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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. No, Gen Z Is Not Undergoing a ‘Religious Revival.’ Melissa Deckman argued that there is simply no evidence to suggest Americans are becoming more religious. (Follow more of ’s work at .)

2. Review: Feasting on Hope. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness by Hannah Miller King.

3. The Pastor of the Nation’s Largest Methodist Church Is Running for the US Senate in Kansas. Rev. Adam Hamilton announced he will seek the Democratic nomination in hopes of challenging Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.

4. Newsboys Co-Founder Sues Julie Roys, World Vision, and Rival Christian Concert Promoters. After months of silence following allegations of sexual assault against then-Newsboys lead singer Michael Tait, a lawsuit targets the journalists who reported the story and others.

5. Evangelical Broadcasting Group Asks FCC to Investigate ABC Over Jimmy Kimmel Joke. After the White House renewed its attempts to cancel a late night comic, a conservative Christian group joined the anti-free speech effort.

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We’re Honored

The Religion News Association recognized the reporting of A Public Witness with two awards last weekend:

• Brian Kaylor won 2nd place in investigative and data reporting.

• Brian Kaylor won an honorable mention in breaking news (for our reporting on government worship services).

These add to the other awards we received earlier in April.

by Jeremy Fuzy, Word&Way Digital Editor

Last week, I was lucky enough to attend the Religion News Association’s annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia. I had been a regular at these in the pre-pandemic years, but have not been able to make the gathering for quite some time. And a lot has changed for both me and the broader world since I last showed up to their meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, as a first-year doctoral student in 2019.

I don’t think I realized how much I needed the experience of being physically present in the same room with many of my peers who cover religion. I caught up with old pals, made new friends, passionately discussed the reasons we do what we do, and learned helpful new ways to approach our work. We enjoyed panels on timely issues such as the ethics of artificial intelligence, the religion of soccer, lessons from the frontlines of the deportation battle, and much more.

We also made some time to get to know our host city, taking a conference field trip to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. The part from this that jumped out to me was their recreation of Martin Luther King Jr.’s desk and bookshelf. You could see notes he had scribbled in the margins of speeches, read letters to and from his contemporaries, and peruse the various books he owned from authors like Reinhold Niebuhr and Langston Hughes. It was a truly powerful experience to have — especially mere days before the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

At the concluding banquet, it was certainly gratifying to win some awards alongside major outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post. The best part for me, however, was being reminded that not only do I have some excellent coworkers here at Word&Way, but the journalists we regularly feature in these very news roundups are also some of the best people around. We are not competitors but rather a niche community that enthusiastically supports each other. The religion beat may be criminally small, but we know mustard seeds can move mountains.

Other News of Note

• Jason Wilson of The Guardian wrote about the sermons preached at Pete Hegseth’s church and what they reveal about Hegseth’s worldview.

• Austin Campbell of The Intercept wrote about how the U.S. State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio is pushing “Christian” messaging and no longer highlighting as much diversity on social media as during previous administrations.

• Haleluya Hadero of Christianity Today reported on Black denominational leaders urging congregants to mobilize after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted protections for minority voters.

• Morgan White of FāVS News reported on an event in Seattle, Washington, where travel writer Rick Steves and ELCA Bishop Shelley Bryan warned about Christian Nationalism.

• Although last week’s Turning Point USA rally at Baylor University in Texas was closed to the media and community members, Mark Wingfield of Baptist News Global obtained audio recordings from the event. He reported on the comments by podcaster Benny Johnson, Border Czar Tom Homan, and the student president of the local TPUSA chapter.

• A group of clergy members in Michigan launched a fast as they seek the release of a man detained by ICE agents.

• On the same day the U.S. government announced it would authorize the use of the firing squad for executions, Pope Leo XIV reiterated the Catholic Church’s opposition to the death penalty.

• The Catholic archbishop of Manila is urging people to collect used cooking oil that can be converted to biodiesel as the Philippines struggles with an energy crisis caused by the U.S.-Israel war against Iran.

• Watch: While in Washington, D.C., this week, Brian Kaylor stopped by the Department of Labor building in search of the “church” where they hold their monthly worship services.

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Rev. William Barber II made this declaration as he stood in front of the White House on Monday (April 27) along with dozens of other clergy to speak against the “illegal and unholy war” the Trump administration started against Iran. As part of his “Moral Mondays” movement that started in North Carolina in 2013, Barber noted they were gathered in Washington, D.C., and in 16 states that day to push for nonviolence, an end to the deadly war, and a shift from government spending on bombs instead of healthcare, education, and other lifegiving programs.

For Barber, a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), what’s particularly needed in this moment is a revival of nonviolent principles. The crowd on Monday practiced what he preached by peacefully marching down 16th Street (in the area formally known as “Black Lives Matter Plaza” before its demolition last year) and then briefly blocking traffic to pray in the middle of H Street (in front of the closed Lafayette Square and the White House). After singing songs like “Down by the Riverside (Ain’t Gonna Study War No More),” the clergy marched to the music of a saxophonist.

“Strongmen — or women — are intimidated by real strength, which is what this nation and our world desperately needs right now. Real non-violent moral strength rooted in love and justice and truth-telling,” he declared. “We need the power and the moral authority of love to fight people who get up every morning and ask how they can use their power to hurt people that they see as enemies. We need the power of true moral authority to stand against the policy of violence that threatens lives here at home and around the world.”

“Nonviolence is not opting out of the struggle against the world’s injustice. Nonviolence is opting in to the struggle. Opting in to training and preparation for the use of a force more powerful than fist and guns and bombs,” he added. “They used to say in the Civil Rights Movement, we’ve got something inside of us that water can’t wash out and fire can’t burn out and bombs can’t blow out.”

As part of the effort to build a nonviolent resistance to the Iran war, Barber noted they are planning for larger rallies in D.C. and across the country on May 11. Additionally, he and other clergy read a “Declaration of Nonviolence & Prayer of Commitment” that they hope clergy across the country will sign as part of their advocacy for peace.

“We will make a witness of the world as it ought to be and not the society that is,” Barber insisted.

Additionally, Barber stressed the importance of helping young people who are being “devoured by a war machine that is serving the selfish interests of billionaires.” So the efforts he announced also include a commitment to teach young men about conscientious objection to war, especially in light of the move by the federal government to automatically enroll eligible teens and young men in the military draft starting next year.

“Our mass movement against unholy war must confess that we’ve not sufficiently at times invested enough in recruiting and training young people for non-violence. The U.S military spends billions of dollars recruiting poor and marginalized youth for the military, sponsoring video games and sporting events that provoke violence as the answer to society’s problems. They try to get so many people to study war.”

With Monday’s rally occurring just two days after a man carrying a gun sought to attack Trump and others at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Barber condemned that intended act of violence while also blasting the hypocrisy of Trump’s call for “unity” in comments after the shooting.

“President Trump has spent a decade or more exploiting every possible fault line to divide America. He has incited violence against members of the media at rallies,” explained Barber, who also mentioned Trump’s attacks on Democrats and others.

While acknowledging that there was still more to learn at that point about the shooter, who wrote a manifesto invoking the Bible to justify violence, Barber argued some things were already “clear” that show similarities between the worldviews of Cole Allen and Trump.

“Allen believes what the president and many others in our society believe. And that is that peace will come when their enemies are obliterated. And they must use violence to win the world that they want,” Barber said. “This idea is what Jesus called bad leaven, a spirit of division and violence that cannot be easily turned off once it has been unleashed to serve some political goal. Once this bad leaven is unleashed, once this impure spirit is unleashed, it’s hard to turn it off.”

“People with power have sown to the wind and now we are reaping the whirlwind. Saturday’s attempt at revolutionary violence was as misguided as Trump’s war of choice in the Middle East,” Barber added. “We cannot be distracted by diversions. Nor can we capitulate to the nihilism that accepts the chaos we are experiencing as inevitable.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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That’s because neighbors are much harder to love in practice than in theory. Their personalities can be rough. They don’t always agree with us. Some of them may not have showered recently. When we encounter the neighbor we are supposed to love, we are encountering someone who is different from us and that means there’s a gap between us and them.

Amar Peterman’s new book, Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local, dares to take Jesus so seriously that it wants to help readers bridge that divide.

“I am convinced that the more we attend to the needs of our community, the more attuned we will be to God’s good purposes and actions in the world,” he writes. “The more we can open ourselves to the possibility of love — even love across our deep disagreements — the more we will find ourselves looking and living like Christ in our world.”

This might sound pollyannish. It might seem overly idealistic in these polarized and perilous times. But this is not a book written with naivete. Peterman is a doctoral student in theology with a history of building relationships across racial, religious, and economic boundaries. His wisdom is rooted in experience, not untethered optimism.

At the center of the vision Peterman casts is the table. Just as Christians gather for communion in a ritual that symbolizes our radical equality before God and God’s gracious acceptance of us, so sitting at a table to listen, share conversation, and break bread together is a way for us to discover new life with our neighbors.

“What will bring us to the table of shared, communal flourishing is a desire to enjoy both God and neighbor in and for themselves,” he suggests. “We love our neighbors because they, made in the image of God, are worthy of love. … We care about the quality and depth of these relationships because Jesus tells us this is the path to relationships of mutual flourishing. We come to the table because the people we love are there too.”

Or, perhaps, it could be better said that the people we are trying to love are there too. That’s because the book’s premise is that how we interact with our neighbors forms who we are as Christians. In exchanges that build relationships, we also have the chance to extend empathy and compassion. We gain new perspectives. We better understand someone else’s world in a way that influences and transforms us.

Loving our neighbors well, by desiring to know and serve them, helps us become better servants of God. Loving our neighbors poorly by ignoring their needs, dismissing their stories, and refusing them respect distorts our own lives as followers of Jesus.

That’s what makes this book such a gift. It’s a relatively quick read, but in less than 90 pages the reader encounters a framework for Christian ethics that’s highly relevant to our contemporary lives. It includes reflections on political theology that connect what we believe about God to how we understand the role of the church in the public square. It doesn’t shy away from naming and exploring differences, but it does so in a way that is generous and constructive. It’s a book with wisdom for scholars, pastors, and lay Christians working to remain steadfast to the hope they profess.

“Loving our neighbors transforms our minds and hearts precisely because it makes us aware of the extent of God’s divine love for us,” Peterman concludes. “When we love rightly through a resurrected imagination, we are freed to participate in God’s good, loving, and redemptive work happening around us.”

While we may not be physical neighbors, the community here at A Public Witness is a group with common questions and interests. The goal of our monthly book reviews is to provide resources for building each other up. Amar Peterman has generously offered to sign a copy of his Becoming Neighbors for us to give away to one of our paid subscribers. So make sure to upgrade your subscription today!

As a public witness,

Beau Underwood

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That’s how comedian and actor John Fugelsang joked about the problem of Christian Nationalism during his remarks at the Summit for Religious Freedom in the Washington, D.C., area this week. The summit was organized by Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair on the national board of trustees).

Fugelsang mentioned his personal faith — “I aspire to be Christian” — and his upbringing in the Catholic Church, as well as being the child of a former Carmelite nun and a former Franciscan friar: “My father, the brother, met my mother, the sister.” He then tore into the politicization of Christianity. His talk echoed themes in his new book, Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds.

“They’re trying to eliminate the wall between church and state to realize their dream of turning America into a second-rate theocracy, like Iran but with Kid Rock music. And the Ten Commandments are being required in classrooms by Christians who are blindly obedient to a man who’s broken all 10,” Fugelsang said. “The only way you can follow both Donald Trump and Jesus, friends, is if you’ve never read either of their books. Because the only thing Donald Trump has in common with Jesus is they both spent a lot of time around prostitutes and they both used ghostwriters.”

Recalling the recent AI image Trump shared of himself appearing like Jesus, Fugelsang again stressed the contrast: “A man who sells gold sneakers playing a man who told the rich to give everything away. A man obsessed with power playing a man who rejected it. Satan offered Jesus the world, and he said ‘no.’ After the miracle of the loaves and fishes, they tried to make him king and he goes by himself to a mountain to be alone. Jesus was ‘No Kings’ before that was trendy.”

Fugelsang also directed his comedic zingers at others in the Trump administration for invoking religion to justify hurting people.

“The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson — America’s creepiest youth pastor — says we were founded to be a Christian nation,” Fugelsang said. “Now, you’ve got a secretary of defense — or the secretary of Jägermeister — brazenly, petulantly pontificating on government property to a spiritually diverse volunteer army about his fervent devotion to this gun-toting-alpha-crow Christ, who does not exist in the actual Jesus parts of the Bible. And while these pious posers pontificate, as we all know, they are blowing up schools full of children in Iran [and] they are blowing up people in Venezuelan fishing boats.”

“They’re cutting services to the poorest of the poor. They are protecting wealthy abusers of children. They’re cutting taxes and regulations for the wealthy. And masked cowards with badges are chasing brown kids around church picnics,” he added. “Millions of us were raised to think it’s a religion about peace and love and empathy, and we grew up to find it’s been hijacked by this mean, White supremacist, tax-free click.”

In contrast, Fugelsang praised Pope Leo XIV for pushing back against Trump, Johnson, Hegseth, and Vice President J.D. Vance on the war in Iran by quoting Jesus and other parts of the Bible.

“To delegitimize and expose these frauds, he’s making them fight Jesus. Because he shows up to a microphone and all he does is the greatest hits of Jesus’s teachings: Blessed are the peacemakers, love your enemies. It’s basic stuff. It’s like, wash your hands, don’t eat the silicone gel. It’s not rocket science.”

From Fugelsang’s perspective, the pope’s critiques help show how Christian Nationalism isn’t about Jesus or Christianity but about power.

“Step one, they used Jesus, his name, his movement to gain power. Step two, once they have that power, they do the opposite of everything the character of Jesus says in the book. And step three, when someone points this out, scream that you’re persecuted. That’s been the play,” he explained. “A country founded by deists who didn’t want a king and a religion inspired by a rabbi who commanded us to love our enemies have both been hijacked by these power-hungry frauds.”

The politicians using Christianity for power and the preachers helping them are, for Fugelsang, “fake Christians.” Those pushing such “authoritarian Christianity,” he added, must be challenged like when some Christians and others challenged the powerful Christian leaders who led the Crusades, the genocide of Native Americans, slavery, and the Nazi regime.

“If we don’t label them ‘fake Christians,’ then we’re letting them put MLK in the same basket as the KKK. Same religion on paper, completely different moral universe and practice,” he explained. “If Christianity is defined by the teachings and example of Jesus, then these two things cannot be morally equal expressions of the same thing. One activity aligns with the core ethic, the other one gives it the finger.”

“You can’t hate them, but we have to beat them,” he added. “Most of these mean fundamentalists or Christian Nationalists don’t know the Bible all that well. But they’re counting on the rest of us not knowing the Bible all that well either.”

An Organized Movement

It’s not just a comedian warning about the danger of Christian Nationalism. Scholars, activists, and clergy at the summit also talked about the policy shifts chipping away at the wall separating church and state, sounding the alarm and urging people to push back against this movement.

Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, vice president of programs and strategy at Interfaith Alliance, explained during a panel conversation about the weaponizing of faith against public education that those in power are “rewriting the relationship between church and state” and “actively dismantling the infrastructure meant to protect students.” As an example, he noted there were nearly 23,000 book bans since 2021 in school districts across the nation. And the bans are overwhelmingly coming from activist groups and government officials, not parents.

“This is a coordinated political campaign dressed up as a grassroots movement,” he said. “The organized minority is winning right now, not because they have the support of the American people, but because they have a strategy.”

Beyond book bans, he highlighted other ways Christian Nationalists are attacking religious freedom in public schools. He called it “a cruel joke that the Department of Education” has so-called “patriotic education” that’s “undermining a core American value of religious freedom for all.” He also blasted the idea of posting a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, which is not only religiously coercive but is “also devaluing the Ten Commandments as a religious text.”

“Do you want the government teaching about religion or do you want the government religiously indoctrinating your children?” he asked. “As much as we complain about the weaponization of faith and religious freedom, we need to be 10 times louder, all of us in this room, advocating for true religious freedom.”

Nadine Smith, president and CEO of Color of Change (a group working for social justice), also noted that we’re watching “the playbook and the role of White Christian Nationalism” in the United States today and that those who value religious freedom need to offer a strong alternative. She explained that Project 2025 is “simply the reverse engineering of everything that has brought us progress.”

“We are not dealing with an incompetent government. We are dealing with people executing precisely what they arrived to execute. The corruption, this plunder economy, and White Christian Nationalism are the same project,” she said. “It’s about control. It is why they don’t want democracy.”

As an example of how religion is being “weaponized” for power, she highlighted the fact that Trump isn’t religious or moral, but he’s “an avatar for an overall belief system” of nationalism. Trump, she added, “uses” religion “as a spray tan of sorts over the horrible things.”

Yet, through it all, Smith holds out hope of MAGA individuals walking away from supporting what’s happening in the nation. Building “something out of the rubble of this plunder economy” will require efforts of “reconciliation.” With that, she argued, also comes the need to “actually have a vision of what our country should be that includes us all. Because we can’t simply be against things, we have to be for things.”

“We are going to have to shape the architecture of true freedom in this country, and it’s going to mean that we have to push for policies that undo the forced religious ideas that are baked into so much of what our laws currently are,” Smith added. “We are having grander ideas of what the world and what our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, and our nation can actually be. And we cannot get there if we continue to allow White Christian Nationalism, the racism that is baked into it, the sexism that is baked into it, the hatred of stranger that is baked into it guide our political life.”

From Oy to Joy

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of AU, also recognizes the attacks on the constitutional principle of church-state separation. She even listed many of them in quick succession during her remarks to open AU’s summit. She noted, for instance, the government worship services at the Pentagon and the Department of Labor, states trying to force a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments in public schools, the “crusade” to create sectarian public schools, and efforts to put spiritual “chaplains” in public schools. But she also mentioned she’s trying to embrace a new mantra she’s heard: “Less oy, more joy.”

“This is not about denial. It’s not about forced cheerfulness or pretending that the danger isn’t real. It’s important to face the reality. It’s important to ring the alarm bells. That sense of threat motivates us to take action. It’s important to clarify the record and state the real facts. The ‘oy’ part is important, and that’s why I began where I did,” explained Laser, who’s Jewish. “But the point here is that ‘oy’ alone isn’t good for a people or a movement. In the Jewish context, ‘less oy, more joy’ means refusing to let antisemitism define the entirety of Jewish life. Yes, Jews must fight antisemitism, but they must also strengthen and celebrate Jewish life.”

Such joy among advocates can be a form of resistance, she added, because it shows those trying to tear people down that they are unable to fully break you. So she noted that even as she names and challenges the threats to church-state separation, she celebrates the nation’s promise and the radical experiment instituted by the U.S. founders. And she celebrates with “joyful resistance” how diverse communities across religious, political, geographical, and other demographic divides are uniting to protect religious freedom for everyone.

“Talk, write, and teach about church-state separation. Preach about church-state separation. And not just with pain — even though some pain is understandable — also with joy about the promise itself. People deserve to know the truth about our country’s founding ideals,” Laser added.

Similarly, John Fugelsang added that he remains optimistic because of the significant improvements he’s seen during his life and because of the examples of successful anti-authoritarian movements in the past.

“There’s always been an amazing tradition of Christian activism, and it has always manifested itself in resistance to Christian authoritarianism. The real Christians prove the fake Christians are fake,” he said. “And it’s going to take coalitions to expose them. The most effective opposition to authoritarian Christianity has always been plural: churches and synagogues and mosques and secular and civic actors together.”

So he encouraged those at the summit to work together regardless of religious beliefs, bringing together those who believe in no gods and those who take seriously the command to “love thy neighbor” because “the own-thy-neighbor folks have gotten too powerful and too insane.” And, unsurprisingly given the summit’s focus, he pointed to the U.S. history of church-state separation as critically important.

“No matter what your belief system is, Christian Nationalism guarantees that we are all going to have to work together,” Fugelsang said. “Separation of church and state isn’t just a single rule, it’s a framework that connects everything. It is baked into our system, like caffeine is baked into coffee beans — and thank God for that.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Trapped Between ‘The Art of the Deal’ and ‘The Art of War.’ Rodney Kennedy argued that President Donald Trump is, with the Iran war, again proving to be a demolition expert, not a deal maker.

2. Review: Witness — Converting Worlds. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Witness: Converting Worlds by Amos Yong.

3. A TPUSA Tour Stop Triggered a Pro-LGBTQ Event at Baylor. Then Came the Baptist Blowback. Kathryn Post wrote about the controversies surrounding dueling events at a Christian university in Texas.

4. Supreme Court Will Hear From Religious Preschools Challenging Exclusion From Taxpayer-Funded Program. An effort by Catholic preschools in Colorado to receive taxpayer funding will head to the U.S.’s high court.

5. Hegseth, Barron, Evangelical Leaders to Join Trump Event Rededicating America to God. Jack Jenkins previewed next month’s worship event on the National Mall to supposedly mark the U.S.’s 250th anniversary.

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by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief

On Tuesday (April 21), the U.S. Justice Department announced an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that has led efforts to expose the KKK and other extremist organizations. Many rightwing groups, including Religious Right organizations like the Family Research Council, have long attacked the SPLC because of its efforts to fight hate groups. So the charges quickly excited the MAGA base.

Many legal experts quickly called the case quite dubious and expect the charges to eventually be tossed out by the courts. In the meantime, this means the DOJ is essentially taking the side of the KKK while in an Alice-in-Wonderland way claiming that a group fighting the KKK was actually helping it.

And all of us should be concerned by this. As Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, warned, such efforts to retaliate against civil society organizations put all of our rights at risk.

“A thriving civil society is not incidental to religious freedom — it is the condition that makes religious freedom possible,” she explained. “When the government uses its prosecutorial authority to target civil society organizations with which it disagrees, it does not merely threaten those organizations; it narrows the civic space in which all of us — every faith community, every person — is free to operate. We stand in solidarity with every organization that does the hard work of keeping our democracy and our pluralism alive. For faith to remain free, civil society must remain free.”

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• Brian Kaylor wrote a Religion News Service column on President Donald Trump reading 2 Chronicles 7:14 during a national Bible reading effort in Washington, D.C.

• Peter Smith of The Associated Press reported on Trump’s participation in the “America Reads the Bible” effort, with quotes from Brian Kaylor and Jemar Tisby.

• Former Vice President Mike Pence blasted President Donald Trump’s AI image of himself as Jesus, calling it “offensive.” Pence also criticized Trump for attacking Pope Leo XIV and defended the pope’s right to speak out.

• U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who started monthly worship services in the Labor Department’s headquarters, resigned this week amid scandals alleging she had an affair with a staffer, mistreated other staffers, and misused agency funds.

• Mark Wingfield of Baptist News Global reported from the “All Are Neighbors” event at Baylor University in Texas that was organized as an alternative to a TPUSA event on campus. Speakers at the “All Are Neighbors” event, which drew a larger crowd than TPUSA’s, included Rev. Paul Raushenbush of Interfaith Alliance and Kelley Robinson of Human Rights Campaign.

• Pentecostal preacher Mike Bickle, who was ousted from his Kansas City megachurch amid a sex abuse scandal, has started a house church and is sparking controversy for urging a fast to help his comeback.

• The general assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) this summer will include consideration of a proposed new confession to “strengthen the witness of the PC(USA) in the world.”

• Mark Wingfield of Baptist News Global reported from the annual gathering of the Alliance of Baptists in Illinois, which included remarks by Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas and Rev. Michael Woolf.

• During a visit to Angola, Pope Leo XIV prayed at a Catholic shrine that was part of the Portuguese slave trade.

• Russell Contreras of Axios reported on how the Vatican is increasing its efforts to create guardrails against AI.

• With the Kansas City Royals announcing the location of their new stadium, parishioners of a Catholic church are excited they will be neighbors to the new ball field.

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Making the ruling even more galling, the majority opinion conscripted John Leland, a legendary colonial Baptist figure who fought for church-state separation, to justify their convoluted argument that the Texas law does not constitute the establishment of religion. The justices in the majority were only able to quote Leland by taking a couple of sentences out of context and by ignoring the clear words of a man who warned us that “the fondness of magistrates to foster Christianity has done it more harm than all the persecutions ever did.”

Making all of this even worse, the Texas law will now force public schools to post a gerrymandered version of the sacred text that doesn’t even match what’s found in any version of the Bible. As I previously documented in the first installment of our podcast series “A Trick of State” (which draws its name from Leland’s writings), the language required in the “Ten Commandments” laws passed over the last couple of years in Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas is based on the Protestant KJV text in Exodus 20, but makes significant changes. It’s kind of like quoting the Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25:17; it might be inspired by the Bible, but it’s not actually the biblical text. That means that if you literally ripped the Ten Commandments out of your Bible and taped them to a classroom wall in these states, the actual words from the Bible would be in violation of the law!

States like Texas aren’t just establishing religion; they’re establishing their own state-approved text and disallowing any other version that’s held sacred by believers. It’s a clear violation of First Amendment rights. That’s why the organizations representing the multifaith group of Texas families were quick to condemn the decision.

“The Court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority,” explained Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair of the national board of trustees), the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation in a joint statement. “The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when, and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights. We anticipate asking the Supreme Court to reverse this decision and uphold the religious-freedom rights of children and parents.”

This problematic ruling is exactly the type of thing that Leland and other colonial Baptists warned against. But apparently nine justices in New Orleans are as bad at interpreting Leland’s writings as they are the U.S. Constitution. So this issue of A Public Witness rises to Leland’s defense to set the record straight.

Lions and Bears, Oh My!

The majority of the justices on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals try to redefine what it means to establish religion by arguing it’s just creating an official state church of one denomination and having a religious test for public office. To attempt this definitional sleight of hand, they invoked Leland to suggest that this extremely narrow definition is how people define establishment in the founding era of the United States.

“For instance, John Leland, the 18th century Baptist preacher — pondering “[w]hat were, and still are the causes that ever there should be a state establishment of religion” — answered: “over-fondness for a particular system or sect … gave rise to the first human establishment of religion, by Constantine the Great,” the majority opinion reads.

That’s it. That’s all they cited to suggest Leland would agree with them. Now I don’t know if they got that suggestion from ChatGPT or just by poor reading, but to invoke Leland to justify Texas’s law is at best absurd and at worst deliberately deceptive.

If we look at the rest of just the essay from Leland they cited, his 1791 sermon “The Rights of Conscience Inalienable,” we find a broader assessment of what religious disestablishment meant for him. He did criticize both having a state church and religious tests for office (which was often broader than just one denomination). But he also quickly raised other religious establishment examples in his sermon, including denouncing the “evil” in the British government that not only had a state church and a religious test for office but also used government funds for sectarian preaching and required those receiving an army commission to “receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper.”

Later in the sermon inexplicably quoted in the majority opinion, Leland made the case for government to stay away from pushing religion in order to respect the conscience of each person. After all, for him, “Religion is a matter between God and individuals, religious opinions of men not being the objects of civil government nor any ways under its control.” And in particular, he criticized efforts to force religion upon children.

“Every man must give an account of himself to God, and therefore every man ought to be at liberty to serve God in that way that he can best reconcile it to his conscience. If government can answer for individuals at the day of judgment, let men be controlled by it in religious matters; otherwise let men be free,” Leland argued. “But supposing it was right for a man to bind his own conscience, yet surely it is very iniquitous to bind the consciences of his children; to make fetters for them before they are born is very cruel.”

Leland even insisted that Christianity actually does better when it is not supported or endorsed by the government.

“Did not the Christian religion prevail during the three first centuries, in a more glorious manner than ever it has since, not only without the aid of law, but in opposition to all the laws of haughty monarchs? And did not religion receive a deadly wound by being fostered in the arms of civil power and regulated by law? These things are so,” he explained. “Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of the mathematics.”

Leland wrote and spoke often on the importance of conscience, religious liberty, and separation of church and state. He repeated these arguments in various sermons and essays, making clear he saw the problem as much more than just an official state church (though he did find such a thing particularly devilish). For instance, in an 1804 essay he warned, “The fondness of magistrates to foster Christianity has done it more harm than all the persecutions ever did. Persecution, like a lion, tears the saints to death but leaves Christianity pure; state establishment of religion, like a bear, hugs the saints but corrupts Christianity and reduces it to a level with state policy.”

Right after his lion-bear argument, Leland added a line that would seem to perfectly describe Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who vigorously advocated for the “Ten Commandments” law while also making news for committing adultery, bearing false witness, and alleged theft. Leland argued, “Magistrates frequently love the advantages of Christianity more than the precepts of it.” And he blasted such magistrates for “lording over consciences, which is God’s prerogative and a favor which is not attached to their civil office.”

In another speech as he argued against Massachusetts’s state church and using taxpayer funds for sectarian purposes, he also noted other establishment problems that show he actually had a much broader definition of what non-establishment should mean. He criticized efforts to limit government leaders to Christians since other nations have found “these divine rulers will be the most cruel tyrants.” In particular, he pointed to the Crusades as an example of why we “should be fearful of attaching corporate power to religious societies.”

In that speech, Leland also criticized having a chaplain for the legislature (something James Madison also argued, and he knew a thing or two about the original intent of the Constitution). So if the Fifth Circuit truly wants to follow Leland’s definition of church-state separation, let’s go for it! Additionally, Leland argued against the need for laws to enforce the Sabbath or aid religious activities, again pointing out that all of this occurred pre-Constantine “without the aid of the law and the schools.”

I could go on — he was kind of prolific — but I’d say I’ve already proven my case.

A Trick of State

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What story was she talking about? Pete Hegseth saying a prayer that was drawn from a scene in Pulp Fiction. And she wasn’t exaggerating. That story really did go viral in the United States and elsewhere. And it all started with A Public Witness.

We broke the news of the Pentagon worship service and Hegseth’s unusual prayer on Wednesday afternoon. Our report quickly started getting attention on social media. No other reporter watched and wrote about the service that day. Two other outlets — New York Magazine and a popular TV news program in Australia — covered the prayer on Wednesday, but both cited us as first reporting it.

Then on Thursday morning, the story continued to grow on social media and spilled into dispatches from news outlets and entertainment media. Among the numerous sources that credited us for discovering the prayer’s movie language are Variety, USA Today, Rolling Stone, BET, The Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Forbes, The Daily Beast, Deadline, Mediaite, and the A.V. Club. As the news spread, other outlets also mentioned it, including People, Hollywood Reporter, New York Post, Washington Times, and Al Jazeera.

On Thursday night, comedian Stephen Colbert roasted Hegseth for the prayer. After splicing together clips of Hegseth praying with Samuel L. Jackson’s monologue, Colbert quipped, “Wow. That mashup really feels like your self-tape versus the guy who actually got the part.” Colbert also then gave a satirical prayer filled with movie lines from Taxi Driver, Forrest Gump, Snakes on a Plane, and Babe.

Others have also enjoyed the opportunity to crack jokes at Hegseth’s expense. During the Inside the NBA halftime show for Sunday’s game between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers, the topic of attending church was briefly mentioned. Charles Barkley quipped in response: “Hey, we’re not going to listen to the pope anymore. We’re going to listen to Sam Jackson and Pulp Fiction.”

U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff of California joked about it, saying, “Hegseth loves telling fictions, even Pulp Fiction.” And actor Mark Hamill mused about the controversy on Bluesky: “We are living in a timeline so dumb it’s exhausting.” Additionally, several political cartoonists have already featured the incident, including John Darkow, Matt Davies, Clay Jones, and Drew Sheneman.

RT, the state-owned Russian media network, used the news to mock Hegseth, including with a video where they superimposed his head on top of Samuel L. Jackson’s in that scene. But RT didn’t credit us, so thanks for nothing, Putin! Hegseth was also mocked by the creators of the Iranian propaganda videos attacking the Trump administration with Lego-style animation (somehow that’s a real sentence). One such video, captioned with “Pay attention to the sermons Pete Fiction,” shows a Lego Hegseth reading a Bible in church. But then the camera pans around to show that he’s actually watching Pulp Fiction on his cell phone that’s tucked inside his Bible.

And, of course, this story sparked numerous memes flying around on social media. The press office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom shared a remade Pulp Fiction movie poster with Hegseth replacing Uma Thurman. Other memes include a recreated version of the AI-Trump-as-Jesus image or doctored images with other “verses” from Hegseth, as well as people sharing images from Pulp Fiction with captions like “This is my favorite scene from the Bible.” And numerous TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram influencers made videos reacting to the news.

As attention to the prayer grew, the Pentagon both affirmed that it happened and also tried to criticize the media. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell on Thursday acknowledged the prayer “was obviously inspired by dialogue in Pulp Fiction.” However, Parnell then tried to insinuate that both the prayer and the dialogue “were reflections of the verse Ezekiel 25:17, as Secretary Hegseth clearly said in his remarks at the prayer service. Anyone saying the Secretary misquoted Ezekiel 25:17 is peddling fake news and ignorant of reality.” As noted in the original A Public Witness report, the movie dialogue does borrow some from that verse, but also misquotes it — and the prayer read by Hegseth misquotes it even more by changing the person promising “vengeance” from being God to the commander of the U.S. military mission.

Some rightwing pundits also tried to attack the media for mentioning Hegseth’s Pulp Fiction prayer. Glenn Beck, for instance, offered two big whoppers in his defense of Hegseth. Beck claimed Hegseth said he was “badly paraphrasing Ezekiel,” but “the media cuts that out.” That’s simply not true; Hegseth did not say that. Then Beck added that this story was first pushed by Russian and Turkish propaganda social media accounts. But that’s false. A Public Witness reported on this more than 14 hours before either the Russian or Turkish propaganda sites he claimed started this. And, for the record, we’ve not received money from either the Russian or Turkish governments (it’s not like we’re Eric Adamas or Michael Flynn). When propagandists like Beck don’t like the news, they make stuff up. As one of the prophets warned, “You can’t handle the truth!”

Watching this story blow up from A Public Witness to global news, late night jokes, and more has been tremendously fun. And it shows the impact and importance of this newsletter. Without us tracking the monthly worship services at the Pentagon, this moment might have been completely missed. After all, like most months, no one else watched and immediately reported on the service. We are finding stories no one else is covering, and we are changing the national (and global) conversations about religion and politics.

But we cannot do this important reporting without the support of our paid subscribers and donors. Thanks to all the paid subscribers of A Public Witness for helping make this possible. Enjoy this moment you helped spark! And if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, upgrade today to help us continue our award-winning (and Colbert-inspiring) journalism!

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor & Jeremy Fuzy

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Founded in 1929, the RCC brings together leading faith-based professionals in journalism, public relations, advertising, and development. Each year, the RCC gives out its DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Awards to recognize excellence in religious communications and public relations. The group also presents its Wilbur Awards to recognize excellence in religious coverage by secular media, which this year included an award for Diana Butler Bass’s book A Beautiful Year.

Last year, RCC gave Kaylor and Beau Underwood’s book Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism the non-fiction adult book category award and the overall Best in Class for Books at its DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Awards ceremony. This year, Kaylor repeated his wins in that book category and the overall Best in Class for Books. The Bible According to Christian Nationalists was also named the overall Best in Show, the top honor given to recognize one of the twelve class winners.

“Already blown away by winning the book award for the second year in a row, I was stunned by the Best in Show honor,” Kaylor said. “This recognition is encouraging and humbling. And I hope it will inspire more people to check out the book, which is unfortunately much-needed in this moment as our sacred texts are regularly being co-opted and misused.”

In addition to the awards for The Bible According to Christian Nationalists, Word&Way also took home two top honors from the RCC. Kaylor’s piece “The Surprising Story of How Speaker Johnson Read a Fake Jefferson Prayer” won the magazine feature category and Best in Class for Writing for Periodicals. And our Unsettling Advent devotionals won the editorial series category and Best in Class for Specialized Writing. This marks the third Best in Class win in four years for Unsettling Advent.

Three other entries from A Public Witness also received RCC awards. Kaylor won two more categories: in editorial for “Chris Tomlin’s Worshipwashing of Charlie Kirk” and in photography feature series for “The Gospel According to Trump Stores.” And Kaylor’s piece “Baptist Pastor Shot in Leg by Officer During All Saints’ Day March Outside ICE Facility” received a second-place recognition in the magazine single article category.

At a different award ceremony this week, the Baptist Communicators Association awarded Kaylor second place in the long news article category for his piece “Global Baptists Gather Down Under to Challenge Injustices and Nationalism.”

“As a small publication, these awards are particularly meaningful,” Kaylor said. “They also demonstrate our commitment to our readers to produce quality journalism. But none of it would be possible without the support of our paid subscribers and donors. We will build on this work to continue to report stories that need to be told.”

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. A Flag Gained, the Gospel Lost. Michael Mellette reflected on the problem that for many American evangelicals, Israel is a theological object beyond moral scrutiny.

2. Review: Suicide and the Communion of Saints. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Suicide and the Communion of Saints by Rhonda Mawhood Lee.

3. Church-State Separation Is a ‘Lie,’ Says Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission Chair. Adelle M. Banks reported on comments by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and pushback from religious liberty advocates.

4. Pope Leo Says He Does Not Fear Trump, Citing Gospel As He Pushes Back in Feud Over Iran War. After attacks by President Donald Trump, Pope Leo XIV refused to back down: “To put my message on the same plane as what the president has attempted to do here, I think is not understanding what the message of the Gospel is.”

5. Archbishop of Canterbury Expresses Solidarity With Pope Leo XIV in Calling for Peace in Iran. The head of the Anglican Communion argued, “It is the calling of every Christian — and of all people of faith and goodwill — to work and pray for peace.”

Dangerous Dogma

This week’s episode features a conversation between Brian Kaylor, Angela Denker, and Beau Underwood about President Donald Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV, Leo’s witness against the Iran war, Trump’s AI image of himself as Jesus, and the electoral defeat of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Listen to the audio version here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or watch the video version here.

Follow Us on Bluesky

by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief

During a press conference on Thursday (April 16), Pete Hegseth took a break from quoting Pulp Fiction movie lines in a prayer to compare journalists to the biblical Pharisees. Referring to a sermon he heard in church on Sunday about Mark 3, he mentioned the story of the Pharisees criticizing Jesus for healing a man on the Sabbath. Hegseth then tried some creative interpretation to apply the passage to journalists writing critically about the Trump administration and the Iran war.

“Even though [the Pharisees] witnessed a literal miracle, it didn’t matter. They were only there to explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda,” Hegseth said. “As the passage ends, the Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel against him, how to destroy him. I sat there in church and I thought, ‘Our press are just like these Pharisees.’ Not all of you, not all of you, but the legacy Trump-hating press. Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors. The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative.”

Hegseth should definitely try to pay better attention in church because he really missed the moral of the story. Even worse, with his analogy he makes Trump out to be like Jesus and the U.S. military a miracle. Thus, any people who criticize Trump or the military are “Pharisees” who are automatically wrong. Clearly, Hegseth should tone down the self-righteous preaching and spend more time trying to live like Jesus. For as we’re reminded in the Bible … wait, I mean in Pulp Fiction: “Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character.”

Other News of Note

• Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported on how “government workers say they’re getting inundated with religion” (with several citations to A Public Witness reports on Pentagon and Labor Department worship services).

• Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed into law a requirement that public schools post a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments. The version differs some from the gerrymandered version adopted in other states but still does not match the biblical texts.

• The only two candidates to qualify for the Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado are two Christian ministers.

• Trumpvangelist Franklin Graham defended President Donald Trump amid controversy for posting an AI image of himself as Jesus. Graham absurdly claimed Trump was right that it was a doctor meme and not a Jesus one.

• Rev. William Barber II criticized Trump for attacking the pope and posting an AI image of himself as Jesus: “What we are watching is a war on divinity, an attempt by a human being to shift the moral compass and for us to engage in a kind of moral deregulation where nothing is sacred anymore except what he says and an AI image of him as Jesus.”

• New survey results from Pew Research Center show that a growing number of Americans say Trump isn’t religious. Even a slight majority of White evangelicals now say that Trump is not very religious or not religious at all.

• A United Methodist church in Colorado held a witness against the Iran war during their Good Friday service, filing out of the sanctuary to pray next to 168 pairs of shoes on the stairs outside that represented the children and teachers killed when a U.S. Tomahawk missile hit a girls’ school in Iran.

• In light of the U.S.-Iran war, Jayson Casper of Christianity Today wrote about Mennonites who have spent decades working to foster dialogue between Iran and the United States.

• Kiera Butler of Mother Jones wrote about efforts of tech billionaires to get Christians to embrace AI.

Photo of the Week

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“Fifteen minutes ago, I was talking about blockades with Admiral Cooper, and now we’re going to study the Lord’s word. And may what we talk about, how we worship today inform the remainder of our day and the remainder of our week and who we are and how we conduct ourselves, no matter what we’re doing,” he said. “That’s why I just wanted to share briefly this morning what my devotion was from this morning, from this very morning.”

Standing at the podium with his Bible stamped with a Jerusalem Cross and “Deus Vult,” Hegseth then read from Luke 7, when John the baptizer sent a couple of his disciples to ask Jesus if he really is the Messiah. Jesus responded by reminding them of the miracles they saw and how “the poor have good news preached to them.” Jesus added, “And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

“I’ve zeroed in on that last verse: ‘And blessed is the one who is not offended by me,’” Hegseth said. “I’m not a theologian, but I know there were a lot of expectations that people were putting on Jesus at that time: What he was going to come to do, what he would save people from. Most of it through our own lens, as we do all the time. It was a cultural lens. It was a political lens. It was a philosophical lens. And they wanted more urgently Jesus to do certain things.”

“And he lays out some of the ways in which he demonstrates who he is, and blessed is the one who is not offended by who I am and what the truth actually represents,” Hegseth added. “Everyone was looking for something else in Jesus’s time. We often look somewhere else and look at trials through the wrong lens, and Jesus understands what kind of recipe we need for his purpose.”

Hegseth added that reminded him of the prayer handed to him a couple of days ago that was “delivered from the lead mission planner of Sandy 1,” the head of the recent rescue mission that recently located and extracted Air Force crew members shot down in Iran. Hegseth then led those at the service in saying the prayer.

“The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men,” Hegseth prayed. “Blessed is he who, in the name of camaraderie and duty, shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy 1 when I lay my vengeance upon thee, and amen.”

Before repeating that prayer, Hegseth mentioned he was told the prayer is titled “CSAR 2517,” which stands for “Combat Search And Rescue” and alludes to the fact that it borrows some wording from Ezekiel 25:17 (though there are other verses also used, like with his violent prayer at last month’s service). The last two sentences of the prayer do mirror language from Ezekiel, except the speaker is changed from being God to the commander of the U.S. mission.

“I will execute great vengeance on them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them,” the prophet records God as saying as a warning to the Philistines for seeking to destroy Judah. Ezekiel offered that word at a time when the Hebrew people had been conquered by the world’s largest and most powerful military and then subjected by the Babylonian Empire.

While Hegseth mentioned Ezekiel 25:17 as an inspiration for the prayer, he did not point out the more direct link to a movie. In Pulp Fiction, Samuel L. Jackson’s character claims to quote that Bible verse but takes poetic license with the text. What he says in the movie during a speech is close to what Hegseth read as a prayer, with a few words changed to make it align more with a search and rescue mission.

“There’s this passage I’ve got memorized, sort of fits this occasion: Ezekiel 25:17,” Jackson’s character says as he prepares to unload his gun at an unarmed man. “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee!”

Other parts of Wednesday service also invoked Christian Scripture and music to sanctify the work of the U.S. military. The guest preacher was Zack Randles, founding pastor of Waterfront Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Washington, D.C. Including Randles, half of the 12 monthly worship services have featured a sermon by a Southern Baptist. Preaching from Acts 28 when Paul is shipwrecked, Randles urged the military members to continue serving God and seeking to help others even when in pain.

The military official who opened and closed the service started by greeting those present “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ” and closed it by praying that “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” His opening prayer included a request to God that the nation’s leaders would hear “the message from your word today” so that “they might see ever more clearly your glory in the face of Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Additionally, Randles led those present in saying the Lord’s Prayer before an Air Force official led the singing of “Amazing Grace” and the “Doxology.”

Theological and Legal Pushback

Hegseth’s violent prayer at last month’s service has particularly sparked criticism. He did not mention the public debates during Wednesday’s service. But just four days after last month’s service, Pope Leo XIV appeared to counter Hegseth’s Crusader theology.

“Brothers and sisters, this is our God: Jesus, King of Peace, who rejects war, whom no one can use to justify war. He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood,” Leo said on Palm Sunday, with the last line a quote from Isaiah 1:15.

Archbishop Reinhard Marx of Munich, Germany, made his criticism even more explicit in his Easter sermon as he criticized Hegseth for “shameless blasphemy.” Marx, who also condemned the head of the Russian Orthodox Church for “holy war” rhetoric, added that the world needs “Easter people” who do not follow those who “prioritize violence and power over justice and peace.”

Shortly before the worship service started on Wednesday, nine U.S. Democratic representatives filed six impeachment articles against Hegseth allegedly war crimes, abuse of power, and other charges. The lead sponsor of the impeachment resolution is Rep. Yassamin Anasari of Arizona, the first Iranian-American Democrat elected to Congress. The cosponsors are Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Nikema Williams of Georgia, Dina Titus of Nevada, David Min of California, Shri Thanedar of Michigan, Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, and Sarah McBride of Delaware. While it won’t advance as long as Republicans hold the House, it signals an increasing focus on Hegseth as the most targeted Cabinet member after the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The impeachment articles don’t mention his worship services. But last month, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair of the national board of trustees) filed lawsuits against the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor for holding government worship services. As AU President and CEO Rachel Laser said about the services: “The federal government’s role is to serve the public, not to proselytize.”

John E. Jones III, a former federal judge (appointed by George W. Bush) who is now president of Dickinson College, this week told The Conversation that Hegseth’s services appear to violate the no establishment clause of the First Amendment. But Jones warned that the current U.S. Supreme Court might not be willing to stop it.

“It sure looks like they are in violation. These activities are hosted on government property. They’re potentially coercive and appear to promote one particular religious viewpoint above others,” Jones explained. “The founders knew that if there was a move towards a favored or national religion in the eyes of the government, that could replicate what took place in Great Britain, where religion and politics mixed with occasionally terrible results. Failure to adhere to the dictates of the church could render you a second-class citizen, or worse. My hope is that judges will be very, very careful about a systemic creep that totally eviscerates the purpose and intent of the establishment clause.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Well, that’s not quite what she said, but it’s the same “logic.”

During the March 24 hearing of the Minnesota House Capital Investment Committee, Franson offered an anti-climate change sermon after hearing researchers from the University of Minnesota report on findings about how to better prepare the state’s infrastructure for changes in climate.

“Members, the climate is always changing,” Franson declared. “But what doesn’t change, my friends, and that’s why, when you talk about climate change, I don’t get upset about it, I don’t get worked up about it, is because my faith is not in climate change. It’s not in scientists dictating what we should and should not do to save the environment. Because my faith is in Jesus Christ, right? He’s the same today, tomorrow, and forever, yesterday. And so if you’ve read the Good Book, you know how it ends. It’s not with climate change.”

We assume she meant to add but simply forgot: “And if God meant for people to fly, God would’ve given us wings!”

The state representative who defended ICE’s actions in her state (including the killing of Renée Good) has pushed anti-science and anti-environmental positions before. She rallied against COVID-19 public health measures and broke the masking rules inside the House chamber in 2020. In 2012, she criticized a prayer by the House chaplain at the start of a legislative session for mentioning Earth Day before thanking God for creation and praying for God “to teach us how to care for your world and to be stewards of your creation.” Franson, who previously called Earth Day a “Pagan holiday,” called the prayer “offensive” and said it “may as well been dedicated to ‘Mother Earth.’”

Rep. Jamie Long, the House Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party floor leader, quickly denounced Franson’s comments at the recent hearing, insisting that her “extreme remarks have no place in any arena of serious policymaking.”

“As legislators, we have a responsibility to future generations of Minnesotans, and that includes ensuring our roads, bridges, water infrastructure, and public buildings — not to mention habitats, waterways, and forests — are all resistant to extreme weather events,” he added. “For a co-chair of the committee charged with making these critical investments to turn a blind eye to this reality, and undermine the critical planning necessary to protect our infrastructure, is deeply concerning.”

Climatologist Michael E. Mann, director of the Center for Science, Sustainability, and Media at the University of Pennsylvania, also pushed back against Franson’s remarks: “Nuclear warheads aren’t in the Bible either. Guess we’re all safe.”

While Franson’s rhetoric isn’t unique and she’s hardly the first Christian politician to invoke their faith to justify denying climate science, it’s also worth noting given the importance of the work she’s trying to undermine. Additionally, it’s necessary to remember that far-right figures like her don’t have a monopoly when it comes to Christian responses to climate change. So this issue of A Public Witness considers another dangerous voice against climate action and then the Christians working to love their neighbors and the Creator by addressing this pressing climate crisis.

Venture Apocalypticism

Tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally Peter Thiel has been making headlines for the past several months for an odd reason: his very public obsession with the Antichrist.

You may know Thiel as the co-founder of the online banking company PayPal and the artificial intelligence/government surveillance company Palantir, through his funding of Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit that raised press freedom concerns when it bankrupted the pioneering internet blogging website Gawker, or as the person responsible for the ascendance of J.D. Vance. Whatever you associate him with, he wields significant influence in the conservative political realm as one of the world’s richest mega-donors.

Thiel, who was raised evangelical and has described himself as a “small-o orthodox Christian” with “somewhat heterodox” Christian beliefs, has made a central aspect of his worldview the notion that the harbinger of the end of the world is in our midst. And one group that he strongly believes could be hastening its rise is environmentalists.

The idea of an antichrist is indeed biblical, as outlined in the Epistles of John — but it is used there to merely describe any false prophets who deny Christ. While early Christians used the term to describe Roman persecutors such as Nero, it did not come to be merged with the concept of a singular evil enemy who would rise up to oppose Jesus in the end times until medieval theologians developed the notion.

During a recent series of lectures on “the Antichrist” in both San Francisco and Rome, Thiel attempted to articulate how his libertarian theology explains the moment in history we find ourselves in. He particularly wants us to fear “woke” people who critique the ways technological advancements have contributed to climate change and wealth inequality.

“My thesis is that in the 17th, 18th century, the Antichrist would have been a Dr. Strangelove, a scientist who did all this sort of evil crazy science,” Thiel said in his opening talk last fall. “In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science. It’s someone like Greta [Thunberg].”

“Luddite” is an interesting term to invoke here. It is used casually to refer to someone either opposed to technology or inept at using it. But it is historically derived from skilled textile workers who broke machines to protest low wages and unsafe working conditions. They came to be labeled Luddites in a smear campaign by the 19th-century factory owners.

In a follow-up interview with Ross Douthat at The New York Times about the Antichrist, Thiel mused that environmentalism is an extremely powerful force in our world, currently just shy of possessing the ability to create a one-world totalitarian state. People who advocate for protecting the environment are getting in the way of Thiel’s vision for technological acceleration through deregulation, and are therefore cast as the most evil of enemies.

This rather absurd way of looking at the world garnered widespread attention, with an episode of South Park even mocking Thiel through a parody of 1973’s The Exorcist. But beyond getting lampooned in popular culture, scholars and theologians also have some strong words for Thiel.

Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro has called out how Thiel reduces the poor to “a collateral effect of the system” instead of a theological focus. And Italian theologian Father Paolo Benanti wrote that Thiel’s way of thinking can “be read as a prolonged act of heresy against the liberal consensus: a challenge to ​the very foundations of civil ​coexistence, which he now ⁠considers outdated.”

But religious studies scholar Anthea Butler perhaps summed it up most succinctly, “There are some things that a billionaire can’t buy. An understanding of theology without rigorous study is one of them.”

‘A More Just and Flourishing World’

While politicians like Franson and vulture capitalists like Thiel dismiss concerns about climate change and invoke their faith to justify their science denialism, other Christians are instead working to find climate solutions and care for creation. And they do it not in spite of their faith but because of it.

“Creation justice begins with the recognition that we are not separate from the earth, but intimately bound up in it. We are formed from the soil and sustained by the breath of God!” Avery Davis Lamb, executive director of Creation Justice Ministries (formerly the National Council of Churches Eco-Justice Program), told us. “Scripture invites us to move beyond seeing the world as a resource to be used and abused and instead to partner with God in the work of protecting, restoring, and rightly sharing all that God has made.”

“To participate even now — especially now — in that eschatological vision of a heavenly-healed and restored creation,” he added. “And that’s what countless churches across the country are already doing: restoring wetlands and forests, installing solar panels, organizing for clean air and water, standing alongside frontline communities, and reimagining their land, liturgy, and life together for the sake of a more just and flourishing world.”

As Lamb mentioned, many Christian denominations and countless churches engage in creation care and sustainability efforts. The effort he leads, Creation Justice Ministries, represents the environmental justice policies of several major Christian denominations throughout the United States. They work in cooperation with 39 national faith bodies, including Protestant denominations and Orthodox communions, as well as interfaith and regional religious groups.

Additionally, almost every mainline Protestant denomination also has its own creation care organization. Just to name a few, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has Lutherans Restoring Creation, the United Methodist Church has Caretakers of God’s Creation, and the Religious Society of Friends has Quaker Earthcare Witness. These efforts include not just practical projects but also the development of worship and discipleship materials to counter the bad theology coming from Franson, Thiel, and others.

“Christians are motivated to care for creation from a variety of paths that lead to something beautiful,” Rev. Scott Hardin-Nieri, co-minister of the creation care program of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) called Green Chalice, told us. “Some see the environment, vibrant ecosystems, and creatures as sacred gifts from God as expressed in Genesis 1 to delight in and partner with as a way to honor the gift and Giver. Others see caring for the environment as not only an expression of loving God but also continuing to follow the Greatest Commandment to love our neighbors as we are told in Mark 12.”

“Loving our neighbors includes ensuring there is clean water for those who live downstream, nourishing air for all city dwellers, protection from climate disasters like heat waves and floods, honoring soil by eliminating toxic pollution and growing healthy food, and supporting a healthy climate for present and future generations,” he added. “Others care for the environment because they simply find God there. Over and over again, God whispers to and nurtures our human hearts, bodies, and minds among the forests, near running rivers, ocean waves, and mountain peaks. We are a part of this earth, created alongside and dependent on the creatures and ecosystems of our common home, and as followers of Jesus we are invited to be in right relationship with God, self, neighbors, and creation.”

So while we won’t speculate over the identity of an alleged Antichrist, we join with the many Christians who see the attitudes and policies of people like Franson and Thiel as antichrist. May we instead bear a faithful witness to the call to love our Creator and all our neighbors who live in this beautiful creation.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor & Jeremy Fuzy

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1. Review: Undoing Manifest Destiny. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Undoing Manifest Destiny: Settler America, Christian Colonists, and the Pursuit of Justice by L. Daniel Hawk.

2. Donald Trump’s Easter Clash of Hell and Holiness. Bob Smietana wrote about how the president mixed Christian claims with threats of war and insults to immigrants during Holy Week.

3. Hegseth’s Removal of Top Army Chaplain Raises ‘Troubling Questions’ From Black Denomination. Adelle M. Banks wrote the response from a Black Baptist denomination after one of their own was fired.

4. Bible Stories Would Be Part of a New Texas Public Schools Reading List Drawing Attention. Heather Hollingsworth reported on another Christian Nationalist effort in the Lone Star State that could move to other states.

5. Faith Has Always Gone to Space. Artemis II Shows How Much It Has Changed. Jack Jenkins reported on expressions of faith in past and present space missions.

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by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief

Earlier this week, I visited the campus of Moravian University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to deliver remarks and join a panel conversation about improving media literacy in churches and religious communities. The event, “Beyond the Headlines: A Ministry Leader’s Guide to Media Discernment,” was hosted by the School of Theology.

These types of discussions are important. As I noted at the start of my remarks, our media landscape and especially the technologies used for communication have been changing at rates that have outpaced our theological considerations in seminaries and our discipleship efforts in congregations. Such work is particularly needed to assist youth in our churches and young adults in our colleges and seminaries who have never known a world without constant connectivity and social media. So I appreciated the opportunity to share some thoughts about how we can help people be innocent as doves but wise as serpents when consuming news and social media.

If you would like an even deeper look at the changing landscape of media and religion, you should join Beau Underwood and me for a class we’re teaching in partnership with Moravian University’s School of Theology to explore how religion is covered and communicated in the media today.

The “Broadcasting Belief: Understanding and Shaping How the Media Covers Religion” course will include four one-hour online sessions at 8 p.m. (ET) on Mondays April 27, May 4, May 11, and May 18 (but the sessions will be recorded for asynchronous engagement). Sessions will look at the historical evolution of religion in the media, the contemporary media landscape, how religion journalists decide what to report, and how you can have your voice heard in media outlets. One week will feature a panel conversation with guests Angela Denker (ELCA pastor and journalist), Jack Jenkins (Religion News Service), and Tiffany Stanley (Associated Press) to talk about their reporting on religion.

The course costs just $50 and is worth one Continuing Education Unit credit. Register today for this online course.

Other News of Note

• Julia Carrie Wong of The Guardian wrote about Pete Hegseth’s “militant Christian theology” (with quotes from Brian Kaylor).

• Brian Kaylor appeared on the WNYC show On the Media to talk about Pete Hegseth’s religious rhetoric and worship services at the Pentagon:

• Pete Hegseth compared the Easter rescue of a U.S. airman in Iran to the resurrection of Jesus.

• U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sparked controversy for sending a highly devotional Easter email to USDA employees.

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two “anti-Sharia” laws that limit free speech and religious liberty rights.

• In the new podcast series One Million Neighbors, Melissa Borja looks back at the story of faith communities welcoming Southeast Asian refugees and how that vision is being challenged today.

• Church bells rang out in Lebanon to mourn a Christian anti-Hezbollah politician and his wife killed by an Israeli strike on their apartment building.

• Jemele Hill of The Atlantic wrote about the religious claims swirling after the Chicago Bulls cut Jaden Ivey.

• The Chicago White Sox plan to honor Pope Leo, a longtime fan of the team, by giving away hats shaped like the Pope’s miter and stamped with the team’s logo.

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“Who is Jesus to you? Is he simply a historical event or a living person? Is he just a good example from the past or is he alive and at work in your life, in our world today?” Morell asked. “A dead Jesus can’t give very much. He can inspire, he can move, he can give you something to think about, but he can’t forgive sins. A dead Jesus can’t speak into your life. A dead Jesus can’t change you, but a living Jesus changes everything.”

After recounting the biblical story of Mary Magdalene meeting the resurrected Jesus on Easter morning and not recognizing him until he said her name, Morell again pressed DoL employees to decide to follow Jesus.

“If Jesus were to ask you the same question that he asked Mary — ‘Who are you seeking?’ — what would your answer be?” the preacher said. “We live in a city where we’re seeking transient things: status, comforts, success — not bad things. But what is your answer to the question that Jesus asks Mary? Whom, not what. Whom are you seeking? Are you seeking the living Jesus? Not a dead Jesus, the risen Jesus, the all-powerful Son of God who’s reigning over all things.”

“Friends, Jesus is still calling our names. Jesus is calling your name. And the good news of Easter is not that we’re living people seeking a dead Jesus, it’s that the living Jesus is seeking dead people and giving us new life,” Morell added. “The message of the Bible is that we’ve all rebelled against God and broken his law. None of us are deserving of fellowship with God, but God didn’t keep us at a distance. He took on flesh. He sent his only son, Jesus, who bore the punishment for our sins on the cross at Calvary but rose victorious, showing that the penalty of sin has been broken, showing that the power of death has been defeated, and offering real life, resurrection life to anyone who turns to him in faith. So let me ask you one more time: Whom are you seeking? Jesus is a living Savior and he continues to call to us today.”

At the end of the March service, Kenneth Wolfe had announced this month’s service would feature a sermon by Rev. Joel Schmidgall, lead pastor at National Community Church, an Assemblies of God congregation in D.C. There was no mention during Wednesday’s service about the change in preacher. The lead pastor at Morell’s church, Rev. Mark Dever, preached last year during a monthly Christian worship service at the Pentagon.

Passing Over Interfaith Efforts

Kenneth Wolfe, the director of the DoL’s Center for Faith, opened the service by attempting to frame it as both a recognition of Passover and Easter. However, despite a couple of references to Passover, it was not an interfaith service. Rather, it was a Christian service that included references to the Passover story in the biblical Book of Exodus in a manner that would fit with a Christian interpretation of the occasion. In fact, Wolfe even suggested that the lessons and themes of Passover and Easter were complementary and therefore could be celebrated together. Thus, it was a service in which a Christian could fully participate but one in which Jews would quickly find themselves excluded as the sermon, prayers, Scripture readings, and songs lifted up Jesus.

Later in the service, Wolfe quickly showed how the service wasn’t interfaith. After the Easter-centric sermon about the resurrection of Jesus, Wolfe declared, “Pastor Caleb Morell, we very much appreciate your powerful words as many here celebrate Easter and Passover. As Christians celebrated Easter Sunday, the solemnity of solemnities, just three days ago, with a Paschal season of 40 days leading to Ascension Thursday, when Christ ascends into heaven, we reflect on hope and joy following the resurrection of Jesus Christ, emphasizing victory over death.” He then introduced a song for them to all sing about the resurrection of Jesus.

Additionally, Morell made no pretense of trying to be interfaith and didn’t mention Passover. As he noted at the start of his sermon, “We’re here, as has been mentioned, because many are celebrating Easter, the time of year when billions of Christians celebrate the resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Like the previous services, the prayers and liturgy showed a preference for the Catholic tradition. After his introductory remarks, Wolfe gave the same traditional Catholic prayer he started the previous three services with. Prior to joining the Trump administration in his role at DoL, Wolfe wrote for various traditionalist Catholic publications, arguing for Mass to be in Latin. The Latin Mass has proved popular among some rightwing Trumpian Catholics in recent years, including Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, and Harrison Butker.

DoL Center for Faith Deputy Director Brent Perrin led those present Wednesday in saying the “Our Father,” which is not only a Christian prayer that Jesus taught his followers to say but is also the Catholic name for it (instead of the more common Protestant terminology of “the Lord’s Prayer”). As with the previous DoL services, the version printed in the program matched how Catholics say the prayer and not how many Protestant traditions do.

Perrin also led those present in reading the Passover story in Exodus 12:13, 26-27. Later, Alberto Calimano, a Catholic anti-abortion activist and senior advisor for the DoL Center for Faith, led those present in reading about the resurrection of Jesus in Matthew 28:5-7 and 1 Corinthians 15:20-22.

The service also included three songs that those present were invited to join in singing, including “For the Beauty of the Earth” and “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today.” As usual, the DoL service ended with the singing of “God Bless America.” Calimano urged that they sing the song as a prayer “for our troops in the Middle East and around the world, for law enforcement personnel and for our leaders.”

Laboring for Christianity

Wednesday’s service, the fifth monthly prayer service at the Department of Labor, comes amid a recent effort throughout the Trump administration to push Christianity over other faiths.

Over Easter weekend, several federal agencies posted sectarian messages even though most had ignored other recent religious holidays like Passover and Ramadan. Compared to more explicit and problematic posts by the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and others, DoL’s Easter post was mild. But it still stood in contrast to their silence on other recent holy days. The DoL account on Elon Musk’s X platform expressed that they were “wishing everyone a Happy Easter” while sharing a White House post that proclaimed, “This Easter Sunday, Christians across our nation and around the world celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ — His triumph over sin and death brings redemption, hope, and eternal life. He is risen. Happy Easter!”

Additionally, on Good Friday, DoL Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer sent an email informing all employees that they could leave two hours early that day for “holiday observances.” She didn’t name the holiday, instead saying in her message that it was “in recognition of spring holidays and observances.” But the time off was set for Good Friday and presumably wasn’t intended to also honor National Chocolate Mousse Day or National Tweed Day, which both fall on April 3.

The DoL monthly services, which Chavez-DeRemer started after attending a monthly worship service at the Pentagon, have been Christian worship services with a preference shown for Catholic prayers and Scripture readings. They have also all featured Christian worship songs. While the first one included remarks from a Trump-backing rabbi, it was framed as a service to “celebrate the season of Advent with Scripture and song” and then to “commemorate” Hanukkah “with a guest faith leader.” All of the other services had sermons from conservative Christian preachers and activists.

Meanwhile, Chavez-DeRemer is embroiled in scandals, leading some to speculate her tenure could be cut short. After President Donald Trump fired Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chavez-DeRemer has been among those most mentioned as a possible next target in an administration shakeup. Trump has reportedly expressed his frustration with her in private conversations, though publicly the White House insists he’s pleased with her performance.

The allegations against Chavez-DeRemer include that she’s been having an affair with a member of her security team and that she’s used department resources for personal trips. Two of her top aides resigned last month during an investigation into her conduct and how they assisted her. Additionally, Chavez-DeRemer’s husband has been barred from the DoL headquarters in D.C. after at least two female DoL employees claimed he acted improperly toward them. For the second month in a row, Chavez-DeRemer was present at the service but did not speak.

Last month, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair of the national board of trustees) filed lawsuits against the DoL and the Department of Defense for not handing over records about the planning and hosting of government worship services. As AU President and CEO Rachel Laser said about the services: “The federal government’s role is to serve the public, not to proselytize.”

At the end of Wednesday’s service, Wolfe announced that next month’s service will feature a sermon by Father James Searby of the Basilica of St Mary in Alexandria, Virginia.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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As other news outlets started covering the prayer, Greg Sargent of The New Republic reached out to learn more about it and where it may have come from. I mentioned that the prayer worked in a lot of biblical verses from various places in the Old Testament, though without citation. For instance, the first sentence starts by quoting Psalm 144:1 and then jumps into Jeremiah 50:3. I quipped that the prayer was basically “a Mad Libs mashup of biblical violence.” That’s the line he used in his excellent piece reflecting on the danger of Hegseth’s rhetoric and theology. My line was also repeated elsewhere, like in The Atlantic. And host Brooke Gladstone of On the Media mentioned the line during a conversation with me on the show that aired on public radio stations over the weekend.

As I thought about the prayer more, I realized there’s something important about that aspect of mashing together unrelated biblical texts. So I decided to annotate the prayer to note the various parts that borrowed from verses.

Some passages used were particularly obvious. Like the start from Psalm 144, which Hegseth previously read at the January Pentagon service (saying it was what he prayed through while planning the Venezuela military operation that month) and during a March press conference about the Iran war. Later in the prayer, Proverbs 28:1 appeared, which is a verse used last year in a propaganda video by the Department of Homeland Security to justify their militarized violence. Other shorter biblical phrases also popped out — like “break the teeth of the ungodly,” which is an idea that’s popular in Christian Nationalist circles.

However, there are also a number of phrases that bounce around in Christian sermons and prayers and therefore might not have been intended as a callback to a specific passage. We don’t know for sure since Hegseth said he borrowed this prayer. According to him, a military chaplain prayed it for the forces that led the Venezuela mission in January. And now, Hegseth offered it as a prayer for U.S. military personnel fighting against Iran. So I only counted phrases of at least four words. That means some other allusions might not be noted. For instance, at the end, the prayer is offered with “bold confidence,” which might be, at least subconsciously, drawn from Ephesians 3:12.

It’s also possible I missed something if the author of the prayer rewrote a verse beyond it being obvious. The prayer does, for example, change Psalm 144:1 from the singular to the plural, but it’s still clear that the passage is being deliberately used. The tenses of other verses were changed to make them not about something done in the past but a request for future action. There also doesn’t appear to be a consistent translation used.

Even with those limitations, I still marked about half of the words in the prayer as borrowed from biblical passages. The most popular book by far was Psalms, with at least six different psalms used. Jeremiah was the next most-used book, with multiple verses from the same chapter but sprinkled throughout the prayer. Other lines came from Job, Proverbs, Isaiah, and Revelation.

At first glance, this might look like a highly biblical prayer. After all, at least half of the words are drawn from various verses. However, once we recognize the Mad Libs mashup approach, we can understand how the various verses have been taken out of context to the point that this isn’t really a biblical prayer. So this issue of A Public Witness considers how the chaplain who authored the prayer and the secretary of defense who appropriated it for himself performed violence against Scripture to justify violence against people.

Gerrymandering the Bible

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Pete Hegseth’s War Prayer. Brian Kaylor reflected on a violent prayer during a recent Christian worship service at the Pentagon and on Mark Twain’s satirical work “The War Prayer.”

2. Pope Leo XIV Rejects Claims That God Justifies War in Palm Sunday Mass Message. Saying we serve the “King of Peace” who cannot be used “to justify war,” Pope Leo added, “He does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them, saying: ‘Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen: your hands are full of blood.’”

3. Review: Becoming Neighbors. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Becoming Neighbors: The Common Good Made Local by Amar D. Peterman.

4. Judge Rejects Johnson Amendment Settlement, Keeping Ban on Pastors Endorsing Candidates. Bob Smietana reported on a win for church-state separation.

5. His Arrest Went Viral. Now Rev. Michael Woolf Is Preaching What He Calls ‘Sanctuary Values.’ Jack Jenkins profiled an American Baptist pastor in Illinois who has been protesting and preaching against ICE.

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by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief

Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war,” has sparked controversies by firing various military leaders and blocking the promotions of Black and female officers. Yesterday, news broke that he fired the Army’s chief of staff, the highest-ranking officer in the Department of the Army. On the same day, Hegseth also fired the Army’s chief of chaplains.

Army Maj. Gen. William Green, who had served as the chief supervising officer in the Army Chaplain Corps since 2023, is a minister in the National Baptist Convention USA, the largest Black Baptist denomination in the country. After enlisting in the Army and then becoming a pastor, he’s served as an Army chaplain since 1994.

This unprecedented move by a secretary of defense to fire the Army chief of chaplains comes as Hegseth is promising to overhaul the military chaplaincy program to make it more evangelistic. He’s also establishing his own version of Christianity in the Pentagon with monthly worship services and by using sectarian language to talk about war and justify public policy decisions. All of that makes his unexplained firing of the chief of chaplains highly suspect.

The White Christian Nationalist Crusader running the Pentagon pushed out a Black Baptist chaplain during Holy Week. Let us not confuse the faith of imperial leaders with the Jesus who was killed by the empire on that Friday.

Other News of Note

• A federal judge ruled that a graven image monument of the “Ten Commandments” on the grounds of the Arkansas Capitol violates the U.S. Constitution. Not noted in the ruling is that the text of the commandments is highly edited and not found in any Bible.

• As a Jewish group seeks to create a sectarian public charter school in Oklahoma, residents and church-state groups are suing to block the proposal. Meanwhile, Florida’s attorney general announced he will not enforce that state’s constitution if a group seeks to receive public funding for a charter school.

• An antiabortion pastor running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska is accused of being a GOP plant after CNN reported he attended a conservative training event for candidates and said he repeatedly voted for President Donald Trump.

• At a White House “Easter” faith event this week, Trump’s spiritual advisor Paula White-Cain compared Trump to Jesus, saying that “no one has paid the price” like Trump and that the president had been arrested, betrayed, and falsely accused but then “rose up.”

• The Wall Street Journal profiled Mark Lanier, the attorney who just won a major case against Meta and Google and who is also a longtime Baptist Sunday School teacher.

• Gaya Gupta of The London Guardian wrote about churches developing underutilized land into affordable housing.

• Megan Fowler of Christianity Today reported on churches trying marketing gimmicks like drone shows and skydiving Easter bunnies to get people to attend an Easter-weekend service.

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The pretense for adding the president’s name — something that’s never happened before — to the nation’s money is that it somehow contributes to the 250th birthday of the United States. It’s not clear how placing the spotlight on a temporary leader celebrates a country whose founding document famously begins with “We the People” and was born from a revolution against a king whose image was on colonial coins.

At a moment meant to venerate the past, the administration’s actions represent a remarkable break with precedent. Since the U.S. started producing paper currency during the Civil War, they have always carried the signature of the U.S. treasurer. Even when “In God We Trust” was added in the middle of the 20th century, the bills remained agnostic about who was president.

Despite laws and conventions prohibiting living people from appearing on U.S. currency, the Trump Administration announced in late 2025 that it’s also considering producing a $1 coin featuring Trump’s likeness as part of the observance of America’s Semiquincentennial.

Then, last month, Trump loyalists appointed to the federal Commission on Fine Arts approved a commemorative gold coin featuring the president’s image. The U.S. Mint reported that Trump had personally been involved in the design and one panelist urged that the coin be made “as large as possible” because “the president likes big things.”

The push to memorialize Trump in gold has faced some official opposition. The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which is tasked with advising the Treasury on the themes and designs of coins, has attempted to stymie the effort but lacks the ultimate authority to stop it.

As the acting chair, Donald Scarinci, noted during a committee meeting, “Only those nations ruled by kings or dictators display the image of their sitting ruler on the coins of the realm. God bless America, and may God preserve our nation.”

While Trump’s desire to live in our piggy banks and wallets is unparalleled in U.S. history, it’s hardly a new dilemma for Christians to navigate. In this edition of A Public Witness, we delve into numismatics (which we all know without googling means the study of currency and coins). Like the woman searching for the lost coin, 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.

Whose Image?

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The “Broadcasting Belief: Understanding and Shaping How the Media Covers Religion” course will include four one-hour online sessions at 8 p.m. (ET) on Mondays April 27, May 4, May 11, and May 18 (but the sessions will be recorded for asynchronous engagement). Sessions will look at the historical evolution of religion in the media, the contemporary media landscape, how religion journalists decide what to report, and how you can have your voice heard in media outlets. One week will feature a panel conversation with guests Angela Denker (ELCA pastor and journalist), Jack Jenkins (Religion News Service), and Tiffany Stanley (Associated Press) to talk about their reporting on religion.

The course costs just $50 and is worth one Continuing Education Unit credit. Register today for this online course.

Additionally, Moravian University’s School of Theology is also hosting a free panel next week related to this topic. One of us (Brian) will join three other scholars for the event, “Beyond the Headlines: A Ministry Leader’s Guide to Media Discernment.” Also speaking during the conversation, which you can register for to watch free on Zoom, will be Belinda Waller-Peterson, Jill Irvine, and Erik Ranstrom.

We hope you’ll tune in to the panel next week and sign up for our course starting later in April.

Register for the “Beyond the Headlines” webinar on April 7.

Register today for the “Broadcasting Belief” online course that starts April 27.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor & Beau Underwood

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Recognizing that we live in a time where taking apart your belief system is a rite of passage, McGrath encourages his readers not to be satisfied just by what can be torn down. Deconstruction leaves you with a pile of rubble. The real value is found in creating a worldview that orients your life in rich and meaningful ways.

As he explains via a housing analogy, “if you were sold a structure that turned out to be structurally unsound, with a sinking foundation and no hope for preservation or restoration, you have a right to feel cheated, jaded, and skeptical. That isn’t a reason to remain homeless if there are other options available. People live in homes and people inhabit worldviews. I want, in this book, to help you move beyond the hurt of your past experiences and into freedom and healing.”

His recommendations for doing that are both obvious and complicated. Rather than seeing faith as a static set of beliefs, he urges readers to embrace an always-developing faith that is constantly being revised based on new information. In doing so, he challenges the myth that a strong faith resists change. From the very beginning of the tradition — reflect for a minute on Paul’s mission to the Gentile and their subsequent impact on the early church — Christianity has sought to adapt its core convictions to an evolving context.

Another suggestion is to reprioritize experience over doctrine. Rather than define faith as thinking about things the right way, McGrath believes a richer path is found in opening ourselves up to encounters with God. This is not the result of devaluing intellectual pursuits or an attempt to wall off religious belief from scientific influences. On the contrary, McGrath is a university professor who embraces both the critical study of the Bible and the integration of faith and reason.

Instead, his warning is not to reduce religious belief to academic pursuits and doctrinal debates. A faith that structures and shapes our lives has to be one that appreciates the reality of what it means to be human.

“Losing the security of our tidy equations about God and the workings of the universe is an experience that leads us into wider theological postures. Our new ways of thinking still cannot hold or do justice to God, but at least they don’t reduce and misrepresent God quite so badly,” he writes. “I suspect that if you continue your pursuit of God and have a transformative religious experience, your unanswered questions will remain and yet will pale in significance in the light of that life-changing encounter.”

Finally, McGrath highlights the inherent desire for community and the power of religion to provide it, though he believes more creativity is needed to imagine how “church” happens. Working for social change, tending a community garden, or meeting to discuss theology at your favorite restaurant are all ways that faith might inspire groups to gather for learning, service, and action.

Overall, Beyond Deconstruction reads like a love letter for intelligent and passionate people not to give up on faith but to reimagine it for themselves. McGrath provides permission to set aside what isn’t working and refocus on the essentials of fostering a life that can flourish within a community of like-minded people. It sounds quite basic, but it’s become much harder in our secularizing age.

“Don’t give up,” he advocates at the end of the book. “Build a worldview, build habits, build friendships. Share your faith in its new form. Share your story. It is still every bit as worthy of being called your testimony as what you might have said in years or decades past. You are on a journey, and your story will be ongoing. The way you tell and share it may change more than once in the future. … Whatever local and online communities you join or create, we are part of a larger whole, a bigger and even more diverse movement.”

While reconstructing Christian faith in the modern world is a lifelong challenge, finding the best reporting and analysis of how religion, politics, and culture intersect in American society is easy. Paid subscribers to A Public Witness get more of our award-winning content. Upgrade your subscription today and you’ll have the chance to win a signed copy of Beyond Deconstruction, as James McGrath has agreed to autograph a book for one of our lucky readers.

As a public witness,

Beau Underwood

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Jerusalem’s Palm Sunday Procession Canceled Due to Iran War. Michele Chabin reported on the impact of the latest conflict on Christian celebrations in Israel.

2. Survey: Support for Trump’s Immigration Agenda Craters With All Faith Groups, Especially Mainline Protestants. Jack Jenkins reported on new findings from PRRI.

3. Progressive Faith Leaders Found New Power in Protesting ICE. Can Their Movement Survive Success? The past year has particularly seen mainline Protestant clergy at the front lines of protests.

4. Cancer Nurse Turned Archbishop Celebrates Election As First Woman to Lead Church of England. Sarah Mullally this week was officially installed as the archbishop of Canterbury.

5. Review: Beyond Deconstruction. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Beyond Deconstruction: Building a More Expansive Faith by James F. McGrath.

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by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief

With Easter quickly approaching, President Donald Trump proposed a way for members of Congress to honor Jesus. Pass the SAVE Act. The bill would impose new documentation standards for voting that could block millions of Americans — especially married women — from voting.

“You don’t have to take a fast vote. Don’t worry about Easter, going home,” Trump said as he pushed for the legislation. “In fact, make this one for Jesus, okay? Make this one for Jesus. That’s what I tell them. It would be a d*mn good thing.”

That’s what it looks like to use the Lord’s name in vain. That biblical command isn’t really about cursing. It’s about taking God’s name to justify profane things.

Trump doesn’t really care about honoring Easter or Jesus. He hasn’t even been to a Sunday worship service (Easter or otherwise) in over four years. But he invoked the holiest day for Christians and the name of our Messiah for his political power grab.

Even those who support the bill should reject such rhetoric. But I not only hope Congress will reject the SAVE Act, but also this misuse of Jesus’s name.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• Lawmakers in Idaho rejected a bill that would have allowed churches to spend money on some political campaigns while also keeping donors a secret.

• After Texas blocked Islamic schools from participating in the state’s new private school voucher program, a judge ordered Texas allow the Islamic schools to participate and receive state funding.

• Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick, who leads Donald Trump’s national “Religious Liberty Commission,” created his own state version to supposedly help promote “religious liberty.”

• Sandi Villarreal of Texas Monthly unpacked the comments by Pete Hegseth’s pastor about wanting Democratic politician James Talarico “crucified.”

• Catherine Porter of The New York Times reported on the Catholic billionaire funding France’s far-right Christian Nationalists.

• A report last year that claimed to show a surge in church attendance in the United Kingdom has been withdrawn after the pollster admitted to a flawed data sample.

• Christians in southern Lebanon are increasingly worried about another Israeli occupation as the war in the Middle East expands.

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Hegseth started his remarks by noting that it was even “more fitting” this month than usual to gather for the service because of military personnel in danger in the Middle East. To make his case that God is on the side of the U.S. military and would help them kill Iranians, Hegseth mentioned he was given a prayer used by “the chaplain who oversaw the Maduro raid” in Venezuela in January. Hegseth had already shared at the January worship service that he had prayed through Psalm 144 for that mission.

Noting that it had been prayed to bless that mission, Hegseth said he now wanted to pray it over the Iran war. The selection from the chaplain started with Psalm 18:37-42. The first verse — “I pursued my enemies and overtook them; I did not turn back till they were destroyed” — was previously used in a Pentagon video that overlayed the verse on top of footage of fighter jets soaring, missiles firing, and soldiers shooting guns.

“I thrust them through so that they were not able to rise,” Hegseth kept reading at today’s service. “They fell under my feet, for you equipped me with strength for the battle. You made those who rise against me sink under me. You made my enemies turn their backs to me, and those who hated me, I destroyed. They cried for help, but there was none to save. They cried to the Lord, but he did not answer them. I beat them fine as dust before the wind. I cast them out like the mire of the streets.”

The prayer then used without citations several passages from other psalms, the Book of Proverbs, and elsewhere. It started with Psalm 144:1 and mixed in other verses and phrases to argue that it’s God’s will to show no mercy to the enemy.

“Almighty God, who trains our hands for war and our fingers for battle, you who stirred the nations from the north against Babylon of old, making her land a desolation where none dwell, behold now the wicked who rise against your justice and the peace of the righteous,” Hegseth prayed. “Snap the rod of the oppressor, frustrate the wicked plans, and break the teeth of the ungodly. By the blast of your anger, let the evil perish. Let their bulls go down to slaughter for their day has come, the time of their punishment. Pour out your wrath upon those who plot vain things and blow them away like chaff before the wind.”

“Grant this task force clear and righteous targets for violence. Surround them as a shield, protect the innocent and blameless in their midst. Make their arrows like those of a skilled warrior who returned not empty-handed. Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation,” Hegseth continued praying. “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy. Preserve their lives, sharpen their resolve, and let justice be executed swiftly and without remorse that evil may be driven back and wicked souls delivered to the eternal damnation prepared for them. For the wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion. We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ, King over all kings and amen.”

After finishing the violent prayer, Hegseth again made it clear that he was offering that as a prayer for the Iran war: “May the righteous be as bold as a lion. May we pray such prayer for our men and women in harm’s way right now. To think that such Americans exist on our behalf, on behalf of the American people, and that is certainly our prayer for them.”

Other parts of the service served to bless Hegseth’s call for a holy war. Before he took to the stage, Undersecretary of the Navy Hung Cao called Hegseth “one of God’s mightiest men.” Cao also prayed for God to place “a hedge of protection over our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Air guardians, and Coast Guardsmen who are right now deployed in harm’s way.” He added in his prayer his request that God would make the war plans of President Donald Trump, Hegseth, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Caine align with God’s will and succeed. Cao also borrowed phrases from Hebrews 12:1-2, Hebrews 10:24-25, and Romans 1:16 in his prayer.

Later, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, a former Southern Baptist pastor, preached. His message mostly centered on rejoicing in God even when things go poorly and trusting in God even during storms. He encouraged those present to lead by seeking to experience a miracle from God during life’s storms.

After his sermon, Collins led those present in saying the Lord’s prayer. Christian musicians Cade Thompson, Lucy Fava, and Jason Kuhn sang several songs, including “Way Maker,” “How Great Thou Art,” “Agnus Dei,” “Jesus Paid It All,” “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus,” and the “Doxology.”

The closing prayer by VA Chaplain Glenn Clarkson cast the U.S. as a divine agent: “May your love enable us as a nation to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. For when we continue to do this as a nation upon you, O God, we will continue to stand as one nation under you, O God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Secret Ambition

This was the third Pentagon service to feature guest Christian musicians. But they initially announced a bigger name would be performing.

On March 13, the Pentagon said in an internal email that Christian musician Michael W. Smith would perform at the monthly worship service on March 17. This marked the first time other than the Christmas service that they had advertised a preacher or musician ahead of time. The day before the service, however, the Pentagon announced it would be pushed to March 18. Then they said the service would be rescheduled again. The Pentagon told me that Smith’s performance had been rescheduled but declined to say when it would occur. A few days later, they announced Collins as the preacher for the rescheduled March service but didn’t include Smith in the invite.

Last month, Smith performed at the National Prayer Breakfast after a rambling, profane speech by President Donald Trump. Smith’s singing of “Agnus Dei” and “Amazing Grace” came after Hegseth declared the U.S. to be “a Christian nation” and made the heretical claim that a soldier “finds eternal life” by dying for the country.

Two weeks later, Smith performed at the opening session of the National Religious Broadcasters convention. That session of the group that brings together conservative evangelical media organizations also included a video from Trump. Additionally, the convention included remarks by Hegseth and numerous MAGA Christian figures like David Barton, Megan Basham, Mike Farris, Jack Hibbs, Tony Perkins, Samuel Rodriguez, Lorenzo Sewell, Matthew Staver, and William Wolfe.

Such involvement with Republican politics and Christian Nationalist efforts isn’t new for Smith. He performed at the 2004 Republican National Convention that renominated George W. Bush, singing his patriotic song “There She Stands” as images of U.S. flags and soldiers appeared on the large screens behind him. In that song, which he wrote at Bush’s request, Smith proclaims that when “all hope is lost,” he knows it’s going to be okay if someone will “show the way” to where “by the light she stands.”

In 2019, he partnered with Liberty University, a fundamentalist Baptist school in Virginia founded by the late Jerry Falwell Sr., to create the Michael W. Smith Center for Commercial Music. At the time, Liberty was led by Jerry Falwell Jr., an early Christian supporter of Trump who resigned in 2020 amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Smith performed during a rally led by Trump-backing evangelist Franklin Graham on the National Mall. The event also included remarks by Vice President Mike Pence, Mike Huckabee, Oliver North, Greg Laurie, and Paula White-Cain. In 2023, Smith publicly campaigned against an Ohio ballot measure that overturned a strict abortion ban, calling the vote “a spiritual battle.”

During the first Trump administration, Smith joined other Christian musicians and conservative Christian leaders in signing an open letter urging Congress to reject proposed Trump administration cuts to international aid programs. He did not, however, offer such public advocacy when those programs were decimated by the second Trump administration.

Smith has performed at the Pentagon before, though at an event hosted by the Pentagon’s Chaplain’s Office instead of the Secretary of Defense. During that February 2024 concert he sang several songs in a concert at the Pentagon, including “Agnus Dei” and “Surrounded (Fight My Battles).”

There was no reference during Wednesday’s service to Smith or if he would be at a future service.

Place in This World

The monthly worship services at the Pentagon continue to spark more controversy, especially after Hegseth had Doug Wilson preach last month. Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, criticized Hegseth for inviting a preacher “who does not believe that women ought to be able to vote, who says that slavery was not so bad, and who believes that America ought to be a Christian theocracy.”

“The beauty of America is that we have a covenant with one another,” Warnock added. “Those of various faith traditions, those who claim no faith tradition at all are joined together in a kind of faith in our ability to move forward as one country. E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. I don’t want to live in anybody’s theocracy — Christian, Jewish, Islamic. We live in a multifaceted democracy, and there’s nothing more dignified than every person having their voice.”

During remarks at the National Religious Broadcasters convention last month, Hegseth defended the worship services. He called them “a time where we pause during a very busy day to give thanks, praise, and glory to God in the name of Jesus Christ.” He also dismissed the growing criticism.

“We hear a lot from the freedom-from-religion crowd. They hate it. The leftwing shrieks, which means we’re right over the target,” he declared.

Chris Line, legal counsel for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, responded to Hegseth’s remarks by noting the constitutional problem with the services: “Hosting sectarian worship services inside the Pentagon is already among the most serious First Amendment Establishment Clause violations we’ve seen in recent memory.”

This week, another church-state group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair of the national board of trustees), filed lawsuits against the Department of Defense and the Department of Labor for holding government worship services. As AU President and CEO Rachel Laser said about the services: “The federal government’s role is to serve the public, not to proselytize.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

By the way, learn more about the monthly services at the Pentagon and the Department of Labor at our “Government Worship Watch.”

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