Home - Word&Way

Featured

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.

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a recent academic gathering to hear from some of the nation’s leading scholars as they offer ways to push back against a dangerous ideology.

In “Evangelical Idolatry: How Pastors Like Me Have Failed the People of God,” Jeff Mikels is concerned by the evangelical church’s embrace of cultural and political idols.

No posts were found.

Videos

Church

The church's pastor said selling the shirts with the logo is an effort to ‘turn evil to good.’

Faith groups have long received government grants to feed the hungry, respond to disasters, and assist those in need — but recent comments from Trump administration officials have cast such grants in a bad light.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’s refusal to defend her fellow Lutherans is quite telling for understanding how some politicians are prioritizing politics and religion today.

Nation

This issue of A Public Witness heads to the Cheese State to consider the church politicking of an Elon Musk-backed court hopeful.

Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, a crucial resettlement agency, is in disarray. The organization is waiting on $3.7 million in federal reimbursements for work it has already provided.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at the U.S. government coming for a Palestinian student activist for exercising his free speech rights and the Christian and other religious voices speaking out for him.

World

While Trump fantasizes about retaking the waterway, this issue of A Public Witness digs into American colonialism and the roles Christian leaders and denominations played.

He’s been widely quoted — and misquoted. People have claimed Bonhoeffer would support their side on issues ranging from the Vietnam War to post-9/11 militarism to same-sex marriage to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Asked about Mike Huckabee potentially becoming the U.S. ambassador to Israel, the Rev. Munther Isaac called the prospect 'frightening,' adding, 'Huckabee presents himself, at least, as a man who does not live in reality.'

Editorials

Brian Kaylor reflects on the 1914 “Christmas truce” during World War I and why it he does not find it to be an inspiring take on what “peace on Earth” could look like today.

Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor reflects on Russian pro-war propaganda dressed up like a Christmas decoration, which he calls a sacrilegious assault on celebrations of the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Brian Kaylor writes that ten years ago today an armed man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and opened fire. This massacre at Christmastime evokes memories of part of the biblical story we tend to leave out of our nativities and pageants.

Word&Way Voices

This action would ensure that no federal prisoner faces execution despite being intellectually disabled, mentally incompetent, or convicted in proceedings riddled with racial bias.

Exploring Advent in a time of dangerous pregnancies, Kristel Clayville reflects on spiritual needs related to the act of creating new life.

Reflecting on the dangerous pregnancies of Mary and Elizabeth, Traci Blackmon writes that God’s miracles required not just their wombs but their entire beings.

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.

Sign up to receive full essays in your inbox!

Recent Episodes

Books

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty’s Amanda Tyler has reshaped the intersection of religion, politics, and law in recent years. And now she has a vital new book.

In "Imitating Christ: The Disputed Character of Christian Discipleship," New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson reorients Christian living toward pursuing sainthood.

In “A Visible Unity: Cecil Robeck and the Work of Ecumenism,” Josiah Baker explores the efforts of Pentecostals towards reconciliation as something significant for how we understand the church.

In “American Christian Nationalism: Neither American nor Christian,” Michael W. Austin offers us a better form of civic engagement.