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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.

Unitarian Universalists and Deists, who were reportedly excluded from the latest list, are among two categories represented among signers of the Declaration of Independence.

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a recent gathering to hear from leading scholars as they offer constructive ways to push back against a dangerous and heretical ideology.

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Videos

Church

Churches across Chicago braced for Trump’s threat of a National Guard deployment and apocalyptic force, even as Chicago’s rates of violent crime have dropped substantially in recent years as part of a national trend.

A report from the Louisville Institute found that the kinds of discrimination faced include gender bias, limited opportunities for leadership, and adverse expectations related to work/family balance.

‘I never thought I had one day to cancel Sunday worship because it is not safe for our Latino siblings to come to church. But here we are … ,’ wrote one pastor on Facebook.

Nation

Not since the Civil Rights Era has the religious left so publicly and collaboratively protested in the name of a social question they regard as a spiritual one.

The high court unanimously ruled in the case of Gabriel Olivier, who says his religious and free speech rights were violated when he was arrested for refusing to move his derisive preaching away from a suburban amphitheater.

The defense secretary’s tattoos of the Jerusalem Cross and “Deus Vult” are frequently invoked as literal signs of his Christian Nationalism — and rightly so. But the same symbols on his Bible were overlooked until now.

World

Many Syrian Christians, who made up 10% of the population before Syria’s civil war, either fled the country or supported Assad out of fear of Islamist insurgents.

Travis Timmerman of Urbana, Missouri, said he had gone to Syria on a Christian pilgrimage and was not ill-treated while in Palestine Branch, a notorious detention facility operated by Syrian intelligence.

The pope’s appeal was made for the World Day of Peace, coinciding with the launch of the 2025 Jubilee year.

Editorials

Some people wanting to reopen their church amid coronavirus restrictions say churches should be treated like Costco. So, I decided to test this theory out. What if my church service could operate like a Costco?

As a child, I imagined the bandits who beat and robbed the man in Jesus’s parable about being a good neighbor wore masks. Now, I’m pretty sure the Samaritan who helped the man was the one really covering his face.

As states across the country shut down non-essential businesses in March and April, debates started about what should count as essential. But one unessential business apparently remained open as “essential” across the country: state lotteries.

Word&Way Voices

Daoud Kuttab reflects on a gathering that took place as the war in Gaza — where at least 23 Christians have been killed — has alienated many Palestinian Christians, who feel their co-religionists around the globe have abandoned them.

Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab documents a recent sermon from an influential pastor of the leading Protestant church in Cairo.

Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy discusses what led him to write “Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit” covering lessons preachers can learn from novelists, poets, philosophers, and rhetoricians.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness looks at the need for those who oppose Christian Nationalism to fight not just with lawsuits but also in the court of public opinion, so we can effectively protect religious liberty.

This issue of A Public Witness recommends two films and one miniseries exploring important issues of Christian Nationalism and religious abuse.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at how one Calvinist voice with connections to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is publicly doing violence to Scripture to justify some disturbingly unChristlike behavior.

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Recent Episodes

Books

In "Review: Gospel As Work of Art: Imaginative Truth and the Open Text," David Brown challenges us to expand our understanding of scripture past source criticism and historical Jesus studies to include works of imagination.

In "A Faith of Many Rooms: Inhabiting a More Spacious Christianity," Debie Thomas takes readers on a deeply personal and profoundly theological odyssey.

This issue of A Public Witness explores what Scott Coley’s forthcoming book “Ministers of Propaganda: Truth, Power, and the Ideology of the Religious Right” reveals about the antidote to Christo-authoritarianism.

In "A Quilted Life: Reflections of a Sharecropper’s Daughter," Catherine Meeks describes the adventures and adversity she encountered on her path to becoming an empowered voice for change.