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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.

According to court documents, Feucht sought a donation for his Kingdom to Capitol Tour, which he planned to take to all 50 states. The donor agreed to fund five tour stops for a total of $250,000, but later discovered that Feucht’s entire concert tour had been fully funded.

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.

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Videos

Church

Budde, who shot to fame after urging President Donald Trump to have mercy on immigrants and others, will remain the Episcopal bishop of Washington until June 2028, when her replacement will be consecrated.

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.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at how some Republican politicians are attacking the faith of mainline Christians and how United Methodists are pushing back against the bigotry.

Nation

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 own records.

A group of Reformed pastors and influencers has wedded old-school segregationist theology with the hypermasculinity of the manosphere and the savvy of the attention economy to preach and sell White supremacy, antisemitism, and patriarchy to angry young men. Its audience is small but growing, and their movement has ties to powerful religious and political figures.

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.

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

Wesley Welch of King’s Church DC delivered the sermon, becoming the ninth Southern Baptist pastor to preach out of 17 total services.

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.

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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.