The RCA traces its roots to the founding of a Dutch Reformed congregation in New York City in 1628, a congregation that expanded to various church buildings and continues today in four Collegiate churches in the city. One of them, Marble Collegiate Church, was led for decades by Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking and the pastor who had a significant influence on both Richard Nixon and Donald Trump as they attended the church. A branch of the Dutch Reformed Church until 1819, the American group adopted the Reformed Church in America name in 1867 and is now headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Meeting for its general synod in Nashville, Tennessee, the RCA statement on Christian Nationalism passed with 96% approval as they called “on all Christians to renounce this error and work for justice, wholeness, and peace for all.”

“We have a necessary voice in the public debate but, as Christ’s body, gathered around Word and sacrament, we must not conflate national identity with God’s reign, lest we mute our prophetic voice and replace discipleship to Jesus Christ with political ambition,” the statement explains. “We belong to Jesus Christ, not to anyone or anything else. We are called to influence the public square through persuasion rather than coercion, to work for unity among all people and nations, to reconcile everyone, and to stand in God’s Spirit without the corrupting influence of temporal power.”

Although the RCA is a small mainline denomination — with fewer than 600 congregations — it’s still important when a group decides to speak collectively and publicly against Christian Nationalism. And while their statement unfortunately does not acknowledge any complicity, it’s still good for mainline Protestants to address this ideology since, as Beau Underwood and I documented in Baptizing America, mainline Protestants helped build Christian Nationalism (and that’s why we especially urged denominations and churches to learn about and repent of their own ways in pushing it).

The RCA is not alone. We’ve previously covered other denominational statements, including those by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 2023, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2024, the Episcopal Church in 2024, the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society in 2024, and the Baptist World Alliance in 2024 (as I led the resolutions committee).

Other denominational bodies have also been working on resolutions and reports this summer to tackle Christian Nationalism, including both the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the Presbyterian Church in America, as well as various regional bodies of the United Methodist Church. So this issue of A Public Witness looks at how these groups are speaking out against what the RCA rightly called a distortion of the gospel.

Presbyterians In, Not Of, America

The two largest Presbyterian bodies in the United States have significant differences. The largest, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is a mainline denomination with more liberal positions. The other, the Presbyterian Church in America, is an evangelical group that’s much more conservative. But both are reckoning with Christian Nationalism.

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1. Review: Baal and the Gods of More. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Baal and the Gods of More: Rescuing Church Growth from Idolatry by Andrew Root.

2. The Challenges of Graduating From a Christian School in the Age of AI. Salam Madanat of Alliance Academy Jordan reflected on the challenges of Christian education today.

3. Christian Leaders in Lebanese City of Tyre Call for Quick International Action After Israeli Warning. Amid threats of Israeli attacks on a Christian community in southern Lebanon, church leaders are calling for help.

4. The Country’s Largest Protestant Adoption Agency Is Dropping LGBTQ Couples — Again. Five years after changing its policies to assist LGBTQ couples in fostering and adopting, Bethany Christian Services is reversing course.

5. At TPUSA’s Women’s Summit, Christian Influencers Say Feminism Threatens Motherhood. Kathryn Post reported in Texas from a rightwing Christian Nationalist event for women.

Follow Us on Bluesky

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

This week, Southern Baptists decided to Southern Baptist.

About three-fourths of messengers to the annual meeting of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination voted for a constitutional amendment to restrict women from serving in a pastoral role. It has to pass again next year before it goes into effect.

In an appropriate historical throughline, the amendment was presented by Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. His school was founded by enslavers and Confederates. Those founders read Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, Titus 2, and 1 Peter 3 to justify enslaving people. Mohler reads the same chapters to justify subjugating women. He interprets the Bible like an enslaver, which makes sense considering he studies in a library named for an enslaver who fought for the Confederacy and preaches in a chapel named for an enslaver and Confederate chaplain.

Mohler not only continues to honor the enslaver founders of his school, he also insists they were champions of “biblical orthodoxy.” If defending a system of holding people in bondage (and whipping, torturing, raping, and killing them) is Mohler’s definition of “biblical orthodoxy,” then we shouldn’t be surprised to see him leading the charge to subjugate women.

Similarly, the SBC this week also brought the lead pastor of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on stage to praise him after protesters disrupted worship earlier this year. Left unsaid by the SBC’s president was the issue the protesters critiqued: that one of the other pastors also served as regional ICE field office director. A denomination literally founded to support enslaver missionaries now backs an ICE pastor. There really is nothing new under the sun.

Other News of Note

• Judy Woodruff of PBS interviewed historian John Fea to push back against claims that the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.”

• After Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is also a pastor, criticized Speaker Mike Johnson’s Christian faith given Johnson’s votes against helping the poor, Johnson requested a private meeting. Afterward, both said the conversation was good — and Warnock repeated his questioning of Johnson’s faith.

• Writing for Sojourners and The 19th, Cassidy Klein profiled Carter Heyward, one of the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church, and her activism today against White Christian Nationalism.

• Randi Richardson reported for Christianity Today about how Black churches and denominations are beefing up their hurricane relief aid efforts, especially amid concerns about the Trump administration overhauling FEMA.

• Religious construction spending is on the rise, but much of the increase is from churches refiguring their buildings as affordable housing.

• Diana Chandler of Baptist Press wrote about a deaf church that started in Indiana with “music loud enough to feel.”

• Leander Schaerlaeckens of The Guardian wrote about how outspoken many members of the U.S. men’s World Cup team are about their religious faith.

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Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war,” announced in March that the Pentagon would be reforming the religion codes that service members can select, which provide insights to chaplains and others in the military about how to assist the members in practicing their faith. He complained that “the previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes,” which was because it categorized people on a denominational level. Hegseth insisted such a large number “was impractical and unusable,” though that might say more about human behavior and religion than the U.S. military. Although it should be noted that the last time the list grew (and got up to 211) was because of an expansion by the first Trump administration.

Hegseth added in his March video that the new system would have just 31 codes, but the Pentagon didn’t release the list. So we’ve been guessing about that draconian cut until it finally came out last Thursday (June 4). It mostly involved consolidating numerous denominations into faith traditions, like condensing 29 Baptist codes into just one, 14 Methodist codes into just one, and 13 Presbyterian codes into just one. But other changes quickly sparked significant criticism.

Many faith traditions were completely cut, including Atheist, Druid, Humanist, New Age, Pagan, and Wicca. Ironically, two other traditions cut in this year of celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States were popular among the founders: Deist and Unitarian Universalist. Hegseth is saying that individuals in these traditions don’t count. And it will likely lead to less spiritual care for them. The organization American Atheists quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain records on how the decisions were made, and litigation might follow. Others, like the Unitarian Universalist Association, also condemned the cuts and are considering how to challenge the new system.

Over the weekend, a second wave of criticism erupted, this time especially from Republican senators who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Twenty-one of the new codes used the word “Christian” as an identifier, such as “Christian - Baptist,” “Christian - Episcopal/Anglican,” and “Christian - Lutheran.” But the LDS code did not include “Christian” in front of it, which critics said suggested the LDS church is not Christian.

MAGA Sen. Mike Lee of Utah posted several complaints on Elon Musk’s X platform about the lack of the “Christian” label for his tradition. He invoked the Constitutional protections against the government mistreating people because of their faith. He added, “The Pentagon shouldn’t disparage the beliefs of Americans willing to die for their country.” John Curtis, Utah’s other Republican senator who is also part of the LDS church, made similar arguments.

So on Monday morning, the Pentagon released a new updated list that removed the “Christian” prefix from all labels, calling the previous list a “mistake” with “redundant and unnecessary labeling.” Lee, Curtis, and others in the LDS church praised the shift. But what went unnoticed by many — and unmentioned in most news reports on the second draft of the new system — is that the list also dropped from 31 codes to 30.

While last week’s version included a category called “Christian - Other,” that disappeared completely in Monday’s version. Rather than renaming it “Other Christian” (which would match how they shifted “Christian - Orthodox” to “Orthodox Christian”), the Pentagon just dropped the category. But in doing so, they just completely excluded some Christians who now do not fit any of the codes, including historic and prominent denominations like the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the United Church of Christ.

The administrative excommunication of these traditions with round two not only creates new problems but also underscores the problems with the coding scheme. So this issue of A Public Witness examines the new mess created by the Pentagon and the larger problems with the religion codes that underscore the religious illiteracy and general incompetence behind its creation.

Crossing the Mainline

This saga hit home this week since one of us (Jeremy) is a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and has been left with no coding option that would fit his religious affiliation. With the “Christian - Other” category removed from Monday’s updated list, the only broad category like that is “Other Religions” — and that obviously isn’t accurate. But servicemembers are required to choose a coding option to represent their religious background. So what other code options would be even remotely possible?

“Christian (Non-Denominational)” doesn’t work because the Disciples are, in fact, a denomination. The broad category “Evangelical” doesn’t work because the Disciples are one of the “Seven Sisters” of mainline Protestantism, fully supporting the ordination of women and LGBTQ+ inclusion. And the “Church of Christ” option really does not work, both because of this evangelical/mainline split and due to denominational history.

What is known as the Restoration Movement or the Stone-Campbell Movement fractured into three distinct branches: the Churches of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Yes, this is incredibly linguistically confusing. But places like Pew Research Center understand this lineage and code them correctly in entirely different sections, with Disciples labeled “Restorationist family (mainline trad.),” and the others labeled “Restorationist family (evangelical trad.).”

Similarly, another influential mainline denomination does not fit into the latest Defense Department coding: the United Church of Christ. Despite its name sounding similar to the aforementioned “Church of Christ” category, the UCC was formed by the merger of the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. So they are not even historically related to the Churches of Christ traditions.

There’s something else notable about the UCC’s exclusion. So far, other reporting on Monday’s update has focused on the LDS church angle and failed to mention that the UCC is not only left out of the religious affiliation coding categories for the military but also represents a group with strong historical ties to the nation’s founders — just like the excluded Deists and Unitarian Universalists.

The UCC traces a substantial part of its lineage to the Congregationalist tradition. And at least nine Declaration signers can be easily classified as Congregationalists. This included probably the most famous person to sign the document: John Hancock. And these ties remain visible today with the Old South Church in Boston, which Samuel Adams was a member of, still meeting today and belonging to the UCC.

Just as LDS politicians complained and managed to force an edit, others are now speaking out about the elimination of the 31st category for other Christians. Like Rev. Jonathan R. Fisher, director of chaplaincy and specialized ministries for the Disciples and a retired U.S. Army chaplain.

“We are dismayed at the actions of the unnecessary and harmful decision of the Department of Defense to remove the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and others from this list,” Fisher told us. “Disciples have served this country with honor and distinction. Servicemembers will now need to use the ‘Other Religion’ category as there is not a category where Disciples belong. If it is a burden to have 200 categories in a nation as diverse as ours, then it is a worthy burden to bear given how much religious liberty is valued in this country. We protest this unnecessary and harmful action by the Department of Defense (War).”

Heretic?

The kerfuffle over the lack of the label “Christian” for the LDS church led many commentators to argue this was initially a Christian Nationalist effort by Hegseth to say the LDS church isn’t Christian. But we’re not sure that was deliberate. Instead, it seems to show the incompetence of the Pentagon under Hegseth’s leadership.

It’s true that the denominations Hegseth has been part of as an adult — the Southern Baptist Convention and the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — have labeled the LDS church as a cult instead of a Christian denomination. But both denominations say the same thing about Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science, yet both of those groups did receive the “Christian” label on the first version of the condensed list. If this was an attempt to adjudicate who counts as Christian, those two groups would have also definitely been excluded. And some SBC and CREC leaders (like Doug Wilson) would go even further to question if Catholics and some mainline Protestants are really Christians.

Amanda Marcotte, a senior writer at Salon, who insisted the lack of the “Christian” label for the LDS category proved Hegseth’s Christian Nationalism and was a deliberate theological decision, saw other issues with the new list. But just because Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist, that doesn’t mean everything he does is because of that ideology.

“Under the guise of ‘streamlining’ services, this number was reduced to 31,” Marcotte wrote. “Anyone who looked at the new list, however, could see that Hegseth’s unsubtle goal was signaling the superiority of Christians to everyone else. The new list gives Christians 21 subcategories to choose from, but Jews, Muslims and other major religious groups only get one option, ignoring the diversity within those faiths.”

Her argument is that Christians got 21 of the 31 categories (now 20 of the 30), so that shows this is about “signaling the superiority of Christians.” But that ignores the breakdown on the older, longer list. While two-thirds of the codes on the new list are Christian, it was closer to three-fourths before. There is now actually more condensing and ignoring of diversity in Christianity. She’s right that combining four Jewish codes into one ignores diversity within the tradition and makes the list less helpful. But the same is true of 29 Baptist codes crammed into just one. And, for the record, the previous list only had one category for Muslims and other religious groups, so that’s not actually a new problem with Hegseth’s list.

We do believe the new list shows some of Hegseth’s Christian Nationalist agenda with the deleted religion codes like Atheist, Druid, Humanist, New Age, Pagan, and Wicca. This matches his claims back in March when he said the new coding system was part of recognizing that chaplains “are first and foremost called and ordained by God.” But depending on the religious tradition, that’s not actually an accurate description of all chaplains. And it is true that Hegseth is a Christian Nationalist, as we’ve documented by covering his Christian worship services that only feature far-right patriarchal Christian preachers, his co-opting of Scripture to justify war decisions, and his Crusader ideology.

But the lack of the “Christian” label for the LDS church feels more like incompetence than bigotry since it would imply that Hegseth was willing to designate both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science as Christian denominations. Other parts of the coding system also show general religious illiteracy and incompetence. Like the “fix” on Monday that dropped the “Christian - Other” category. That, too, seems like an error instead of a deliberate attempt to suddenly kick out denominations like the Disciples and UCC.

Coding Incompetence

Other parts of the new system also give the impression that it was crafted by a drunk weekend cable news talking head instead of someone who knew what they were doing. There’s no clear coding scheme. Such coding should be both exhaustive and exclusionary. That is, the coding scheme should have a category for everyone and not have overlapping categories so that people would fit into multiple ones. The new list fails both standards.

The previous list with 211 codes was done largely at the denominational level (although some other religions only had one code). And there were some catch-all “other” categories to help make sure everyone could pick one. But the new list has no consistent categorization within the Christian camp. Some of the codes are at the faith tradition level, like “Presbyterian” and “Methodist,” while others are at the denominational level, like “Assemblies of God” and “Church of the Nazarene.” That creates problems since there’s also a “Pentecostal” category in which the Assemblies of God denomination would fit.

Pew Research Center, for instance, labels the AoG as one of the denominations within their “Pentecostal” category. Pew also puts the various Church of God denominations in that category, but the Pentagon instead has a “Church of God” category. Then there’s an “Evangelical” category which would also overlap with several other categories, including some in “Baptist,” “Lutheran,” and “Christian (Non-Denominational).” This coding system has no coherent categorization and thus will create confusion.

It’s also odd that if they’re only going to have 30 or 31 codes that they gave some to small groups like the Church of the Nazarene, Brethren, and Quaker. The latter two are particularly interesting since not only are those smaller traditions than others that didn’t make the list, but they are also groups where the membership is less likely to be in the military given their historic pacifism. While 30 or 31 codes seem like too few, if we were to create categories based on that limit we would condense several of the ones they used to create more distinction elsewhere on the list. Another problem is where to put Messianic Jews since they don’t really fit any Christian category, the Judaism category, or the other religion category.

Far from “making the Chaplain corps great again,” as Hegseth has claimed, the new coding system is unconstitutionally exclusive and makes it harder for chaplains to effectively and appropriately serve those in the military according to their own religious traditions. As Beau Underwood, Word&Way’s resident Disciples minister and a current doctoral candidate completing his dissertation on chaplains and public policy, told us, “The purpose of the military chaplaincy is to protect and promote the religious rights of those in uniform. It’s hard to understand how overlooking the faith identities of so many soldiers and sailors serves that purpose.”

“At a time of increasing religious pluralism, the Department of Defense is intentionally reducing the number of faiths it officially recognizes. We are erasing the very differences that chaplains are trained to honor and nurture,” he added. “For an administration that makes a lot of noise about protecting religious freedom, this is one of those moments where the actions intentionally taken directly conflict with the priorities so loudly proclaimed.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor & Jeremy Fuzy

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“On a day like today, there’s no better way to start than with a word from Scripture,” Hegseth declared as he started his commencement remarks at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, on May 23. “And on a day as special as this for the 998 great Americans of this class, there’s no more fitting verse than from Isaiah 6:8 — Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.’ Four years ago, you raised your right hand, swore an oath to preserve and defend the Constitution. And in that moment, you said to your country, ‘Send me.’”

Over the weekend while in France for the 82nd anniversary of “D-Day” in World War II, Hegseth repeated it while speaking to troops stationed in Sainte-Mère-Église. Talking about the storming of the beaches of Normandy, he said, “It was men like you, soldiers like all of you who despite the odds and despite the nature of the enemy, said as is written in Isaiah, ‘Send me.’ And you said, ‘Send me’ when you raised your right hand, and you still are today.” The Pentagon later released a video of Hegseth’s participation in D-Day commemorations, which they titled “The Boys of D-Day Said: ‘Send Me.’” It included shots of him and his family at markers of the war, clips from his speech at D-Day ceremonies in which he included an anti-immigrant screed, and his co-option of Isaiah 6:8.

This isn’t the first time Isaiah 6:8 has been co-opted by the Trump administration. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security’s first video that mashed a Bible verse together with footage of militarized agents hunting for immigrants used the verse. But with Hegseth now drafting the verse to serve U.S. military interests, such misuse should be examined and condemned.

The use of Isaiah 6:8 also adds to our understanding of Hegseth’s Crusader ideology, which appears to be closer to a Hollywood version of faith than what the Bible teaches. So this issue of A Public Witness considers the theological problems with Hegseth conscripting Isaiah 6:8 and how his use of Scripture aligns with Bible quotes in violent movies.

God vs. Uncle Sam

To put it simply, Isaiah 6 is not about joining the U.S. military. It’s not even about joining any military.

The chapter is a mystical call of the prophet Isaiah by God to serve God and proclaim messages from God. And these messages include a rebuke of Isaiah’s own nation and warnings of judgment to come (including military defeat by another nation). It’s also a chapter full of awe for God, which is why it’s inspired many hymns, including “Here I Am, Lord,” “Holy is the Lord,” and “Holy, Holy, Holy!”

When Hegseth invokes this passage to describe U.S. soldiers volunteering to serve the nation, he’s clearly changing the meaning of the text and doing so in a heretical manner. In the new revised Hegseth version, it’s not just that U.S. soldiers replace the prophet Isaiah; the United States of America replaces God as the soldiers say “send me” to Uncle Sam.

Christian Nationalism turns the nation into an idol, making it so the call is ultimately not to serve God but to serve (and die) for the nation. Hegseth sees those as the same thing, but they’re not. He argued during his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in February that a soldier who dies for the nation “finds eternal life.” With that Crusader theology, Hegseth conflates God and country, making salvation not about the work of Jesus but about a soldier dying for a nation. His co-option of Isaiah 6:8 makes the same fundamental mistake.

Hegseth might think that a call to serve the nation is synonymous with a call to serve God, but that’s simply because of his Christian Nationalist lens. Not all people in the U.S. military are actually Christian (despite his effort to eliminate many religion codes for military members). But he wants to baptize America so that the call of a prophet to preach God’s message can be retranslated as a command by a nation to pick up a weapon and kill someone.

As with much of Hegseth’s rhetoric, it quickly falls apart when we look beyond his made-for-cable-TV buzz words. For instance, his argument about D-Day that those who fought had echoed Isaiah in saying “send me” ignores the fact that many were actually drafted and forced to go. And in his speech to the graduating class at West Point, he used the “send me” rhetoric to take a jab at transgender and nonbinary people.

“Four years ago, you raised your right hand and said, ‘Send me.’ And today, as you join the ranks of the greatest fighting force in the history of the world, we stand together as one army and we say, ‘Send us,’” Hegseth said. “‘Send me’ becomes ‘send us’ because you are one fighting force just as we are ‘one nation under God.’”

“The call is ‘send us,’ not ‘send he, not ‘send she,’ not ‘send they/them.’ It’s ‘send us,” he added. “You can’t throw your pronouns at the enemy.”

Of course, in the text, it is actually a “send he” type of call as it went singularly to just one person. It’s not “send us” because the prophet Isaiah isn’t a unit. But in the verse Hegseth had already read in his speech, there is an example of pronoun-switching. As God says in the text, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” This is just one of the biblical passages where a plural pronoun is used for God. And Hegseth can’t throw that away.

While Hegseth’s heretical co-option of Isaiah 6:8 deserves condemnation, it is important to note he’s not the first to misuse the verse this way. Even before DHS used it to bless ICE, President Joe Biden quoted it like Hegseth does now to baptize the U.S. military. After a terrorist bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, killed 13 American soldiers in 2021, Biden rightly honored their service to their nation and mourned their deaths. But he also christened the entire military, arguing that to enlist is to make a commitment to serve God.

“Those who have served through the ages have drawn inspiration from the Book of Isaiah, when the Lord says, ‘Whom shall I send … who shall go for us?’ And the American military has been answering for a long time: ‘Here am I, Lord. Send me. Here I am. Send me,’” Biden said. “Each one of these women and men of our armed forces are the heirs of that tradition of sacrifice of volunteering to go into harm’s way, to risk everything.”

There truly is no heresy new under the sun. But that doesn’t mean we should shrug as Hegseth today abuses our sacred texts.

The Gospel According to Hollywood?

In April, Hegseth sparked international headlines, late night jokes, and countless online memes after A Public Witness broke the news of him offering a violent prayer at a Pentagon worship service that was drawn from a Samuel L. Jackson monologue in Pulp Fiction that largely makes up words claimed to be from Ezekiel 25:17. While a few words in the scene do come from the verse, which Hegseth cited before his prayer, it’s mostly just a mashup of biblical phrases and violent sentiments that Jackson’s character recited before gunning down an unarmed man and that Hegseth prayed to justify the Iran war.

Less obvious than him borrowing from a Quentin Tarantino film is how Hegseth’s broader use of the Bible matches how violent movies cite the “Good Book.” Two other verses he’s repeatedly cited this year are each featured in a prominent scene in an epic war movie.

When DHS used Isaiah 6:8 in a video last year, they did so while taking audio from the 2014 movie Fury, which starred Brad Pitt as a tank commander leading his crew in fighting the Nazis during the last few weeks of World War II in Europe. Shia LaBeouf played Boyd “Bible” Swan, a tank gunner who talks a lot about his evangelical Christian faith. In the scene that DHS stole (and that resulted in the video being taken down on some social media platforms), LaBeouf’s character tries to encourage the others to keep fighting because they’re doing “a righteous act.”

“Here’s a Bible verse I think about sometimes, many times,” he says in the film. “It goes: ‘And I heard the voice of Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for Us? And I said, Here am I, send me!’”

Like LaBouf’s character in Fury, Hegseth now seeks to change the context of the passage to baptize the work of the U.S. military. All while he oversees the ongoing war in Iran, which the Pentagon named “Operation Epic Fury.”

There’s another passage Hegseth has quoted sometimes, many times, this year that also has a famous scene in an epic war movie: Psalm 144:1-2 (about having one’s hands trained for war). He read those verses and several others from that chapter during the January worship service at the Pentagon after explaining that he had prayed through that passage and shared it with others under his command as part of the planning for the military operation in Venezuela a couple of weeks earlier. In March, he read the first two verses during a press conference, that time employing it to support Operation Epic Fury in Iran. The first verse was also included in a violent prayer he read during the March worship service at the Pentagon that he offered in support of the war in Iran.

The first two verses of Psalm 144 are recited during a key battle scene in the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan with Tom Hanks and Matt Damon. In the World War II movie, Barry Pepper plays a religious sniper who is part of the team sent on a mission by the U.S. Department of War to find and extract Private James Ryan. During a fight, the sniper recites the biblical passage while pausing to reload and kill Nazi soldiers.

Unlike with the Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25:17, Hegseth hasn’t included nonbiblical movie lines with his recitations of Isaiah 6:8 or Psalm 144:1-2. So it’s unclear if he was inspired by Fury or Saving Private Ryan.

But with these three passages, his interpretation of the Bible on war and violence seems to align less with biblical analysis and more with a Hollywood approach of grabbing a verse out of context to make audiences see the U.S. military as righteous and on the right side of the fight. While that might work for dramatic effect in a film, it’s dangerous for the head of the Pentagon to do violence against Scripture in order to justify violence against people.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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1. ‘The Sheep Detectives’ Reveals Holy Mysteries. Juliet Vedral reviewed the new film The Sheep Detectives and its unexpected Christian imagery.

2. Evangelical Politics and the American Spirit. Rodney Kennedy wrote about the desire for a sustainable authoritarianism among MAGA Calvinists.

3. Review: To Rebehold the Stars. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed To Rebehold the Stars: Reimagining Faith and Formation After Deconstruction by Tiffany Yecke Brooks.

4. Draft of King’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’ Found at Virginia Seminary Archives. Adelle M. Banks wrote about an archival discovery by a graduate student.

5. 4 Years Running, Southern Baptists Weigh Tightening Ban on Churches With Women Pastors. Peter Smith wrote about the nation’s largest Protestant denomination ahead of its annual meeting next week in Orlando, Florida.

Dangerous Dogma

This week’s episode features a conversation between Word&Way Editor Brian Kaylor and Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry. The conversation includes discussion of efforts in the Southern Baptist Convention to further target women serving in churches and how BWIM is advocating for women (including with a billboard to greet SBC messengers next week in Orlando, Florida). Listen to the audio version here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or watch the video version here.

Follow Us on Bluesky

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

Pete Hegseth, who likes to call himself “secretary of war,” is drastically reducing the number of religious affiliation codes that military members can select, which provide insights for a chaplain about how to provide appropriate spiritual care. While just 31 codes will remain in use, 180 are being deleted. This creates two significant problems.

First, many faith traditions were completely cut, including Atheist, Druid, Humanist, New Age, Pagan, and Wicca. Ironically, two other traditions cut in this year of celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States were two traditions that were popular among the founders: Deist and Unitarian Universalist. Hegseth is saying that individuals in these traditions don’t count. And it will likely lead to less spiritual care for them.

Second, even among traditions that remain, the new list condenses numerous denominations into broader categories. For instance, now there will be just one Baptist category instead of 29, one Methodist instead of 14, and one Presbyterian instead of 13. This means chaplains will be flying more blind as they try to minister to someone.

A Pentagon leader claimed the reduced number of codes “will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices.” But that’s simply not true.

There are significant differences between Southern, American, National, and Cooperative Baptists. Putting them all in one code eliminates important nuance. Similarly, while the largest Presbyterian denomination is mainline, the next biggest one is evangelical and much more conservative. Or consider the historic Black denomination the African Methodist Episcopal Church. They used to have their own code, but now will have to pick “Christian - Methodist,” “Christian - Episcopal/Anglican,” or “Christian - Other.”

While Hegseth seeks to establish his own faith at the Pentagon with monthly worship services, he is undermining the spiritual care provided to those from different traditions. His war on religious liberty continues.

Other News of Note

• David Brockman wrote for Texas Observer about how U.S. Senate hopeful James Talarico’s faith represents the mainline Protestant tradition despite attacks on his faith by rightwing evangelicals.

• Katherine Stewart wrote for The New Republic about the push for rightwing “biblical economics.”

• Lydia Bugg of The Guardian reported on the rise of “Christian energy drinks.”

• The Washington Post published an overview of ways that lawmakers are trying to inject more rightwing Christianity into public schools.

• A lawsuit seeking to create the first “public Christian school” in Colorado ended after a new state law made those trying to start the school ineligible. Such efforts for a sectarian public school have also been unsuccessfully tried in other states.

• Ruth Graham of the New York Times wrote about how some rightwing Christians see proof of demons in the government’s U.F.O. files.

• Makella Knowles wrote for MinistryWatch about the need for churches to address the growing sports gambling crisis.

• Russell Contreras of Axios wrote about research showing that AI systems are sidelining religious perspectives even when people seek religious insights.

Photo of the Week

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“The people who are the naysayers and who have created this new term of ‘Christian Nationalism’ as a pejorative, a derogatory term, are trying to silence the influence and the voices of Christians, and I think that’s wildly inappropriate,” he declared on the morning of the so-called “Rededicate 250” event that pushed Christian Nationalist myths about U.S. history.

Let’s put aside his absurd claim that the term “Christian Nationalism” is new (simply because he’s just learned about something doesn’t make it new). The even more inaccurate allegation is that those who critique Christian Nationalism just want to silence Christians. Johnson’s either lying or isn’t paying attention because many who challenge Christian Nationalism, like me, do so as Christians who remain deeply concerned about the integrity of the Christian witness.

So last weekend, I found myself on the campus of Villanova University in Pennsylvania for a conference as Catholic and Baptist scholars gathered to critique Christian Nationalism. And we did so from deeply Christian theological perspectives.

The annual convention of the College Theology Society (a group that primarily brings together theology and religious studies professors and graduate students from Catholic institutions of higher education) met in conjunction with the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion. Gathering on the campus of Pope Leo XIV’s undergraduate alma mater — and the Vatican even sent greetings to the conference from Leo — the conference centered on the theme “Reclaiming Faith Amid Christian Nationalism.”

The conference mainly focused on the current threats of Christian Nationalism to the nation and the Church from evangelicals like Johnson, Pentecostals like Paula White-Cain, and Catholics like J.D. Vance. To complicate the narrative and broaden the perspective, I was invited to speak on how moderate and progressive mainline Protestants helped push Christian Nationalism (largely drawing from the work of Baptizing America).

Since Villanova’s campus sits just a few miles from Valley Forge and the image of George Washington praying on bended knee in the snow has been particularly popular lately with officials in the Trump administration, I mentioned how exciting it was to talk about Christian Nationalism so close to where that prayer moment did not occur. The myth of that story (and the religious bigotry against Quakers embedded in the original version) highlights the problems of Christian Nationalism then and now.

The weekend included numerous excellent presentations unpacking various aspects of Christian Nationalism, its theological errors, its civic threats, and how to resist. So this issue of A Public Witness takes you inside the conference to hear from scholars as they offered ways to push back against this dangerous ideology.

American Idol

Anna Scheid, a theology professor at Duquesne University, spoke about the prophetic witness of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches in 1982 to declare South African Apartheid — which was supported and implemented by many White Reformed churches — a heresy. That effort was particularly spearheaded by Black South African theologian Allan Boesak, who Scheid leaned on for defining heresy as she applied it to Christian Nationalism today.

“To reunite the body of Christ, we must declare that Christian Nationalism is a heresy,” she said. “It’s not good news. It mocks God’s efforts to deliver the oppressed from bondage. And it disavows the redeeming and reconciling love born of faith in Jesus Christ.”

“Theologically speaking, Christian Nationalism is a violation of the first commandment: ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods besides me,’” she added. “Christian Nationalism asks us to make the nation the source of our hope, and asks us to trust in idols for our safety and glory. … For the living God, Christian Nationalism substitutes a mediocre American idol.”

Drawing on the work of sociologist Andrew Whitehead, Scheid highlighted how Christian Nationalism promotes the idolatry of power, fear/grievance, and violence. She added that it’s also “a heresy because it divides us from one another” and “encourages hatred and exclusion.” As a key example, she pointed to a violent prayer offered by Pete Hegseth during a worship service at the Pentagon in March.

Alessandro Rovati, chair of the Theology Department at Belmont Abbey College, also contrasted the virtues taught in submitting to “the way of Jesus’s lordship” versus the values of idolatrous Christian Nationalism: “One rooted in weakness rather than power, self-emptying rather than dominion, love rather than strength.”

“[Christian Nationalism] is not one of the issues confronting Christians; it is the issue confronting Christians. The biblical weakness and the church’s teachings following it are unequivocal: Because of sin, we are often confronted with idolatry. We often place our hopes in things and people who do not lead us to authentic nourishing,” Rovati added. “The Church puts us in front of our many self-deceptions and reminds us about the truth about ourselves and the world. We are dust, in constant need of God’s mercy. The more we enter into such an awareness, the more we will experience the passage from that to life, from powerlessness to the possibilities of God, from allegiance to our many worldly idolatries to knowing and loving the one and truth.”

Brent Little, chair of the Catholic Studies Department at Sacred Heart University, emphasized how Christian Nationalism is both “idolatrous” and “collective narcissism.” He lamented that despite this, many American Christians “do not want to recognize how nationalism has perverted their faith,” instead wanting to believe “that Christianity and the nationalistic political agenda” are “completely compatible, so as to conveniently ignore any friction between the two loyalties.”

Similarly, José Francisco Morales Torres, a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) minister and a professor of comparative theology and philosophy at Chicago Theological Seminary, criticized the “idolatrous force” of White Christian Nationalism. He argued that “one of the heretical strains that grounds White Christian Nationalism” is what he called “anthropological Docetism.” Referring to the ancient heresy that denied Jesus took on human form and only seemed human, Morales argued that this new form of Docetism that again removes Jesus from his body and that “privileges the invisible soul” over actual bodies.

“White Christian Nationalism, to possess a kind of Christian signature, decarnates the Word by rejecting the brown, fleshly Messiah and by rejecting a fully theological anthropology that makes demands on the body and not just our hearts or souls,” Morales explained. “Christian nationalism forges idols to seem Christian enough to ‘sanctify’ the hidden ways White supremacy is enfleshed in the world.”

Divorcing Jesus from his body, Morales added, not only lifts up Whiteness but also is used “to deny the full humanity of the racialized other and to ignore the incarnational faith that orients us to the weightier matters of the law — justice and mercy.”

Empire or Exile?

Janna Louie, an American Baptist Churches USA minister who serves as chief of staff for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, argued that merely critiquing rightwing expressions of Christian Nationalism misses the larger “reality that the U.S. empire is a project of settler colonialism that sustains itself through neoliberalism’s reliance upon free and cheap labor.” Such a focus also “seems to absolve the religious left from examining itself and their complicity to the neoliberal agenda of the U.S.” Thus, she added, “to resist propensities towards nationalism requires an acknowledgment of complicity with neoliberalism” and requires that we “contend with the U.S. empire’s continued reliance upon free and cheap labor.”

“Selling Bibles endorsed by the president is merely a symbol of the U.S. hubris as a source and promoter of global market capitalism,” she added.

Louie argued that in challenging Christian Nationalism, “sustainable resistance requires much more than symbolic opposition. It calls for an exilic witness grounded in the biblical theology of exile.” This includes contending with how Christianity has been used to justify the U.S. empire and colonial work.

“The story of God’s people through the Babylonian exile provides insight for sustained resistance and a perpetual invitation to confession in order to ground faithful witness,” she explained. “The people are not spared from the violence of empire-building. But there is a persistent reminder that being on the underside of the empire meant being closer to God. It’s when the people of God find themselves on the side of the empire or moving towards the side of empire-building power that judgment and justice call God’s people to account. In this, a biblical theology of exile invites God’s people to a practice disposition that rejects any form of empire-building power. To embrace exile as faithful and prophetic witness is to resist the use of power.”

“An embrace of exile is counterintuitive in a world that clamors for power and control. An assumption of exile frees the people of God to ask ‘how to be faithful’ rather than ‘how to win,’” she added. “To embrace exile is to commit to a disciplined practice that continually examines human propensities toward power and control.”

Kate Hanch, director of the Baptist House of Studies at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University, similarly recounted how Southern Baptists and others used appeals to Scripture to justify slavery and the violence of such a capitalistic system. She traced how early approaches to what eventually became known as biblical “inerrancy” were employed to craft a justification for slavery, and therefore to dissent against slavery was “to attack the Bible itself.” She noted that the same method of interpretation is used today by Southern Baptists to argue against women in ministry and to attack those who support women. And she pointed to Doug Wilson, who she noted preached in February at the Pentagon, as a contemporary example of someone using the Bible to defend slavery and attack women in leadership.

“Today, these claims of objectivity are rooted in inerrancy and have been utilized by theologians and politicians alike to promote a Christian theocracy at the expense of marginalized people for the sake of the power and privilege of the few,” she argued.

It is precisely because of that past and present use of the Bible and Christianity to support empire and its oppressive economic systems that Louie urged dissent from not just Christian Nationalism but all forms of empire-building. And such exilic dissent, she added, means we must be honest about our own roles in the system.

“There’s no path forward unless we engage with the legacies of Manifest Destiny, which reinforce the reliance upon the violence of chattel slavery and the continued racial subjugation to actualize the expansion of the U.S. empire,” Louie said. “Perhaps the most Christian starting place is the acknowledgment that we all have blood on our hands. When we confess that there’s no one righteous, we can humbly find our place as faithful witnesses together.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Rosenbaum has tried to spin the problem as proof that his book is right: “These AI errors do not, in fact, diminish the larger questions that the book raises about truth, trust, and AI and its impact on society, democracy, and editorial.” That’s pretty weak, but his answers to Wired were even worse as he said he would rather just stop writing than stop using AI in his writing. In that case, we say he should, in fact, just stop writing.

We promise we do not use AI to write, create citations, or edit our work. And there are many other authors who similarly are actually writing. We enjoy discovering a good book that came from the mind of a human and not from an AI bot that stole and repackaged the work of others.

So as we publish our fifth annual list of recommended books for summer reading, we want to assure you we are real people suggesting real books that you can actually buy or grab from your local library. We’ve once again asked several Word&Way writers to offer two books perfect for wherever you find your real happy place this summer.

Some Recommended Books

• Brian Kaylor, author of The Bible According to Christian Nationalists:

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. From the author of A Man Called Ove (a fantastic novel that was adapted into the movie A Man Called Otto starring Tom Hanks), this book is also wonderful with humor, plot twists, and a puzzle to slowly put together. After a thief fails to rob a bank since it’s cashless, they end up accidentally taking people hostage across the street in an apartment that’s having an open house. From there, Backman unwinds a quirky tale that captures unexpected interconnectedness between different people. All while some detectives — and the readers — try to figure out who the robber is. There’s a Swedish-language miniseries adaptation of it on Netflix (since the novel was originally written in Swedish), and there’s an English-language movie in the works with Angelina Jolie, Aimee Lou Wood, and Jason Segel.

The Library Book by Susan Orlean. This book is really three books masterfully woven together. It tells the story of the 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library, the largest library fire in the United States. It’s still a bit of an unresolved mystery, which Orlean unpacks to complicate the narrative about the arson that destroyed or damaged more than one million books in the library that opened a century ago this year. With that tale, the longtime staff writer at The New Yorker weaves in her own personal experiences in libraries and their broader history. It’s a delightful and insightful read, especially for anyone who loves books.

• Sarah Blackwell, author of God is Here:

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It may not be much of a stretch to write a book recommendation on a popular novel that forms the basis of a new major motion picture, but I tend not to read science fiction and probably would have skipped this book if it were not by the author of The Martian, the last sci-fi book I read and enjoyed. Yes, Project Hail Mary is a futuristic, action-filled page-turner about saving the world; however, what makes the book worth reading is the unlikely friendship at the core of the story. While exploring the universe, it also delves into what it means to love your neighbor in the most extreme of circumstances and what it might look like to lay down one’s life for others. Since I teach college students, I am always looking for popular media that can engage them in the deeper questions of life — and this novel hits the right chord.

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer (illustrated by John Burgoyne). If lazy days of piddling around in the summer are more your speed, this short volume by the author of Braiding Sweetgrass may be the perfect complement to a quiet evening in a rocking chair with a cold glass of lemonade. Sometimes a book comes along that is a balm to the burns and scars of the world — The Serviceberry has these types of healing properties for our communities that are taxed by dissention and natural lands that are marred by overuse. It does so by focusing on sustainability over consumerism. One would not think a book about a wild berry would be so captivating, but the observations within recalled simpler days of picking the first berries of summer and sharing fresh-made cobblers with friends and family. The central tenet is the idea of reciprocity, that shared benevolence and contributing the gifts we already have (whether physical, mental, or emotional) can make our communities better.

• Jeremy Fuzy

The Night Manager by John le Carré. I was inspired to pick up this 1993 novel after watching the recent second season of the excellent BBC series by the same name, starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, that adapted (and added to) the source material. This is a smart and propulsive espionage novel set in the aftermath of the Cold War, where unconstrained global capitalism has created a cabal of greedy criminals who are not bound by ideology or law. Traditional intelligence agencies are failing to meet the challenge as institutions, and the only option is for our protagonist, Jonathan Pine, to go undercover as an everyday service worker who can remain virtually invisible to the wealthy arms dealers as he gathers information and infiltrates their networks. It truly contains everything you could want from a spy thriller and then some.

Cranial Fracking by Ian Frazier. One of my favorite things to read while traveling and relaxing in the summer is a collection of short stories. You can easily start and finish an entire mini-narrative between dips in the water or during a layover — and this book perfectly fits that bill. Written by a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, each chapter contains a different insightful take on the perplexing world we live in. With deadpan midwestern wit, Frazier walks the line between social commentary and absurdist humor. If the notion of exploring the impact of climate change on Hades, advocating for mummies in the golden age of zombies by invoking Jane Austen, or a former scoutmaster detailing the obscure heresies he collected that led to his ouster (think Bogomilism, Pelagianism, or Albigensianism) brings up a chuckle, this one’s for you.

• Juliet Vedral

The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson. Fans of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and even J.K. Rowling will appreciate these four fantasy novels, centered on the three Igiby children, Janner, Kalmar (Tink), and Leeli, and rich in Christian themes. Set in a world that has largely been occupied by Gnag the Nameless, an evil overlord bent on remaking humans in his own image, the children must find their way to safety and defeat Gnag’s armies of Fangs (Lizard, Wolf, and Bat People) while reclaiming their destiny. The first two books are a little slow, but the last two are hard to put down. I started reading these with my sons at the same time my friends started reading them with their kids, and they are as compelling for kids as they are for adults.

The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley. Looking for a thoughtful and uplifting story that can double as a poolside read? Then this book is very much for you. The story is set in London and centers on six different people who are brought together by a mysterious green journal containing one man’s honest confession about his life. It’s a fun and heartwarming story that is easy to digest and will leave you feeling hopeful about life — something we all kind of need right now.

• Beau Underwood, coauthor of Baptizing America:

Battlefields: The Chicago White Sox and the Great War by Jim Leeke. In my household, we’ve dubbed this the “summer of baseball.” There are trips planned to more than a dozen MLB games in a half dozen cities, passionately following the surprising success of my beloved Chicago White Sox, and playing as much baseball with my son as possible. It all serves as a valuable distraction from the chaotic and perilous times we’re living through. Battlefields explores how the White Sox navigated through another challenging period: the years in which the U.S. fought in World War I. It describes how that conflict changed the game of baseball alongside so many other aspects of our national life.

Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi by Amy-Jill Levine. While not a new title, this book is the perfect resource for my planned summer Bible study on the parables of Jesus. The volume is accessible for a layperson, but packed with the insights of a leading New Testament academic whose perspective is that of a Jewish scholar studying Christian constructions of Jesus. Levine conveys both how radical the parables are in their implications and how common they were in the examples they draw upon. At a time when many conflate American culture with the teachings of Christ, this book reminds us how provocative, challenging, and life-giving Jesus’s demands can be, if only we will listen to them with ears to hear.

• Sarah Miller

The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. If you’re someone who takes the occasional trip down a Wikipedia rabbit hole in a futile attempt to understand the nature of the universe, consider making theoretical physicist Prescod-Weinstein your next tour guide. As the title suggests, her passionate and poetic explanations of gravity, quantum particles, light, and more are intended not to help you master the material, but to see the world with new eyes as you journey to the edge of what humans currently know about physical reality. Along the way, she illuminates the political, ethical, and cultural dimensions of physics and makes a passionate case for scientific exploration as essential to human flourishing. At the end of the journey, I found myself appreciating physics’ open questions as much as its answers, and amazed at the human ingenuity it takes to know anything at all about our mysterious universe.

Middlemarch by George Eliot. Eliot’s masterpiece has no shortage of advocates — it recently topped The Guardian’s 100 Best Novels list — so I doubt I can tread any new ground here, but I can attest that it makes a great, sprawling summer read. Set in a rural community facing the technological and political changes of 1830s England (the railroad and the first Reform Act, respectively), the novel is an honest and empathetic exploration of human agency. As idealist Dorothea Brooke and medical reformer Tertius Lydgate struggle to do some measure of good in the world, they contend with the inertia of social mores and the all-too-human flaws in their own judgment. Their progress, while never unchecked, is a testament to the small acts of magnanimity, imagination, and grace that sustain our shared life.

• John Sianghio

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu). In her masterwork The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt wrote that science fiction deserved attention “as a vehicle of mass sentiments and mass desires.” The Three-Body Problem is an exemplar of Arendt’s observation. A contemporary story with the Chinese Cultural Revolution as its critical backdrop, the book is a rare opportunity to explore the sentiments, desires, values, and visions of a non-Western culture through the vehicle of a high-flying space odyssey grounded in a gritty neo-noir mystery. Real-world technological advances like AI, once firmly in the realm of science fiction, continue to drive reexamination of our relationship to science, faith, and God. This novel explores all of these themes without sacrificing an iota of its gripping storytelling — with perhaps its most profound insight being that the most important thing for understanding these relationships is our relationship to one another.

Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution by Anand Gopal. This book narrates events within one of the great geopolitical crises of the 21st century while delving into themes of economic, social, and political theory through its narration of the city of Manbij’s short-lived experiment in revolutionary democratic self-government amid the Syrian Civil War. Yet the book reads neither like the report of a war correspondent nor a treatise on government. Rather, from its opening vignette, Gopal immerses readers in the sights, sounds, and stories of the city and its citizens in a way that brings Manbij alive as vividly as James Joyce’s Dublin, Charles Dickens’s London, or Victor Hugo’s Paris. Defying its status as nonfiction, the story focuses on the private passions and personal disillusionments that fuel the love and rage of its title in epic fashion, more reminiscent of the Iliad and Odyssey than the AP wire.

• Kristel Clayville

Dizzy: A Memoir by Rachel Weaver. In January 2006, days before starting a Master of Fine Arts program, Weaver woke to a world that wouldn’t stop spinning. Dizzy traces the eighteen years and more than forty clinicians it took to name and finally quiet her illness, including a long passage through dismissal, misdiagnosis, and the particular loneliness of a body no one can explain. Set against her earlier life studying wildlife in the Alaskan wilderness, she writes about suffering without flinching and about hope without sentimentality. For readers drawn to questions of endurance, meaning, and how we keep faith inside deep uncertainty, this is a luminous and unsettling companion.

When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love by Amanda McCracken. By her late thirties, McCracken had dated more than a hundred men when a therapist finally named what had shaped her: limerence, an addiction to longing itself. In this candid and often funny memoir, she traces that craving back to the evangelical purity culture of her girlhood, where adolescent desire was redirected into waiting for the husband God supposedly had in store. Weaving research with confession, she argues that purity culture and hookup culture can both leave a person attached to wanting rather than to loving. Readers wrestling with faith, formation, and desire will find an honest, generous map toward something more real.

Read On

With the variety of books we’ve compiled, we hope you’ll find a couple worth adding to your summer reading plans. And if you need more options, you could always look back at our 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 lists.

There are plenty of great books out there, so you shouldn’t need to ask AI to slop one together for you!

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor & Jeremy Fuzy

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Theo vs. the TheoBros. Sarah Blackwell reflected on her new Theo(logy) of noticing found in Allen Levi’s book Theo of Golden.

2. In Our Image. Kristel Clayville wrote about what the Christian tradition has to offer when it comes to thinking about AI.

3. In His First Encyclical, Pope Leo XIV Says AI Must Serve Humanity, Not the Powerful Few. In Magnifica Humanitas, Leo's 83-page manifesto on AI, the pope tackles the social, economic, and political challenges associated with artificial intelligence.

4. Review: Better Than Normal. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Better Than Normal: Virtues for an Off-Script Life by MaryAnn McKibben Dana.

5. These Houses of Worship Are Older Than America. How They Outlasted Wars, Schisms, and Lawsuits. Adelle M. Banks wrote about historic Baptist, Episcopal, and Jewish congregations that predate the United States.

Follow Us on Bluesky

by Jeremy Fuzy, Word&Way Digital Editor

This week, something remarkable happened in the world of religion and politics: the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy that reshaped early 20th-century Protestantism fully reared its head again. This time, with two Lone Star State politicians serving as its figureheads.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated Sen. John Cornyn on Tuesday (May 26) for the Republican Senate nomination. Paxton, a Southern Baptist who is backed by President Donald Trump’s endorsement, has endured numerous controversies, from accusations of marital infidelity that caused his wife to file for divorce citing “biblical grounds,” to criminal charges that led his own party to impeach him.

Paxton will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in November. Talarico is a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) seminarian who is most widely known for being the guest on the defunct Late Show with Stephen Colbert whose interview Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr intimidated CBS into posting only on YouTube instead of airing over broadcast. Talarico used this moment in the national spotlight to denounce Christian Nationalism.

So now, the conflicts regularly simmering below the surface between the more fundamentalist wing of conservative evangelicals and the modernist strand of mainline Protestants seem like they will routinely bubble over into the news cycle throughout the election.

Perhaps theologian Diana Butler Bass put it best when she wrote on Bluesky: “Talarico v. Paxton is going to be a straight up religious argument between Christianity as a religion of love for neighbor and Christian authoritarianism. There’s not been a public theological contest like this since the Scopes Monkey trail.” What a time to be alive.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• Sydney Byerly of The Indiana Citizen reported on some rightwing Christians in the Hoosier State claiming “anti-Christian” discrimination to justify (and quotes Beau Underwood to refute the claims).

• Local officials in Texas installed graven images monuments of the “Ten Commandments” on the grounds of the Rockwall County Courthouse and the Amarillo City Hall. Both monuments use a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments that’s not found in any Bible.

• Bob Smietana reported for NPR about how the worship song “How Great Is Our God” has become popular at political rallies (including at Pentagon worship services).

• Sandi Villarreal of Texas Monthly wrote about the Republicans attacking Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico for calling God “non-binary” even though many theologians would agree.

• A Kansas state senator seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate is claiming his primary opponent Rev. Adam Hamilton covered up sexual abuse at the Church of the Resurrection. But The Kansas City Star examined court records and found the attack on Hamilton and the church to be inaccurate.

• Union University, a Southern Baptist school in Tennessee, is partnering with the rightwing legal group Alliance Defending Freedom to try to start a sectarian public charter school. This follows other efforts, thus far unsuccessful, to create sectarian public charter schools.

• Anna Claire Vollers of Stateline reported on the trend of megachurches starting their own colleges, often without traditional accreditation.

• After the University of Missouri cut designated funding for a historic Black student group, a prominent Black Baptist church in Virginia announced it would provide the funding for the student organization.

• Anthea Butler wrote for MSNBC about Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI and the importance of him using the text to apologize for the Catholic Church’s participation in slavery.

• UM News reported on how United Methodists in the Democratic Republic of Congo are responding to an Ebola outbreak.

• Angela Youngman wrote for Religion Unplugged about cathedrals in the United Kingdom trying to cash in on the craft beer craze.

Photo of the Week

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Mullin, who assumed the job in March after the ouster of Kristi Noem, wasted little time in picking up the Christian Nationalist bully pulpit of his predecessor. Under Noem’s leadership, DHS created numerous videos that kidnapped Bible verses out of context in order to justify kidnapping people, even twisting the words of Jesus to make “up” mean “down” and “wrong” mean “right.” Noem’s Department of Herod Security also misunderstood the reason for the Christmas season, casting themselves as the holy ones even while using state power to track down refugees who, like the Holy Family, flee state violence. And she justified the executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis despite saying for years that her Christian faith and biblical principles guide her public policy decisions.

Noem deserved to be sent packing, but Mullin didn’t represent a policy shift as much as a PR rebranding. He’s also continued Noem’s Christian Nationalist rhetoric and misuse of the Bible to justify DHS violence.

Like Noem, Mullin comes from the Pentecostal tradition. Although he grew up in church, he underwent a conversion at an Assemblies of God congregation in Oklahoma when he was 20.

“When I’m trying to serve the Lord, I have a lot less screw-ups. Not that I’m perfect, but my life has changed in ways that I never thought was possible,” he told Fox News in March after being nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as DHS secretary.

Prior to his DHS tenure, Mullin had also participated in events by a far-right Christian Nationalist group in Tulsa called City Elders. The group, which is led by a Pentecostal evangelist, seeks to implement “Christian” rule locally and wants to encourage those in other cities to follow this model. While speaking at a City Elders event in 2022, Mullin bragged about hitting his kids with a belt and threatening violence against his daughter’s boyfriend.

Since taking the DHS post, he helped promote the “Rededicate 250” worship rally, invoked Bible verses to sanctify ICE, and has overseen DHS as it ramps up its social media posts that co-opt Bible verses. So this issue of A Public Witness considers how the DHS under Mullin continues to do violence to Scripture.

DHS Ramps Up Misuse of the Bible

Under Noem’s leadership, DHS last summer started creating videos that juxtapose DHS agents hunting for immigrants and firing guns with Bible verses (and often unauthorized use of popular songs or movie audio). These videos and a few other social media posts with Bible verses primarily drew from Old Testament passages, especially Proverbs and Isaiah (though they did venture once into the Sermon on the Mount as well as the Book of Psalms). Since Mullin took over, the number of Bible verses from DHS accounts has increased, and those used online and in Mullin’s speeches borrow from more New Testament passages.

ICE Can Do All Things.

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Instead of distorting history for ideological ends, a better way for Christians to honor the Semiquincentennial is to rededicate themselves to learning the more complicated story of Christianity’s role in American public life. Matthew Sutton’s expansive new book, Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity, is the perfect resource for understanding what the United States has been, not what some people wish it would be.

The book tells the stories of how so many different versions of Christianity have influenced the self-understanding of the United States. Some of them have enjoyed cultural dominance, reimagining the country in their own image. Others have been minority voices of dissent or marginal groups whose religious visions never took hold. All of them saw opportunity in the free market of religious expression to attract others to their religious mission.

Sutton argues that Christianity is an underappreciated force for understanding U.S. history. While many narratives focus on economics, race, and politics as sources of cultural change, religious values and agendas can hold their own in explaining what links the past to the present. The title Chosen Land reflects both the sacred character many have ascribed to their activities and the peculiar nature of a democratic society that provided the liberty to pursue them.

Specifically, his argument “links Christianity to key facets of national development, suggesting that to understand American distinctiveness fully, we must account for how Christianity shaped and was shaped by every major historical development from education to war. Americans’ success at weaving Christianity into all aspects of their culture is what made the United States so unique.”

While Sutton argues that Christianity is integral to grasping what America has become, he is also clear that the Christian tradition within the United States is itself a contested identity. Throughout the book, he tracks four different “streams” that intermingle and disperse to shape the contours of the country’s life:

• Conservatives “emphasized tradition, historic creeds, and the importance and centrality of the church and the church community.” This is not a political descriptor but a theological one. Conservatives “knew the world was a fallen place and hoped that their example would attract others to Christianity.”

• Revivalists prioritized the individual. In doing so, “they made Christianity a commodity, a choice, something that one could purchase or return like a pair of shoes based on the whims of the day. They shifted the act of conversion from being the means of entry for non-Christians into an end unto itself — a sacrament required of everyone to authenticate one’s faith.”

• Liberals privileged rationality, embracing the findings of science and expecting Christianity to evolve in response. They have also been the most open to ecumenical and interfaith connections and collaborations.

• Liberationists drew on the ideals of their faith to “free people from stifling gender norms, economic inequalities, and racism.”

Chosen Land describes how these four different strands of Christianity encountered and competed against each other to legitimize their causes, determine the direction of society, and define what it meant to be a Christian in the United States. It’s a plot that continues to unfold today.

Despite the lengthy nature of the volume and the breadth of events it covers, Sutton writes in a way that is both engaging and accessible to any curious reader. His work is likely to define how a generation of Americans perceives the ways church, state, and culture have intersected.

Religious studies scholar Anthea Butler writes, “Chosen Land is an insightful, compelling, and deftly written new interpretation of the history of Christianity in America. Sutton’s redefinition of America as a Holy Land is a powerful tool to understand America’s history, and its future.” That endorsement makes clear that this book warrants your attention, especially when so many other stories will be told this summer about the place of faith in our public life as America looks back on the last 250 years in partial, parochial, and partisan ways.

Matthew Sutton has graciously agreed to autograph his book for one lucky paid subscriber of A Public Witness. Upgrade your subscription today and you’ll receive ALL of our reporting, analysis, and commentary about the ways Christianity intersects with politics and culture. Plus, you might be the chosen one who receives a signed copy of Chosen Land in your mailbox.

As a public witness,

Beau Underwood

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Review: Genealogy Theology. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Genealogy Theology: Exploring Family Lines and Spiritual Legacies. By Frank G. Honeycutt.

2. After Years Fostering Interfaith Ties, San Diego Mosque Finds Allies in Grief. Ulaa Kuziez reported on a deadly shooting at a mosque this week.

3. Belarus Authoritarian Leader Welcomes US Evangelist Franklin Graham to Hold Massive Gathering. The Trump-backing evangelist is also cozy with authoritarian leaders of other nations.

4. Thousands Attend Protests in Selma and Montgomery for Voting Rights. Ralph Chapoco reported on a demonstration by clergy and others against gerrymandering efforts targeting Black Democratic members of Congress.

5. As Seminaries Shuttered, Union Grew. For Serene Jones, Controversy Was the Price of Survival. Fiona Murphy spoke with the retiring president of Union Theological Seminary.

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 Rededicate 250, gerrymandering, Adam Hamilton’s Senate campaign in Kansas, and the MAHA movement. Listen to the audio version here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or watch the video version here.

Follow Us on Bluesky

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

The Spring awards season for religion journalism wrapped up over the weekend with a few more for us. We’ve already received numerous honors this year, such as from the Religion Communicators Council and Religion News Association. Now, we earned a few more from the Associated Church Press, which brings together the leading publications in mainline Protestant life as well as some Catholic and evangelical publications.

Here are the awards we received from the ACP for our work in 2025:

• First place in national reporting (long format) for my piece, “The Surprising Story of How Speaker Johnson Read a Fake Jefferson Prayer.”

• Second place in nonfiction books for my latest, The Bible According to Christian Nationalists (which follows the first place win in the category last year for Baptizing America).

• Second place in devotional writing for Unsettling Advent.

• Third place in seasonal writing for my piece, “Department of Herod Security’s War on Christmas.”

• Third place in audio news story for Dangerous Dogma.

That’s quite the representation of the breadth of our work, with awards for A Public Witness, our popup Advent newsletter, our podcast, and my newest book. But as always, we couldn’t do this without the support of our paid subscribers and donors. So if you’re not yet a paid subscriber to A Public Witness, upgrade today to help us continue our award-winning journalism.

Other News of Note

• Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that the head of the Department of Labor’s Center for Faith (who has been leading the DoL’s worship services) is now also leading the DoL’s office to make sure federal contractors comply with anti-discrimination laws.

• The Department of Transportation hung up a large banner on its building declaring, “One Nation Under God.” DoT Secretary Sean Duffy has used his position to push Christianity.

• The Department of Homeland Security released a video using John 1:5 to suggest they are the light that the darkness cannot extinguish. This follows a pattern of DHS co-opting Bible verses in propaganda videos.

• New Air Force rules, which were designed to follow guidance from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, make it harder for service members to receive religious accommodations and reduce the input of chaplains.

• Chick-fil-A is famous for being closed on Sunday to observe the Sabbath. But now the fast food chain is being sued by the federal government for not accommodating an employee whose Sabbath is on Saturday.

• Episcopal Bishop Deon Johnson of Missouri spoke with St. Louis Public Radio about the immigration struggles experienced by his family.

• Emmanuel Nwachukwu wrote for Christianity Today about how churches in Sudan are struggling amid a brutal civil war.

• Next week, Pope Leo XIV will release his first encyclical, which will address the issues of human dignity in the era of AI.

• Many Catholics are mourning the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show, during which he often highlighted his Catholic faith. Last year, we published our own lament about the cancellation of his show.

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Noting that these monthly Christian services started one year ago, Hegseth called them “fitting and proper, especially given the business that we’re in.” Later in a prayer, he declared to God that those in the Pentagon were “seeking only to glorify you with what we do” and prayed that their actions would “glorify you in every single context.” He also asked that God would protect members of the U.S. military, adding, “Put on the armor of God in a worldly context and in a spiritual context for all of them.”

Unlike the last two services when he shared particularly violent prayers to justify the war in Iran, Hegseth shared a more subdued message and didn’t mention Iran. He recalled a trip earlier this month back to where he grew up in Minnesota, during which he went to church with his parents (at the Baptist megachurch where he used to attend as well). During the service, the preacher talked about how “at the foot of Christ’s cross, in the shadow of Christ, the ground is level. We are all equal before Christ.”

“Our works, our position, our status, our rank, our good intentions don’t matter in that context, and that should be both humbling for all of us, which I know it is for me,” added Hegseth, who held his Bible that’s stamped with Crusader symbols. “It’s also reassuring that it isn’t us that earns that salvation through our works, it’s through the blood of Jesus Christ.”

A military chaplain who opened the service also christened the Pentagon’s work as God’s. He asked God to help those in the military “to do the work that you’ve assigned to our hands in such a way that it blesses your people and brings glory and honor into your name.”

“This service serves as a vital opportunity for reflection, renewal, and edification in the midst of our demanding duties and shared responsibility of supporting our national security mission,” he added. “It is essential to pause and draw strength both from our faith and our community.”

At the conclusion of the service, the chaplain again prayed to God that as those present “depart in peace,” they would “do so with a renewed sense of purpose and passion to do the work that you’ve assigned to our hands.”

Turner, the seventh Southern Baptist to preach during the 13 monthly Pentagon services, was the second member of the Trump Cabinet to give a sermon at the Pentagon. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, also a former Southern Baptist pastor, preached during the March service. Turner’s also the second former NFL player to preach after businessman Jack Brewer in September.

Turner started his sermon by saying that he and “our beloved team at HUD, we thank God for each of you and what you do for our country.” Preaching about God promising (in Genesis 15) to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars and Paul recounting that story (in Romans 4), Turner urged those in the military to be like how Paul described Abraham by having “hope against hope” and believing in what’s unseen even in difficult times. He explained this kind of hope by sharing his experience in the NFL getting cut by the San Diego Chargers and then brought back (before getting cut again, though he left that part out of his sermon). Through it all, he remained hopeful, he said, because he “knew God was calling me back to the team.”

At the conclusion of his sermon, Turner led those present in reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Two members of the military then led congregational singing of “How Great Thou Art,” “How Great Is Our God,” and the “Doxology.”

‘Too Ridiculous’

The worship services at the Pentagon, which Hegseth started a year ago, have only featured rightwing patriarchal preachers. Several of them have joined Hegseth in using biblical references to justify military violence and even genocide. At the December “Christmas” service, Franklin Graham praised a “God of war” and urged the military leaders to follow a biblical call to genocide. In January, Hegseth read Psalm 144 as his prayer for the Venezuela military operation earlier that month. In March, Hegseth read a prayer that was basically a Mad Libs mashup of biblical violence. The next month, he read another violent prayer drawn from a monologue delivered by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

After A Public Witness broke the news about the Pulp Fiction prayer, the incident went viral on social media and sparked jokes by late night comics like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers. Saturday Night Live also mocked the moment with Colin Jost doing his popular Hegseth impersonation. Later, Jost appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and said he had actually pitched having his Hegseth character do the Pulp Fiction version of Ezekiel 25:17 as a joke before the April worship service.

“We were talking in the writers’ room, we were pitching ideas for one of the cold opens, like, two months ago. And I was like, ‘Would it be funny if Hegseth just did that Bible verse that they have in Pulp Fiction?’” Jost recounted. “We talked about it, and we were like, ‘That would be too ridiculous.’ And it would take up all this time in the cold open. … And then he for real did it! Like two weeks later! And I was like, ‘The good news is I’m being surveilled.’”

Despite the global headlines, late night jokes, and even a member of Congress mentioning it during a hearing with Hegseth, the secretary of defense has not addressed or even acknowledged the incident. He claimed during the April service that the prayer was previously used by military personnel who led a search and rescue mission in Iran to find a downed Air Force crew member. However, that has not been confirmed, nor is it clear if Hegseth was aware before the service that the prayer drew from the movie.

Hegseth spoke via video earlier this week at the “Rededicate 250” event on the National Mall. During his remarks, he shared, as he often does, the story of George Washington supposedly praying on bended knee in the snow at Valley Forge, but without acknowledging that the story is a myth. Turner spoke earlier this month at a “National Day of Prayer” event in the U.S. Capitol. He quoted Benjamin Franklin’s remarks to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 as Franklin requested that they pray, but Turner didn’t mention that Franklin’s proposal was overwhelmingly rejected by the delegates.

Meanwhile, monthly worship services at the Department of Labor, which Hegseth had inspired the start of, stopped this month following the ousters of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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In addition to the experience of playing at the stadium, the orchestra students also got cheaper game tickets and could sell them as a fundraiser for the program. So after the pre-game concert, we found our seats to watch the Cardinals game.

It’s at this point I should mention that Saturday saw the Cardinals hosting Missouri’s other team, the Kansas City Royals. And I am a lifelong Royals fan. If the Cardinals had been playing anyone else, I would’ve been happy to wear a red shirt. But not when they’re playing the Royals. Even better, I have a shirt that says “Kratz 19” on the back, which is from when my friend Erik Kratz played for them back in 2014 and 2015 (when the Royals went to the World Series both years and won in 2015 — I have to point that out!).

That morning before we left, my son saw my Royals shirt and incredulously asked, “Are you really going to wear that?” His teacher had clearly gotten them all pumped up for the Cardinals and he even wore a Cardinals cap (teenage rebellion is a problem). But the real feeling of disconnect came later.

I’ve been to Royals games at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. And I’ve been to Cardinals games at Busch before when they played other teams, and I cheered for the Redbirds. I’ve also been to Wrigley Field when the Cubs played someone I didn’t care about, so I just decided to root, root, root for the home team. But Saturday was the first time I’ve gone into enemy territory to cheer for a team. Since it’s the next closest stadium to Kauffman, there were a good number of Royals fans. But our blue dots were, of course, still dramatically swamped by the red sea of Cardinals fans. Even where I sat, among other orchestra families, I stood out. Although Jefferson City is halfway between the two teams, the city has always been more of a Cardinals town. So I had to endure some ribbing from friends I sat with as their Cardinals beat my poor Royals (though the Royals came back to win the next day).

Standing in line to enter, I was conscious that I was a minority voice. My eyes also noticed every Royals fan as I passed them in the stadium. I almost felt like we should nod our heads to encourage each other to stand strong. But it was during the game itself that the experience diverged most significantly from previous games I’ve attended. When the Cardinals had a good play, the stadium erupted in cheers and applause. It was weird not joining in. When the Royals had a good play, it was almost like the crowd wasn’t even watching.

The next day, officials in the Trump administration and various rightwing preachers gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for their “Rededicate 250” rally that mixed worship songs and Bible readings with made-up Christian Nationalist history, a glorification of the United States, praise for President Donald Trump, and even claiming divine support for Trump’s desire to build a massive ballroom (and that’s what it means to take the Lord’s name in vain). Throughout it all, the crowd there cheered and applauded.

I didn’t attend in person, though I’ve been at plenty of such MAGA Christian Nationalist gatherings before. But as I listened to the event’s livestream, it at first felt a bit like being a Royals fan in Busch Stadium. Then I remembered there’s a big difference. While they put on a show and had powerful people send in video comments, they’re not actually the majority. As new polling shows, most people in this country are not rooting for the red hats or the Christian Nationalist team. The “Rededicate 250” organizers and speakers want us to feel like we’re in the minority so we’ll give up.

Redividing America

Sunday’s “Rededicate 250” was largely what I expected. Except for the fact that Trump did nothing for it. He was supposed to send video greetings, but they instead played a video he recorded for an earlier event. Not only could Trump, who hasn’t attended a Sunday worship service in 4.5 years, not be bothered to even show up for his “worship” rally, he didn’t even record a new video for it! The preachers and politicians sang his praises about how godly he was for announcing this event, and he made them out to be liars as he instead went golfing.

The rest of the day included familiar messages, although it was a lot less exciting than a ballgame with less interesting music between plays and a lot more (and longer) breaks for pitching changes. There were references to a May 17, 1776, event that was significantly different from Sunday’s gathering. There were mentions of fake history, like the false story about George Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge that was depicted on the stage and mentioned by speakers like Pete Hegseth.

There were numerous recitations of Bible verses that Christian Nationalists like to use to justify their efforts. The most used Sunday was Psalm 33:12 about “blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” even though that passage is about Israel as “the people he chose for his inheritance.” Rev. Jonathan Falwell, who for some reason was invited instead of his brother, invoked Matthew 5:14 to call the United States the “city on the hill,” even though Jesus was actually talking about his followers and not a nation. And organizers played a video of Trump reading 2 Chronicles 7:14, which was actually just a rebroadcast of the video he recorded for last month’s “America Reads the Bible” effort.

There were attempts to suggest the event was unifying despite the dearth of religious or political diversity. Perhaps most comically, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina tried to frame it as part of the nation’s “Judeo-Christian” heritage after starting his speech by repeatedly shouting, “How many of you love Jesus?!” And then he ended by shouting “Jesus!” several more times. Throughout, the rally was sectarian and partisan. All while the government used taxpayer resources to promote this quasi-official event that lacked bipartisan oversight or pluralistic input.

Anti-abortion activist Alveda King used her remarks to sing “This Little Light of Mine,” which she likes to do at government worship services. Franklin Graham bemoaned sin in American culture, complaining about those who are “lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive” (hmm, if only he could think of someone that sounds like). Lou Engle got down on his knees to, again, turn the country around with a dramatic prayer. Several speakers invoked the Christian faith of abolitionists and civil rights leaders, all while also supporting efforts to gerrymander congressional districts in order to undo the gains of the civil rights movement and chip away at Black representation.

Sprinkled between the divisive partisanship, fake history, and unconstitutional sectarianism from government leaders, Christian musicians and choirs did their best to worshipwash it all and to try and keep the crowd from leaving. And the crowd cheered and applauded for it all. Watching it, I almost felt like a Royals fan in Busch Stadium. But then I remembered a few thousand people don’t represent American democracy, and the National Mall on Sunday wasn’t the whole ballgame.

Survey Says…

These days, it can often feel like Christian Nationalism is the majority opinion. The crowd is cheering as they make big plays. But while Christian Nationalists have grabbed significant positions of power, many times it’s just that they’re being extra loud. New survey data from the Pew Research Center shows that those of us who oppose Christian Nationalism far outnumber its advocates.

For the first time since Pew started asking about it, most Americans say they have heard of Christian Nationalism. But as more people are learning about the concept and seeing it in action, more don’t like it. In fact, three times as many Americans say they have a negative view of Christian Nationalism than those who support it. (Most Americans still aren’t sure what to think, which is why we need to continue to warn about how it endangers democracy and the Christian witness).

Relatedly, most Americans still support church-state separation. Several speakers on Sunday attacked this constitutional concept because they correctly recognize that church-state separation is the antidote to Christian Nationalism. If we maintain such separation, then the Christian Nationalists can’t accomplish what they want to. But despite their attacks on this idea, the separation of church and state is the real American heritage worth celebrating and rededicating ourselves to. And most Americans agree, with 54% saying the “government should enforce separation of church/state” and only 13% disagreeing. Additionally, 81% say the federal government “should not declare Christianity the official religion of the U.S.,” while only 17% want that. And a majority of Americans (52%) say that “conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to push their religious values in the government and public schools.”

Even when looking at partisan and religious breakdowns, Pew found majority support. That is, the winning opinions among both Democrats and Republicans are that the government should continue to enforce church-state separation and we should not declare Christianity the nation’s official religion. The same thing is true for all religious groups, even White evangelicals.

Simply put, what we saw on Sunday was not only a misrepresentation of American history and principles (and Christianity) but also a misrepresentation of the American people today. While we must push back, we cannot allow their misdirection to lead us to give up. Because unlike the Royals this season, we can win.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. This Mother’s Day, the Church Cannot Be Silent About Black Maternal Deaths. Nicolle Fletcher and Phillip D. Fletcher reflected on a new “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America” initiative.

2. Between Christendom and Faith. Michael Mellette wrote about the problems of the commercialized American church.

3. Review: Emotion in Early Christianity. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Emotion in Early Christianity by Andrew Crislip.

4. Thomas Paine Helped Start America. In the Trump Era, He’s Under Fire. Jack Jenkins wrote about the contemporary debate over Paine’s legacy and what it means.

5. The Cherokee Bible, One of the Language’s First Books, Is a Window Between Worldviews. Margaret Bender and Tom Belt wrote about the continuing impact of 19th-century efforts to translate the Bible into a Native American language.

Dangerous Dogma

This week’s episode features a conversation between Brian Kaylor and Warren Throckmorton about his new book, The Christian Past that Wasn’t: Debunking the Christian Nationalist Myths that Hijack History. Listen to the audio version here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or watch the video version here.

Follow Us on Bluesky

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

On Wednesday (May 13), Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty Executive Director Amanda Tyler testified in a U.S. House committee to oppose so-called “anti-Sharia law” legislation. She explained that “targeting individuals and groups based on religion violates our country’s constitutional commitment to religious freedom for all.” Denouncing such legislation being pushed in D.C. and in states across the country, she argued this hurts all Americans because “when any person’s religious freedom is threatened or diminished, it weakens everyone’s religious freedom.”

“When the government itself targets religious groups with broad generalizations and baseless accusations, it only adds to the culture of discrimination that already harms Muslim families and children. It models bullying rather than respect,” she added. “Particularly at a time of rising political violence, targeting groups based on perceived differences threatens to exacerbate tensions and contribute to a culture of fear, discrimination, and violence. … Rather than fearmongering and distorting religion for perceived political gain, our country’s leaders should be actively working to make the constitutional promise of full belonging without regard to religion a reality for all.”

Tyler’s right and I’m glad she was in the U.S. Capitol to make that case. And, as she noted, it’s unfortunately something we must push back against across the country. I testified against four such “anti-Sharia law” bills in Missouri this year. Sadly, lawmakers passed one (despite my excellent arguments) and sent it to the governor’s desk this week. We won’t always stop bigoted bills. But we must not sit by quietly.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• Peter Smith of The Associated Press previewed the upcoming Rededicate 250 “worship” rally (with comments from Brian Kaylor).

• Sean Scott of The Maine Monitor wrote about Christian Nationalist efforts in the Pine Tree State (with quotes from Brian Kaylor).

• MAGA pastor Mark Burns led the dedication of a golden statue of Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Burns insists it isn’t “a golden calf,” which is obvious since this graven image is a golden statue of Nebuchadnezzar Trump.

• During a Canadian Christian conference, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith argued that a new pipeline project follows the teachings of Jesus.

• Jill Nelson of Christianity Today reported on how Ukrainian Christians continue to worship even as Russian military strikes hit their communities and churches.

• Three Baptist pastors were shot dead in an act of terrorism in Northeast India while traveling home from a denominational meeting.

• Russell Contreras of Axios wrote about how “America’s pastor pipeline is collapsing” as fewer people are preparing to become pastors (especially impacting rural and Black communities).

• NPR reported that while church attendance in the United States is down, “cowboy churches” are on the rise.

• Numerous presidents of Christian colleges are warning that a new Trump administration regulation regarding financial aid poses an “existential threat” to their schools.

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The controversial services at DoL, which have sparked a lawsuit and complaints from DoL employees, started in December after Chavez-DeRemer attended a similar service at the Pentagon in October. Inspired by that initiative, which Pete Hegseth started in May 2025, Chavez-DeRemer decided the DoL should also organize and host monthly services, which were branded each month as the “Secretary’s Prayer Service.”

“I thought that this would be something important for the Department of Labor,” she explained during the first service in December. “And as we celebrate 250 years in 2026, [this country] will probably need a little more prayer.”

The services, which have been explicitly Christian, have centered a Catholic approach to faith, prayer, and Scripture. Chavez-DeRemer and the leaders of the DoL’s new Center for Faith are Catholic. Guest preachers have criticized nonbelievers, argued that DoL employees are working for God and Trump, and evangelistically urged employees to follow Jesus. (I reported on all five services, each time being the only reporter to watch and write about the service.)

The services occurred in the Cesar Chavez Memorial Auditorium of the DoL headquarters in Washington, D.C., though the April event instead referred to the room as the FPB Auditorium (for Francis Perkins Building) after an explosive New York Times exposé of allegations of sexual abuse and rape committed by the late labor activist Cesar Chavez. DoL leaders reacted to the news by removing a portrait of Chavez and hanging an American flag over the engraving of his name outside the auditorium. Meanwhile, a massive banner of President Donald Trump, who has also been accused of sexual abuse and rape by multiple women, still hangs on the outside of the Francis Perkins Building that serves as the DoL headquarters next to the National Mall.

At the end of the service on April 8, DoL Center for Faith Director Kenneth Wolfe, who has led each service, announced that the next one would occur on May 13 with a sermon by Father James Searby of the Basilica of Saint Mary in Alexandria, Virginia.

In addition to a familiar liturgy and format during the services, the timing and promotion of them also followed a pattern each month. All five services were held on the second Wednesday of the month, which this month was May 13. Additionally, DoL employees each month received an email invite a week before, and fliers advertising the service were posted around the DoL headquarters building. None of these things have occurred in May. Officials in the DoL’s Center for Faith and Office of Pubic Affairs refused to comment or even acknowledge the service had been canceled.

Less than two weeks after the April service, DoL Secretary Chavez-DeRemer was ousted after just 13 months on the job. She had been dogged for months by various scandals, including allegations she was having an affair with a member of her security team and that she had used department resources for personal trips. Some of her top aides resigned during an investigation into her conduct and how they assisted her. Additionally, her husband was barred from the DoL headquarters in D.C. after at least two female DoL employees claimed he acted improperly toward them.

Trump has yet to nominate a new Labor secretary. In the meantime, Keith Sonderling is serving as acting secretary after being confirmed last year as deputy secretary under Chavez-DeRemer. Sonderling, who is Jewish and has spoken about the workplace discrimination his grandparents faced because of their faith, is largely seen as a policy wonk who was already running the main operations of the DoL while Chavez-DeRemer sought to be a figurehead who traveled.

Sonderling briefly spoke at the January worship service, which Chavez-DeRemer missed due to travels. He said that Chavez-DeRemer “envisioned [the service] as a time for people of all faiths to reflect and recenter amid our very busy schedules.”

“It’s important we all are here today to come together, to take a moment, to take a pause, to reflect on the work we’re doing and our mission here, which is, of course, putting the American worker first,” he added. “So regardless of your beliefs, we hope you leave here today feeling encouraged and reminded of the important role you all play in serving the American people.”

Although Sonderling spoke of bringing people together regardless of their beliefs, the service was entirely Christian and guest preacher Alveda King, an anti-abortion activist who serves as senior advisor on faith and community outreach for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in that agency’s Center for Faith, used her sermon to criticize those who are not religious.

While there wasn’t a worship service inside the DoL this week, the agency is helping promote the “worship” rally on the National Mall this Sunday that Trump announced to supposedly celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. DoL’s Center for Faith has an advertisement on its website for “Rededicate 250,” though it uses an image of George Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge despite that being a myth. Additionally, Sonderling filmed a short social media video to encourage people to attend on Sunday. Other than one Trump-backing rabbi, all of the announced speakers are MAGA Christian politicians and preachers.

Small Business Administration Borrows the Idea

While the organizing and hosting of monthly worship services has been paused at DoL, such services continue at the Pentagon — with the May service, the first since Hegseth offered a violent prayer that borrowed from Pulp Fiction, planned for next week. Additionally, this trend has spread to at least one more federal agency.

Last month, Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that the trend of government worship services had spread to the Small Business Administration. She noted they launched their “Faith and Fellowship Prayer Service” on March 12 with a sermon by Alveda King. An SBA employee told Wired that it made them “uncomfortable to know that there’s a Christian prayer service happening in a government building, which is supposed to be religiously neutral” and that “there were no faith services under Biden.” According to the SBA email inviting people to the service, they were told not to share it or the livestream link with people outside the agency.

“SBA is proud to offer optional monthly prayer services to all employees and continues to leverage its new Office of Faith to increase outreach to religious Americans, who were openly targeted and attacked during the Biden administration,” SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons told Wired. “This administration strongly supports religious freedom and will continue to defend those who wish to celebrate their faith.”

Since the report by Wired, I’ve learned additional details not reported about the inaugural SBA worship service. During her sermon, King referred to Habakkuk 2:2, where God is recorded as saying, “Write the vision and make it plain.” She then applied that to how she thought SBA employees should do their jobs: “Keep making it plain. The red tape is too much. People can’t always comply. They don’t know how.”

Janna Bowman, director of Faith Outreach for the SBA and the head of the SBA’s Center for Faith, read a prayer of “general thanksgiving” from the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgical resource for worship in the Episcopal Church. The prayer includes declarations about Jesus and his death and resurrection: “Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.”

An SBA program analyst read Mathew 5:14-16, in the New King James Version, about Jesus’s followers being the light of the world. The passage is where the “city on a hill” language comes from, which is often co-opted by Christian Nationalist politicians to talk about the United States instead of the followers of Jesus. The service also included singing, such as when King and Bowman led those present in singing “This Little Light of Mine.” That’s King’s favorite anthem, which she often starts singing at events, including at DoL’s service in January and last week during a webinar hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement.

Although the SBA said this would be a monthly effort, they did not answer my requests for comment about whether there had been a service in April or thus far in May. (Anyone with information about government worship services at SBA or other federal agencies can contact me by email or on Signal at BrianKaylor.12.)

Although the agency has not joined others in the Trump administration in posting numerous sectarian messages on social media, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, who briefly served as a U.S. senator from Georgia before losing to Rev. Raphael Warnock, has used her official accounts to do so. Earlier this month, she shared a social media message on the “National Day of Prayer” to encourage people to “offer daily prayers for our nation, leaders, military, and for God’s providence.” She attached to her prayer request a painting of the mythic moment of Washington supposedly praying at Valley Forge. Loeffler, who is Catholic, has also used her SBA accounts to share Scripture she heard in Mass and lessons from Trump-backing Catholic leaders. She quoted the Sermon on the Mount to call Trump a blessed peacemaker (a commonly misused verse in the administration) and on the anniversary of the assassination attempt of Trump in Pennsylvania, she invoked Ephesians 6:12 to suggest God saved Trump (based on an absurd reading of the verse number and a clock that I critiqued in The Bible According to Christian Nationalists).

Such sectarian messages are starting to face legal pushback. The worship services at the Pentagon and DoL have already sparked lawsuits from Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair of the national board of trustees). And yesterday (May 13), AU joined with Democracy Forward and Bryan Schwartz Law to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture on behalf of federal workers and the National Federation of Federal Employees. The suit focuses on sectarian messages by USAD Secretary Brooke Rollins, which the litigants insist violate the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.

“Trump is not Jesus, federal agencies are not churches, and cabinet secretaries are not government preachers,” AU President and CEO Rachel Laser said about the suit. “Secretary Rollins’s Easter message is a particularly egregious example of Trump administration officials abusing the power of public office to impose their beliefs on others and promote one narrow view of Christianity. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Across the federal government, this administration has misused taxpayer resources to preach, hold government-sponsored prayer services during work time, and broadcast Christian Nationalism on official social media channels. Not on our watch.”

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor

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By the way, during a trip to Washington, D.C., last month, I stopped by the Department of Labor headquarters in search of the “church” where they hold their monthly worship services. Here’s my short video report:

With the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence nearing, the “Rededicate 250” event is being cast as “a national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving.” It’s being planned and led by a group called “Freedom 250,” which is already a big red MAGA hat flag.

A decade ago, Congress created America250, a bipartisan, government-funded nonprofit to lead the 250th birthday celebrations. But President Donald Trump apparently didn’t like that the congressional commission overseeing the effort was pushing back against some of his plans. So in December he created Freedom 250 to instead lead various festivities, including this Sunday’s day of prayer and a crypto-sponsored Ultimate Fighting Championship mixed martial arts match on the White House lawn next month on Trump’s birthday (and somehow the UFC fight will be the less profane and more historically appropriate of the two).

With his own nonprofit outside of congressional oversight, Trump has been able to plan and monetize U.S. Semiquincentennial events that lack bipartisanship, historical accuracy, or financial accountability. Yet, this group’s events are now promoted by various government agencies, using taxpayer resources to advance the MAGA and Christian Nationalist agenda of this quasi-official group that supplanted the official commission. Making matters worse, his Freedom 250 group is partnering with various Christian Nationalist groups, like Hillsdale College, Moms for Liberty, Museum of the Bible, National Religious Broadcasters, and David Barton’s Wallbuilders. And as companies seek to find favor with Trump, it’s also receiving sponsorship funds from John Deere, Lockheed Martin, Mastercard, Palantir, UFC, United Airlines, and others (which has led to calls for boycotts, especially because of their support for Sunday’s “worship” rally).

The lineup for Sunday’s “prayer” event quickly confirms the concerns this would be a partisan event. The only political figures speaking are Republicans, including Secretary of Pulp Fiction Pete Hegseth, Speaker Mike Johnson, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Senator Tim Scott. Additionally, the list of selected preachers is basically a who’s who of Trump’s court preachers, including Franklin Graham, Paula White-Cain, Lou Engle, Robert Jeffress, Jack Graham, Jentezen Franklin, Lorenzo Sewell, Gary Hamrick, Jonathan Falwell, and Bishop Robert Barron. Throw in Eric Metaxas, one of the family members from Duck Dynasty, and anti-abortion activist Alveda King, and it’s quite clear that this event is as lopsided theologically as it is politically (and ironically doesn’t include the faith traditions of most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who were largely deists and what we now call mainline Protestants). Oh, and of course, there will be several musical guests there to worshipwash the Christian Nationalism, including Chris Tomlin, a Hillsong musician, and choirs from Hillsdale College and Liberty University (along with various military bands).

Far from a unifying, bipartisan, and pluralistic event representative of the diversity of America, the unofficial “worship” gathering on the National Mall won’t just be competing with actual church services but also with reality. And to justify this Christian Nationalist takeover of the Semiquincentennial (in hopes of a Christian Nationalist makeover for the nation), the Freedom 250 organizers and supporters are cooking up an inaccurate view of American history. So this issue of A Public Witness unpacks why the gathering was planned for May 17 and the fight to remake the past and present.

May the Seventeenth Be With You

The date for Freedom 250’s “national jubilee of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving” is no coincidence. It’s an attempt to redefine the United States as having been created as a “Christian” nation.

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

1. Review: Early Christian Theology. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Early Christian Theology: A History by J. Warren Smith.

2. Did the Founders Create a Christian Nation? No, but Religion Did Shape Their Thinking. Peter Smith talked to historians to offer a more accurate understanding of the United States’ founding.

3. ‘Which Side Are You Going to Be on?’ Kansas Faith Leaders Urge Churches to Protect Immigrants. Grace Hills reported on clergy in the Sunflower State who are organizing to push back against anti-immigrant actions by the federal government.

4. Evangelical Groups Warn Trump’s Deportations Could Leave 1.3M ‘Torn Apart’ From Families. Jack Jenkins wrote about a new report from World Relief and the National Association of Evangelicals.

5. After the Los Angeles Wildfires, Clergy Crossed Denominational Lines and Forged New Bonds. Deepa Bharath reported on how houses of worship are rebuilding and working together after devastating wildfires in California.

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

A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released this week included several interesting findings on how Americans are responding to various religious-political moments. Here are a couple of highlights:

• 87% disapproved of President Donald Trump posting an AI image depicting himself as Jesus, with only 9% approving. Overwhelming majorities of all faith groups reacted negatively to this.

• 69% disapproved of Pete Hegseth’s violent prayer at the March Pentagon worship service (which was first reported by A Public Witness) that included a request for “overwhelming violence” and “no mercy” in the war against Iran. Only 27% approved, and even a majority of White evangelicals reacted negatively to the prayer.

• 66% approved of Pope Leo XIV urging U.S. leaders to reject war and work toward peace, with only 30% disapproving.

It’s great that these items were polled so we can have a better sense of how people are responding. While it was clear that the AI-Jesus image was widely unpopular, I wasn’t sure how Hegseth’s violent religious rhetoric was playing among evangelicals. So it’s encouraging to see most people are rejecting his heretical Crusader theology, though we still have work to do to challenge it and help more people reject it.

The co-opting of sacred language and Bible verses (not to mention movie lines) is discouraging and upsetting. But the good news is it’s a minority opinion, even among Christians. Let us keep challenging those who push heretical theology. But may we also be encouraged that more people already agree with us.

Survey Says…

Other News of Note

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced he’s investigating public school districts to see if they’re complying with a state law mandating the display of a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments. Paxton has previously faced investigations himself for committing adultery, bearing false witness, and alleged theft.

• Harmeet Kaur of CNN wrote about Pete Hegseth’s use of the word “Pharisees” to attack journalists, with comments from Amy-Jill Levine, Craig Morrison, Sam Perry, and Brian Kaylor.

• Laura Pylvänäinen wrote for Religion Unplugged about how the religious Iran war rhetoric by Pete Hegseth and others is dividing Christians in Alabama.

• Kimberly Winston wrote for ARC about the longshot California gubernatorial campaign of New Apostolic Reformation preacher Ché Ahn, who claims God called him to run (but then Ahn didn’t make the ballot so he’s waging a write-in campaign).

• In a conversation with journalist Jason DeRose and Rev. Gabriel Salguero, NPR looked at how Christians are responding to the Trump administration’s actions against immigrants and the co-opting of Scripture to justify it.

• Adrienne Matei of The Guardian reported on the Christian Nationalism inside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

• A bill advancing in Louisiana would criminalize homelessness. Some Christians are speaking out against it.

• Faith leaders in Ohio and Tennessee this week waged public advocacy efforts to prevent state executions.

• Robert Downen of Texas Monthly wrote a deep-dive look at the religious and political influence of Paul Pressler (who helped spearhead the rightward shift of the Southern Baptist Convention) and his alleged sexual abuse of multiple teenage boys and young men.

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“Our press is just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth declared during a press conference last month after recounting a sermon he heard about some Pharisees criticizing Jesus in Mark 3 for healing a man’s shriveled hand on the Sabbath.

“The legacy, Trump-hating press: Your politically motivated animus for President Trump nearly completely blinds you from the brilliance of our American warriors. The Pharisees scrutinized every good act in order to find a violation, only looking for the negative. The hardened hearts of our press are calibrated only to impugn,” Hegseth added. “I would ask you to open your eyes to the goodness, the historic success of our troops, the courage of this president, and this historic moment for a deal that could end the Iranian nuclear threat. The incredible battlefield victory laid before your eyes. The not one but two incredible rescue missions — miracles, you might say.”

The next day, Hegseth criticized reporting about the poor food quality aboard U.S. ships in the Middle East as false, though more reporting continues to document with images concerns about the food. Writing on Elon Musk’s X platform about the claims, Hegseth called it “more FAKE NEWS from the Pharisee Press” (which probably would’ve been a good newspaper name back in the first century, along with the Sadducee Sentinel, Essene Enquirer, and Zealot Gazette).

A couple of weeks later, a Department of Defense account on X posted a graphic from a rightwing organization claiming that on major media news apps there had been 634 “left-leaning articles” about the Iran war and only 41 “right-leaning articles.” The DoD account captioned it: “Secretary Hegseth was right — the media is filled with Pharisees.”

Putting aside the absurdity of the graphic that labeled any story noting how the war wasn’t going well or how the U.S. was committing war crimes as “left-leaning” (instead of reality-based), the use of “Pharisee” as a stand-in for “left-leaning” journalist shows how divorced from the biblical texts Hegseth’s favorite new insult has become. And as his use of it at the press conference suggests, he’s calling someone a “Pharisee” simply based on whether they criticize Trump or the war in Iran, which makes Trump the Jesus-like figure in that analogy (not that Trump would ever depict himself as the Great Physician).

But there’s another problem with how Hegseth is using the term “Pharisees” as an insult: He seems to be drawing upon inaccurate and antisemitic uses of the term. But he refuses to stop, even when confronted about it being disrespectful.

While testifying before a U.S. Senate committee last week, Hegseth again invoked the old Jewish group as he attacked journalists for not being pro-war enough (and pro-administration spin enough). A bit later in the hearing, Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada criticized him for using the “problematic and historically weaponized term that casts Jewish communities as hypocritical or morally corrupt.” As Hegseth dismissively laughed at the senator, who is Jewish and even served as president of her Reform synagogue before entering politics, she insisted that “words matter.” Noting that such rhetoric can suggest his department “is going to target specific groups or individuals of people based on their religion,” she asked why he’s using the term in “a historically hurtful” way.

“I feel like it’s a pretty accurate term for folks who don’t see the plank in their own eye and always want to see what’s wrong with an operation as opposed to the historic success of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, so I stand by it,” he insisted as he borrowed a teaching from Jesus that was actually directed toward his disciples and not the Pharisees (and that wasn’t about dropping bombs since it’s literally found in the same sermon as “love your enemies”).

Rosen angrily responded by blasting Hegseth for not being respectful and for being antisemitic. In response, Hegseth quietly sat as if being dared by Samuel L. Jackson to “say ‘what’ again.”

Given Hegseth’s insistence on co-opting a biblical term and employing it out of context as an insult against reporters doing their job, this issue of A Public Witness takes a look at the real Pharisees and the lesson Hegseth is missing with his childish name-calling.

Will the Real Pharisees Please Stand Up?

New Testament professor Roland Deines has called the Pharisees “good guys with bad press.” If Hegseth learns that, he might switch course and borrow from Paul to declare himself “a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees.”

That description of “good guys with bad press” might surprise many Christians since the group often gets a bad rap in sermons. But the assessment by Deines is widely shared among New Testament scholars and among Jewish scholars and rabbis.

Read more

He quickly took his first question from the comedians posing as the White House press corps: “Uh, yeah. When you recited that Bible verse from Pulp Fiction about ‘vengeance and furious anger,’ um, did you know it was fake and it wasn’t really in the Bible?”

“Yeah!” Jost’s Hegseth responded aggressively and unconvincingly.

“But also, I do believe that someday it will be. In Bible 2: Electric Bible-aloo. Now, I’m not going to apologize because I wear my religion on my sleeve literally. I have a tattoo on my forearm of Jesus choking out Jimmy Kimmel,” he added, alluding to Hegseth’s Crusader tattoos that he also has stamped into the leather of his olive green bespoke ESV Bible.

This adds to the growing list of jokes stemming from a viral story that broke here at A Public Witness with our reporting on April’s Pentagon worship service. We thought we had reached new heights when our reporting on March’s government worship service landed one of us (Brian) an interview with On the Media. But now the fact that he was the only journalist to watch these services live has paid off on a scale we could never have predicted.

Since we last wrote about the Pulp Fiction prayer phenomenon, both Seth Meyers and Jimmy Kimmel have joked about it on their late night talk shows (adding to the SNL skit and earlier jokes by Stephen Colbert). And this viral story even made its way into congressional hearings last week, with Democratic Rep. Salud Carbajal of California saying directly to Hegseth: “We have something in common. I’m also a fan of Pulp Fiction. And no, the movie is not an accurate portrayal of the Bible. You know what I’m talking about.” (Hegseth did not respond to the quip.)

Our award-winning journalism is clearly making a difference. And this week we’re marking the fifth anniversary of the start of A Public Witness. So after lighting five birthday candles, this issue of A Public Witness reflects on the highlights of the past year as we look forward to again inspiring members of the U.S. Congress, national journalists, and late night comics.

Quite a Year

Over the past 12 months, we published a weekly roundup and 115 pieces exploring the intersection of faith, culture, and politics. Of those 115 pieces, about 30% went only to paid subscribers (who can also write comments on any post to add to the conversation). We covered a lot of important ground, including events and topics that would’ve otherwise been overlooked.

Our path to discovering Hegseth’s Pulp Fiction prayer came as we’ve often been the only outlet covering government prayer services, as some federal agencies organize, host, and conduct Christian worship. So we’ve covered the various services at the Pentagon and have produced the only reports on multiple services at the Department of Labor. Our reporting helped inspire lawsuits from Americans United for Separation of Church and State against both agencies.

Building on previous reporting, we’ve continued to cover issues around immigration and the U.S. government’s crackdown on immigrants and their allies. This has included reports on churches winning decisions in lawsuits against DHS, the misuse of the Bible and the co-option of Christmas by DHS, the deporting of pastors and lay church leaders, the silence of Kristi Noem’s church as she oversaw DHS violence, an anti-ICE protest in a church, and DHS violence against clergy peacefully protesting.

Similarly, we’ve covered issues of war, including Christian opposition to the Iran war (as well as earlier criticism of a U.S. raid on Venezuela), a faith-based rally against war, the misuse of the Bible by the Pentagon (and by Israeli leaders), and profane pro-war claims by President Donald Trump.

In this year of celebrations for America’s 250th anniversary, we’ve unpacked the bad history and problematic policies pushed by Christian Nationalists. Like the inaccurately named “Religious Liberty Commission” (and antisemitism that erupted on it), a popular fake prayer story about George Washington, efforts to teach inaccurate “Christian” history in schools, anti-Muslim bigotry by lawmakers, and efforts to put a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments (as well as an atrocious ruling to allow Texas to mandate such “Ten Commandments” posters).

We also considered a number of other important issues at the intersection of faith and politics, including the death penalty (in Missouri and Alabama), anti-vaccine efforts, the promotion of Confederate leaders, climate change, and attacks on late night comics like Stephen Colbert.

We also published reviews of 12 books, with a paid subscriber each month randomly chosen to receive an autographed copy of that month’s book. These reviews included works on greed, faith and science, rethinking how to lead churches today, the emergence of the MAGA movement, the Book of Revelation, and more (including, of course, the now award-winning book The Bible According to Christian Nationalists).

Another way of looking back at what we’ve published over the last year is to consider our most popular pieces. We like to count down for suspense, but everyone should be able to guess our most-read piece this time. Here are the top stories from the past 12 months:

10. Bombing God’s Love (June 22)

9. The Silence of Kristi Noem’s Church (Jan. 29)

8. Not Worth It (Sep. 11).

7. At Pentagon Christmas Service, Franklin Graham Praises ‘God of War’ (Dec. 17).

6. Doug Wilson Preaches at Pentagon, Compares Services to Day of Pentecost (Feb. 17).

5. At Pentagon Worship Service, Hegseth Casts Iran Conflict as Violent Holy War Against God’s Enemies (March 25).

4. At National Prayer Breakfast, Hegseth Says US Soldiers Gain Salvation by Dying for ‘Christian Nation’ (Feb. 5).

3. Chris Tomlin’s Worshipwashing of Charlie Kirk (Sept. 22).

2. Protesters Disrupt Southern Baptist Church of Pastor Who Leads ICE Office in Minnesota (Jan. 18).

1. Hegseth Borrows Violent Prayer From ‘Pulp Fiction’ to Bless Iran War at April Pentagon Worship Service (April 15).

Community Effort

We appreciate everyone who has been reading and sharing our work. The viral Pulp Fiction prayer story is just one example of the influence of A Public Witness. Our work is also often cited by larger publications as we provide unique, in-depth news and analysis. In just the past 12 months, that has included cites for stories other than the Pulp Fiction prayer in articles by the Associated Press, The Christian Century, CNN, The Guardian, MS NOW, New York Magazine, Religion News Service, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and others. Pretty impressive impact on national conversations for a publication with such a small staff and budget!

Additionally, we just won several awards from the Religion Communicators Council and Religion News Association for pieces published at A Public Witness (in addition to other awards for our seasonal e-newsletter Unsettling Advent and more). These awards help show our commitment to bringing you quality Christian journalism.

We’ve covered a lot, not just this year but throughout the five years of publishing A Public Witness. And a quick look at current events shows how desperately our work is needed. So we’re just getting started.

The community that is growing here encourages and inspires us to keep up the work. We appreciate all of you for reading. Together, we are creating a public witness as a counter to Christian Nationalism and other heresies. And we literally could not do this without the support of our paid subscribers and donors. So if you’re not yet a paid subscriber, you can upgrade today to help continue our award-winning (and late night comedy-inspiring) journalism.

As a public witness,

Brian Kaylor & Jeremy Fuzy

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Top 5 at wordandway.org

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

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

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

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

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

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We’re Honored

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

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

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

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

by Jeremy Fuzy, Word&Way Digital Editor

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

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

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

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

Other News of Note

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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