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Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, is best known as the church where former President Jimmy Carter taught Sunday School for decades. The church’s new pastor recently moved the U.S. and Christian flags out of the sanctuary.

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell makes the case that the culture of flopping has spread beyond sports. Who are the biggest floppers right now? Christian Nationalists.

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a contentious hearing in the Missouri Senate, offers context for Ten Commandments mandates spreading across the country, and highlights the strong Christian opposition to an attempted Christian Nationalist power grab.

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Videos

Church

At its national synod, the Christian Reformed Church in North America voted to put congregational leaders on 'limited suspension' if their churches publicly welcome LGBTQ+ members.

At a recent PCA meeting, critics of ‘Jesus Calling,’ written by Sarah Young, called for an investigation to see if the book was safe for Christians to read.

Once relegated exclusively to gay bars and nightclubs, drag is increasingly in the open these days — at libraries, music festivals, and, yes, churches.

Nation

‘I will defend equality for all, diversity, equality, inclusion, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration rights,’ a crowd recited at a rally.

‘We’ll be taking attendance on who’s afraid — of dream busters or who stands with the dreamer — on Martin Luther King federal holiday,’ Rev. Al Sharpton said ahead of a planned rally.

The bill, which advocates said President-elect Donald Trump is willing to sign after he is inaugurated next week, now moves to the Republican-controlled Senate.

World

Though he has allowed new houses of worship to be built and old ones to be reopened, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan needs to do more, observers say, to restore respect for a truly pluralistic society as much as for church property.

Archbishop Welby spent several days in Jerusalem last week following the attack on Israelis by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the ensuing assaults on Gaza by Israeli forces.

Draft law 8371, which requires another vote before moving to the president’s desk, would give Ukrainian authorities power to examine the connection of religious groups in Ukraine to the Russian Federation and to ban those whose leadership is outside of Ukraine.

Editorials

Last year, my wife and I saw the famous Leonard da Vinci mural “The Last Supper.” To be honest, I went because it seemed like something we should do while in Milan. But I was truly impressed by the mural.

There’s a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and its dictator “won” an unfair election last year to hold power. But if the recent past in Latin America — and elsewhere — teaches us anything, it’s that military invasions and coups destabilize nations, spark civil wars, devastate local economies and result in

As of press time, the U.S. government was reopening after the longest shutdown ever. Although I don’t work for the government, I was surprised how many times the shutdown impacted me.

Word&Way Voices

Professor Greg Carey writes that hope is an essential strategy for Christians. As the apostle Paul said, three things abide: faith, hope, and love. Love may be the “greatest,” says Paul, but hope stands in the top three.

Terrell Carter writes that unfortunately, mass shootings and other acts of violence have become an ordinary experience in our world. Some might say that this upward trend in violence epitomizes the “ordinariness of suffering,” the fact that violent things regularly occur in the world.

Angela Parker from Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology writes about the time that a complementarian invited her to lunch. Thinking through the genealogy in Matthew’s Gospel and Ware’s re-imagination makes her ask how certain segments of Christianity still stifle women’s ministry.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness tackles Chicago Bears stadium pastor Rev. Charlie Dates and offers some postgame analysis about what went wrong with his recent prayer controversy.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at the problems with recent public school chaplaincy bills by considering what a chaplain really is and what religious freedom actually looks like.

This issue of A Public Witness digs into recent data from Lifeway Research and the Land Center to see what we can actually learn about a significant evangelical denomination and why the framing of the report misses the mark.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Robert D. Cornwall reviews Stepmother: Redeeming a Disdained Vocation by Dorothy C. Bass. The book delivers a deeper understanding of complex family relationships and seeks to redeem a “disdained vocation” through exploring life experiences and offering a word of grace

Robert D. Cornwall reviews Holy Communion in Contagious Times: Celebrating the Eucharist in the Everyday and Online Worlds by Richard A. Burridge. The book is both a scholarly response and a personal reflection since Burridge draws on his own experiences

Robert D. Cornwall reviews The New Adam: What the Early Church Can Teach Evangelicals (and Liberals) about the Atonement by Ron Highfield. The book explores how we should understand the death and resurrection of Jesus and what this means for

Robert D. Cornwall reviews The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar by Luke Timothy Johnson. The book serves as a memoir about the life of a scholar, written both for potential academics and for those who wonder