Weekly Roundup: Jan. 30
Here’s the weekly roundup from A Public Witness. In addition to a consideration of the importance of a denominational faith witness that is free for anyone to read, paid subscribers to A Public Witness received a report on how Christian groups are defending the Greenlandic people.
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Top 5 at wordandway.org
An American Baptist Church Ministers in Shadow of Pretti Killing. Brian Kaylor reported on a church that sits just one block from the site of the latest killing by federal agents in Minneapolis.
GOP Judge Blasts ICE Pastor for ‘Extraordinary’ Court Order Violations. Brian Kaylor reported on a conservative judge in Minnesota who is increasingly critical of ICE’s actions.
Maine Clergy Form Spiritual ‘Shield’ Outside Workplaces to Protect Immigrants From ICE. Jack Jenkins wrote about clergy in Portland, Maine, protesting ICE and helping immigrants.
Review: The Green Funeral. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed The Green Funeral: Honoring the Environment While Beautifying Funeral Practices by Sequola Dawson.
Faith Leaders Criticize Trump Administration’s Removal of Philadelphia Slavery Exhibit. Adelle M. Banks reported on the whitewashing of U.S. history, including a recognition of historic Black Christian leaders.
Dangerous Dogma
This week’s episode features a conversation between Brian Kaylor and American Baptist ministers Anna Piela and Michael Woolf on their new book, Confronting Islamophobia in the Church: Liturgical Tools for Justice. 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
A new poll from the Pew Research Center showed President Donald Trump’s approval rating continues to fall. Now, just 37% of Americans approve of the job he’s doing, down from 40% last fall. Digging deeper into the findings also shows most religious groups do not approve of him.
Religious traditions where most people disapprove of Trump include atheists (91%), agnostics (80%), Black Protestants (85%), and Hispanic Catholics (76%). Among White Christians, there’s an important dividing line. Most White evangelicals approve (69%) as do a narrow majority of White Catholics (52%). But more White mainline Protestants disapprove (52%) than approve (46%).
It’s no surprise that White evangelicals continue to be Trump’s most supportive religious group. They’ve held that status for close to a decade. Yet, despite that, every election year, journalists and pundits ask if Democrats can win over White evangelicals. Some progressive groups have even wasted a lot of money trying to convince White evangelicals to vote for Democrats. But Catholics and mainline Protestants have been the key groups who actually explain why Joe Biden won the presidency while Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris failed.
Mainline Protestants are more populous in most of the key swing states and are more likely to shift support. That makes the move among White mainliners toward disapproving of Trump’s job performance a significant development. The question is whether other media outlets will pay attention.
Other News of Note
On the podcast Reign of Error, Sarah Posner and Julie Ingersoll talked about Pete Hegseth, Doug Wilson, and Christian Nationalism (with references to reporting by A Public Witness).
Politico reported on the Republican primary battle in Texas for a U.S. Senate seat, where the candidates are trying to outdo each other as the most Islamophobic.
Hunter Walker of Talking Points Memo wrote about how “churches are on the front line in the fight against mass deportation.”
Kristian Moravec of the Maine Monitor reported on a pastor’s difficult effort to find and minister to a congregant grabbed by ICE.
Kevin Gallagher wrote for Commonweal about participating in a vigil outside a Department of Homeland Security prison to remember those dying inside.
Christi Harlan wrote for The Christian Citizen about protesters who interrupted worship at First Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., while then-President Jimmy Carter was a member at the church.
“You keep seeing the fracture continue to spread.” —a father of a child who survived the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis in a Christianity Today article about the ongoing work toward healing months after the deadly shooting.
A Maryland county agreed to settle a lawsuit filed by an imam who was barred from serving as a jail chaplain because he wasn’t a Christian.
Daniel Silliman wrote for The Roys Report about a minister excommunicated by the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America because of his White supremacist views.
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who’s been lecturing on how the antichrist will be someone who tries to regulate AI, took his odd presentation to Paris.
A study by the Bible Society in the United Kingdom found that Bible chatbots are biased by pushing U.S. evangelical theology and interpretations.
Photo of the Week
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