Here’s the weekly roundup from A Public Witness. This week we published a report on the latest proposal by a prominent Christian Nationalist preacher and a review of a forthcoming book by a journalist on women leaving churches.
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Top 5 at wordandway.org
Eulogies Do Not Save the Living. Jack Nassar wrote about how Christian denominations can practice real solidarity with Palestinian Christians.
Clergy Rally for Haitians in Maryland County Amid Fears of ICE Surge. Jack Jenkins reported from a rally with Rev. William Barber II and other clergy.
‘Our Immigrants Are Invisible’: A Pastor Ministers to the Frightened at Immigration Court. Fiona Murphy reported on an ELCA Lutheran minister showing up at immigration hearings in New York City.
An AP Reporter Spends the Night Locked Inside Jerusalem’s Holiest Church With Clergy and Pilgrims. Giovanna Dell’Orto reflected on spending a night locked in a Jerusalem church with clergy and pilgrims.
‘I Am a Person of Faith’: How Christianity Shaped Dolly Parton’s Music and Spirit. Adelle M. Banks wrote about the faith of the country music icon who died this week.
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 revelations that the Department of Homeland Security has been spying in churches, a controversial golf ad, and a White Sox night celebrating Pope Leo. Listen to the audio version here (or wherever you listen to podcasts) or watch the video version here.
by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief
Russia’s authoritarian leader Vladimir Putin has a new strategy for turning the tide in his ongoing failure to defeat Ukraine. He’s sending a few body parts of an old saint to the front lines.
The remains of Dmitry Donskoy, a 14th-century Moscow prince, were recently discovered. A national hero today, he started construction on the Kremlin and fought against the Mongols. In 1988, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized him as a saint as part of the celebrations of the 1,000th anniversary of Christianity gaining official recognition by a Kievan Rus’ leader.
When Donskoy’s remains were discovered, Putin heralded the “glorious acquisition.” A Russian Orthodox spokesperson praised the “sensible decision” to send some of the remains off to war. But Ukraine’s foreign minister was unimpressed, declaring about the plan, “Unlikely to help end the war. But if Putin took his place, that just might.”
I think the Ukrainian leader is right. After all, the previous attempts by Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church to forcibly conscript God to help them win the war have all failed. Patriarch Kirill has blessed the war, claimed that soldiers dying in it would be forgiven of their sins, and praised the creation of nuclear weapons as proof of “God’s grace and mercy” for Russia. Make no bones about it, none of this has brought divine assistance for Russian imperial war against its neighbor.
Christian Nationalists ultimately always end up with a small view of God. They want a deity they can control like a magical genie who they bring out of a bottle when they need a miracle. And no matter how many remains of saints they desecrate, they cannot bless an evil war.
Other News of Note
Audrey Dutton of ProPublica reported on preventable deaths of children among a faith-healing sect in Idaho, where parents are granted religious exemptions from laws requiring they provide medical care for their children.
A second Catholic priest in Iowa is suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for delaying his work authorization permit.
Farnaz Fassihi of The New York Times profiled Artemis Ghasemzadeh, a Christian convert from Iran who was deported by the Trump administration to Panama but now has been given asylum in Canada.
After being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for refusing to grant a Jewish employee time off for Sabbath observances, Apple Inc. will pay $150,000 to the former employee and update its religious observance policy.
Quaker and other U.S. groups that help individuals obtain conscientious objector status are seeing a spike in inquiries — including from current military members who believe they’re being asked to violate international law.
“Moses was inconvenient to Pharaoh. Jesus was inconvenient to religious and political authorities who had learned to live quite comfortably with one another. The early church’s insistence that Caesar was not Lord was not exactly helpful to the imperial public-relations strategy. Faith at its best has always created people who know there are things they cannot worship, bargains they cannot make, and neighbors they cannot abandon.” —Rev. Jennifer Butler on the important witness of mainline Protestants in her newsletter Reclaiming Faith.
Abingdon Press, the book publishing arm of the United Methodist Publishing House, issued a statement condemning the antisemitic attacks on Dr. Amy-Jill Levine after her election as the first Jewish president of the Catholic Bible Association. Abingdon has published numerous books by Levine, who is a New Testament scholar.
Marissa Nichols wrote for the National Catholic Reporter about pop-up Masses.
An Episcopal church that sits just a couple of blocks from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, unveiled a sculpture to honor Black Americans and women who played a role in the U.S. space exploration program.
Photo of the Week
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