kaylor reflects on a recent violent prayer by Pete Hegseth during a Christian worship service at the Pentagon and Mark Twain’s satirical work “The War Prayer.”

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.

Word&Way Voices

Evangelicals have turned to various historical figures in an attempt to depict President Donald Trump as a fine Christian man. But the “Sun King” might be the best fit.

There is a way to interpret Scripture that leaves a person almost permanently reassured — difficult passages become instruments for identifying enemies rather than mirrors for examining the soul. But the Bible consistently resists that reading.

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.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness contemplates historical parallels between the Stasi secret police force in East Germany targeting activist Lutheran congregations and DHS agents spying inside ELCA churches today.

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.

This issue of A Public Witness pulls back the curtain to explore self-defeating efforts from the religious right in Washington and Iowa.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Daniel Cooperrider reminds readers that God continues to speak in the context of nature and the ebbs and flows of the seasons. It’s a witness we need to heed, considering the climate challenges we face as human beings.

In this luminous and deeply comforting collection, Fr. Joel W. Huffstetler, rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Cleveland, Tennessee, invites us to see life's upheavals through the steady light of grace.

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.