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For the second entry in our series on religion and AI, a biblical scholar and ethicist unpacks how technological advances are influencing how her students might choose bullet-pointed information over learning to seek and love the truth.

This updated edition includes a chapter on the intersections between LGBTQIA identity and neurodivergence and extra attention to how churches can respond to the assault on diversity and transgender rights in the current political climate.

This issue of A Public Witness takes you inside a recent conference that celebrated America’s heritage of religious freedom, with a special Seventh-day Adventist flavor.

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Videos

Church

From encrypted apps to legal clinics: How an immigrant-majority church is responding to protect its congregation.

In an open letter, a group of survivors and advocates say that comments by SBC President Willy Rice and Texas pastor Jack Graham make it harder to address the issue of abuse in churches.

'The Supreme Court, not too far from here, decided that it was OK for Black folks to not deserve representation in Congress,' said its social justice commission co-chair.

Nation

Civil rights advocates on Monday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a Texas law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments, teeing up a potential new test of state-sponsored religious expression in classrooms.

The Department of Defense is introducing a course centered on Western civilization and Christianity this fall in the schools it operates for military families, part of an effort by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to redirect the education system toward patriotic values and classical learning.

A surveillance incident at a Baptist church particularly raises questions since the congregation’s building is covered by a federal injunction blocking warrantless DHS actions there.

World

The encounter between Christianity’s two most famous religious figures would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, given the divisions between their two churches over women’s ordination.

In addition to heading the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, including the Episcopal Church in the U.S.

This issue of A Public Witness considers some dangerous voices against climate action and then the Christians working to love their neighbors and the Creator by addressing our pressing environmental crisis.

Editorials

The thinning of the UMC’s conservative ranks makes this week’s conference a perfect time to address the issue.

Missing in all the jokes and news reports about the Trump Bible is that this isn’t the first time a presidential stamp of approval was sought for the Good Book.

Brian Kaylor reacts to claims that God is sending a message through a 4.8 magnitude earthquake shook the northeastern part of the U.S. on Friday or a solar eclipse going across much of the U.S. on Monday.

Word&Way Voices

When Christianity becomes publicly associated with nationalist aggression and eagerness for war, it presents a face to the world that is, by any honest reading of the New Testament, a misrepresentation of the faith.

Contributing writer Sarah Blackwell explores the importance of ‘theodiversity’ on college campuses, where student ministries are often dominated by conservative evangelicals.

Rev. Dr. James Ellis III reflects on the often contentious issue of ordination in the Black Church — particularly the rift that can exist between women who feel called to vocational ministry and women who do not.

E-Newsletter

This issue of A Public Witness strikes at the heresy in Trump’s Fourth of July remarks and thunders some disapproval for similar rhetoric recently offered by Speaker Mike Johnson.

The first moment of the Quentin Tarantino film highlighted by the vice president during a recent interview occurs just seconds after the Samuel L. Jackson monologue used by Pete Hegseth as a prayer during a worship service at the Pentagon in April.

For this issue of A Public Witness, we virtually trek deep in the heart of Texas to see how “God and country” too often looks more like country as god at Prestonwood Baptist Church.

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Recent Episodes

Books

L. Daniel Hawk exposes the belief systems and practices that settlers developed to justify the displacement, destruction, and cultural erasure of Indigenous peoples, beginning in the early American colonial period and extending to the present day.

Amar D. Peterman explores how the common good can be cultivated through the practice of neighbor love and encourages Christians to join their neighbors at what he calls ‘the shared table.’

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.

Writing in a personal, conversational style, New Testament scholar James McGrath shares his experiences of outgrowing a narrowly defined Christianity and learning how to inhabit a more dynamic Christian faith.