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The faith leaders, who hail from across the country and represent a range of religious traditions, deployed to neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations, where DHS agents have been most active.

Viral video of the protest shows activists standing up during the middle of a service at Cities Church and calling for the ousting of David Easterwood, a pastor at the Southern Baptist church who is also acting director of the St. Paul ICE field office.

During the first Christian worship service at the Pentagon in 2026 — and the first since the operation that resulted in the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — the Secretary of War framed that U.S. military action as a godly mission.

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Videos

Church

‘New York was the center of the slave trade in the United States,’ said the Rt. Rev. Matthew F. Heyd, bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. ‘That evil is part of the fabric of the diocese, and we’re trying to repair this fabric.’

During a mid-June event at Otter Creek Church, musicians and activists praised PEPFAR for saving millions of lives and urged evangelicals to call their representatives and show their support for the program.

The resolution shines a spotlight on a critical moment in the history of the Baptist church, signed two years after the issue of slavery prompted southern Baptists to split from northern Baptists and form the SBC.

Nation

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a very Catholic governmental Christmas celebration that also featured a Trumpian rabbi commemorating Hanukkah.

Mahan and Mozhan Motahari are members of an Episcopal church in Virginia. An alarming CBP social media post publicly shared images of the women, potentially heightening the risks they face back in Iran.

Religion in America might be best described in the words of rap artist LL Cool J: Don’t call it a comeback. At least not yet.

World

A Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem — yes, that Bethlehem — Rev. Munther Isaac denounced Trump’s recent Gaza proposal as “evil” on this week’s episode of Dangerous Dogma.

Maaloula is one of the world's few places where residents still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus is believed to have used.

On this somber anniversary, many are remembering the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have been killed in fighting over the last three years. But the president of the United States is instead trying to rewrite the facts of the war.

Editorials

Editor Brian Kaylor tells the Good Friday story as if set this year in Richmond, Virginia. As the Bible tells the story, Barabbas and the two men crucified along with Jesus are insurrectionists (not thieves).

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.

Word&Way Voices

Exploring Advent in a time of violence in Lebanon, Lina Sawan Raad reflects on rulers with hearts blinded by the love of power.

For the first entry on Advent in a time of violence in Lebanon, Nabil Costa reflects on how Christmas should be about moving out of our comfort zone.

For our final entry on Advent in a time of dangerous pregnancies, Sarah Miller reflects on the places where new life feels improbable and suffering surpasses speech.

E-Newsletter

With Pete Hegseth resurrecting a Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, this issue of A Public Witness looks back at how prayer was used to bless its White Supremacy ideology.

This issue of A Public Witness looks behind the unmarked cars to see the chilling impact of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on pastors, churches, and communities.

This issue of A Public Witness opens up DHS’s social media in one hand and an actual Bible in the other to consider the competing faiths.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Jerome Copulsky’s “American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order” is a tour de force documenting the religious illiberalism that has challenged democratic values from the very beginning.

In “The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening Our Democracy,” Matthew Taylor shows how some of the more extreme beliefs of American evangelicalism have begun to take hold in the mainstream.

In “The Moral Teachings of Jesus: Radical Instruction in the Will of God,” leading Christian ethicist David Gushee examines forty teachings of Jesus to clarify exactly what Jesus said about the moral life.

In “Another Gospel: Christian Nationalism and the Crisis of Evangelical Identity,” Joel Looper communicates an insider’s perspective on how a false gospel has colonized American evangelicalism.