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‘Church-state separation ensures we are all free to live as ourselves and believe as we choose, as long as we don’t harm others,’ Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State countered.

This issue of A Public Witness considers some dangerous voices against climate action and then the Christians working to love their neighbors and the Creator by addressing our pressing environmental crisis.

Trump delivered an extraordinary online attack against Leo on Sunday night after the first U.S.-born pope suggested that a ‘delusion of omnipotence’ is fueling the U.S.-Israel war in Iran.

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Videos

Church

‘We are honest about the conditions that we're facing, but we are not hopeless about what we're facing,' said Bishop W. Darin Moore of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion 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.

Nation

Brian Kaylor, a Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-affiliated minister and leader of the Christian media organization Word&Way, called having an ICE official serve as a pastor ‘a serious moral failure.’

‘Jesus — who they claim to worship — went into the so-called houses of God, he flipped over tables. … So that’s what we did today,’ said minister and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong.

Amid an internal investigation into Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the Department of Labor held its second monthly worship service featuring the rightwing anti-abortion activist niece of MLK.

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

(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.

Imagine a world where Christians — both those running for office and those just planning to vote — actually applied the Golden Rule. With that goal in mind, Baptist and other denominational leaders are calling for Christians to act Christlike, even in political conversations.

There’s a fascinating, oft - overlooked parable in Judges 9. It might be one of the most profound teachings about political power and who we trust to rule found in the scriptures.

Word&Way Voices

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.

Rev. Janna Louie, chief of staff for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, reflects on Psalm 80 and how anxieties can be transformed by collective grief and lament.

Word&Way trustee and scholar of American evangelicalism William Trollinger argues that Johnson’s association with Ark Encounter makes sense given the strong connection between Young Earth Creationism and Christian Right politics.

E-Newsletter

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.

A congregational pastor who also serves as the UCC’s Minister for Disabilities and Mental Health Justice, Sarah Griffith Lund has long been a voice helping Christians gently and wisely wrestle with neurodiversity.

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Recent Episodes

Books

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.

In "Multiracial Cosmotheandrism: A Practical Theology of Multiracial Experiences," Aizaiah G. Yong considers how the lives and spiritual experiences of mixed-race people can transform efforts for racial justice.

In "Jesus the Refugee: Ancient Injustice and Modern Solidarity," D. Glenn Butner Jr. draws on scripture, theology, and legal analysis to provide a compelling and important look at one of the major crises of our time.