Home - Word&Way

Featured

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.

If HGTV decided to cast a show about fixing up your old religion, few could compete with James McGrath to be the star who transforms outdated edifices into contemporary spiritual structures.

No posts were found.

Videos

Church

There is so much history between the walls of Metropolitan AME, which has hosted funerals for Rosa Parks and Frederick Douglass and opened its pews to American presidents. It made history again this year.

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.

Nation

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a very Catholic governmental Christmas celebration that also featured a Trumpian rabbi commemorating Hanukkah.

Mahan and Mozhan Motahari are members of an Episcopal church in Virginia. An alarming CBP social media post publicly shared images of the women, potentially heightening the risks they face back in Iran.

Religion in America might be best described in the words of rap artist LL Cool J: Don’t call it a comeback. At least not yet.

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 KaylorFor more than 400 years, Baptists have urged religious liberty for all. The advocacy of Baptists like Isaac Backus and John Leland helped enshrine religious liberty rights in the First Amendment to

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”

Word&Way Voices

Theologian and anti-apartheid activist Allan Boesak reacts to the recent U.S. House of Representatives resolution expressing support for Israel.

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.

E-Newsletter

Joe Blosser’s recent book is challenging because it takes seriously the idea that the only way to love God well is to love our neighbors more by re-evaluating how much we’ve fallen in love with ourselves.

A debate in the Oklahoma Senate yesterday over the use of corporal punishment against children with disabilities turned into a lesson about how not to read the Bible.

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

Sign up to receive full essays in your inbox!

Recent Episodes

Books

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

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