Home - Word&Way

Featured

As we enter a season of Lent amid the chaos of Elon Musk and an oligarchy-fueled administration, this issue of A Public Witness reads the Bible and the Forbes Billionaire List to decide this day who we will serve.

In “Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible,” Liz Charlotte Grant interprets the Bible’s inspired book of beginnings as a work of art.

Most Greenlanders are proudly Inuit, having survived and thrived in one of the most remote and climatically inhospitable places on Earth. And they’re Lutheran.

No posts were found.

Videos

Church

Disqualified challengers hoped sufficient ‘no’ votes would cause the election process to restart.

Jackson described how faith, especially instilled by her now late grandmother, had undergirded her personal and professional life.

When the CCLI Top 100 chart first appeared in 1988, most of the songs had one writer. Today, the average hit worship song has at least two writers — who often have ties to the so-called Big Four megachurches.

Nation

Few people have thought as much about faith and politics as Danforth, who served as Missouri’s attorney general, special counsel for the DOJ, special envoy to Sudan, and ambassador to the UN for George W. Bush.

Facing misinformation and decreases in attendance, clergy whose congregations include immigrants are working to prepare their flocks for potential ICE raids while at worship.

Trump's first term crippled much of the nation's resettlement infrastructure. Now a new executive order threatens to do the same.

World

The largest ecumenical body in the United States included a panel about the ongoing tragedies in Armenia, Haiti, and Sudan as part of their recent Impact Week.

There are 182,000 Christians in Israel, 50,000 in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and 1,300 in Gaza, according to the U.S. State Department. The vast majority are Palestinians.

Buildings have sunk into the Atlantic Ocean, an increasingly common image along the vulnerable West African coast.

Editorials

Editor Brian Kaylor reflects on Jesus’s parable in Luke 10 about being a good neighbor after learning of the death of a man in the roadway on Christmas Eve just blocks from his church.

Editor Brian Kaylor reflects on the Magi in the biblical story and how they inspired his imagination as a child and still today. They’re mysterious, magical, powerful, wise

President Donald Trump will leave the White House next month after overseeing a deadly year of federal executions. We should pause and reflect on this moment. After all, our government conducts this killing spree in our names and with our resources.

Word&Way Voices

Many churches hold Blue Christmas services that allow people a sacred space for mourning. Perhaps the laments that come from political loss also need to be acknowledged in this season of anticipation.

We live in a time of great precariousness and it is important to be reminded that the only kingdom sure to last is the kingdom of God.

Often it doesn’t seem like Jesus was terribly concerned with politics, and certainly not with obtaining earthly power. But he was playing the long game of spiritual, social, and yes, political transformation.

E-Newsletter

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.

This issue of A Public Witness heads deep in the heart of Texas to track the campaign of U.S. Rep. Colin Allred as he shows up in pulpits hoping to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

This issue of A Public Witness explores how challenging White supremacy and Christian Nationalism requires both honesty and repair.

Sign up to receive full essays in your inbox!

Recent Episodes

Books

In "bell hooks' Spiritual Vision: Buddhist, Christian, and Feminist," Nadra Nittle offers readers a window into religion's role throughout the prominent social critic's writings.

In "My Body, Their Baby: A Progressive Christian Vision for Surrogacy," Grace Kao assesses the ethics of surrogacy from a feminist perspective, concluding that certain kinds of arrangements should be embraced.

In "Songs I Love to Sing: The Billy Graham Crusades and the Shaping of Modern Worship," Edith L. Blumhofer explores the stories behind some of the most beloved modern hymns.

In his new book "The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: And the Path to a Shared American Future," Robert Jones argues that truly understanding the sordid racial history of the United States requires reckoning with the Doctrine of Discovery.