Here’s the weekly roundup from A Public Witness. In addition to a look at an upcoming book that is free for anyone to read, paid subscribers to A Public Witness received a report on the anti-vax politics and faith of Florida’s surgeon general.
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Top 5 at wordandway.org
The Beauty of Being a Regular. Sarah Blackwell reflected on nurturing third space communities.
Review: Rooted. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Rooted: A Spiritual Memoir of Homecoming by Christy Berhoef.
Women Ministers Resist Misogyny With Mentors, Training, Resilience, Study Finds. Adelle M. Banks wrote about the discrimination faced by women in ministry.
At NatCon, a Confusing Resurgence of Anti-Muslim Sentiment. Jack Jenkins reported on Christian Nationalist comments during a political conference in Washington, D.C.
Pope Leo and Vatican Insist on 2-State Solution to End Gaza War During Meeting With Israel President. Pope Leo XIV is pushing for peace in Gaza and speaking out for Christians in the Middle East.
by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief
Following Texas and California, the mid-decade partisan gerrymandering war has opened up next in Missouri. And several other states might also join the madness soon.
Lawmakers in the Show-Me State returned to the state Capitol this week after Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe urged them to create a new map to take one seat away from Democrats. The state votes about 60% Republican and 40% Democratic, which would suggest a 5-3 GOP advantage among the eight congressional seats. Instead, the state has six Republicans and just two Democrats. Now, Kehoe wants to make it 7-1 after President Donald Trump called for such a shift. And the governor had the gall to suggest such a move would be to represent the state’s “values rooted in faith.”
Going even further, the top Republican in the Missouri Senate argued they need to approve the new map “to be sure Missouri’s representation matches Missouri’s Christian conservative majority.” It turns out that while 62% of Missourians are Christians, 100% of the state’s congressional delegation is Christian. So Christians aren’t actually underrepresented or persecuted. Even worse, the 7-1 map is based on gerrymandering out of office Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is also a United Methodist minister and one of just three pastors in the U.S. House of Representatives. You don’t get to claim you’re increasing Christian representation when you’re targeting a minister!
So I went to the Missouri Capitol yesterday (Sept. 4) to testify in a House committee against the profane partisan power grab. Dozens of others from across the state also offered remarks against the proposal for about four hours. Meanwhile, only one person (a conservative lobbyist) showed up to support the gerrymandering. But the committee went ahead and voted on party lines to advance it. While it’s bad enough to see lawmakers lying, cheating, and stealing, it’s even worse when they take God’s name in vain to suggest this is a holy mission.
You can watch my testimony as it aired on C-SPAN. Additionally, I penned a column for the Missouri Independent on this: “Missouri Republicans Invoke Christian Values to Gerrymander Out a Methodist Minister.” I also wrote in my new book, The Bible According to Christian Nationalists, about misuses of the Bible during an earlier attempt to gerrymander out Rep. Cleaver. Let’s not allow politicians to gerrymander the Bible and faith values as they flex political power.
Other News of Note
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton wants children to say the Lord’s Prayer every day in public schools.
Jared Wilson of the London Guardian reported on far-right ideas pushed on a Christian Nationalist podcast in Doug Wilson’s denomination (which Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is part of).
The Department of Homeland Security used the hymn “Lord, Make Us Instruments of Your Peace” in a promotional video. This adds to recent DHS videos co-opting Bible verses.
United Methodist, Episcopal, and other clergy in Indiana held a prayer vigil to protest plans by DHS to open an immigrant detention center in the northern part of the state.
A Presbyterian church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hosted a session to train people on how to document immigration raids and arrests. The church’s pastor called such work part of what it means to “move from compassion to actual action.”
“Pastors across the country in Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, they're very concerned. We need love, we need light. And the way of light is the way of Jesus Christ for us. And it's not the way of war.” —Rev. Kip Banks, pastor of East Washington Heights Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., talking to NPR about the crime problem in D.C. but why deploying the National Guard is not making his congregants feel safer.
A United Methodist pastor and a Unitarian Universalist minister were arrested while kneeling in prayer to attempt to stop Florida officials from painting over a “Black History Matters” street mural.
As Pope Leo XIV offered prayers for the victims of the Catholic school shooting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he also called for an end to the “pandemic of arms, large and small.”
Bobby Ross Jr. wrote for Religion Unplugged about the ongoing work of a Ukrainian-born Christian serving refugees in Alaska.
A Pentecostal pastor in Russia was sentenced to four years in prison for preaching against war in a sermon. Many Christians — especially Pentecostals and Baptists — have been persecuted by Putin’s regime.
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