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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Missouri Baptists Vote to Close Baptist Homes, but Transparency Lacking About Financial Troubles. Brian Kaylor reported on the demise of a 113-year-old ministry.

2. The Trump Show’s Declining Ratings. Rodney Kennedy reflected on Augustine and the theater of MAGA rallies.

3. Review: Fish With Feet. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Fish With Feet: Human Evolution and the Image of God by Janet Kellogg Ray.

4. Catholic Bishops Accuse White House of Manipulation Over Prayer Video. Several Catholic bishops complained after the White House shared a video of them praying over President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

5. UMC Bishop Removes Ministers From Dallas’ Highland Park; Church Says They Will Stay. Yonat Shimron reported on the continuing drama after members of one of the largest United Methodist congregations voted ot leave the denomination.

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

On Wednesday (Oct. 28), a Russian court sentenced a 74-year-old Baptist pastor, in absentia, to five years in a penal colony because he prayed for peace and against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Rev. Yuri Sipko, a former vice president of the Baptist World Alliance and former president of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, was convicted for supposedly disseminating “fake news” about the Russian military.

“I have been given a prison term for just a few words: ‘The Russian army, with all its might, has descended upon Ukraine, destroying people, cities, and villages — subjecting residents to the fear of death and forcing millions of Ukrainians to seek refuge all over the world,’” Sipko said in response to the conviction. “Apparently, this is considered ‘fake news’! But just look! What is the Russian army doing today? How many people have lost their lives since then?”

Sipko was not present for his trial since he fled Russia in 2023 after learning he would soon be arrested. I interviewed him via Zoom a couple of weeks after he went into exile. I was inspired by his prophetic courage as he was willing to stand up and say what few Christians in Russia have been willing to.

“I don’t think about myself too much. I continue to remain in the state of grief over the events that Russia’s involved in,” Sipko told me in 2023. “Russia continues to wage this war. There are still rockets that are being fired at Ukraine, at the Ukrainian people. … The evil continues to do evil.”

“I followed the word of God: ‘blessed are the peacemakers,’” he added. “My words of encouragement, my wishes are that Christians continue to look at Christ and listen to the word of Christ. As Christ said, ‘I was persecuted and so you will be.’”

As I noted in my piece three years ago, Sipko’s father spent five years in prison as part of the Soviet Union’s persecution of Baptists and other Christians. And now, Sipko has also been given a five-year sentence — though, given his age, being sent to a penal colony could be a life sentence. Instead, like the prophet Jeremiah, he remains in exile, lamenting for his country that he may see again.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• The organization American Atheists is suing the U.S. Department of Defense to compel the release of public records related to the Pentagon revising its religious identification codes from 211 to 30.

• A federal judge this week heard arguments in a lawsuit challenging U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins for sending proselytizing messages to USDA employees.

• Dana Bash of CNN spoke with Jack Jenkins and David French about the high number of pastors and seminarians running as Democrats in the midterms.

• Robert Downen of Texas Monthly reported on how a Christian Nationalist pastor working for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been helping push Islamophobia.

• Pope Leo XIV has become the first pope in history to vote in a U.S. election.

• Lubomir Martin Ondrasek wrote for Sightings about the problems with the religious freedom restrictions in Slovakia.

• The son of a Baptist pastor from Cuba has been detained by ICE. Advocates are calling for his release amid fears that if deported he would be forced to serve in the Cuban military.

• The United Methodist Church’s General Conference in 2028 will for the first time have a second concurrent location. In addition to the previously chosen Minneapolis, Minnesota, there will also be a site in Harare, Zimbabwe. The UMC is growing in Africa and there were concerns about increasing travel restrictions by the United States preventing people from being able to attend.

• With Trump’s growing unpopularity, some Trump stores are going out of business. Last year, A Public Witness explored “the gospel according to Trump stores.”

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Some churches, businesses, and homes in the Show-Me State host signs featuring a woman holding a baby and urging people to support Amendment 3. It’s an effort to ban most abortions, which is why the signs opposing the amendment declare, “Stop the Abortion Ban.” Yet, as you drive around you’ll notice many more signs pushing for people to vote for what sounds like a different Amendment 3: “Ban Transgender Surgeries for Minors.” It’s the same ballot measure, but these signs don’t mention that it’s actually an abortion ban. And it’s this anti-transgender sign that many churches decided to evangelize with.

To understand what’s going on, we must back up a bit. In 2019, Missouri lawmakers passed a law to ban nearly all abortions. However, they couldn’t actually implement it at the time, so they included a trigger clause saying it would go into effect if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade. When that occurred on June 24, 2022, then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (and now an Atlanta Hawks fan in the U.S. Senate) proclaimed almost immediately that the ban was official.

That triggered some litigation, including a lawsuit by clergy challenging the 2019 abortion ban as a type of religious establishment for invoking “Almighty God” in the law as legislators made it clear they were implementing their sectarian beliefs. However, before the various lawsuits reached completion, Missouri voters took action. In 2024, even as Donald Trump won the state by 18 points, voters passed a state constitutional amendment by a 52%-48% margin to enshrine reproductive freedom and therefore block the abortion ban. Coincidentally, it was that year’s Amendment 3.

Upset by we the people thwarting their ban, state lawmakers decided to put the issue right back on the ballot this year with a new constitutional ban to undo the one passed in 2024. The fact that they keep ignoring or overturning statewide ballot initiatives is why there’s another measure this year, Amendment 6, that would curtail the ability of lawmakers to reverse votes of the people. If the provisions in Amendment 6 were already in place, this year’s abortion ban would not be on the ballot. Amendment 6 is basically an effort to help voters no longer feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.

And here’s where the political dishonesty shows up. Since Missouri voters literally voted to block an abortion ban in 2024, lawmakers recognized it would be hard to get the same voters to approve an abortion ban in 2026. So they decided to add some ballot candy, which is throwing in another provision that’s more popular so people will vote for that and perhaps not realize what the amendment actually does. And what’s one of the biggest political boogeymen right now? Transgender minors.

Across the country we’ve seen desperate Republicans try to attack Democrats for supporting transgender surgeries and athletes. It’s a main line of attack (often inaccurately) against surging candidates like James Talarico in Texas and Rev. Adam Hamilton in Kansas. State legislators in 19 states this year passed 63 anti-trans bills, and many states (including Missouri) have recently seen more bills introduced in a single year to ban transgender athletes than the number of such athletes.

Most absurdly, as Trump has been holding campaign rallies across the country, he often makes the false claim that parents send their son to school in the morning and then pick up their child after a “brutal operation” that the school pushed without telling the parents. To be clear, this is a gross lie. Kids are not coming home from school after a surprise transition surgery. (The real threat is kids not coming home from school because of another mass shooting since our politicians refuse to do anything to save our children from gun violence.)

Some anti-abortion activists and pastors claimed two years ago that the Missouri ballot initiative to enshrine reproductive rights would allow for medical surgeries for transgender children, but that was debunked by legal and medical experts at the time after it appeared in bulletins at Catholic parishes. And we know the rhetoric was inaccurate because the amendment passed and such surgeries still were not allowed. But while making that a secondary issue didn’t work two years ago, anti-abortion groups hope they can find success now by making transgender issues the main topic.

Here’s the simple truth: Regardless of how people vote on Amendment 3 next week, medical surgeries for transgender minors will be banned in Missouri. That’s because there’s already a ban in place, which was unanimously upheld by the state Supreme Court earlier this year. What will change if Amendment 3 passes is the implementation of a ban on most abortions. But fearing they can’t win on that issue, anti-abortion groups are trying to make the amendment seem like it’s about something else.

“If we talk to people about the trans part of this amendment,” an activist said during a Republican meeting, “we can get it to pass.”

This is a calculated political strategy to confuse voters — and many churches are joining in. By my unscientific observation of churches as I’ve driven around the state, those with pro-Amendment 3 signs are much more likely to post the “Ban Transgender Surgeries for Minors” banner than one about abortion. Yet, even one of the most Christian Nationalist and anti-abortion lawmakers — who was the sponsor of the bill that banned “gender transition procedures” for minors — has criticized such political messaging.

“They’re being disingenuous and they’re saying that now we need to outlaw transgender procedures through the Constitution,” said Republican state Sen. Mike Moon, who has also criticized Amendment 3 for not going far enough in banning abortions. “And I’m thinking we’ve already got it as the law. So why now do you need to say we need it as a constitutional provision?”

This misleading political rhetoric is what many churches are embracing and spreading. A Southern Baptist church last month even held a rally in its sanctuary to urge support of Amendment 3 in between worship songs. At one point in the service, they went straight from singing “How Great Thou Art” to showing a political ad (created by an organization led by the governor’s wife) that started by declaring, “It starts with drag queen story hour and ends with children under the knife. Irreversible sex change surgeries on minors — that’s the goal of trans extremists. … Amendment 3 stops them.”

Earlier this week, the annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention featured a push for Amendment 3 made by Andrew Bailey, a former Missouri attorney general who, until last month, served as co-deputy FBI director in the Trump administration. While Bailey actually focused his remarks on abortion, he still emphasized the claim that the amendment would ban “child gender mutilation.” As he urged support for Amendment 3, he also attacked the constitutional principle of church-state separation.

“It’s time we take a stand,” Bailey said. “I believe that the rights in the United States Constitution come from God, not man. … If you read the First Amendment, we have the free exercise of religion, that’s unique. That’s unique in the world, that’s a unique freedom that is given to us by God, protected by our Constitution. But you won’t find the term ‘separation of church and state’ in that Constitution.”

Other churches and denominational bodies have also been campaigning for Amendment 3. And a few mainline Protestant and Unitarian Universalist congregations have countered this with “No on 3: Stop the Abortion Ban” signs outside their buildings.

There’s nothing legally wrong with churches or other nonprofits urging votes for or against a ballot measure like Amendment 3. But there is something ethically problematic with pushing misleading messaging. While lying is sadly too common in our political campaigns, churches shouldn’t join in.

When advocating for a “yes” or “no” vote on a matter, we should be honest about what the vote actually does. After all, Jesus told us our “yes” should be “yes” and our “no” should be “no.” Maybe it’s time to put a truly radical slogan on campaign-like lawn signs: “Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.” I approve this message.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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The crowd gathered for the partisan rally Sunday night at Exodus Church in Wichita, which is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, a denomination started and led by Wilson, a Christian Nationalist pastor in Idaho, self-described “paleo-Confederate,” and a patriarchal figure who wants to repeal the 19th Amendment (and who has a history of condoning sexual abuse). A prominent member of the CREC is Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war.” Hegseth invited Wilson to preach at the February 2026 Pentagon service and has had CREC pastor Brooks Potteiger preach at four Pentagon services.

While the “sanctity of life” was the dominant theme for the anti-Hamilton service, no one called on CREC member Hegseth to repent for killing more than 200 people — including fishermen and perhaps human trafficking victims — in boats off the coasts of South America or for launching a war against Iran that included a strike in February when U.S. Tomahawk missiles struck a girls’ school in Iran and killed more than 160 civilians, most of them children.

Instead, the focus of the service, billed as a “Kansas State Gathering for Prayer & Repentance,” was to support Republican candidates like Marshall and attack the faith of Democrats like Hamilton. And they did so with a cast of rightwing preachers and Republican activists, including Tony Perkins, Jim Garlow, Troy Newman, Colin Smothers, and others.

The service came together after an “open letter” to Hamilton published earlier this month by Kyle Lammott, lead pastor at Exodus Church. In the missive, Lammott called on Hamilton “to repent of what you have taught and to withdraw from the Senate race.” He criticized Hamilton for comments in sermons about how people from other faiths could go to heaven, that there are errors in the Bible, and that same-sex couples can be married. While such positions are classically deemed as “unbiblical” by fundamentalist and evangelical pastors, they are not unusual or unorthodox within the mainline Protestant tradition. Lammott also criticized Hamilton for his campaign position against criminalizing abortion.

“If you will not keep faith with the word you were ordained to preach, why should Kansas expect you to keep faith with her?” Lammott wrote. “Repent of what you have taught concerning salvation, Scripture, marriage, and the unborn. Then step out of this race rather than carry the name of Christ into an office you intend to use to mock God by shielding those who desire the blood of the innocent.”

During Sunday night’s event at his church, Lammott further explained his claim that Hamilton is unfit for office because of theological beliefs (despite a constitutional prohibition on religious tests for office). Lammott insisted that political leaders must follow God’s will.

“The president, the governor, the Senate, the House — they’re all called by God to be his servants. And when the magistrates enact godless laws, approve tyranny, legalize evil, he is committing high treason against the one who has all authority in heaven and earth,” Lammott declared. “Political reform without faithful allegiance to Christ is merely repainting a sinking ship. … We are to proclaim the obedience of the gospel as the only way, the only hope for our nation and our state.”

In addition to attacking Democrats on the issue of abortion, he also claimed they should be rejected for supposedly not believing the Bible or Jesus.

“One political party has already told us that they do not hold to the authority of God’s word. One political party has already told us that salvation is not by faith alone in Christ alone,” he said.

Garlow, an evangelical pastor in California, took a stronger shot against the UMC and the mainline tradition. Long involved in Republican politics, Garlow has worked closely with Trump, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Johnson. After recounting the “explosive” growth of Methodism in the early years of the United States, he argued the denomination was “a powerhouse for God until late 1800s German historical criticism started creeping in.”

“By 1960s, the undercurrent of liberalism had literally taken away the firepower of the once phenomenal movement called, at the time originally Methodist Episcopal Church, then eventually United Methodist Church. They had 11 million strong in 1968. Today, there’s 3.8 million, and shrinking every day,” Garlow added without noting that in recent decades evangelical denominations have also been shrinking.

Garlow criticized Hamilton, pastor of the largest UMC church, for not opposing the affirmation of LGBTQ individuals within the UMC. Saying Hamilton was “once very biblical, once orthodox,” Garlow claimed Hamilton was “affirming that for which God had destroyed Sodom” — by which Garlow meant homosexuality, even though the Bible says it was for pride and refusing to help the poor and needy. Apparently knowing that his interpretation has been challenged, when he again repeated his Sodom remark, Garlow declared, “And by the way, for the adherents to Hamilton, Sodom wasn’t destroyed for its inhospitality. Check out Jude 7.” In addition to ignoring Ezekiel 16, which does say it was for inhospitality, Garlow’s prooftext doesn’t actually mention homosexuality and might instead allude to an apocryphal text about supposed angel-human sex. But maybe that’s just the historical criticism talking.

Garlow added that he doesn’t “blame Adam Hamilton alone,” which is a shift from Marshall’s rhetoric in inaccurately claiming that Hamilton “split” the UMC. Still, the strong supporter of Trump insisted that Hamilton’s theology makes him unfit for office.

“If elected, his abhorrent theology and the tragic politics that flows out of that will be more mainstream than it already is. He’ll misuse the Scripture to justify wrong votes,” Garlow said. “Adam Hamilton, we appeal to you to repent of being in violation with the word of God.”

During his meandering remarks, Garlow also praised the addition of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and the adoption of “In God We Trust” as the national motto — two Christian Nationalist moves that occurred in the 1950s. And Garlow praised rightwing Brazilian politician Flávio Bolsonaro, who Garlow said he had met with in Brazil last month. Garlow expressed his hope that Bolsonaro would be elected president that day, but the results shortly thereafter showed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva narrowly won reelection. Bolsonaro, son of a former president in prison for his role in a failed insurrection after the last time Lula won, has thus far refused to accept the results.

Parade of Pastors

Anti-abortion activist Troy Newman, who leads the Wichita-based group Operation Rescue, emceed the event. In 2009, abortion doctor George Tiller, a key target of Operation Rescue, was assassinated while serving as an usher at an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in Wichita. The killer had been involved with Newman’s group, though Newman denounced the murder of Tiller and claimed there were no connections. Newman, who is apparently part of the CREC host church, kicked off the program by mentioning the “amazing” Trump rally last week and announcing this would be “a Jesus rally.”

Newman set the tone for the night by attacking abortion and transgender people. Several pastors offered remarks or led prayers during the nearly two-and-a-half-hour service.

One pastor prayed for “boldness to shake up the political realm” since they have been “called for such a time as this” to “wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities. And so, Father, we come against the principalities.” Yet, he then prayed not against the principalities but for President Donald Trump.

“Father, we know that this is our hour. This is our day. Your kingdom has come and your will is being done. We pray for our president and chief, Pastor Donald Trump,” the unidentified pastor declared. “We pray for every man and woman of God that’s in the corridors of the White House. God, we decree and we declare in the name of Jesus that every weapon formed against them, it is not going to prosper.”

Rob Rotala, a charismatic pastor in Wichita, prayed that Marshall, Masterson, and the other Republican candidates present would approach their governance positions by asking, “Lord what can I do, Father?” Rotala is part of the leadership team of the Kansas chapter of City Elders, a Christian Nationalist group based in Oklahoma that has worked with Republican politicians like DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, and former Oklahoma Secretary of Public Instruction Ryan Walters. During Sunday night’s event, he also prayed that “Christians and citizens would stand up and be bold.”

Wayne Cash, pastor of Calvary Chapel Fellowship in Wichita, prayed over the Republican politicians present for having “accepted the call to fight for life, to get into the fight, to take possession of the land of Kansas and the United States.”

“They have accepted the call to battle the forces of evil through the desire to lead by your word as the one and only absolute truth,” Cash added. “So, Father, tonight we recognize that getting into the land is the only beginning battle for them; taking possession of it is going to be the real battle to come. … Establish the work of their hands for us — yes, establish the work of their hands for your glory.”

Con Howerton of Temple Baptist Church in Wichita spoke as a representative for Faith Wins, a rightwing Christian group that focuses on getting Christians engaged in politics and voting. The group, which helped sponsor the event at Exodus Church, was founded by former Republican National Committee faith director Chad Connelly.

“This election may well decide whether or not Iran gets a nuclear weapon. I’m not exaggerating, I’m telling you what’s absolutely true. This election could decide how safe our streets are and all the things involved in that,” Howerton said before mostly focusing his remarks on abortion. “We’ve got a man running for governor, and I’m telling you God will use that man. That man is fearless. He’ll proclaim the gospel. He doesn’t care where he’s at. I’ve heard him do it 100 times. Amen. He came to our school 20 years ago and preached the gospel. Amen. Love Brother Ty, and I want you to send him to Topeka. Amen. Let’s get him there. Hallelujah.”

Another pastor, Jordan Friesen of Vine Community Church in El Dorado, prayed for families with “husbands who know how to lead and exercise their headship” and “wives who are submissive and clothed with strength and dignity.” He added, “In the book of Exodus, you multiplied a family to the point where Pharaoh himself feared what the sons of Jacob had become, and we want to ask you would do the same today, that you would give us strong families.” He didn’t mention that Pharaoh’s response was to enslave the descendants of Jacob for hundreds of years.

Others who prayed included Colin Smothers, a Southern Baptist pastor in Kansas who also serves as executive director of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (which promotes a patriarchal reading of Scripture), and Sam McVay, the executive director of ENGAGE, an initiative of the Kansas Family Foundation to evangelize public officials.

In between the speeches praising Trump and attacking Hamilton, a music leader led those gathered in singing hymns, including “How Great Thou Art,” “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” and the “Doxology.”

Marshall, for his part, affirmed the attacks on Hamilton’s faith offered throughout the event.

“What Kansans want is someone that protects our values. And to be frank, my opponent doesn’t. He does not represent Kansas values,” Marshall said. “We just want to protect those traditional Kansas values: faith, family, community, hard work.”

During the service, Marshall invoked the “armor of God” from Ephesians 6 to say what he wanted people to pray he would have. Lammott and others during the service also mentioned that passage. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council led the prayer for Marshall and his campaign. Perkins also brought on stage Republican gubernatorial hopeful Ty Masterson, state Attorney General Kris Kobach, and U.S. Rep. Ron Estes to offer remarks and to be prayed over.

Polls show the race between Marshall and Hamilton statistically tied in a state Trump won by 16 points just two years ago and which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in nearly a century. While the political campaign comes to an end in eight days, the century-old debate between Fundamentalists and mainline Protestants appears to be nowhere near a conclusion.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. What’s in Ten Thousand Names? 250 Years of the Faithful Fight Against Religious Establishment. Nathan L. Taylor reflected on the 1776 Dissenters’ Petition of Ten Thousand Names and connects it to our religious freedom today.

2. Finding the Love in God’s Apocalyptic Plan. Michael Mellette wrote about the prophet Jonah as a path to bypassing the apocalypse by becoming worthy of God’s love and presence.

3. Review: Vulnerable God. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Vulnerable God: How Jesus Upends Our Assumptions About God — and Shows Us How to Be Human by Kenneth Tanner.

4. Taxpayers Are Funding Private School Tuition. It’s Helping Classical Christian Schools Expand. Tiffany Stanley reported on how state programs using public money for private schools are helping fund those connected to Doug Wilson and other Christian Nationalists.

5. Faith Leaders Unite Across Religions to Counter Voter Intimidation on Election Day. Deepa Bharath reported on clergy who are preparing to serve as “poll chaplains” on election day.

Follow Us on Bluesky

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

On Tuesday (Oct. 20), a federal appeals court handed a victory to more than two dozen religious denominational bodies seeking to block the Department of Homeland Security from conducting warrantless immigration enforcement actions at houses of worship. As a quick reminder, there are three major lawsuits seeking to block DHS enforcement actions at houses of worship — and two have already resulted in federal injunctions.

In the first successful case, a judge last year granted an injunction to protect congregations affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and several regional Quaker groups in addition to a Sikh Temple in California. Earlier this year, a different federal judge granted an injunction to similarly protect congregations in the American Baptist Churches USA, Alliance of Baptists, Metropolitan Community Churches, and several regional synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. That judge is now considering whether to hold DHS in contempt for repeatedly spying at a Baptist church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, covered by the injunction.

The other case initially saw a different result as the district court judge ruled against the plaintiffs. Now that the appeals court overturned it and argued the plaintiffs have proven standing and harm from the Trump administration's policies, it seems likely the judge will grant an injunction. Among the plaintiffs in the case are mainline Protestant groups like the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Episcopal Church, General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Mennonite Church USA, and some regional United Church of Christ and United Methodist Church bodies. Additional plaintiffs include a Hispanic Baptist convention in Texas, multiple Jewish groups, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the state council of churches for Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin.

“The D.C. Circuit’s decision recognizes the real harm that DHS inflicted on religious communities when it rescinded the sensitive locations policy that had protected places of worship from immigration enforcement activity for over three decades,” Kelsi Brown Corkran, lead counsel for the religious groups and an attorney at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, told Newsweek. “It is an important victory for the millions of people of faith represented by the 27 Jewish and Christian denominations and organizations that came together to file this suit in defense of their right to worship and serve their communities without fear of intrusion by ICE officers.”

The religious resistance to DHS continues to bring victories.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• After Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed offered a viral answer about religion in response to a questioner at a campaign event in Michigan, journalist Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket reported on the Christian Nationalist connections to Josh Hawley, Sean Feucht, and more of the person who challenged El-Sayed.

• David Gibson wrote for The Verge about the “dizzying religious and sociocultural philosophy” of Peter Thiel after obtaining recordings of his lectures about “the antichrist.”

• Mark Wingfield wrote for Baptist News Global about some new controversies involving churches serving as polling locations as pastors run for office or engage in partisan politicking.

• Episcopal Bishop Mark Edington of the American Cathedral in Paris criticized "how little the vice president knows about France" in Sunday's service after J.D. Vance blamed immigration for unrest in France. Edington also defended concerns of students protesting and criticized "idolatry" of AI companies.

• Harriet Riley reported for The Presbyterian Outlook on the impact on a North Carolina church when its ruling elder was deported.

• An Anglican priest who became reliant on a wheelchair due to health issues that developed during 13 months in an immigration detention center was ordered to be released by a judge but had to be carried out since ICE took away his wheelchair.

• Rishabh Jain wrote for Religion Unplugged about how Christians in Japan are wrestling with a rise of nationalism in the country’s politics.

• Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas is now requiring faculty to sign a statement on “sexuality, gender, and marriage,” which is sparking resignations and criticism.

• Ruth Graham of The New York Times reported on the turmoil and changes at Christianity Today as the publication has lost about half of its staff.

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“Faithfully perform your service to our country in the place God has providentially placed you for such a time as this,” Potteiger told those gathered in the Pentagon. “Christ holds you fast right now, today, as you pour yourself out for God and for country.”

During his sermon, Potteiger read from 1 Corinthians 15 about the promised resurrection of the dead. At the end of that chapter, the early Christians were told that because of this their labor for God is not in vain. Potteiger then used that verse to argue that the labor of those at the Pentagon is for God and therefore also matters as it “will help shape the architecture of eternity.”

“Your service here — done in faith, done in dependence upon the living God who has placed you there — will far outlive you in ways you can’t begin to fathom,” he said. “Every effort you make here in your life, including your time at the Pentagon as you honor Christ in the service he’s called you to, is helping to shape the eternal story God is telling.”

“As Christians, a key to remaining steadfast with a holy intention, fresh encouragement, vigilance at your Pentagon post for however long Jesus has you here, it’s knowing morning by morning that it matters. It matters not just for today; it matters for generations that will come in America, but even beyond that, it will matter beyond America into eternity,” he added. “Because Jesus rose, the way he uses me today at the Pentagon, in the field, or overseas, the way he uses me in defense of our homeland, including the freedom that you protect to worship Christ and spread his gospel, which you help secure, that will rise. It will matter. It will bear fruit. It will, in some very real way, contribute to the glory of the life to come.”

While Potteiger told a story about a colonial figure’s life being saved, he did not mention the impact of the military today in ending the lives of others. The Pentagon is still delaying a report on a strike in February when U.S. Tomahawk missiles struck a girls’ school in Iran and killed more than 160 civilians, most of them children. When Hegseth launched his monthly Christian services at the Pentagon in May 2025, he invited Potteiger to offer the first sermon. During that service, the pastor claimed God directed where U.S. missiles landed: “If our Lord is sovereign even over the sparrows’ fallings, you can be assured that he is sovereign over everything else that falls in this world, including Tomahawk and Minuteman missiles, including strategy meetings and war room debriefings. Jesus has the final say over all of it.”

Beyond baptizing the Pentagon’s work as labor done for God, Potteiger also prayed during Wednesday’s service for God to bless the largest military in the world and its leaders.

“As I stand in this symbolic center of our military might, with these dear and faithful service members before me, O God, again with the secretary, I would pray down your blessings upon them and upon all our armed forces. Make them all keen-eyed. Make them sure-handed. Make them wise. Make them unwavering,” he prayed. “Strengthen our military.”

Potteiger also prayed for Hegseth, asking God to “protect him from those who would seek to undermine him.” He also prayed that God would “surround [Hegseth] with faithful counselors that are worth listening to, that have true Solomonic wisdom and fear you above all.” Borrowing language from Psalm 90:17, Potteiger changed the pronouns to ones he preferred to make a verse about the ancient people of Israel instead about Hegseth: “Establish the work of his hands — yes, establish the work of his hands.”

Citing a Thanksgiving proclamation by President George Washington, Potteiger insisted it is the “duty” of the United States (and all nations) “to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor.” Insisting God has protected and guided the nation “from our founding and even before,” he told God in a prayer that the United States is “the greatest nation in the history of the world.” Potteiger also quoted Proverbs 14:34 (“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people”) before offering a confession to God for the sin of the American people.

“We have sinned grievously and boldly, and in many ways as a people. We have turned the definition of liberty exactly on its head. When our fathers spoke of liberty they did so in the classic sense, namely freedom from being ruled by our base and corrupting passions. But we, as a nation, now see it as the freedom to pursue base passions and corrupt lust and indecencies that are an offense to you and unbecoming all who bear your image,” he prayed. “So, Lord, we would ask now that you would forgive us our sins and that you would turn our collective heart back to you. Give us true liberty — that liberty that can only come through the freedom Christ secured through his cross and freely offers.”

Potteiger previously pastored a church in Tennessee that Hegseth attended before joining the Trump administration. Earlier this year, Potteiger moved to D.C. to lead a new church. Both congregations are part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, founded by self-described “paleo-Confederate” Idaho pastor Doug Wilson (who preached at the February 2026 Pentagon service).

‘Honor Christ’

Others during Wednesday’s service joined Potteiger in blessing the U.S. military as working for God. Navy Chaplain Donny Keim opened the service by reading Jeremiah 17:7 about being blessed for trusting in the Lord, and then he prayed that all those present would learn “to place our confidence not in ourselves, but in Christ Jesus, who reigns over all.” After his prayer, he introduced Hegseth as “our host and our brother in Christ.”

Hegseth called it “a blessing” to hold the service “to honor Christ in this moment” and “in what we do each and every day.” He then mentioned his recent announcement about the creation of the Office of Religious Affairs, a proposal which quickly sparked confusion and criticism from some faith leaders involved in the military chaplaincy. During Wednesday’s service, Hegseth said the office was created since faith should not be “a side thing” or “an afterthought” but “needs to be central to our formations” because it helps with “readiness” and is “a good thing across the force.”

As he announced the new religious office last month, Hegseth quoted several Bible verses, including from Psalm 33, Ephesians 6, Isaiah 6, and Psalm 118. During Wednesday’s service, he read Psalm 37:3 (“Trust in the Lord and do good”) and 1 Corinthians 16:13 (“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love”).

“Lord God, we give it all to you, each and every aspect of our lives, each and every aspect of our formations and our duties and our responsibilities,” Hegseth prayed during the service before asking for God’s protection over “our war fighters” who serve the nation. “Lord God, may you protect them in that process. We don’t know all the reasons why things happen, but we know that you keep your hand on the wheel on our behalf.”

At the end of the service, Potteiger led those gathered in saying the Lord’s Prayer and in singing “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less” and the “Doxology.”

The Last Service?

With the midterm elections less than two weeks away, Hegseth’s job security is increasingly uncertain. The least popular member of the Trump Cabinet, only 32% of Americans approve of how he’s doing his job while 57% disapprove. Many congressional Democrats have criticized him and various decisions, and some Republicans in Congress have also voiced their disagreement with some of his moves (like ousting popular military leaders). Thus, some political analysts believe he could be the key target for removal if Democrats win the midterm elections, with his firing or forced resignation essentially traded in order to gain support from Senate Democrats for a military appropriations bill and other defense legislation.

If Trump removed Hegseth, it wouldn’t be the first time a defense secretary got axed after a midterm election where an unpopular war hurt the Republican candidates. The day after the 2006 midterms that saw the Democrats flip control of both houses of Congress, Donald Rumsfeld found himself out of the top job at the Pentagon. If Trump does not follow that model, Hegseth could be the first impeachment target for a new Democratic-controlled Congress.

With the unpopularity of the Iran war and the increase in fuel and other prices because of it, Trump has said the United States started the war because of Hegseth, which suggests Trump might make Hegseth the fall guy for the failures of the war. Democratic candidates have even been singling out Hegseth in campaign ads about the war and high prices. Additionally, Trump last week overruled Hegseth’s plan to livestream a firing squad execution after bipartisan criticism of Hegseth’s idea.

At the same time, Hegseth’s recent travel suggests to some that he might be eyeing a move to a political position in Congress or elsewhere, perhaps for a face-saving exit amid the growing push for his removal. Hegseth previously ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination to a U.S. Senate seat in Minnesota in 2012. And he’s been engaging in partisan politics this year more than secretaries of defense historically have.

Regardless of the reason, if Hegseth leaves his post shortly after the midterms, he would not be leading the Pentagon at the time that the next Christian worship service would be set to occur. Such a departure might lead to the end of the services, which have no precedent in the Pentagon or even in other federal agencies. However, there is precedent of services ending following the departure of a Cabinet secretary.

Lori Chavez-DeRemer started monthly worship services at the Department of Labor last December after attending one at the Pentagon. After five months of services (which I reported on, each time being the only reporter to watch and write about the service), the May one was suddenly canceled after Chavez-DeRemer was fired by Trump amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. The services have not resumed under her replacement. Lawsuits against the Labor Department and the Pentagon over the worship services are ongoing.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Listening is a really difficult skill to master. When others speak, we are quick to formulate responses before they are finished. We struggle to hear what they are truly saying because we interpret their words through our own agendas. When we find ourselves under indictment, we quickly grow defensive.

When reading Amy Kenny’s second memoir, My Disability is Divine: A Joyful Witness that Defies Ableist Nonsense, the first goal is just to listen. We are gifted with the stories of a Christian who loves Christ and the Church despite being dismissed and diminished by so many because of her disability.

We need to listen because Kenny has become vulnerable in order to pass along wisdom we desperately need to understand. She describes how her pastor once told her that he felt “uncomfortable around disabled people” and how an elder in the church complained about her serving communion because “it’s too awkward to have a broken body up there.” As a scholar and disability rights advocate, her experiences and expertise can illuminate aspects of our own lives, our congregations, and our society that continue to harm our neighbors living with disabilities and hold all of us back from enjoying true community.

If we are able to listen — to silence ourselves and hear what Dr. Kenny has to teach us — then we will discover aspects of God’s story that we have overlooked or ignored, because her book is more than a denunciation of what is wrong in the world. It is also a witness to the beauty that emerges when the effort is made to put things right.

She describes how disabled people adapt to a world that often is not designed to include them. At a time when many in the church are eager to condemn social sins, the systemic barriers to access often go unmentioned and unaddressed in both our wider society and in the very buildings from which such denunciations are spoken.

Yet, Kenny is not only a critic who points out what needs to change. She also invites us to see how the necessity of overcoming environmental obstacles has sparked incredible innovations from within the disability community that benefit everyone. From communication tools to sensory devices to cruise control, all of us reap the creative rewards of inventions that arose from inequitable circumstances.

Within the book, there are also powerful reflections on how disability can be lonely and excluding, while also fostering connection and interdependency. The reality of disability quickly disabuses us of our cultural celebrations of independence and forces us to recognize how much we rely on each other. At the same time, different disabilities can create physical pains or social exclusions that separate and harm.

Ultimately, though, the core of this book is not about social critique or cultural analysis. Those arguments and the other material in the book are all rooted in a theological vision. Readers are asked to understand and affirm a basic Christian idea that too many refused to accept: disability reveals the Divine to us. Those living with disabilities bear the Image of God to the world.

This beautiful reflection unpacks much of what that implies. In disability, there is value that goes unrecognized. There is radiance that must be noticed. There is joy that cannot be silenced. Yet, that is what many in the church have sought to do.

“One of the uncomfortable truths is that disabled people are often treated with more love, respect, and kindness outside of church walls than within,” Kenny states in her final chapter. “We can change that. We can co-create a world where disability is not vilified but venerated. We don’t need to apologize for our existence or explain our joy. We can celebrate and radiate our disability wisdom to the world until one day, talking about disability and joy in the same sentence won’t seem suspect or even surprising.”

Given the opposition and rejection Kenny has faced, this book is an audacious effort that trusts readers to approach it with open minds that were previously closed as to the meaning of the Christian faith and to revise their own perceptions of what disability involves. It presumes our willingness to listen and be changed by what we discover.

“Disability is a creative force that invites us to dream up a new world,” Kenny writes. “Imagine what we could design together if we stopped thinking of disability as a loss and recognized it as a variety of experience, including many gains. Imagine the world we could create together if we were united not by who we condemn but by who we champion. Imagine if we stopped demanding gratitude from one another for meeting basic access needs so we can roll, walk, stim, and sign our way to co-flourishing.”

To realize that world requires us to listen not only to what Kenny has to share in My Disability is Divine, but also to what Scripture conveys to us about the nature of God, the sacred value of all human life, and the flourishing we are meant to experience when all of us recognize the interconnectedness we share now and forever.

As a public witness,

Beau Underwood

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2. Review: Devils of Democracy. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Devils of Democracy: America’s Love Affair with Political Demons from the Revolution to Today by Michael E. Heyes.

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

Ty Masterson, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Kansas, says his race is a “spiritual battle,” adding that “God’s armies are out there in this.” The state senator made this claim as he attacked his Democratic opponent for supposedly using “witchcraft spells” and “demonic stuff” to win the election next month.

That’s quite a claim! So why does Masterson think his fellow state senator, Cindy Holscher, is part of the “rising” level of “evil” in the state? Because he apparently was confused by a silly TikTok meme video created by Holscher’s 20-year-old daughter.

In the short video captioned “Casting a spell so my mom wins Kansas Governor except she’s so done with me,” Holscher’s daughter comically dances around her mom while wildly waving her arms — all while Holscher, who is Lutheran, stares with confusion. That’s it. That’s why Masterson decided to bring back the Salem witch trials in a campaign speech.

The demonization of political candidates isn’t new. And it’s definitely occurring in harmful ways right now in numerous races across the country. But if you’re going to cast your race as a divine battle of “God’s armies” against “evil” and “demonic” witches, don’t go all hellfire-and-brimstone over nothing more than a viral joke. What’s next? Seeing if she weighs the same as a duck?

Worse than Masterson not understanding a joke is his misuse of religious language. His rhetoric is dangerous. And he wrongly conscripts God as a partisan ally akin to a shadowy super PAC. It’s time to focus on the issues and leave God (and witches) out of it.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• Robert Downen of Texas Monthly wrote about the national effort to dismantle church-state separation that’s led by several Texan politicians and activists.

• While Texas Republican Senate hopeful Ken Paxton attacks the faith of his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, it’s not clear if Paxton even attends church beyond campaign events.

• Ruth Graham of The New York Times reported from Kansas on the U.S. Senate campaign of Democratic nominee and United Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton.

• Alexei Koseff of The Washington Post reported on the financial and ethical questions about who is funding a ministry run by Speaker Mike Johnson’s wife.

• A new study found that many people who are pushing Christian Nationalism in the United Kingdom don’t actually attend church.

• Israeli settlers have been attacking historic olive trees owned by Christians in the West Bank.

• Camillo Barone of The National Catholic Reporter covered a traveling installation of more than 100 crosses that represent people who died in U.S. immigration custody or during enforcement operations.

• Jeff Brumley of Baptist News Global wrote about a high school scouting student who created a sensory room for special needs children at a church in Dallas, Texas.

• Sho Baraka of Christianity Today reported on a coffee house in Memphis, Tennessee, that is trying to serve justice in its community along with coffee.

Photo of the Week

Thanks for reading!

“It’s a strange time,” Rev. Steve Sylvester, then the intentional interim lead pastor at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in the Twin Cities suburb of Roseville, told me. “Even with the kind of aberrations that we’ve been dealing with, typically people don’t sit down and think, ‘Well, the Stasi might know what I’m doing.’”

Earlier this week, his remark about the Stasi (the secret police force of the Communist regime in East Germany) spying on churches came to my mind as I stood in two of the churches that show up in DHS’s files. Documents in a federal case against liberal activists in Minnesota revealed DHS had secretly spied inside at least four churches in the Twin Cities and another in Michigan. As first reported by A Public Witness, one of those churches was covered by a federal injunction. Court filings show that DHS agents on at least four occasions — including on two Sundays — surveilled people entering or leaving University Baptist Church.

So while in Minneapolis on Sunday, I went to UBC. I wanted to see the signs they had on the property and doors informing agents of a federal injunction that prevented warrantless enforcement actions at the church or within 100 feet of an entrance to the building. The signs were already up when agents recorded people entering and exiting the building, and the signs were there when an agent walked right past them to secretly record people attending a Mixed Martial Arts class led by a progressive group in UBC’s building (and then the agent had to go back into the building to recover the recording device after realizing she had dropped it).

I parked in the lot that DHS claimed, under oath, they were unable to determine whether it was within 100 feet. As I noted in August, it was clear from Google Maps that the lot was well within 100 feet of a door — and the denominational groups that won the injunction have submitted documentation proving that. Getting out of my car, I realized UBC sat even closer to the parking lot than it seemed from Google Maps. I could just about touch the building and my car at the same time — and I promise my wingspan is nowhere near 100 feet! (You can see my perspective of the church from the parking lot in a video I recorded.)

The next day, I was in another church that shows up in the DHS surveillance records. Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church is not one of the five churches (that we know of) where DHS agents secretly went inside. But the church does show up in the surveillance records, complete with photos of the building, as agents tracked an individual to the church’s parking lot. Although not preemptively targeted, the church’s leaders had previously been outspoken against DHS’s violent actions in the Twin Cities, even hosting a “singing resistance” event.

The church, along with the Minnesota chapter of Christians Against Christian Nationalism, hosted a discussion about my book The Bible According to Christian Nationalists. It was a great evening as I shared about the political misuse of Scripture and then was joined on stage by Minneapolis-based journalist and Lutheran minister Angela Denker. She’s the author of Disciples of White Jesus and Red State Christians, a Word&Way board member, and a monthly guest along with Beau Underwood on my Dangerous Dogma podcast. We talked about Christian Nationalism, church-state separation, journalism, and more. And then we signed copies of our books, which people could get at the event from local independent bookstore Magers & Quinn.

As I have done at other churches over the past year, I shared some examples of how DHS and the Pentagon are co-opting Bible verses and twisting the sacred texts out of context to justify imperial violence. But it hit differently for me to show some of DHS’s misuse of Scripture to a crowd that so closely experienced DHS’s terror this year. And doing so in a church that shows up in DHS surveillance records brought to mind the remark by Rev. Sylvester about the Stasi. It’s a history we would do well to remember.

‘Most Successful Church Espionage Operation in Modern History’

Two of the churches that we know DHS spied on are Lutheran. That’s not surprising since the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is strongest in the Upper Midwest. Additionally, many ELCA ministers, like Denker, have been involved in the anti-ICE advocacy in Minnesota.

But it’s also interesting that Lutheran churches are being spied on since that’s who the Stasi in East Germany especially targeted — again in large part due to size. And we’ve been learning this as people uncover the agents in the files from the regime that fell with the Berlin Wall. No one has documented the story more than Elizabeth Braw, a Swedish journalist who has focused on security and defense issues (and whose father was a minister). Her book, God’s Spies: The Stasi’s Cold War Espionage Campaign Inside the Church, is a fascinating and alarming look at how the authoritarian regime spied inside churches.

“Ever since East Germany was founded, it was important for the Stasi to minimize the role of churches because the churches, in particular the Lutheran Church, were very strong,” Braw explained to Religion News Service. “The vast majority of people were Lutheran, and the Lutheran Church was also quite activist. So the regime knew from the beginning that it would have to focus on undermining the church.”

And undermine the church they did. In what Braw called in the book “the most successful church espionage operation in modern history,” these Stasi “pastor spies” bugged conversations at denominational meetings, informed on other pastors or theologians who made remarks critical of the regime, told on churches that embraced modern music, and thwarted the careers of faithful pastors. Some of the “pastor spies” managed to connect with various Christian networks outside of East Germany, where they pushed Communist ideas. One of the spies even infiltrated a Bible-smuggling network, which led to the arrest of some people in the Soviet Union.

Over three decades, hundreds of such “pastor spies” joined the effort, with some rising into denominational leadership roles while also assisting the Communist regime. And they did so while believing that their secret would never be known, at least by people. But since the East German regime fell so quickly, not all of the files were destroyed. In the years since, many people who were spied on have received the files on themselves and been able to piece together who was informing on them. Hundreds of “pastor spies” have been identified, though others still remain unmasked.

The revelation of “pastor spies” is a devastating blow to the credibility of the church. While a few were defrocked or removed from ministry, most have been allowed to remain. Some explicitly denied they had served the Stasi effort — until records were discovered revealing the truth.

All of this is ironic since the church played a significant role in the ultimate fall of the Communist regime, though Braw suggests it might have occurred sooner without the work of the “pastor spies.” The fact that churches became important rallying places during protests in the late 1980s proved why the regime had sought to undermine churches in the first place.

Similar dynamics can be seen today in the opposition to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant efforts. Clergy and churches have been at the forefront of the protests in the Twin Cities, as well as in places like Illinois, Louisiana, New Jersey, and Texas. Religious groups have been challenging the administration in court. Mainline Protestant groups, like the ELCA, have been among those particularly involved. This is why the churches DHS spied on opened their doors for people to meet and consider ways to support their immigrant neighbors. And that’s precisely why DHS then targeted the churches.

We don’t yet know the full extent of DHS’s spying on churches. The first batch of court records to reveal this included five incidents. Another round of files showed three additional surveillance incidents at University Baptist. That was followed later by the photos of Hennepin Avenue UMC appearing in the records. And just this week, a document revealed another time that an undercover agent went inside St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in St. Paul. We learned from the first round of documents that DHS spied on the church on April 14, but we now know DHS also did so on March 31. It’s highly possible that additional incidents at these and other churches occurred but have not been made public yet.

It might not be until the next administration (or later), but we’ll eventually learn more about which churches DHS targeted. And we’ll likely learn more about who assisted DHS in surveilling churches and targeting immigrants. We do already know some. There’s a Catholic theologian who joined DHS’s public affairs office to help promote the administration’s immigration actions. And there’s a pastor at a Southern Baptist church in St. Paul who also served as an ICE leader during the surge of ICE activity in the Twin Cities and the spying on other churches in his community.

In a time of DHS theologians and ICE pastors (and maybe even “pastor spies”), it was an honor to be at churches that appear in DHS’s files as surveillance targets instead of collaborators. This is a moment of choosing for us all. When the records are eventually public, where will we be found?

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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That’s what Christian Nationalist activist William Wolfe declared on Elon Musk’s X platform in response to a news headline noting that the “Pentagon says firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter will be livestreamed.” Wolfe, who served in the first Trump administration and now leads a group trying to make the Southern Baptist Convention more Trumpian, is not alone in his praise for the controversial decision to livestream the first military execution by firing squad since World War II.

“I support the Pentagon’s decision to livestream the execution of mass-murderer Nidal Hassan,” Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas and a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, wrote on X. “Capital punishment is commanded by God in Genesis 9:6 to remind people of the sanctity of human life. The more people that can see that truth illustrated through a public execution, the better.”

Trump later affirmingly shared the statement by Jeffress on social media, although it remains to be seen if the execution of Nidal Hasan on Dec. 3 will actually be livestreamed. And while many Catholic, mainline Protestant, and even evangelical leaders quickly condemned the Pentagon’s announcement, a vocal and connected group of Christian Nationalist voices joined Wolfe and Jeffress in praising the idea as supposedly “biblical.” Brooks Potteiger, the longtime pastor of Pete Hegseth (and who has preached three times at Hegseth’s Pentagon worship services), even offered his support for Hegseth having a pastor preach an “execution sermon” to the condemned man before the soldiers open fire.

“I like this idea. I think I will,” Potteiger wrote on X in response to someone making the suggestion, though it’s unclear if Hegseth will actually invite him to do it in person at Hasan’s execution.

Potteiger, who pastors a church in Washington, D.C., that is part of Doug Wilson’s Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, also criticized a rightwing anti-abortion activist for opposing the livestreaming plan. Potteiger insisted that anyone opposing it is “claiming to be wiser than God — and 95% of the history of western civilization.”

Putting aside the theological debates about capital punishment in general, the invoking of the Bible and God to justify livestreaming a firing squad is worth closer consideration. That’s why some people who support the death penalty oppose livestreaming it, like Southern Baptist theologian Albert Mohler. So this issue of A Public Witness considers the claims that “the Bible says so” and the diverse Christian voices opposing the snuff film planned by the Crusader leading the Pentagon.

Biblical Livestreaming?

The fact that Hegseth would recommend a public execution shocked many politicians, pundits, and preachers. But I wrote last year about how some in his own denomination have been pushing for a return to public executions. Like Joshua Haymes, a podcaster who used to be a pastoral intern at Hegseth’s church and has had Hegseth on his show.

“Public executions are biblical. Therefore, public executions are good. Therefore, we should bring back public executions,” Haymes declared last year on a podcast cohosted with Hegseth’s pastor.

In addition to supporting the idea in general, Haymes even praised the U.S.’s last public execution, which was of a Black man convicted by an all-White jury of raping and murdering a White woman — and then executed less than two months after his three-hour trial. About 20,000 people showed up for the show, during which they could buy sandwiches and Coca-Cola — and many celebrated with parties the night before.

Haymes, Potteiger, and Hegseth are all part of the denomination started and led by Doug Wilson, a Christian Nationalist pastor in Idaho, self-described “paleo-Confederate,” and a patriarchal figure who wants to repeal the 19th Amendment (and who has a history of condoning sexual abuse). Wilson has also defended Hegseth’s proposal to livestream the upcoming execution. He told Religion News Service he prefers “public executions to those conducted in the recesses of a prison somewhere in the middle of the night,” adding, “Executions in the Scriptures were public.”

“With that said, one of the things that turns people away from the death penalty at all is when public executions turn into a circus, and a ghoulish atmosphere develops,” Wilson added. “So if the Pentagon takes steps to discourage that kind of thing, then I think this is a welcome development.”

While Wilson offered a caveat on tone, Haymes and others have been more celebratory. And they keep doing so by claiming it is “biblical.” But to quote Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

When William Wolfe claims he supports livestreaming a firing squad execution “because the Bible says so,” it demonstrates how claims about being “biblical” are often just using the term as a political soundbite without any serious interpretative effort. Does the Bible really support livestreaming an execution by firing squad? That’s about as absurd as asking if the Bible demands we watch a president’s State of the Union address live on TV. Livestreaming executions is not required by the Bible because livestreaming is not something the Bible even addresses since, in case Wolfe isn’t aware, there was no livestreaming back then. And, for the record, the verses Haymes, Wolfe, and others point to justify public executions also don’t mention firing squads.

While these Christian Nationalists claim to just be advocating what the Bible teaches, they’re doing so by being very selective in their alleged literalism. But it’s literally not taking the Bible literally if you just pick and choose which verses to hold up as universal commands and which to ignore.

Haymes likes to post stories about horrendous crimes to justify public executions, but the passage in Deuteronomy 21 that he uses to justify public executions is about stoning “a stubborn and rebellious son” who won’t obey his parents. The condemned is not accused of being a pedophile or murderer but simply “a glutton and a drunkard.” If Haymes really thinks we should enact that verse, he needs to go all the way and demand public execution of disobedient and lazy children. Guess that would be one way to lower our need to fund schools. That may seem offensive to our modern sensibilities, but, hey, that’s what the Bible clearly says.

Or how about the verses right before that section? It talks about how a man with two wives is supposed to treat his children. That and other verses show that polygamy is biblical. Therefore, polygamy is good. Therefore, we should bring back polygamy. To be very clear in case my wife reads this, that is satire as I apply Haymes’s own words to a line just a couple of verses before the one he cites. (If I tried to get a second wife, I would quickly find myself again with just one!)

Other nearby verses that Christian fundamentalists generally overlook even while insisting on biblical “literalism” include rules about how to marry a woman you capture in war (21:10-14), the requirement to build a wall on the roof of your house (22:8), a prohibition against using wool and linen in the same piece of clothing (22:11), a command to make tassels for the corners of your cloak (22:12), or the requirement that an unengaged virgin woman marry her rapist as long as the rapist pays her father in silver (22:28-29).

Even in his application of Deuteronomy 21:21, Haymes strays from the literal command. Last year, he cited the verse as he suggested “death by a public firing squad.” But that’s not what it says. The Bible clearly says to kill the stubborn, disobedient son by stoning. Anything less is just liberal wokeism.

And while others, like Robert Jeffress, like to point to Genesis 9 to justify capital punishment, it’s telling how Jesus rarely shows up in their theological considerations on the topic. And when Jesus is mentioned, it usually goes pretty poorly. Like when rightwing conspiracy theorist and podcaster Jack Posobiec invoked Jesus amid the debate about killing Hasan.

“The New Testament clearly supports the death penalty for civil authorities,” Posobiec wrote on X. “Christ himself accepted the death penalty.”

Jesus accepting the crucifixion does not mean Jesus would support crucifying (or shooting) someone else. That’s like saying Jesus “accepted” being betrayed by a friend so therefore it is biblical for me to betray my friends. And to my friends, please note I will not actually do that (unless it’s for way more than 30 silver coins).

Just because something happened in the Bible does not mean we are taught to act that way today. Instead, as followers of someone brutally killed in a public execution, Christians should be among the loudest voices against such imperial violence. Thankfully, many are doing exactly that.

‘Barbaric’ and ‘Reprehensible’

While some rightwing Christian Nationalists close to Hegseth and Trump back public executions, many Christian voices across the theological and political continuums quickly condemned the Pentagon’s announcement.

Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, expressed his “shock and great sorrow” in response to the news. He condemned livestreaming it as “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered.” He added, “The public execution even of one who has done grave harm will only further undermine the moral fabric of our nation and be a blight on the conscience of its people.”

Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, a recent president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who now serves as head of the U.S. Archdiocese for the Military Services, went further in his condemnation. Noting that he had preached the funeral of one of the victims of the mass shooting, he insisted that plan was not the correct response to the terrorist act.

“Do we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries?” Broglio wrote in a statement yesterday in which he also urged Catholic members of the military to “request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”

Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe similarly argued that “the idea of livestreaming a firing squad execution is reprehensible in the extreme and will cause moral injury to everyone involved. We need to ask ourselves who we have become as a nation when senior officials decide to make a spectacle of state-sponsored violence.”

The Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church released a joint pastoral letter yesterday criticizing the planned livestreaming, calling it a failure to resist the temptation “to answer violence with spectacle.” They rejected the idea that the public execution could be called “justice.”

“Turning the death of a human being into a public broadcast does not honor the victims. It coarsens the conscience of a people and contradicts the gospel we proclaim,” the bishops explained. “Our Lord himself died by public execution, staged by an empire to display its power and frighten the watching crowd. Christians, of all people, should refuse to gather around such a spectacle again.”

In addition to Catholic and mainline Protestant condemnation, some evangelical leaders also criticized the livestreaming announcement. For instance, National Association of Evangelicals President Walter Kim argued that “a livestreamed execution by firing squad risks turning one of the state’s most solemn responsibilities into a public spectacle, promoting a culture of death, rather than a culture that upholds the dignity of every human being.”

Faith leaders aren’t the only ones attacking the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution. It has also sparked rare criticism from multiple Republican members of Congress (most of whom support capital punishment). And it’s opposed by a survivor of the deadly attack, who supports the execution but not the livestreaming.

It remains to be seen if Hegseth will actually kick off Advent by livestreaming a firing squad killing a man in a wheelchair. Whether this barbaric show is produced or not, the fact that Hegseth is preaching a gospel of bloodlust is, unfortunately, not surprising for a man with Crusader symbols on his body and on his Bible.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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4. Andy Beshear Wants Americans to Emulate the Good Samaritan, Not Trump. Bob Smietana reported on the book tour of Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.

5. Bishop Mariann Budde, in New Election Ad, Urges People to Vote. The Episcopal bishop of Washington said she’s “asking for your courage to love your neighbor, to respect the dignity of every human being, and now, to vote.”

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

A recent attack ad by U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, a Republican in Kansas, included a particularly egregious error. The ad falsely suggested that a Kansas campground affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was the site of an alleged sexual abuse incident. And the senator, who is a longtime member of a Disciples church in Kansas, refuses to apologize.

As Marshall finds himself locked in a tied race against Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton, pastor of the largest church in Kansas (and the largest United Methodist congregation in the United States), the Marshall campaign is going on the attack. Marshall accuses Hamilton of covering up sex abuse at his church. A Democratic state senator made this attack during the primary, but independent fact-checking by The Kansas City Star found that court records “paint a more complex picture that does not back up the core of [the state senator’s] claims.” Now, the Marshall campaign is recycling the misleading claims to score political points by attacking the largest church in his state. Of course, that’s not surprising as his campaign has even attacked the church’s theology in ways that drew rebukes from many United Methodist pastors.

But the Marshall campaign ad made another big error. It included images from campgrounds unrelated to the abuse. One image shows children inside the chapel at Tall Oaks Camp and Conference Center, a Disciples campground in Linwood, that was not connected to the abuse case in any way. Leaders of Tall Oaks quickly condemned the unauthorized and inaccurate use of the photo and sent a cease-and-desist demand to the campaign. While the online version was quickly changed, the old version continued to run on some TV stations even after the Marshall campaign said they had changed it. It was later discovered that images were also inappropriately used from another Kansas facility and a camp in Maine.

The Marshall campaign’s response has made the incident even worse. They’ve made excuses for the error and have refused to apologize. When Marshall first ran for office, he highlighted his time as a Sunday School teacher and elder at his local Disciples church. Since moving to Washington, D.C. (or maybe Florida), it seems he needs a Sunday School refresher course about not bearing false witness and about making amends with your brothers and sisters when you’ve wronged them.

Other News of Note

• Christopher Mathias of Talking Points Memo reported on an Islamophobic pastor who spoke at a campaign event along with Republican Ohio gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy.

• CNN discovered that the Trump administration was planning to include a controversial “God Made Trump” campaign ad as part of a taxpayer-funded ad program. But after a backlash to the ads, a pro-Trump super PAC will now pay to air them ahead of the midterms.

• Rev. Rob Schenck wrote for Mother Jones about clergy he met in various states who are leading efforts against ICE and Christian Nationalism.

• An interfaith group of clergy led a 96-mile pilgrimage through southern California to protest conditions at immigration detention centers.

• The Globe and Mail reported on the separatist movement in Alberta that includes rightwing Christian messages.

• Vikram Mukka reported for Christianity Today how India’s caste system is sparking controversies in churches as some continue to hold to the discriminatory system.

• Eric Vanden Eykel wrote for The Conversation about why some Christians think a natural rock formation in Türkiye is actually Noah’s Ark.

• A street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has been renamed to honor Bishop Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1794.

• Died: Jim Bakker, a charismatic preacher whose 1980s television empire collapsed amid sexual and financial scandals. After time in prison, he launched a new ministry show. He was 86.

Photo of the Week

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“Hail Satan and hail yourself,” the person giving the prayer declared.

The first person selected to offer an official invocation at the city government meetings was a representative of The Satanic Temple. A similar city council invocation with a “Hail Satan” the next day in Ottumwa, Iowa, sparked outrage on social media from some Christian Nationalists. Like Micah Beckwith, a pastor who is also the lieutenant governor of Indiana: “This is what happens when Christians stay home and don’t engage in defending God’s Truth in the culture.”

Beckwith, as usual, got his facts backward. The “Hail Satan” invocations actually occurred precisely because some Christians tried to inject sectarian faith into government meetings. The new policies passed in the two communities this year to start government meetings with prayer were the result of advocacy by those pushing Christian Nationalism!

While the U.S. Supreme Court allowed sectarian prayers at city council meetings in its 2014 Town of Greece v. Galloway ruling, inviting local faith leaders to lead such prayers automatically opens the door for a variety of prayers in a pluralistic society. And that’s what happened this week in Washington and Iowa.

The resolution passed by the Battle Ground City Council in August set the process for who prays as “a rotating, first-come, first-served basis.” And first up was The Satanic Temple. Similarly, the Ottumwa City Council passed its policy in January that any resident could request to be placed on the list on a “first-come, first-serve basis.” It took a bit longer, but The Satanic Temple made it on the schedule for this week after prayers by Baptist, Pentecostal, and other individuals and just ahead of a Catholic priest on the list for the next meeting.

The Washington case is particularly ironic given an ongoing effort to transform the community into a Christian city, much like Wilson is trying to do in Moscow, Idaho. Instead, the city council officially included for the first time an invocation to Satan. So this issue of A Public Witness pulls back the curtain to explore this self-defeating Christian Nationalist effort.

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Rev. Traci Blackmon, a United Church of Christ minister from St. Louis, fired up the crowd at St. James United Methodist Church in Kansas City on the other side of Missouri during the first stop of Interfaith Alliance’s national “The Vote Is Sacred Tour” on Monday (Oct. 5). With 30 stops in 18 states, the nonpartisan, interfaith bus tour is designed to get clergy involved in protecting voting rights and encouraging people to vote in the midterm elections.

Interfaith Alliance launched “The Vote Is Sacred Tour” in 2024, going that year to just six states. The tour’s name is drawn from a remark by the late civil rights activist and U.S. Rep. John Lewis: “Your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union.” This year’s expanded tour will wind through the upper Midwest before swinging through the Southeast and then the Southwest before ending with a post-election event in Colorado.

“Voting is not the whole of democracy, but democracy cannot be whole without the vote,” Blackmon declared at Monday’s event as she argued for protecting voting rights. “Democracy cannot remain strong if people stop participating. Representation cannot work if people decide their voices don’t matter. And the government of the people cannot function well without the voices of we the people.”

“Democracy is not a spectator sport. We cannot cheer for democracy from the sidelines. You cannot simply post about democracy online. You cannot merely preach about democracy. You can’t just complain about democracy. At some point, you have to participate in it,” she added. “Voting is not about worshiping government; it’s about accepting our responsibility for community. It’s about saying that my neighbor matters, my children matter, my elders matter, my community matters.”

With less than a month before the midterm elections, Blackmon and other speakers noted that the problem is not just voter apathy or confusion. This year has seen lawmakers and judges rolling back the rights and choices of voters, and the Trump administration is even threatening to send agents to voting places on Nov. 3. That’s why Interfaith Alliance is mobilizing clergy to help protect voting rights. So this issue of A Public Witness drives over to the opening stop of the 2026 “The Vote Is Sacred Tour” at a church that’s seen firsthand the efforts this year to distort elections and dilute the voting power of Black communities.

‘Voting Is an Act of Justice’

Rev. Thomas Bowen, the general secretary of the Progressive National Baptist Convention and Interfaith Alliance’s visiting senior fellow for faith and democracy, talked at Monday’s rally about the importance of continuing to push for voting rights and access for all people. As a leader in what was the denominational home of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Bowen stressed that he and other clergy members continue to push for voting rights and access because their ancestors prayed, organized, marched, bled, and even died for such rights.

“When we say ‘the vote is sacred,’ we’re not saying that any political party is sacred. We’re not saying that any candidate is sacred. We are saying that the right of the people to have a voice in determining their own future is sacred,” Bowen said.

“Democracy isn’t something that belongs to Washington,” he added. “It belongs to we the people.”

Bowen also argued that in a nonpartisan way, faith leaders should work to protect voting rights. He emphasized they were doing this as a multifaith group, not as an effort to “brand” the nation with “one particular belief.”

“Faith has something to say about human dignity. Faith has something to say about justice. Faith has something to say whether our neighbors are treated fairly and whether every eligible citizen participates in our democracy without intimidation or obstruction,” Bowen said.

Rev. Rodney Williams, pastor of Swope Parkway United Christian Church in Kansas City, similarly insisted that “voting is an act of justice.” He argued that since voting “allows us to express our whole humanity,” it must be protected from “unjust, inhumane” politicians in the state and nation who seek to block the people from participating. He criticized efforts to stop people from voting or having a full voice in democracy as inspired by racism and “White Christian Nationalism, which is not Christian at all.”

“Without full access to the ballot, we become slaves to the rule of money. Without access to the ballot, we become slaves to manipulation and of extremists,” Williams added.

The host pastor for the rally, Rev. Emanuel Cleaver III, argued that this effort was part of what it means “to put our faith into action.” He argued clergy should act to protect members in their community since such rights are under attack.

“Today, we fight against modern forms of voter suppression. They fought it in the ‘60s and we’re still dealing with it today,” he explained. “When I think of the civil rights movement, I think of their desire for justice and equality and fairness. That’s why they used to sing, ‘Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round.’ Dogs didn’t turn them around. Water hoses didn’t turn them around. Police brutality didn’t turn them around. The KKK didn’t turn them around. Public lynchings didn’t turn them around. Cross burnings didn’t turn them around. They just made up in their minds, ‘I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.’”

“And today, in 2026, we need some people of faith willing to stand and say, ‘I don’t care what they throw at me, I ain’t going to let nobody turn me around. Gerrymandering won’t turn me around. Politicians trying to overturn the will of the people won’t turn me around. Attacks on free speech won’t turn me around. Dismantling civil rights gains won’t turn me around. Changing polling locations won’t turn me around. Voter intimidation won’t turn me around. False information won’t turn me around,’” Cleaver III added. “We need people of faith here in Kansas City and across the state to stand together, to stand boldly and say, ‘I don’t care what they throw at me, my goal is justice, my goal is freedom, my goal is inclusion, and I ain’t gonna let nobody or nothing turn me around.’”

Celebrating a Win Against Gerrymandering

While this year has brought actions across the country by politicians and judges to limit the voting power of Black communities, that issue was particularly fresh for the clergy at the first stop of Interfaith Alliance’s bus tour. Rabbi Susan Talve of Central Reform Congregation in St. Louis joined other speakers in criticizing gerrymandering efforts in the Show-Me State.

“As we in Missouri have spoken, that we will not have our districts be gerrymandered by politicians,” she declared to applause. “We said to the country: Voters pick leaders; leaders do not get to pick their voters. Leaders do not get to weaponize religion and use faith to manipulate self-serving ends that do not protect the common good.”

The effort to slice up Kansas City along historic racial dividing lines was ultimately blocked last month after months of legal battles and political maneuvers that saw a unanimous state Supreme Court stop the redistricting effort and a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court rule — three times in one month — against the GOP. Had the redistricting effort not been blocked, Kansas City would’ve been split into three districts and outvoted in each by large swaths of rural voters. Not only would this have left the city without a representative who lives there, but it would likely have shifted one congressional seat to the Republican Party.

It’s an issue that those in the host congregation know well. Just outside the sanctuary, a portrait of a former longtime pastor hangs in the hallway. But he’s been in the news more recently as the target of the gerrymandering effort. U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II is also a United Methodist minister who served as senior pastor at St. James for 37 years before his son assumed that role.

While dozens of clergy from various denominations and faith traditions sat together at the front of the church during the rally — and held hands while singing — the elder Cleaver sat off to the back quietly watching. He did not speak and was not mentioned during the nonpartisan rally. He attended as a member of the clergy who’s concerned about voting rights and as someone who’s spent months fighting for representation for his community. But like him, many in the pews had been impacted by the electoral chaos as the political and judicial fight kept moving where and for whom people would vote.

“Your participation matters,” Traci Blackmon said the debates about gerrymandering and voting rights should remind us. “Where lines are drawn matters. Who has access matters. Who has registration that’s current matters. Whether you know where you vote matters. Whether you understand the rules matters. And whether you actually cast your vote matters.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Warnock, who has multiple graduate degrees from Union Theological Seminary, is the longtime senior pastor of the famed Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, where both Martin Luther King Sr. and Martin Luther King Jr. served. He’s also the author of a new book, The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America, which is his effort to interpret and apply the Book of Isaiah.

“Pete Hegseth is busy twisting the scriptures yet again,” Warnock said in a video he posted to social media on Oct. 1. “This is something that our so-called ‘secretary of war,’ as he likes to describe himself, seems to have a knack for. He enjoys twisting the Scripture, twisting the meaning of the faith.”

Noting that he has spent a lot of time thinking, preaching, and writing about Isaiah, Warnock insisted that Hegseth is misusing the verse where the prophet Isaiah said to God, “Send me.” The verse describes the call of the prophet Isaiah by God to go and deliver God’s message. As Warnock explained, “When Isaiah answers that call, it is not a call to go into battle. It is not a call to fight an external enemy.” But beyond just misusing that one verse, Warnock added that Hegseth is missing the larger message of that biblical book.

“Pete Hegseth needs to know that, actually, Isaiah is answering the call to confront abusive power in his own context — words that are particularly apt in a moment like this. Isaiah challenges corruption. Isaiah challenges government that marginalizes the poor, the widows, and the orphans,” Warnock explained. “Isaiah challenges the powers that be within his own context. Pete Hegseth should read the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, where the prophet says, ‘Your princes’ — which means those who are in power — ‘Your princes are companions with thieves.’”

“So as the prophet deals with public corruption, as he deals with those who would crush the poor, there’s a valuable lesson in that for the so-called ‘secretary of war,’” Warnock added. “I don’t think he hears it because he’s focused on wrapping up power in sacred clothes. Faith, when it is authentic, stands on the margins, stands with the weak, recognizes that all of us are children of the living God. It calls us into a new covenant with God and with each other. I’m standing with Isaiah. I’m standing in that grand prophetic tradition, which we need so badly during this moral moment in America. Where do you stand?”

Warnock’s video critique came on the day after Hegseth invoked the verse during a highly partisan speech to members of the military at U.S. Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia. In that speech, Hegseth also quoted Psalm 33, Ephesians 6, and Psalm 118 to justify his effort to unconstitutionally push his sectarian faith. But it’s the Isaiah verse that’s become by far his most used (and misused) biblical reference this year.

As first noted by A Public Witness, Hegseth started regularly quoting Isaiah 6:8 in May. He used it back then during his commencement remarks at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, and while in France for the 82nd anniversary of “D-Day” in World War II. Since then, it’s become a regular part of his remarks, including at a 9/11 remembrance ceremony at the Pentagon, remarks at Texas A&M, last week’s speech that Warnock responded to, and remarks at the U.S. Air Force Academy two days after Warnock’s video.

The Pentagon has followed Hegseth’s lead by repeatedly posting the verse on social media with images of soldiers and the phrase “send me” — including again over the weekend after Warnock’s critique. His two visits to Texas A&M and the Air Force Academy have even been billed as part of a “Send Me Tour” (by which he really means “send you to fight a dumb, illegal war started by me”).

Hegseth isn’t alone in this administration in co-opting Isaiah 6:8 to justify the use of militaristic force. Last year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security created a propaganda video featuring the verse superimposed on scenes of heavily armed agents hunting for immigrants. And Gregory Bovino, then the commander-at-large for the U.S. Border Patrol, posted a video with the verse to justify himself and those under his command.

‘Proud Christian Nationalist’ Criticizes Hegseth

Former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, was one of the most Trumpian MAGA politicians in Congress. She frequently made headlines for uncivil antics, absurd conspiracy theories, bigotry, and Christian Nationalism. In pushing the latter, she even sold t-shirts declaring, “Proud Christian Nationalist.” But like Warnock, Greene thinks Hegseth has gone too far.

On Elon Musk’s X platform, Greene recently denounced Hegseth’s use of Isaiah 6:8 as “manipulation.” She particularly criticized Hegseth for using the Bible to justify a foreign war.

“This is using God’s name in vain. This is not what we voted for,” Greene wrote on Sept. 25. “We voted to defend America. We did not vote to send our young men and women to fight in foreign wars while the Trump administration invokes God’s name to advance man’s agenda.”

Greene isn’t alone on the right in pushing back against Hegseth. Pastor and commentator Joel Webbon also recently criticized Hegseth’s use of the verse, saying he “twists Scripture” into “war propaganda.” Like Greene, Webbon is outspoken in his desire for White Christian Nationalism (and often uses racist and antisemitic rhetoric), but he is also opposed to the U.S. war in Iran.

“The prophet has become a warfighter, the divine commission has become a deployment order, and obedience to God has become obedience to whichever collection of AIPAC lobbyists and intelligence officials has selected this season’s enemy,” Webbon wrote on X. “Hegseth does not drag Washington before the judgment seat of Christ. He drags Christ before the judgment seat of Washington about and assigns him the task of blessing whatever Washington wants to bomb. Christ being King has nothing to do with this.”

While Greene and Webbon lack the theological training and insights of Warnock and other pastors and theologians who have criticized the Pentagon’s use of Isaiah 6:8, their attacks on Hegseth could be more politically undermining since their audiences are much more likely to be part of the Trumpian MAGA movement.

It’s surprising to see Greene and Webbon on the same side of a biblical debate as Warnock. But politics, and apparently theology, can make strange bedfellows. The breadth of the criticism highlights how far Hegseth’s use of the verse strays from faithful biblical interpretation. Thus, it must be challenged. As Warnock put it: “I’m standing with Isaiah. … Where do you stand?”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Review: Live Each Season As It Passes. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Live Each Season As It Passes: Re-earthing Spiritual Practice by Daniel Cooperrider.

2. Barred From the U.S., a Pastor Leads his Wisconsin Church From Guatemala. Aleja Hertzler-McCain and Fiona Murphy reported on a Church of God pastor ministering remotely due to immigration issues.

3. Pope Leo Warns: Invoking God to Justify War Is to ‘Profane’ His Name. The pope has a word for leaders like Pete Hegseth.

4. Bishop Mariann Budde to Resign, Will Remain in Post During Lengthy Replacement Process. Jack Jenkins reported on the latest from the bishop who made news for challenging President Donald Trump during an inaguration event.

5. Donor Revives Fraud Claims Against Christian Worship Leader Sean Feucht Over a $250,000 Donation. The Christian Nationalist musician is accused of deceiving a donor.

Dangerous Dogma

This week’s episode features a conversation between Word&Way Editor Brian Kaylor, Lutheran minister and journalist Angela Denker, and Disciples pastor and author Beau Underwood. The conversation includes discussion about a botched execution in Tennessee, religious issues in political campaigns, and Pete Hegseth's misuse of the Bible. And Beau shows off his White Sox papal hat! Listen to the audio version here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or watch the video version here.

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

Another week brings another heretical speech by Pete Hegseth.

The man who likes to call himself “secretary of war” is waging a battle against biblical interpretation. In a highly partisan speech to members of the military on Wednesday (Sept. 30), Hegseth invoked several Bible verses out of context to justify his Christian Nationalism.

Since May, he has repeatedly misused Isaiah 6:8. He once again conscripted that verse to morph the call of a prophet into a military recruitment meme. Hegseth also misused several other verses as he announced the creation of a so-called “Office of Religious Affairs.” Although the devil is still in the details, it sounds like an effort to proselytize in the military. He invoked Psalm 33, Ephesians 6, and Psalm 118 to justify his effort to unconstitutionally push his sectarian faith.

And to be clear, he is doing violence to Scripture to justify doing violence to people (in ways I unpacked in my book, The Bible According to Christian Nationalists). The “armor of God,” for instance, is not about strengthening an imperial military force. And it’s heretical for him to steal the words of a psalmist and declare, “The Lord is on my side,” while bombing a girls’ elementary school.

Pope Leo XIV was right when he explained this week, “To invoke God’s name in order to justify violence or oppression is to profane that name. Nothing that disfigures human dignity can claim to be inspired by God.”

Other News of Note

• Lewis Brogdon wrote at Baptist News Global about an event with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear at a prominent Black Baptist church in West Louisville.

• Another county in Texas voted to install a large idol monument with a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments at its courthouse.

• Hundreds of people attended a rally in a United Methodist church in Iowa to demand the release of a U.S. legal resident being prepped for deportation to an African nation she’s never visited.

• Heidi Schlumpf of Commonweal wrote about the importance of Catholic voters in the upcoming midterm elections.

• Hunter Williamson of Christianity Today reported on the arrest of a Kurdish pastor in Syria.

• Bobby Ross Jr. of The Christian Chronicle reported on a church in Dearborn, Michigan, that’s trying to love their Muslim neighbors as Islamophobic activists target the city.

• Dan Simmons of The Washington Post reported on a Lutheran church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, trying to address the loneliness epidemic by turning a chapel into a taphouse.

• John Blake of CNN reported on the coming “tsunami” of church closures in the United States.

• The Chicago White Sox received a supportive letter from fan Pope Leo XIV just before the team’s first playoff game. The White Sox won.

• Presbyterian News Service profiled the Washington, D.C., Presbyterian pastor who won an episode of Jeopardy! this week.

Photo of the Week

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A predominately Muslim nation, it had become the first constitutionally atheist state in 1967 during the Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha, who also isolated the nation from the rest of the world. Only 8% of Albanians claim Catholicism, with another 7% as Eastern Orthodox and less than 1% as Protestant. But in this land where more than half of the population adheres to Islam, Mother Teresa is a national hero and the nation now celebrates its religious coexistence. So Francis went to honor that, while also remembering Catholic clergy and members who were tortured and executed for their faith by the Communist regime that fell in 1991.

“The climate of respect and mutual trust between Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims is a precious gift to the country,” he declared during an event in the capital of Tirana. “This is especially the case in these times where an authentic religious spirit is being perverted and where religious differences are being distorted and instrumentalized by extremist groups. … What the experience in Albania shows, rather, is that a peaceful and fruitful coexistence between persons and communities of believers of different religions is not only desirable, but possible and realistic. The peaceful coexistence of different religious communities is, in fact, an inestimable benefit to peace and to harmonious human advancement. “

Two years later, Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint. Born to a Kosovar Albanian family in Skopje (then part of the Ottoman Empire but now the capital of North Macedonia just to the east of Albania), she is celebrated across the southern Balkans by people of various faiths. As is Francis for his visit.

Shortly after announcing Mother Teresa would become a saint, political leaders in Albania unveiled a statue of Francis in Tirana on a prominent street near a large pyramid originally built to honor the longtime Communist dictator — but which today serves as a popular place for locals and tourists to view the city skyline. Nearby sits St. Paul’s Cathedral, a Catholic church that Pope John Paul II laid the cornerstone for in 2002. Honored inside with stained-glass windows are the apostle Paul, Mother Teresa, and Popes John Paul II and Francis. John Paul II has his own statue in Tirana a bit farther away, next to Sheshi Nënë Tereza (Mother Teresa Square), which you can visit after flying into the city’s international airport also named for the famous nun.

The unique history of Albania — from missionary stops by Paul to a site of Roman and Byzantine Christianity to hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire that persecuted Christians to a Communist regime of 55 years that outlawed religion — as well as its reputation today for peaceful religious coexistence drew Francis to the nation. And all of this is still celebrated in Albania, as I learned during a recent visit to attend the annual council meeting of the European Baptist Federation.

With individuals from more than 30 nations in Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East in attendance, Baptist, Anglican, and Lutheran speakers considered faith in the context of war, nationalism, political and social challenges, technological advances, and more. So this issue of A Public Witness travels to the “Land of the Eagles” to learn from Christian leaders ministering in challenging contexts.

New Opportunities Together

Various churches and denominations had to relaunch after the fall of Communism three decades ago. While a Baptist church had started in 1932, the Communist dictator shut down every place of worship, imprisoned and even executed many clergy members, and criminalized owning a Bible. So like with many churches, there was nothing left.

As the nation’s doors suddenly opened in 1991, the European Baptist Federation sent a retired Canadian missionary couple to survey the possibilities for work. Alan Donaldson, a Scottish minister who today serves as EBF general secretary, noted that EBF immediately started sending resources to launch churches and then a denominational body. He sees that success as a model for doing more work together “through the power of God” and “through our collective energy and resources.”

In 1999, four Baptist churches came together to start the Baptist Union of Albania. In a symbol of the changing times, they met in a building built by the late Albanian Communist dictator and where the first stone had been placed by Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev.

In addition to electing leaders and approving governing documents, the new Albanian group passed a resolution at its constituting meeting. The first topic that this fledgling group decided to address was helping refugees. Noting the “utterly tragic predicament” of Kosovar refugees fleeing the ongoing NATO-Yugoslavia war in the neighboring area of Kosovo. The resolution expressed “solidarity to the Kosovar brethren forced out of their homes and their land and undergoing the most atrocious suffering for their lost relatives and daily hardships as well as to all those persons in Yugoslavia who suffer the consequences of this war.” Additionally, it called for “a just settlement of the Kosovar conflict and an end to the war be found soon.” It also included a plea for God to “comfort and meet the basic needs of all the victims of this war, whatever their ethnic origins.”

Today, there are 10 Baptist churches in Albania with a total of about 250 members in a nation of nearly 2.8 million people. In all, there are estimated to be fewer than 10,000 Protestants in the country. But they now enjoy religious freedom. And the Baptist union set a goal of not just receiving assistance but also sending out their first international missionary in the new few years.

For the Albanian hosts of the recent meeting held on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, the fact that people came from various countries was meaningful. And it underscores that they are part of a bigger movement than what they see just in their nation.

“For us, this meeting means much more than simply hosting a meeting. We are a small Union, but we are part of a much larger family,” said Edmond Palucaj, president of the Baptist Union of Albania. “From the very beginning, this relationship has felt like a family relationship. … We need one another.”

Beyond helping start churches and the Union, he noted other times when EBF and Baptists in other countries assisted those in Albania, including when thousands of people from Kosovo entered as refugees in the late 1990s and then again in 2004.

Elijah Brown, an American who serves as general secretary & CEO of the Baptist World Alliance, argued that the history of Albania makes an appropriate place to consider the challenges faced by many Christians today around the world.

“As a Baptist global family, we are working to stand alongside our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and Myanmar and Gaza and Nicaragua,” Brown said. “What does it mean to gather in Albania — a country that faced great challenges not so many years ago — and to say, again, ‘We are Baptists’ when one out of every four Baptists in the world today faces war, persecution, and extreme hunger.”

Such contemporary situations were indeed a key area of focus for the three-day gathering in Albania.

Ukraine and the Middle East

Although Albania still suffers from democratic deficiencies and official corruption — which has sparked months of protests against the long-serving prime minister and the Trump family — it is a place where Christians are free to worship in peace. Other places in the EBF are experiencing more difficult times. As Alan Donaldson of the EBF noted, there are issues of migration — including political backlashes to immigrants — in various countries, along with “increased polarization in many places and questions and concerns about Christian Nationalism.” And then there are the wars and rumors of wars.

“Increasingly, churches have been damaged,” Donaldson said as he recounted visiting Ukraine last month as part of a delegation of denominational leaders and pastors. “Thousands of children remain abducted. And though the scars of the physical war are often quickly repaired, the scars of trauma, sleeplessness, loss, and worry for loved ones are increasing daily.”

“Maybe a less-known story is that of Ukrainian people living in the occupied territories. Three hundred and twenty Baptist churches under occupation. Eighty buildings that have been destroyed, he added. “Stories continue to reach us of murder, persecution, and hunger in those communities. And we feel powerless to reach out and help them. Religious freedom suffers, as does every other form of freedom in the occupied territories.”

Igor Bandura, vice president of the All-Ukrainian Union of Associations of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, talked about the trauma of constant bombings as “Kiev is bombarded day and night now.” School is interrupted several times each day because of Russia’s attacks. And one has to decide if going to the grocery store or gas station is necessary because it “can be attacked and you can be killed.” In this context, he urged Christians elsewhere not to take the approach of trying to avoid being “political” since “you cannot separate the political” from what is happening and what is needed to bring about justice and a just peace.

“As churches and people in each country, we should stay against combining Christianity with nationalistic ideas, what we call Christian Nationalism. Because it’s a very dangerous mixture, which really changed the mindset of people and then people with God’s name on the shields started to do terrible sins,” Bandura said. “Keep your prophetic voice, speaking about God’s values, justice. Stand against propaganda.”

Another place where war has impacted life and ministry for many in the room is the Middle East. Baptists from Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt were among those at the gathering. In addition to war following the October 2023 terrorist attacks by Hamas, many in the region have experienced missile strikes this year after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran.

Joy El Kazzi, a program officer at MERATH (a Christian NGO in Lebanon assisting refugees in the country), noted that because of the war, her church couldn’t meet in its building out of concerns that it was too close to where bombings might occur. So they started meeting in different locations. She said that the state of not knowing if a bomb might hit where you are “took a toll” on her and her family. In light of this, she admitted it can be difficult to love one’s neighbors. But she added that they’ve been trying to practice this for years before the recent conflict with Israel as they welcomed refugees from Syria (who had previously occupied Lebanon).

“When the war started in Syria, we had an influx of refugees into Lebanon. We were faced with this question,” El Kazzi explained. “Our pastors were saying, ‘It’s time to practice what we preach, and we always preach love your enemy. Are we going to do that now?’ And it was very difficult. … Even as a good Christian, you take a lot of time to kind of heal this trauma and be able to open your doors and say, ‘I want to help.’”

Rani Saba, general director of the Association of Baptist Churches in Israel, similarly mentioned the toll of constantly hearing alerts about possible missile strikes and seeking to continue to minister to everyone. He explained that the constant threat of attacks means sheltering and then “waiting for something to happen.” Because of this, trips to visit someone or go church can take “maybe 10 times” as long because of the need to stop, shelter, and wait. And not all of the churches have a shelter.

“It affects everything,” added Saba, who lives in Nazareth.

It can also impact how one reads the Bible, he added. He noted that “sometimes Bible verses become different when you are in the middle of a war or conflict.” He explained that the war “gives you a different insight” and the new way of reading a verse “becomes close to your heart. It releases you and gives you hope.”

Saba added that they need Christians in other countries to pay attention and “support not one side but the people inside these countries and support the churches.”

Supporting one another by learning from each other and building relationships is exactly why people traveled from various countries to Albania for the meeting. As Donaldson of EBF noted, there are lots of challenges for churches in the region. But through it all, they must come together as a family.

“Connecting is increasingly challenging,” he acknowledged. “Visas are becoming more challenging to obtain as nations tighten their borders — that’s making connections harder. And the rise of nationalism in many of our nations, sadly, also results in an underlying current of mistrust between nations that can be reflected in the way we view each other — especially the longer we spend apart from one another. We overcome them when we come together, and that’s why it’s so important for us to connect face to face, hand in hand.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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After revelations last month that DHS secretly spied in a Baptist church in Minnesota covered by a federal injunction blocking warrantless DHS enforcement actions, the judge who granted the injunction ordered DHS to inform the court of any other “potential violation.” DHS claimed in court filings on Sept. 25 that they searched their records but couldn’t find any incidents beyond two others at Lutheran churches in Texas and California that were previously discovered by the denominations that won the injunction.

Attorneys for the denominations criticized DHS’s report on Sept. 29 as “poorly calibrated,” adding that the submitted records “only underscore the high, systemic risk of noncompliance” with the injunction. Rather than indicating a lack of incidents at protected churches, the new DHS court statements instead suggest a lack of quality record-keeping by DHS.

Filings in a criminal case in Minnesota revealed in August that DHS had spied on Lutheran, Episcopal, Unitarian Universalist, and Baptist churches in the Twin Cities and at a Lutheran church in Michigan. As first reported by A Public Witness, one of those churches was covered by a federal injunction. Court filings show that DHS agents on at least four occasions — including on two Sundays — surveilled people entering or leaving University Baptist Church in Minneapolis. And on at least one occasion, it sent an undercover agent inside to secretly record people attending a Mixed Martial Arts class led by a progressive group in UBC’s building (and then the agent had to go back into the building to recover the recording device after realizing she had dropped it). These actions occurred despite prominent signs at the church notifying DHS agents that they are barred from entering.

On Sept. 4, U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV heard oral arguments virtually about whether or not to hold DHS in contempt for violating the injunction. While he has not yet ruled on that, he did immediately order DHS to let the court know within three weeks of any other immigration enforcement actions at a church covered by his injunction granted in February to congregations in the American Baptist Churches USA, Alliance of Baptists, Metropolitan Community Churches, and several regional synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. (A similar injunction that protects churches in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and several regional Quaker groups in addition to a Sikh Temple in California was upheld last month by a federal appeals court.)

After the denominations that won an injunction from Saylor informed the court about the DHS actions at the Baptist church in Minnesota, DHS claimed it had not violated the injunction since it was not trying to deport anyone in that investigation. A DHS official added in a filing, “I cannot confirm or deny that there are additional investigations at other locations on the protected locations list.” That admission led to the order that the agency inform the court of any other incidents. The new filings, however, essentially offer the same conclusion of neither confirming nor denying other investigations.

Two More Potential Violations

Late on the afternoon of Sept. 25 (the judge’s deadline), DHS announced its records didn’t reveal any incidents beyond those already mentioned by attorneys representing the religious denominations in the case. DHS only noted two other incidents, though the agency questioned if one of them even occurred. Neither incident appears to have garnered media coverage.

According to court filings by DHS, the attorneys for the denominations with the injunction contacted DHS attorneys on June 5 to ask about a potential violation of the injunction on April 19 at Iglesia Luterana San Pablo in San Antonio, which is part of the Southwestern Texas Synod of the ELCA. The allegation was that ICE agents waited in the church’s parking lot on that Sunday “to follow an individual as he left the place of worship and stopped the individual shortly after leaving the parking lot.” DHS claimed their “good faith effort” found no records for the alleged incident and that the San Antonio office of DHS’s Enforcement and Removal Operations office “located no records of ERO presence at the location in question on April 19, 2026.”

The Spanish-language Lutheran congregation in San Antonio had previously been mentioned in court documents as a reason for granting the injunction in the first place. A memorandum submitted last year by Bishop Susan Briner of the Southwestern Texas Synod of the ELCA explained to the court why she felt an injunction was warranted. She mentioned Iglesia Luterana San Pablo among the examples of how the Trump administration’s policies and actions were impacting congregations in her synod. The congregation had planned a “Know Your Rights” event for the church community in February 2025. Although they had held similar events at the church before, the new DHS policy allowing warrantless immigration enforcement actions at houses of worship “meant that the church was no longer a safe space.” The church worried, Briner added, that those who most needed the information would be scared to attend, so the event was moved to a house “where attendance was less obvious and people would feel safer and less exposed. The pastor told me that she still felt afraid every time the doorbell rang that night, and was constantly checking the windows to make sure that the curtains were closed.”

While DHS questioned whether an incident occurred at a Lutheran church in Texas, it admitted one did happen at a Lutheran church in California. However, DHS maintains that arrest did not violate the injunction.

DHS reported that on July 17 the attorneys for the denominations with the injunction contacted DHS attorneys to ask about a July 8 incident when an ICE officer chased a man on the property of New Hope Lutheran Church in Agoura Hills, which is part of the Southwest California Synod of the ELCA. The DHS court filing says that four ICE officers were conducting surveillance at another address about 400 feet from the church when they approached a man to confirm his identity. The man allegedly fled, with two officers running after him. The man ran onto the church’s property, but DHS insists the officers saw no signs and did not know that as they chased the man and arrested him in the church’s parking lot.

In a separate court filing on Sept. 24, DHS submitted an email exchange between DHS attorneys and attorneys at Democracy Forward (which is representing the denominational groups) about the incident at the church in California. DHS insisted that the arrest was a “hot pursuit” where there was “a reasonable belief that there was immediate threat to human life or safety.” Thus, DHS argued the incident was not a violation since the officers unexpectedly found themselves on church property and apparently did not realize they were at a place protected by the injunction.

It is not clear if DHS would have even reported the California incident if the denominations hadn’t already flagged it. DHS claimed their overall search effort was limited because “the location of arrest is a free text field, so the locations may only list a physical address and not necessarily identify the location as ‘sensitive.’” Additionally, DHS noted its reports are not in “a single systems source” but in multiple places that “would then have to be cross-checked against the current list of over 5,000 protected locations.” Thus, DHS added it did not have time to physically check “approximately 296,783 encounter records created between February 13, 2026, to September 21, 2026.” Instead of checking all their records, they asked field offices to self-report any incident at a protected church and were told nothing had occurred.

DHS also reported that it searched some records “using the following keywords: ‘church,’ ‘synagogue,’ ‘mosque,’ and ‘place of worship,’” but those terms only yielded “false positives” for things like Falls Church, Virginia, or Church Street. DHS did not mention searching for the term that would capture Spanish-language congregations like the one in San Antonio: “Iglesia.”

In a response on Sept. 29, the denominations covered by the injunction criticized DHS’s report documenting only the two incidents previously identified by the denominations themselves. The faith groups insisted that “DHS’s poorly calibrated keyword searches and internal ad hoc discussions do not amount to the good-faith review the Court ordered.”

“DHS’s responses confirm that its lack of a reliable method for ensuring compliance has deprived it of a reliable method for identifying noncompliance. As DHS established, when its agents on the ground are aware that the preliminary injunction is implicated, they will sometimes simply discuss the preliminary injunction amongst themselves and decide whether they are about to violate it,” the denominations argued in their filing. “The supplemental declarations provide no evidence that DHS requires agents to document these discussions or their conclusions at all.”

“In its contempt remedy, the Court should impose at least the basic guardrails that DHS has not. DHS’s supplemental declarations weigh in favor of Plaintiffs’ recommendations that the Court order additional training for certain DHS officers and require DHS to designate an officer tasked with overseeing compliance and filing status reports,” the denominations added. “The declarations also suggest that the Court should consider requiring DHS to impose basic recordkeeping requirements to ensure that enforcement operations at or near Protected Areas are uniformly documented to facilitate record retrieval and compliance auditing.”

It is not known when Saylor will rule on the motion to hold DHS in contempt for its actions at the Baptist church in Minneapolis or if he will be satisfied with DHS’s self-reporting on other potential violations. Meanwhile, several additional denominational bodies are asking the court to extend the injunction to also cover their congregations. DHS is fighting that effort, still claiming the injunction is unnecessary and complaining that adding additional protected locations would make compliance even more difficult.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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5. Meryl Streep As Narnia’s Aslan: Why Some Evangelicals Call It Blasphemy. Bob Smietana wrote about a controversy over an upcoming movie adaptation of a beloved C.S. Lewis series.

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

Since May, Pete Hegseth has repeatedly misused Isaiah 6:8. But during a speech at Texas A&M University, he took the heresy to a more explicit level.

In the biblical text, that verse is part of the call of the prophet Isaiah. But the man who calls himself “secretary of war” turns the passage into a military recruitment moment, and the Pentagon has followed his lead by repeatedly posting the verse on social media with images of soldiers and the phrase “send me.”

“When the nation calls, when the cry echoes: ‘Who will go for us?’ The Aggie, over a century, doesn’t hesitate. The Aggie steps forward from the sideline, helmet strapped, boots laced, and answers: ‘Here I am, send me,’” he declared last weekend.

Hegseth made the comment during the first stop of what he’s calling the “Send Me Tour” to recruit more military members. Which means it’s really a “send you to fight a dumb war I started tour.”

But beyond that semantic issue, the bigger problem is how he rewrote the Bible verse. This time, he made the nation — not God — saying, “Who will go for us?” In the new revised Hegseth version, America literally replaces God. Christian Nationalism ultimately always transforms the country into an idol, but its advocates aren’t usually so blatant about it. But apparently that’s what we get from someone with Crusader symbols tattooed on his body and his Bible.

Aggies and everyone else should reject Hegseth’s false gospel. Since Isaiah isn’t here to speak out against this misuse of the text, the rest of us will have to denounce it for him.

Other News of Note

• Sarah Posner reported for Talking Points Memo on remarks by Tom Homan, the White House’s “border czar,” at a rightwing evangelical event in Georgia.

• A federal judge ruled that Oklahoma must allow a Jewish school to become the nation’s first sectarian public charter school. An earlier effort to create a Catholic public charter school in the Sooner State was rejected as unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court and then remained blocked by a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court.

• A federal appeals court panel of three judges heard arguments about an Arkansas law requiring public schools to post a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments.

• Claire Wang of The Guardian wrote about how some public school teachers are defying state mandates to post a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.

• The city of Dearborn, Michigan, is being sued for spending public money to promote Muslim holidays while ignoring Christian and Jewish ones.

• Jeff Brumley of Baptist News Global reported on remarks about Christian Nationalism by Interfaith Alliance President Paul Raushenbush at a Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky.

• American Community Media profiled Pastor Guillermo Torres, who has been meeting with detained immigrants in Los Angeles and advocating against the “place of evil.”

• Kami Rice wrote for Christianity Today about how Christians in France are exploring ways to minister to people suffering from intense heat waves in the country.

• Faith in Public Life, a progressive advocacy group, announced it is closing one year after laying off 90% of its staff. The group was founded in 2006 by Rev. Jennifer Butler, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister who left the organization in 2022.

• The Catholic Church held a beatification Mass in St. Louis, Missouri, yesterday for the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, putting the host of a popular religious TV show just one step away from being the first American-born bishop to become a saint.

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U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy made that declaration in September of 1960 as he found himself locked in a tight race for the presidency against Vice President Richard Nixon. Sixty-six years later, the warnings in his speech ag…

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One of the best compliments you can give a horror film is to describe it as “chilling.” That’s also the most accurate word to describe Bradley Onishi’s new book, American Caesar: How Theocrats and Tech Lords are Turning America into a Monarchy, but this horrifying tale doesn’t end when the credits roll and the lights turn on. It’s a scary story that is all too real.

The plot is simple. The consequences are profound. We are experiencing the rise of a new class of ruling elites who seek to use religion and technology to replace democracy with authoritarian rule. It sounds extreme, even implausible. And yet, Onishi documents the ideas, the speeches, the organizing activities, and those in positions of power who are advancing that agenda.

The alarm likely hasn’t been heard in most American churches. Pastors preach sermons unpacking a gospel story or urging their parishioners to be a little nicer, a bit more other-minded, to slightly increase their focus on the wider community. Church members appreciate the nice sentiments and work to plan the next congregational luncheon. They scold the pastor for any sermon that gets “too political.” They continue to operate within the liberal project, where the church respects all choices and only tells people what to do in the most gentle of ways.

If Onishi is correct, then everyone is fiddling while Rome burns. Democracy’s opponents are extending a radical invitation: the only way to protect true Christianity, ensure the safety of society, and reap the full benefits of technology is to end democracy. Freedom is dangerous because everyone gets a say, and some of those people don’t want what these reactionary Christian leaders and tech utopians believe society needs.

These postliberals believe American democracy has run its course and the real danger is continuing the experiment. The liberties it protects allow people to make choices that reject traditional religious worldviews and practices. Its individualism eliminates the possibility for shared meanings and values.

Some of the figures Onishi builds his argument around are well known. Peter Thiel’s apocalyptic visions that view societal efforts to rein in technology’s unbridled march as the work of the Antichrist are well documented. For Thiel, Elon Musk, and others, Onishi highlights how technology has become an idol that is described in biblical language and conceived as humanity’s path to redemption.

Others are becoming more familiar as they have increased their influence and power. For example, the far-right pastor Doug Wilson has argued that a political leader “has the responsibility, as a public figure, in the discharge of his office, to believe in Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth.” That idea is fundamentally at odds with the U.S. Constitution’s explicit statement that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

A few decades ago, Doug Wilson’s views would have been dismissed as retrograde. Now, a man who has stated that “the great secular experiment that is America appears to have gone out behind the barn and shot itself” is planting churches in Washington, D.C., preaching in the Pentagon, and exercising moral influence over Trump administration officials.

It can be difficult to identify the overlapping interests between Christian reactionaries longing to return the United States to a mythical past and Silicon Valley titans seeking to remove any and all obstacles impeding their understanding of progress.

As the saying goes, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” When democracy’s restraints are seen as the problem, then all those working to undermine it are united in common cause. The battle over its replacement can be waged after its collapse.

American Caesar forces the reader to consider the dangers before us, but it is not a book devoid of hope. The good news is that this fight is in its early rounds and there’s ample opportunity to renew the best of the democratic tradition that we have come to take for granted.

“We have forgotten how to speak of democracy not as permission to ‘do you,’ but as a shared project — one in which freedom is secured together by resisting those who would make us subservient,” Onishi writes. “Democracy becomes sacred when it is understood as the fragile structure that reveres truth as the only royalty, sees leaders as removable, and promises to keep violence in check.”

Go read American Caesar. It will scare the hell out of you. Then, get to work protecting a common life where Christian faith promotes democracy rather than becoming a tool for its demise.

As a public witness,

Beau Underwood

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So in a city that has lived through some of the devastating impacts of Christian Nationalism, it’s appropriate that in early October two events in Minneapolis will feature experts on understanding and combating this ideology.

Minneapolis-based journalist and Lutheran minister Angela Denker will moderate two upcoming book talk events, the first with Kristin Kobes Du Mez on Oct. 6 and the second with Brian Kaylor on Oct. 12. Both events will be held at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church and are cosponsored by Magers & Quinn Booksellers and the Minnesota chapter of Christians Against Christian Nationalism.

In addition to the five churches that DHS sent undercover agents into earlier this year, Hennepin Avenue UMC also showed up in the investigation’s reports. As DHS agents surveilled someone, they tracked the individual to the church’s parking lot and took photos (but did not go inside the church). Although not preemptively targeted, Hennepin Avenue UMC leaders had previously been outspoken against DHS’s violent actions in the Twin Cities, even hosting a “singing resistance” event.

Continuing that public witness, the church will host the upcoming book talks to help unpack and push back against Christian Nationalism, toxic masculinity, political abuse of Scripture, and more.

On Tuesday, Oct. 6, Du Mez will give a talk about her brand new book, Live Laugh Love: The Secret History of White Christian Women and the World They Made. In her previous book, Jesus and John Wayne, Du Mez explored how White evangelicals recast Jesus as an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian Nationalism. In her new book, she explores the roots of today’s White Christian femininity and how it is marketed. A professor of history at Calvin University, Du Mez is also a senior democracy fellow with the Public Religion Research Institute. Denker, author of Disciples of White Jesus, will join Du Mez on stage for the conversation.

You can register for the free event with Du Mez and Denker here.

On Monday, Oct.12, Kaylor will give a talk about his newest book, The Bible According to Christian Nationalists: Exploiting Scripture for Political Power. This book unpacks ways the Bible is misused in politics today and how these misinterpretations distort the teachings of Jesus. With his humor and sarcasm, Kaylor takes seriously the threat Christian Nationalism poses to the Christian witness and democracy. Denker, who is also a Word&Way board member, will moderate the Q&A.

You can register for the free event with Kaylor and Denker here.

DHS spying in mainline Protestant churches shows us that even Christian churches, institutions, and individuals can find themselves targeted by a Christian Nationalist government because they aren’t considered to be the “right” kind of Christians. This ideology truly threatens us all. And if Christians won’t challenge it, then we’ll surrender our witness to the extremists claiming to be God’s agents on Earth.

We hope that those in the Twin Cities will be able to make it to these two events to learn from three leading voices pushing back against Christian Nationalism. But if you can’t make it, you should at least grab copies of Live Laugh Love, Disciples of White Jesus, and The Bible According to Christian Nationalists because the dangers of Christian Nationalism aren’t going away.

Register here to join Du Mez and Denker at Hennepin UMC on Oct. 6.

Register here to join Kaylor and Denker at Hennepin UMC on Oct. 12.

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