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For years, churches and separation of church and state activists have been frustrated at the way the IRS has handled allegations of church electioneering.

This issue of A Public Witness explores the “Let Freedom Ring!” initiative’s remembrance of the past, which also serves as a warning about contemporary tyrannical threats.

In recent decades, many mainline Protestants have moved away from the Calvinist theory of penal substitutionary atonement, which summons up the idea of an angry God who needs to be appeased.

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Church

This issue of A Public Witness tracks which denominations Lutheran congressional members are part of to consider what that reveals about Lutheran life and the broader Christian witness.

Among corporate America’s most persistent shareholder activists are 80 nuns in a monastery outside Kansas City. The Benedictine sisters of Mount St. Scholastica have taken on the likes of Google, Target, and Citigroup.

A dispute over weekend parking in bike lanes has left a group of inner-city congregations — four churches, a pair of synagogues and the Philadelphia Ethical Society — in Philadelphia dealing with a tricky urban dilemma.

Nation

This issue of A Public Witness heads to the city that never sleeps to combat a zombie version of a famous biblical story.

‘We are running a tremendous risk, but we are doing it on principle,’ the Rev. Carlos Malavé, LCNN’s president, said.

The college’s social media post about alumnus and Project 2025 architect Russell Vought has led to two open letters that reveal competing interpretations of Christian values.

World

Many Christian converts have lost their spiritual connection to the forests and lore. Meghalaya is 75% Christian in a country that is almost 80% Hindu.

The weeklong gathering outside Kenya's capital focused on gender-based violence, teenage pregnancy, and HIV/AIDS, saying the Anglican churches in Africa have been silent on these issues affecting many African women.

Nicaragua’s government released a prominent Catholic bishop and 18 other clergy members imprisoned in a crackdown by President Daniel Ortega and handed them over to Vatican authorities who welcomed them in Rome. 

Editorials

One hundred years ago, a bold experiment died. But it could be more than a historical footnote; it should serve as a prophetic whisper that things are not as they should be.

Mysterious people with political connections arrived from a country off in the East. They brought news the ruler did not like.

In a Polish museum dedicated to the “Warsaw Uprising” of 1944, one room stood out in particular for me — the one dedicated to the role of the press. In the midst of the fighting, a vibrant free press community continued.

Word&Way Voices

Much like the evangelical megachurches that have since taken over many a suburban mall movie theater, shopping malls initially catered to middle-class America during the height of White flight and represent an interesting case study of social stratification and culture.

For Earth Day, Lauren Graeber reflects on the spiritual practice of working the land and the deep wisdom it can offer about where and how to encounter a life of faith.

Evangelicals place great stress on the authority of the Bible and have often labeled their interpretation “the biblical view.” Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy outlines the problems with this framing and offers some helpful tips for combating it.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness looks at the creation of the law that eventually led to the Supreme Court’s case on the Bible in schools to determine what it teaches us about Christian Nationalistic motivations today.

This issue of A Public Witness takes off on a quest to understand what the recent Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission Brent Leatherwood debacle tells us about religion and politics.

Theologian and pastor Ross Kane articulates a vision of how Christians can engage in public life that begins with the premise that all politics is local.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Historian and former denominational executive Lee Spitzer spent years researching for his new book Sympathy, Solidarity, and Silence: Three European Baptist Responses to the Holocaust. The book tells inspiring and disappointing stories of how Baptists in England, France, and Germany

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Father Abraham’s Many Children: The Bible in a World of Religious Difference" by Tyler D. Mayfield with a forward from Eboo Patel. This book invites us to read Genesis from the perspective of religious pluralism as

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Unruly Saint: Dorothy Day's Radical Vision and its Challenge for Our Times" by D.L. Mayfield. This book recognizes a degree of saintliness about Day's life but fears she might get domesticated by a church that might

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "The Book of Revolutions: The Battles of Priests, Prophets, and Kings That Birthed the Torah" by Edward Feld. This book provides us with an intriguing picture of early Judaism by focusing not on historical narrative but