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This issue of A Public Witness goes inside the first meeting of the White House Religious Liberty Commission this week to warn about their effort to turn religious freedom upside down.

‘It is featured in over 40 different Christian hymnals and sung in churches all across America, not just during Black History Month or Juneteenth,’ said musician Theodore Thorpe III.

As survivors gathered Tuesday, they invited another congregation that knows the pain of murderous hatred to join them: members of the Tree of Life synagogue.

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Church

They reject climate science but accept medical science, according to the National Survey of Religious Leaders published this week.

The number of nondenominational churches has grown, as have the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated. As a result, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, and other historic mainline groups have had to do less with less.

The investigation cost the SBC's Executive Committee $2 million in legal fees and led to one former Southern Baptist seminary leader pleading guilty to lying to the FBI.

Nation

Capitol police said nine people were charged with ‘crowding, obstructing, and incommoding.’

‘You have done a marvelous job of grasping the underlying truth and philosophy of the movement,’ the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote to the creator of a comic book about civil rights.

Faith groups say thousands remain locked in limbo as the administration drags its feet.

World

In September, he said Israel's attacks in Gaza and Lebanon have been immoral and disproportionate and that its military has gone beyond the rules of war.

An investigation found that he failed to tell police about serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer at Christian summer camps as soon as he became aware of it.

In the last two years, the number of religious activists who are being held as political prisoners has sharply increased — part of a broader escalation of a campaign of repression that has also led to the arrests of journalists and other opposition figures.

Editorials

Editor Brian Kaylor reflects on the Ever Given container ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal. And he connects this modern parable to biblical stories about Egyptian pharaohs and other rulers seeking more wealth and power.

Editor Brian Kaylor reflects on the painting behind Georgia Governor Brian Kemp during the signing ceremony for a new law making it harder for people to exercise their right to vote.

Editor Brian Kaylor reflects on the quick move by a Baptist church in Georgia to kick out the man who killed eight people at three massage parlors. And Kaylor wonders where Jesus would have instead shown up in Atlanta on Sunday.

Word&Way Voices

Christians often hear, share, and remember lies — but the light that exposes these lies doesn’t make their newsfeed. And this can make it difficult to be part of a faith community.

A Jordanian worship band has made it their mission to perform and record hymns composed around the middle of the 20th century that might have otherwise been lost to time.

Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy explores how the pilgrimages made by various politicians to Trump’s Manhattan trial are all about religion.

E-Newsletter

Joe Blosser’s recent book is challenging because it takes seriously the idea that the only way to love God well is to love our neighbors more by re-evaluating how much we’ve fallen in love with ourselves.

A debate in the Oklahoma Senate yesterday over the use of corporal punishment against children with disabilities turned into a lesson about how not to read the Bible.

A religious coalition won the first round of faith-based litigation against the Trump administration — but the scope of the preliminary injunction is limited.

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Recent Episodes

Books

We’ve once again asked several Word&Way writers to each offer two books perfect for curling up with at the beach, on your couch, or in your backyard as you listen to the singing of the cicadas.

In "Thinking About Good and Evil: Jewish Views From Antiquity to Modernity," Rabbi Wayne Allen traces the most salient ideas about why innocent people suffer, why evil individuals prosper, and God’s role in such matters of (in)justice.

In "Miracles for Skeptics: Encountering the Paranormal Ministry of Jesus," Frank G. Honeycutt draws out the deeper truths in the weird incidents from the Bible.

In "God After Deconstruction," Thomas Jay Oord and Tripp Fuller write for people experiencing the traumatic realities of discovering that what they once believed about God is no longer sustainable.