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This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside the UCC synod to explore the specific issues that were discussed and how they are relevant to all ecumenical Christians in these troubling times.

In “Delivered Out of Empire: Pivotal Moments in the Book of Exodus,” Walter Brueggemann shows how Exodus consistently reveals a God in radical solidarity with the powerless.

Unless the international community acts decisively and swiftly, Al-Taybeh risks being overrun by Israeli settlers, its lands confiscated, and its people forcibly displaced.

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Videos

Church

Queen is the first SBC leader to be charged in an ongoing DOJ investigation into the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

At St. Paul's Episcopal Church, the Rev. Jean Beniste, a Haitian immigrant and Episcopal priest turned internet curses into blessings during an annual blessing of the animals, held in honor of St. Francis.

Nation

‘Stir the conscience of our nation. Let justice rise up on these very steps, let truth trouble the chambers of the Capitol,’ Shane Claiborne said as he prayed.

President Donald Trump has appointed evangelical allies and a pair of high-profile Catholic clergy to join other faith leaders on a National Commission on Religious Liberty.

This issue of A Public Witness opens up the Aitken’s Bible to consider the tale of a flop and how Christian Nationalists misleadingly repackage it as ‘a Bible approved by Congress.’

World

Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, led the memorial service.

The commitment falls short of demands from some campaigners for institutions that benefited from slavery to pay compensation to descendants of the enslaved.

The militants 'are terrorists, and they are not fighting for any religion. But they want to use religion to achieve their target of destabilizing the country and establishing an Islamic state,' said a local evangelical Christian pastor.

Editorials

Throughout much of the book of Judges a consistent pattern emerges: the Israelites disobey God, find themselves oppressed for many years, a judge arises to bring peace for a few decades, and then they start the cycle all over.

Over the weekend, U.S. Special Operations forces trapped terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who then killed himself with a suicide blast. The world is safer with al-Baghdadi no longer planning terrorist activities. But that doesn’t mean we should cheer his death.

(WW) — A recent CNN piece explored how contemporary Christian music largely ignores contemporary moral concerns. But one line in the piece particularly caught my eye — and not in a good way.

Word&Way Voices

Ethicist, pastor, author, and advocate David P. Gushee reflects on the recent Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly and what makes the denomination distinct from the Southern Baptist Convention.

Rev. Joy Martinez-Marshall reflects on both the heartbreaks and triumphs she encountered on the winding road to finding a new denominational family.

Contributing writer Greg Mamula walks us through the recent denominational gathering of the most ethnically diverse and politically balanced denomination in the United States.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness looks at how Trump, along with several pastors and conservative Christian activists, lied about shouts of “Lies!” at a recent Harris rally — and his supporters responded by taking the Lord’s name in vain.

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.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Christian ethicist Robin Lovin’s "What Do We Do When Nobody is Listening: Leading the Church in a Polarized Society" joins a growing number of important books warning of the threat tribalism poses to democratic society.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President" by Allen C. Guelzo. This new book, an updated version of the 1999 first edition, offers one of the best portrayals of Lincoln the thinker, politician, and war-time leader.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "The Church After Innovation: Questioning Our Obsession With Work, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship" by Andrew Root. This book is a philosophical conversation about whether being innovative and creative is the best way to be faithful as Christians.

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "The Scandal of the Gospel: Preaching and the Grotesque" by Charles L. Campbell. This book challenges us to look beyond the safe path and embrace the less orderly and more chaotic realities of the grotesque, which