Here’s the weekly roundup from A Public Witness. In addition to an announcement about upcoming events and a review of a new book that are free for anyone to read, paid subscribers to A Public Witness received a look at partisan attacks on a church and how United Methodists are pushing back.
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Top 5 at wordandway.org
An Indianapolis Church Turned an AR-15 Into a Garden Tool. Beau Underwood and others hosted a “Guns to Gardens” event.
Review: Traveling by a Different Way. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Traveling by a Different Way by Joel W. Huffstetler.
MAGA Told Us We Were Getting Louis IX. We Got Louis XIV Instead. Rodney Kennedy argued that the “Sun King” might be the best historical figure to compare President Donald Trump to.
DOJ Asks Appeals Court to Allow Churches to Endorse Political Candidates. The Trump administration continues its effort to let houses of worship engage in partisan politics while remaining tax-exempt.
Meryl Streep As Narnia’s Aslan: Why Some Evangelicals Call It Blasphemy. Bob Smietana wrote about a controversy over an upcoming movie adaptation of a beloved C.S. Lewis series.
by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief
Since May, Pete Hegseth has repeatedly misused Isaiah 6:8. But during a speech at Texas A&M University, he took the heresy to a more explicit level.
In the biblical text, that verse is part of the call of the prophet Isaiah. But the man who calls himself “secretary of war” turns the passage into a military recruitment moment, and the Pentagon has followed his lead by repeatedly posting the verse on social media with images of soldiers and the phrase “send me.”
“When the nation calls, when the cry echoes: ‘Who will go for us?’ The Aggie, over a century, doesn’t hesitate. The Aggie steps forward from the sideline, helmet strapped, boots laced, and answers: ‘Here I am, send me,’” he declared last weekend.
Hegseth made the comment during the first stop of what he’s calling the “Send Me Tour” to recruit more military members. Which means it’s really a “send you to fight a dumb war I started tour.”
But beyond that semantic issue, the bigger problem is how he rewrote the Bible verse. This time, he made the nation — not God — saying, “Who will go for us?” In the new revised Hegseth version, America literally replaces God. Christian Nationalism ultimately always transforms the country into an idol, but its advocates aren’t usually so blatant about it. But apparently that’s what we get from someone with Crusader symbols tattooed on his body and his Bible.
Aggies and everyone else should reject Hegseth’s false gospel. Since Isaiah isn’t here to speak out against this misuse of the text, the rest of us will have to denounce it for him.
Other News of Note
Sarah Posner reported for Talking Points Memo on remarks by Tom Homan, the White House’s “border czar,” at a rightwing evangelical event in Georgia.
A federal judge ruled that Oklahoma must allow a Jewish school to become the nation’s first sectarian public charter school. An earlier effort to create a Catholic public charter school in the Sooner State was rejected as unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court and then remained blocked by a deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court.
A federal appeals court panel of three judges heard arguments about an Arkansas law requiring public schools to post a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments.
Claire Wang of The Guardian wrote about how some public school teachers are defying state mandates to post a highly edited version of the Ten Commandments in their classrooms.
The city of Dearborn, Michigan, is being sued for spending public money to promote Muslim holidays while ignoring Christian and Jewish ones.
Jeff Brumley of Baptist News Global reported on remarks about Christian Nationalism by Interfaith Alliance President Paul Raushenbush at a Baptist church in Louisville, Kentucky.
“I don’t want the government forcing a religion down my throat. So why would I do that to my Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, agnostic, atheist neighbors? That’s not love. ... I will always stand up for the separation of church and state.” —James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, during the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.
American Community Media profiled Pastor Guillermo Torres, who has been meeting with detained immigrants in Los Angeles and advocating against the “place of evil.”
Kami Rice wrote for Christianity Today about how Christians in France are exploring ways to minister to people suffering from intense heat waves in the country.
Faith in Public Life, a progressive advocacy group, announced it is closing one year after laying off 90% of its staff. The group was founded in 2006 by Rev. Jennifer Butler, a Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister who left the organization in 2022.
The Catholic Church held a beatification Mass in St. Louis, Missouri, yesterday for the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, putting the host of a popular religious TV show just one step away from being the first American-born bishop to become a saint.
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