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Two recent books, each co-authored by two pastors, offer insight to church leaders who feel stuck and congregations struggling to muster hope in a time where maintaining a successful religious community is more difficult than ever.

Through honest storytelling, spiritual reflection, and practical wisdom gained from a pilgrimage journey, Andy and Kara Root offer parents and pastors a refreshing alternative to the exhausting cycle of trying to control outcomes.

Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy makes the case that the best approach to this question is investigating how Jesus interacted with the Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Zealots throughout the Gospels.

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Videos

Church

‘We're still going through a healing process here at the church,’ Johnson said in an interview about grief over the death of his predecessor in 2022.

SBC leaders also set up a new department to deal with the issue of abuse, though the fate of a long-delayed database of abusers remains unknown.

The new denomination, with 4,715 congregations, will meet to adopt a constitution and iron out its governance structure.

Nation

Clergy are accompanying immigrants to court appointments to provide comfort and information and, in cases where their worst fears are realized, to pick up the pieces of a shattered American dream.

This issue of A Public Witness looks at how one Calvinist voice with connections to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is publicly doing violence to Scripture to justify some disturbingly unChristlike behavior.

The opening chapter to “The Bible According to Christian Nationalists,” which officially releases in eight weeks, is fortunately (and unfortunately) quite timely. We are sharing an excerpt from it here.

World

Church leaders are conducting weekly workshops to train traditional and church leadership in how to promote peace in their communities.

Pope Francis and the Vatican are pursuing peace in the globe’s two major conflicts, working through official and unofficial channels.

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.

Editorials

Bill WebbDo our personal (or corporate) prayers ever include the question, “Lord, how can you use me (or us) to improve or remedy this condition or this situation?

Bill WebbThe Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Annual Gathering were held a little more than a week apart in June. SBCers and CBFers have much in common —

Bill WebbLarry Johnson, associated with The Baptist Home of Missouri since 1984 and the Baptist ministry’s president when he retired in 2005, was remembered May 21 for putting into practice in his last

Word&Way Voices

Contributing writer Rodney Kennedy argues that “gaslighting,” Merriam-Webster's 2022 word of the year, pertains to the way that some non-believers, particularly New Atheists, have gaslit our entire culture. But the god they created in order to insist that he doesn’t exist is a god he doesn't believe in either.

“It was a personally moving experience,” said Amy Brown after visiting the house where her great uncle spent 36 years as a general surgeon in Jordan. Amy, married to the secretary general of Baptist World Alliance Elijah Brown, visited just one month after the passing of the elder Lovegren, who

Social worker Sophie Day writes that this Advent, she has not had the luxury of looking away from the hurt in this world as an execution date looms for another one of her clients on the Tenth Day of Christmas. In her work, but especially now, hope has to be

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness explores alarming new moves to implement Christian Nationalistic ideas in Indiana and Oklahoma before considering a glimmer of hope in Texas.

This issue of A Public Witness unpacks how Kamala Harris’s decision to skip the Al Smith Dinner — and the legacy of Smith (the first Catholic nominee for president) — offers important insights into this year’s campaign.

Matthew Taylor makes a compelling case that the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders and ideas have migrated from the fringes to the center of American evangelicalism, is a dangerous threat to democracy.

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Recent Episodes

Books

Robert D. Cornwall reviews Living Under Water: Baptism as a Way of Life by Kevin J. Adams. Cornwall makes the case that this book can help us gain a better sense of what baptism means so that we can live

Over the course of the past two years, the preachers of the Washington National Cathedral have addressed the grief, loneliness, and other trials of the COVID-19 pandemic through sermons each Sunday. 

Andrew Young is marking his birthday with a four-day celebration from March 9–12, starting with a livestreamed “Global Prayer for Peace” worship service at the Atlanta church, followed by a peace walk, debut of the book The Many Lives of Andrew

Voices Editor Jeremy Fuzy reviews a new book by Rodney Kennedy, The Immaculate Mistake: How Evangelicals Gave Birth to Donald Trump. Kennedy utilizes his identity as a scholar of rhetoric and a Baptist preacher to draw out new understandings of