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The defense secretary’s tattoos of the Jerusalem Cross and “Deus Vult” are frequently invoked as literal signs of his Christian Nationalism — and rightly so. But the same symbols on his Bible were overlooked until now.

'This is one important step in our struggle for justice and my call to live out Jesus’s command to care for the captives,' said the Rev. Susie Hayward, who is cited in the legal case and was in court for the ruling.

This issue of A Public Witness heads down to Georgia to consider the devil in the details of the race to determine who will be the next Republican nominee for governor.

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Church

Sociologist Ruth Braunstein recently decided to try a different way of analyzing religion, politics, and money: a documentary podcast exploring divergent evangelical responses to Christian Nationalism.

One claim, about an allegedly defamatory tweet by another former denominational president, is still live. The SBC has spent more than $3 million in legal fees on the Hunt case.

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.

Nation

West Virginia’s school vaccination policy has long been heralded by medical experts as one of the most protective in the country for children.

With Pentagon prayer services continuing into the Christmas season, this issue of A Public Witness peeks inside Pete Hegseth’s monthly effort to establish his brand of rightwing Christianity inside the government.

The third installment of the ‘Knives Out’ series examines the spiritual warfare within American Christianity and looks at writer-director Rian Johnson’s struggle with the essence of faith.

World

The building, a striking fusion of the ancient and the modern, reflects a country determined to express its soul even in wartime.

The commissioners recommended the State Department also retain the dozen countries that are currently designated as ‘countries of particular concern.’

Dmitry Safronov held a memorial service by Navalny’s grave in Moscow on March 26 to mark 40 days since the politician’s death, an important ritual within Russian Orthodox tradition.

Editorials

Brian KaylorIn the U.S. context, we often hear laments about the decline of Christianity, how younger generations are walking away from faith and about our culture’s increasing embrace of immorality. If we hear

Brian KaylorThe top religious advisor to President Donald Trump defended his policies on detaining immigrant children, claiming Jesus never broke the law. Rather than an aberration, Paula White, the Florida megachurch “prosperity gospel”

Brian KaylorIt seems that since people could write, we’ve had stories warning about powerful people using their power to abuse others and to gain or preserve their power, assets or lustful desires. Homer’s

Word&Way Voices

Rev. Angela Denker reflects on the unjust and tragic death of sprinter Tori Bowie, one of the fastest women in America.

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell makes the case that future Christians will point to the names of our colleagues and friends as those who first navigated the waters of leading a church and serving as a wife or mothering a family at the same time.

Contributing writer Laura Levens reflects on the recent denominational meeting of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and how the energy of people in attendance felt different than in previous years.

E-Newsletter

A religious coalition won the first round of faith-based litigation against the Trump administration — but the scope of the preliminary injunction is limited.

On this somber anniversary, many are remembering the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have been killed in fighting over the last three years. But the president of the United States is instead trying to rewrite the facts of the war.

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

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Books

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

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "A Gift Grows in the Ghetto: Reimagining the Spiritual Lives of Black Men" by Jay-Paul Michael Hinds. This book reimagines the ghetto, a place of separation and abandonment, in terms of the wilderness that Ishmael experienced

Robert D. Cornwall reviews "Decolonizing Christianity: Becoming Badass Believers" by Miguel A. De La Torre. This book is a strongly worded prophetic statement calling for Christians of color to decolonize their minds, that is, set themselves free from the message

In his new book, David Hollinger argues that conservative evangelical churches flourished by providing a safe harbor for White Americans who wanted to be counted as Christian while avoiding a challenge that mainline leaders insisted must be faced: living a