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Faith leaders recently spoke out against the ICE activity after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Trump to end temporary protected status for the 330,000 Haitians who’ve fled violence.

'The fact that we still have to fight to maintain and renew voting rights in this country is beyond abysmal and a truly national disgrace,' Martin Luther King III said Friday.

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.

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Church

The former Southern Baptist President's lawyers had argued he was a private figure and his misconduct was nobody's business. He also claimed a tweet criticizing him was defamatory.

'We too can have rough patches in our marriage,' said the Rev. Jamal Bryant, senior pastor of an Atlanta-area megachurch where is wife is an executive pastor.

Like other Haitians losing protection, they face an agonizing choice: try to stay in the U.S. and find underground work, constantly fearful of being caught by ICE. Or return to a nation so overwhelmed by gang violence and poverty that deportation is tantamount to a death sentence.

Nation

Civil rights advocates on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a potential new test of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms.

The Department of Defense is introducing a course centered on Western civilization and Christianity this fall in the schools it operates for military families, part of an effort by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to redirect the education system toward patriotic values and classical learning.

A surveillance incident at a Baptist church particularly raises questions since the congregation’s building is covered by a federal injunction blocking warrantless DHS actions there.

World

Churches are calling for restraint, humanitarian support, and law and order as xenophobic unrest deepens.

Despite the fact that many Venezuelan faith leaders have been impacted themselves by the ongoing disaster, they’ve sprung into action to provide food, psychological support, and other basic needs to the large population of victims.

‘For three years, the police saw me as a nudnikit (pest),’ said Yisca Harani, founder of the Religious Freedom Data Center, which tracks and aims to prevent incidents targeting Christians in Israel. ‘After the incident with the nun, I feel they are taking me a little more seriously.’

Editorials

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor reflects on the Christmas narrative in the Gospel of Matthew and an upcoming Christmas program at the Kennedy Center in the aftermath of Donald Trump taking it over.

The remarkable part of the Christmas story is that God decided to come as one of us. The incarnation means Jesus cried out at birth, announcing the breath of life in the one who breathes life into us.

For the first entry in our series this year, Word&Way president and editor-in-chief Brian Kaylor reflects on this week’s theme: Advent in a time of religious nationalism.

Word&Way Voices

The Israel-U.S.-Iran conflict has seen an appeal to scripture from many of the involved leaders. But the moment God is invoked as argument rather than moral motivation, the willingness to be wrong is surrendered.

Set in modern-day Tehran, the new film premiering in Chicago this weekend is both a forbidden love story and a depiction of the steadfast faith of the Baha’i community amidst ongoing oppression.

We live in an era saturated with more means of communication than ever before, and yet we also face unprecedented threats to our genuine human connections.

E-Newsletter

In light of advocacy from figures like Doug Wilson and Micah Beckwith, it’s worth remembering why the American experiment includes a ban on religious tests for office.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at how the head of the Russian Orthodox Church nukes God’s grace and mercy before considering how it serves as a warning about militaristic Christian Nationalism more broadly.

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a hyperpartisan church for a taste of how the gospel of Jesus is being supplanted by an imperial lust for political power.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Warren Throckmorton, whose fact-checking of David Barton's book 'The Jefferson Lies' convinced the publisher to pull it from the shelves, picks a fight with fables told about the past by those who are trying to erase the separation of church

Drawing from personal experience, theological insight, and psychological depth, Richard Beck challenges the fear-based, legalistic interpretations that have long dominated many Christian traditions.

In his new book, acclaimed sociologist Robert Wuthnow seeks to both illuminate what has been hidden and to add complexity where a story has been too simply told.

In this innovative synthesis of practical theology and psychological science, professors Katherine M. Douglass and Brittany M. Tausen bring wisdom from Scripture and cutting-edge research into conversation.