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James Ellis III reflects on how being a preacher these days feels different. It’s unsettling how many people are thoroughly consumed by rage — and we as Christians should know better.

Brian Kaylor didn’t expect World magazine to like his new book, "The Bible According to Christian Nationalists." But he did anticipate that if the influential conservative Christian publication reviewed it, they would at least do so honestly. Apparently, that was expecting too much.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at Lance Shockley’s extensive history of Christian leadership while in prison, as well as the role restorative justice should play in our criminal legal system.

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Videos

Church

A dispute over weekend parking in bike lanes has left a group of inner-city congregations — four churches, a pair of synagogues and the Philadelphia Ethical Society — in Philadelphia dealing with a tricky urban dilemma.

During a recent installment of A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast, hosts Simon Doong and the Rev. Lee Catoe asked pastor and author the Rev. Dr. Brian Kaylor to talk about how mainline Protestants have helped build Christian Nationalism.

When faculty and staff at Sterling College received an updated employee handbook in August 2023, they were quickly alarmed by changes made without their input. Those concerns sparked a year of frustration with president Scott Rich’s leadership, frustration that continues as a new school year approaches.

Nation

The $643,401 grant is being returned to the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation, which attributed the decision of the world’s largest Baptist university to an ‘online campaign of fear and misinformation.’

As today’s Supreme Court leans right, there is an ongoing push to infuse conservative Christianity into taxpayer-funded education. Advocates of religious diversity and church-state separation are countering it.

Religious summer camps date back to two parallel movements in the 19th century — the revivalist religious gatherings in tents and the “fresh-air movement” after the industrial revolution — and boomed after World War II.

World

This issue of A Public Witness considers Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek from Deuteronomy and unpacks what it means when politicians invoke such passages during war.

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.

Editorials

Brian Kaylor“Everyone went to their own town to register” (Luke 2:3).

The familiar Christmas story starts with a governmental registry. Tracking — and taxing — populations helped Rome enact its oppression. So we

Bill WebbThanksgiving 2016 is already shaping up as one of my most memorable — for various reasons. Our household is experiencing change and with it stress as retirement and, in our case, relocation

Bill WebbIn case you haven’t noticed, we’re coming down the final stretch of an election year.

Participate in the process and affirm you are exercising the right — if not the privilege —

Word&Way Voices

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell believes we are teaching our young people a version of reading the Bible that resembles the game Operation. They often have little concept of “connective tissue” and can only pluck out quotations like the stylized versions of body parts in the board game.

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.

E-Newsletter

Sociologist Jason Shelton’s new book explains what has happened — and is happening — in ways that call for revising how we perceive the Black Church as an institution and social force.

This issue of A Public Witness tracks which denominations Lutheran congressional members are part of to consider what that reveals about Lutheran life and the broader Christian witness.

Some public figures also regularly tweet a random Bible verse on Sundays. And sometimes that creates an incongruity with the news. So this issue of A Public Witness gets biblical online to look inside this practice of tweeting the Bible.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Parents are calling attention to whitewashed illustrations, almost exclusively male characters and an emphasis on memorizing morals over engaging with the divine in many existing children's story Bibles.

Christian author Rachel Held Evans left behind a legion of loyal readers when she died in May 2019, at the age of 37. Next week, her final book for adults is being published, titled 'Wholehearted Faith.'

Terry Wildman hopes the new translation published Aug. 31 by InterVarsity Press, 'First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament,' will help Christians and Indigenous peoples read it again in a fresh way.

One of the Vatican’s most important but least studied departments is actually one of its most extensive: the massive network of lay and religious people engaged in peacemaking, information gathering, and international diplomacy who throughout history have swayed governments and