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Editor-in-Chie Brian Kaylor reflects on a recent violent prayer by Pete Hegseth during a Christian worship service at the Pentagon and Mark Twain’s satirical work “The War Prayer.”

In this edition of A Public Witness, we dig around between the couch cushions to explore the relationship between religion and politics as American Christians are confronted with what belongs to God when Caesar becomes more demanding.

We’re partnering with Moravian University’s School of Theology to offer a four-week online course (with synchronous and asynchronous options) to explore how religion is covered and communicated in the media today.

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Videos

Church

A group of prominent SBC leaders say the denomination's public policy arm still matters.

The fire severely damaged Clayborn Temple, which served as the headquarters for the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike that brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the city.

‘Afrikaners don’t fit any definition of refugee,’ said the Most Rev. Sean Rowe, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Nation

The question of offering pastoral care to immigrant detainees has become a theological and legal flashpoint since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation effort last year.

The faith-based networks, which developed organizing infrastructure and relationships during the Floyd era, are joined by newcomers as resistance efforts have intensified since Good’s shooting.

With the growth of worship services by leaders in a Christian Nationalist administration, it’s worth revisiting the most significant previous effort to craft religion within the federal government: the church of Nixon.

World

Surf Church was established by an ordained Baptist pastor to spread the Gospel in a once-devoutly Catholic country where about half of young people today say they have no religion.

The Salvation Army is exploiting a connection to the Beatles to draw more visitors to fund its mission and encourage people who would never consider stepping inside a church to find out about Christianity.

A large majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox, but they are divided between two main groups with similar names: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Editorials

We celebrate many early Baptist giants. Thomas Helwys. Roger Williams. John Leland. Adoniram and Anne Judson. Luther Rice. But there’s one we generally don’t know: Jack.

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.

Word&Way Voices

Rev. Alex Awad, a retired minister who served as pastor at East Jerusalem Baptist Church and a professor at Bethlehem Bible College, reflects on modern-day Herods and how the Christmas story gives oppressed people around the world hope.

Rev. Dr. Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, offers this first entry in our week exploring the theme of Advent during a time of bloodshed in Israel.

Rev. Nathan Empsall, executive director of Faithful America, writes that we begin to calm our anxieties only when we learn to accept the presence of divine mystery in our lives.

E-Newsletter

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.’

This issue of A Public Witness looks at the dustup over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in Oklahoma and the religious freedom arguments before eight black-robed justices.

Our ‘A Public Witness’ newsletter also garners two Best in Class awards in the Specialized Writing and Artwork categories, and Unsettling Advent wins top editorial series for the fourth straight year.

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Recent Episodes

Books

In "Saving Faith: How American Christianity Can Reclaim Its Prophetic Voice," Randall Balmer argues that any attempt to arrest the decline of Christianity in America must first reckon with the past.

In "Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age," author Thomas C. Berg makes the case that religious freedom for all is part of the cure for our political division.

This issue of A Public Witness explores Andrew Whitehead’s compelling new book "American Idolatry: How Christian Nationalism Betrays the Gospel and Threatens the Church."

In "Theology without Deception: God, the Poor, and Reality in El Salvador — Conversations with Charo Marmol," Jesuit Jon Sobrino explores faithful discipleship in a world marked by injustice.