When religious leaders die

For me, Jimmy Carter’s death came too soon.

Not necessarily because of his age. He lived to the ripe old age of 100 and, in many respects, lived those years to the fullest.

No, and if I may be crass for a moment, Carter passed before I had a reporting guide ready for reporters looking to cover the faith angles of his life and legacy.

You see, as Editor for ReligionLink, I put together resources and reporting guides for journalists covering topics in religion. Each month, we publish a guide covering topics such as education and church-state-separation under Trump, faith and immigration or crime and houses of worship.

Early in 2024, I started to put together a guide to cover the passing of Jimmy Carter. Serving as Editor is only a part-time gig, and it usually takes all the time I have dedicated to the role to produce a single, monthly guide. But on the side, I started to make notes, identify sources and build a timeline for Carter’s life and legacy.

When he passed on December 29, 2024, the guide was not ready. Nor would it be in the matter of days necessary for it to be useful. So, the opportunity came and went. The draft of the guide to covering Jimmy Carter’s passing tossed on the editing floor.

The missed occasion, however, inspired me to work ahead more intentionally on guides for other famous faith leaders. The process of putting such guides together led me to reflect on what it means to remember, and report on, the passing of prominent figures in religion. 

World Evangelical Alliance Seeks New Leader Who Can Bring Unity

Peirong Lin, a deputy secretary at the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), likes to joke that evangelical is the most polarizing word in the world. 

“Yet that is exactly what we are trying to unite around,” she told Christianity Today, “the euangelion, the Good News, the gospel, and what it looks like in different countries and contexts.” 

Now the global organization of national and regional alliances representing 600 million evangelicals is looking for one person to help bring everybody together. The international council that oversees the WEA is stressing the need for unity as the search for a new secretary general gets underway. 

“The Good News expresses itself in different ways around the world … and our responsibility as the WEA is to take a ‘world’ understanding to the gospel, not just a particular context,” Lin said. “The question for us going forward is how we can best represent everyone and work together.”

The search began 11 months after the resignation of secretary general Thomas Schirrmacher, who stepped down for health reasons amid ongoing controversies about the WEA’s participation in interfaith dialogue with Catholics. A plan for a quick search for a new replacement—one press release promised new leadership in six months—was scuttled. WEA leadership said it needed more time to review its organizational structure and consult more evangelical leaders about the strengths, weaknesses, and long-term direction of the alliance.

Goodwill Shana, the interim head of the WEA, said in an email that the appointment of a new leader will be a “very significant step for the WEA” and everyone wants to find “the person of God’s choice to lead us into the future.”

The WEA hopes to announce the name of the new secretary general at the upcoming General Assembly in October.

David Briggs Honored with 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award

One of my favorite “jobs” while serving on the board of the Religion News Association (RNA, a professional association for people who report on religion in the news media, has been overseeing the William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award.

In preparation for giving out the prize, I get the chance to interview the recipient about their life and work. These conversations go beyond the “5ws,” offering me the opportunity to listen and learn from reporters who have done some of the best, longstanding reporting on religion over the last several decades.

This year, like each before, it was an honor to interview and profile David Briggs, veteran religion reporter best known for his years with The Associated Press in the 1990s.  

Briggs covered three popes, seven presidents and almost too many church conventions to count. But far and away, he said, the most impactful interviews he ever conducted were with survivors and victims of abuse by religious organizations and clergy. “Those interviews became some of the defining moments of my life,” Briggs said. “Over and over again, they invited me into their homes, into their lives, to share their stories.” 

In Ohio, where Briggs covered religion for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, he wrote story after story about Mainline Protestant leaders and evangelicals, Jewish organizations and clergy of all kinds who broke the sacred trust given to them by abusing the vulnerable. Along the way, he angered plenty of people across the religious spectrum, he said. But it didn’t matter much to Briggs. He was there for those who shared their stories.  

“I kept up with a great number of those people — over 90 of these individuals — over the years,” he said, “and those are still the stories that stick with me.”  

For his contributions to the beat, long-term commitment to RNA and service to its members, Briggs will be honored with the 2025 William A. Reed Lifetime Achievement Award at a banquet on April 5 at the Religion News Association’s Annual Conference, in Arlington, Virginia. 

Islam, Real and Imagined: PW Talks with John Tolan

In Islam: A New History, the historian chronicles the religion’s 1,400–year evolution through profiles of figures who showcase its diversity.

Why is a new history of Islam particularly relevant now?

Much of the current discourse on Islam is based on a traditional narrative about its origins and rise, as if everything we know about the religion was produced by Muhammad and his companions in the seventh century. But as recent scholarship shows, Islam emerged gradually and has been in constant change over the centuries. This pushes back on what Muslim fundamentalists believe is a “pure” form of Islam—an imagined, ideal society around Muhammad where Sharia was already the law of the land. The far right does the opposite, saying that this early Islamic society persecuted minorities, women, and so forth, and that it is essentially the same today. This means, for them, that Muslims are not able to adapt to modern Western societies. I hope to show people who are not on either of those extremes Islam’s rich history and diversity.

Who are some of the people from Islamic history you introduce and how do they illustrate these themes?

One of the chapters that was most fun for me is about Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan man who leaves home at the age of 22 and travels for 20 years, going as far as India, China, and beyond. He gets jobs as a judge and an administrator in Delhi and the Maldives. He’s appreciated wherever he goes, because he knows his Quran and Islamic law. At the same time, his testimony shows the diversity of the Muslim world and its constant engagement with others—with Christians, with Hindus, with Buddhists. His story reminds us that the real demographic center of Islam is much further east than the Middle East or North Africa, and that in all these countries Muslims have had to interact, often creatively, with people of other faiths. Still today, none of the top five countries with the largest Muslim population is Arab.

How does one make sense of such a vast and diverse religion?

I like to point readers to the cover of the book. You see this Indian-looking woman lying prostrate in prayer and receiving a paper with a text in Arabic, a verse from the Quran. This is Rabia al-Adawiyya, an eighth-century Iraqi Sufi woman, portrayed a thousand years later by an Indian artist as a well-dressed, idyllic beauty of 18th-century India. That, to me, shows Islam’s paradoxical unity in diversity, because here she is, an Iraqi Sufi who speaks across borders and centuries, holding a verse from the Quran to which all Muslims would relate.

A version of this article appeared in the 03/24/2025 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: John Tolan

A Tale for our Time: Shira Piven and Joshua Salzberg on “The Performance”

It was not an ideal spot for a phone call but there I was, balancing between cars on a train traveling back home to Berlin, talking with Joshua Salzberg, who was calling from Budapest, where he was working on a film.  

Salzberg knows I am a religion nerd. The film he adapted with co-writer/director Shira Piven — “The Performance”— featured a cast of characters with varying religious identifications. The team wanted to get the details right. Down to the minutest items. 

So, there I was, rocking back and forth as the German state of Brandenburg flitted by, talking to Salzberg about the ring a club owner in 1930s Berlin might foreseeably be wearing.  

That attention to detail impressed me. The care and concern that Piven, Salzberg and the entire team brought to the film is a testament to its overarching message of resisting hate and finding people’s humanity in the unlikeliest of places.  

“The Performance,” starring the director’s brother, Jeremy Piven of Emmy-nominated “Entourage” acclaim, is adapted from an Arthur Miller short story of the same name. The story has been described as, “a strange midnight train ride” by Seattle Times critic Richard Wallace, and tells the tale of Harold May, a down-on-his-luck New York tap dancer who heads to Europe in the 1930s in search of new opportunities.  

While dancing on the tabletops of a Hungarian night club, May and his troupe attract the attention of Damian Fugler (Robert Carlyle), who invites them to give a special performance at a Berlin nightclub, hefty paycheck included. May, who is Jewish but can “pass” as a blond-haired Aryan, and his fellow performers — including Adam Garcia as the politically attuned Benny Worth, Isaac Gryn as a closeted Paul Garner, Lara Wolf as the namesake of a Persian princess “Sira” and Maimie McCoy as a recently divorced, single dancer Carol Conway — are fast-tracked through a series of ethical, moral and professional through stations as they tap their way into a performance none of them really want: a private show for Adolph Hitler.  

The story chugs along like “a modern, gothic folktale,” with the personal stakes becoming ever greater until it all falls off the rails, when their experience of opulent luxury at the behest of their German hosts contrasts too starkly with the increasingly evident persecution of Jews, homosexuals and other so-called “undesirables” around them. 

Episcopal Diocese Defends Migrant Shelter, Citing "Jesus" and "Constitution"

On March 11, the Department of Homeland Security sent the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande a letter insinuating illegal activities at a diocesan shelter, including human trafficking.

The letter, sent by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, states that the Department of Homeland Security, of which FEMA is a part, has “significant concerns” about organizations receiving FEMA grants using those funds to engage in or facilitate “illegal activities.”

Hamilton wrote that such organizations, such as the diocese’s migrant shelter, “may be guilty of encouraging or inducing an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States” and “transporting or moving illegal aliens, harboring, concealing or shielding from detection illegal aliens or applicable conspiracy aiding or abetting.”

In an online video posted on March 14, Bishop Michael Hunn of the Rio Grande diocese said the letter amounted to a not-so-subtle accusation that the diocese was engaged in human trafficking. Hunn did not share the letter with Sojourners. (The Denver Post published a copy of a similar letter.)

“I’m insulted by the insinuation that we have been involved in anything illegal or immoral,” Hunn said in the video after reading excerpts from the letter.

The Phantom Far-Right Menace in Germany's East

When my wife and I were about to buy a house on the edge of the Thuringian Forest a couple of years ago, some friends from Hanover expressed concerns. Their objection was not to the home itself. The traditional half-timbered house lying on a three-quarter-acre lot with immediate access to trails, selling for less than $250,000, was, in many ways, a dream. Their skepticism, instead, stemmed from its setting. They asked if we really wanted to live in an “AfD Dorf,” or AfD village — a hamlet full of people who support Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany party. 

Their perception is based on statistics and phantom data visualizations that represent eastern Germany — the areas of Brandenburg, eastern Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia that from 1949 to 1990 made up the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR), also known as East Germany — as an almost solid mass of far-right sentiment. Outside major cities like Berlin and Leipzig, they see the entire east as one big AfD Dorf. 

They are not alone. In the aftermath of Germany’s March 2 federal election, which the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), won with 28.5% of the vote, there has been yet another round of commentary and analysis about eastern Germans opting en masse for the AfD. Color-coded maps, and their associated explanations, frame eastern Germany as almost solely responsible for the far-right party’s popularity and ascent to become the second-largest party in Germany’s parliament since its founding 12 years ago.

This is only partly true. In the area around Eisenach, the western Thuringian town my wife and I ended up finding the apartment we live in, 4 out of 10 voters chose the AfD. Those numbers need to be taken seriously. Yet the idea that the AfD’s rise is due entirely to voters in the east, and the maps used to sell that view, are demonstrably flawed.

According to statistics from the Bundeswahlleiterin, the officer responsible for overseeing elections at the federal level, 70.7% of the 10.3 million votes cast for the AfD last week came from western Germany, while only 29.3% came from the east of the country. The AfD did win the vast majority of eastern constituencies, but the party also took the lead in two western constituencies — Gelsenkirchen and Kaiserslautern — for the first time. 

While the ex-socialist states of the former GDR appear to be a sea of blue — the AfD’s color — on electoral maps, support for the party actually rose all across the country. As the AfD improved by 14 and 15 percentage points in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Thuringia, respectively, it also saw increases of near, or more than, 10 percentage points in several western states (Baden-Wuerttemberg, Bavaria, Lower Saxony and North-Rhine Westphalia), including jumps of 11 percentage points in Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland. The far-right party pulled support from across the political spectrum, with the center-right CDU/CSU conceding the most, losing 1 million voters to the AfD. 

In other words, the AfD did not become the second-largest party solely because of its voters in eastern Germany. That claim not only misrepresents the reasons for the AfD’s popularity but also plays into a decades-long narrative of “east-bashing” in popular discourse. Having lived here for nearly six years, this attitude feels lazy and elitist; it also misdiagnoses the real reasons for the AfD’s menacing rise. 

Can Christian Charities Serve Both God and Trump?

The U.S. government and faith-based organizations have worked together since the dawn of the United States. The same Congress that prevented the government from endorsing or becoming too involved in religious activities through the First Amendment also set aside land for churches in the Northwest Territory, later Ohio, in the 1780s. Funds to support recently emancipated people after the Civil War were often channeled through Christian schools and agencies.

In the wake of World War II, faith-based relief organizations worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. government to deliver aid and address hunger, poverty, and displacement around the world. In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration created its “faith-based initiatives” program, which made religious social-service providers—including evangelical groups—institutionalized partners of the U.S. government.

But in his second term, President Donald Trump has quickly signaled a drastic shift in this relationship. In executive orders, Trump froze federal grants flowing to religious nonprofits; terminated refugee resettlement programs, most of which are run by religious organizations; and suspended foreign aid pending review. The Trump administration effectively dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which partners with an array of religious charities and communities.

The administration’s efforts face legal challenges on multiple fronts. A federal judge in Washington ordered a temporarily lift to the funding freeze that halted U.S. foreign aid. Meanwhile, religious groups have challenged the administration’s cuts, arguing that they disproportionately harm vulnerable populations. In separate suits, multiple faith-based organizations have challenged what they say is the unlawful suspension of refugee resettlement programs.

Faith leaders fear that such measures are just the beginning of a larger realignment of the U.S. government’s relationship with religious groups toward an aggressive attitude of brute force and domination.

Interfaith Inc.: Will US corporations continue to embrace dialogue as many curtail DEI efforts?

Photo via Interfaith America Magazine.

When Jacqueline Moreno got her job at a global investment firm, it was an answered prayer.  

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “Coming from my background, as the child of immigrants growing up in the poorer parts of San Diego, I thought these kinds of jobs were out of reach.  

“It’s really, truly, a miracle,” Moreno said. 

Moreno was thankful her prayers seemed to be answered with the job offer. What she did not expect was that her prayers would be welcome at work. But when she started, she joined a “Christian life” community at the firm, one of its 24 different employee resource groups (ERGs), representing an array of identities and interests among the company’s workforce.  

“Too often, when you work at big companies, you feel like you have to keep your faith in the back pocket,” Moreno said, “but through this community, it’s like every day is ‘bring your religion to work day.’”  

Moreno’s experience is becoming more common as companies and corporations come to terms with increasing religious diversity in the workplace. As Eboo Patel, Founder of Interfaith America told Religion News Service’s Kathryn Post, among major brands like Walmart and Starbucks as well as tech firms like Google and financial behemoths like Alliance Bernstein, a growing contingent of businesses are engaging questions around religious diversity and dialogue.  

The expansion seen in recent years, however, may be under threat, as the federal government’s efforts to curb Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices may soon have sweeping impacts on the private sector and threaten interfaith efforts at corporations and companies across the U.S.      

The American workplace: Ground zero for interreligious encounter 

Elaine Howard Ecklund, sociology professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, said workplaces are one of the places Americans are most likely to encounter religious diversity, when compared to other spheres of life.  

“Our social media channels, the kinds of neighborhoods we are in, the places we shop or spend our free time; it’s easy to be with people like us in all of these places,” Ecklund said. “Workplaces are one of the last places in American society where we have the potential to meet people who are different than us, including from different religions.”  

Ecklund is Co-Author, with Wheaton College professor Denise Daniels and West Virginia University sociologist Christopher P. Scheitle, of a new book, Religion in a Changing Workplace, which shows how employees across the private sector are embracing the notion of “bringing their whole selves to work” — and many employers are encouraging them.  

The team conducted more than 15,000 surveys and 300 in-depth interviews on the subject of faith in US workplaces. It is the largest study of faith at work in the US to date.  

Though the researchers surmised that people would bring their faith to work, they were surprised by the extent to which people want to.  

Wheaton’s Daniels has been studying these dynamics for years. She said when people hear “religion at work,” they tend to think about that coworker who wants to talk about their personal faith or invite you to their house of worship. But beyond wanting to talk about faith, members of the American workforce understand their work — and callings — in terms of their faith. 

“American workers are exploring things like meaning, calling, and ethics within a faith framework, seeing their work through the meaning and purpose of their religion,” said Daniels, “which helps them engage work in a more meaningful way.”  

Ecklund and Daniels said a lot of policymakers and employers may at first be uneasy — or downright fearful — of having people talk, and share, openly about their faith in the workplace. Thier research concluded that allowing, and encouraging, employees to “bring their faith to work” does not necessarily lead to conflict, but closer relationships and diverse teams performing better, together as members have opportunities to engage their differences and share their strengths.  

To strengthen a culture of belonging in their workplace and open up new opportunities for growth, Ecklund and Daniels said leaders have to intentionally engage this facet of their workers’ identities, and do so in a civil, respectful and power-mindful way.

Immigrant churches standing in sacred resistance against Trump’s “shock and awe” immigration policies

“WE ARE FULL of fear, but we are not helpless,” said Giselle, a 40-year-old living in a mixed-status immigrant family in Chicago. “We have the power of God, the power of the church, and the power of the Holy Spirit on our side,” she said.

Giselle is the mother of two children who are U.S. citizens. She is long settled in Chicago, having arrived two decades ago from Michoacán, Mexico. She lives in a three-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Little Village — known as the “Mexico of the Midwest” or “La Villita” by locals — and works as a bookkeeper and worships at a local Pentecostal church where, she told Sojourners, there are other immigrants without permanent legal status singing next to her on Sundays. She volunteers and donates to local charities and generally tries to be a good neighbor — offering her time, talent, and treasure to others in her little corner of Chicago. Giselle said she has built her life in the U.S. and that her adolescent children know nothing else. “We are proud to be Mexican American, to live life here and be part of this community,” she said.

Like thousands of others across the U.S., Giselle and her family do not know how the Trump administration’s stated mass deportation policies will play out. But as policies are put in place and enforcement efforts ramp up, questions keep running through Giselle’s mind: How will I protect my family? What will happen to my immigration status? How will I be able to seek safety in the U.S.? “These are just some of the questions that handicap my ability to live,” she said.

As the Trump administration continues to implement its mass deportation plans, a swirling vortex of pain, fear, and uncertainty dominates the conversation among immigrants and faith communities across the nation. People of faith are responding with hope, resilience, and a steady resolve to be the best neighbors they can be to immigrants in need.

Public-private partnerships a “catalyst for good”

Pastor Ben Squires did not have “baseless allegations of money laundering by Lutheran social service agencies” on his 2025 bingo card.

And yet, in the early hours of Sunday morning, Feb. 2, Squires found himself reading a flurry of social media posts about Mike Flynn’s unfounded accusations and billionaire Elon Musk’s promise that the Department of Government Efficiency would be “rapidly shutting down” supposedly “illegal payments” to a list of Lutheran groups including Global Refuge (formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services), Pacific Lutheran University, and Lutheran Social Services organizations in Florida, Wisconsin, and South Dakota.

Flynn’s post included screenshots of select Lutheran groups that receive such funds. It is still unclear how or why Flynn singled out these Lutheran groups in his post, or what prompted Musk to presume those payments were illegal.

Each year, billions of federal dollars go to faith-based nonprofits that provide a range of community services, such as housing support, refugee resettlement, or food assistance.

While Squires’ Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation in the Chicago village-suburb of Gurnee, Ill., does not receive federal funding nor work directly with Lutheran social service agencies, the posts were painful and shocking.

“These are services that vulnerable people in our congregation and community rely on,” he said. “To see them get attacked for no reason and for the funding to be frozen is really disheartening.”

But more troubling, Squires said, was how the posts represented an attack on the longstanding tradition of Christian community service and neighbor-care.

“Christians have always been doing charitable work, caring for the poor, caring for the dead,” he said. “That’s the DNA of the church, the values the church champions.

“Rather than attacking it or thinking that kind of work takes away from the gospel, why not celebrate that? I just don’t understand.”

Is a far-right party gaining ground among German evangelicals?

Elections in Germany are typically pretty quiet, according to Assemblies of God pastor Timothy Carentz.

Germans are wary of extremism, concerned about propriety, and committed to a principle of political privacy or “electoral secrecy,” which is enshrined in the German constitution. They don’t often put signs up in their yards or get into heated arguments about candidates at the pub.

But this year, following the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz's three-party coalition in November, things have been more heated.

“We’ve noticed people getting more and more vocal,” said Carentz, an American who runs Rhema Café, a coffee shop and ministry center in Kaiserslautern, in southwestern Germany. 

There are debates about the economy, which is floundering, and rise of rightwing nationalists in Germany and around the world. People are arguing about immigration and asylum policies, the war in Ukraine, high energy prices, and which politicians (if any) can be trusted to do something to help.

The conversations seem more divisive than usual.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen Germans so active, engaged and opinionated about it all,” Carentz said. “This year, people are putting up banners outside their apartment windows, leaving stickers around town, wanting to hand out brochures and pamphlets.”

Amidst it all, evangelical leaders told Christianity Today, they are focusing on God’s love for all people and the value of every human life—unborn and migrant, in Ukraine, the Middle East, and at home in Germany. And they are praying for Germany’s democracy.

Covering, and Questioning, Anti-Christian Persecution

If you report on religion long enough, you’re bound to be called an anti-Christian bigot at some point in time.

In my 14 years of reporting, I’ve been labeled an atheist agent for my coverage of a book on how Jesus may have been a vegetarian, denounced as a prejudiced partisan as I covered instances of clergy abuse in Houston, Texas, and much worse for my writing on neo-Nazi ideology and racism among Lutherans in Germany and the U.S.

In each case, the critique of my writing was less about the coverage or claims therein, but much more to do with a feeling that anti-Christian bias — and even persecution — in the media is not only real but rampant.

When it comes to the issue of anti-Christian persecution itself, coverage in the media can sometimes swing between two magnetic poles. On one end are those who are convinced that such persecution is the most pressing contemporary human rights issue. On the other are those who equate such statements as melodrama, with little grounding in the lived reality of most communities worldwide.

Journalists covering the issue might be swayed depending upon their sources, who often have a stake in arguing one way or the other.

To best cover the matter of anti-Christian persecution, or to address it when it comes up in critiques of our coverage, reporters have to make two things clear: 1) many individuals and communities across the globe are vulnerable because of their identification as Christians and 2) that the extent of anti-Christian persecution is not as widespread or as grievous as some make it out to be.

To help navigate how to cover particular cases and claims, I recommend journalists consider issues related to power, the shift from “privilege to plurality,” and how Christians use the idea of persecution as a way to make sense of their faith in the 21st century. 

Outlook Apocalyptic for UK Theology Schools

When the Association of Bible College Principals in the United Kingdom (UK) convened in the summer of 2024, administrators came away with some pretty dire predictions.

Anthony Royle, head of the Kings Evangelical Divinity School in southeast England, told his colleagues that “it seems like 50 per cent of Christian Bible Colleges in the UK will close in the next year or two.”

There are only 30 Bible colleges across the UK, alongside the Church of England’s 23 theological educational institutions. But these are the schools that train ministers for the 16,000 Anglican congregations in England and the dozens of free church denominations. The apocalyptic outlook about the future of British theological education has some worried.

“I don’t know a theological college that does not have financial problems, enrollment issues, or some kind of existential challenge right now,” cultural commentator Krish Kandiah told Christianity Today. “It’s as bad as people are saying.”

If Piety Is Always Political, Who Then Is A Saint?

On the outskirts of Naples, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, lies the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Arco in Sant’Anastasia.

The walls of the shrine are covered in painted, votive tavolette — little, painted boards given as an offering in fulfillment of a vow (ex voto) and featuring devotional scenes and images of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ.

One of my favorites features a man in bed, with a heavily bandaged leg, his small children and wife praying to the Virgin and Child as they appear amidst a veil of clouds from their throne in heaven.

It is, in many ways, a visual embodiment of traditional notions of piety, defined as dutiful devotion to the divine.

But as I teach in my religious studies courses, piety can take a variety of forms.

It can be visual and sartorial, both highly personal and politically charged. More than an individual’s particular practice of religious reverence, piety is a socially defined and structured response to one’s emotional, social and material context. And in a time of political upheaval, social uncertainty and ecological anxiety, it might do well to revisit piety and its varieties.

Education and church-state separation under Trump

In June 2024, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a law requiring Ten Commandments displays in that state’s public classrooms. At a press event the same day, Landry said, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” 

Critics say the law contradicts long-standing United States Supreme Court precedents. Those precedents include the 1980 Stone v. Graham decision, when SCOTUS ruled that a Kentucky law requiring a copy of the Ten Commandments in the state’s public classrooms was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Also in June, Oklahoma’s top education official ordered public schools there to incorporate the Bible into lessons, while the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional what would have been the nation’s first state-funded Catholic charter school. Later, in November, Texas’ State Board of Education allowed Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools. Officials in other states have also been under pressure to introduce Bible lessons into state education curricula or to ban books and subjects related to race, sexual orientation and gender identification. Meanwhile, the case over whether an effort to establish the first taxpayer-funded charter school in Oklahoma can go ahead is headed to the Supreme Court.

Such moves have outraged civil rights and minority faith and values groups, such as Interfaith Alliance or the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is part of a coalition suing Louisiana over its Ten Commandments law and which has taken action to block Bible lessons in Oklahoma. 

Though there is no U.S. federal law stopping public schools from including the Bible as part of children’s education — and the federal government, in turn, cannot mandate what states teach — opponents fear such initiatives not only violate the Constitution but are “part of a larger push to increase the presence of Christianity in the public sphere and to challenge constitutional protections for religious freedom.” 

In this edition of ReligionLink, we share relevant stories, sources and resources to help you report on the separation of church and state as it relates to education, Christian nationalism and parental rights in the U.S. 

How they do it in Deutschland: Signposts for Interreligious Dialogue in Germany

The Christmas market attacks in Magdeburg — and the heated political atmosphere that followed — have stressed a range of issues ahead of Germany’s snap elections on February 23.  

Voters across Europe’s largest economy are concerned about domestic security, immigration, upholding the rule of law and strengthening democracy against perceived enemies within and without.  

An important aspect of this equation is how followers of Germany’s various religious communities might work to address these concerns together.  

With a total population of nearly 85 million, there are an estimated 23 million Catholics (27 percent), 21 million Protestants (25 percent) and nearly 5 million Muslims (5.7 percent). There are also smaller populations of evangelicals (2 percent) and Orthodox Christians (1.9 percent), as well as Jews, Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Hindus, Yezidis, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pagans and Sikhs. Notably, 44 percent of Germans (or 37 million) claim no religious affiliation, but may practice some form of spirituality or hold some kind of enchanted worldview.  

In my latest for Interfaith America, I explore how members of these various groups work together — or against one another — is of great importance for the future of plural, open societies like Germany. 

Chaos and confusion: Faith-based nonprofits plan for uncertain futures at federal fund freezes

“It was chaos,” sighed Stacey Hall Burge, CEO of Found House Interfaith Housing Network, which provides emergency shelter and programs for families dealing with housing loss and insecurity in the Cincinnati area.

“From Monday to Friday, we had no specifics, no clarity,” said Burge, recounting the past week at her organization. “There are rents and supports for hundreds of families I am not sure how to pay right now. Families that worked hard to get off the streets, who may go right back. Many of them working, but unable to fully afford rent in the current housing crisis,” she told Sojourners in an interview over Zoom.

“At any given time, we could be letting down a couple of hundred families who would be left on their own to figure out their housing,” she said.

For Found House, the saga began when the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans on Jan. 27, following an executive order from President Donald Trump requiring all federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to … disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

Legal experts argue the executive order directly violated Article I of the Constitution and decades of legal opinion. Cerin Lindgrensavage and William Ford, staff for the nonpartisan, anti-authoritarian nonprofit Protect Democracy wrote the Trump administration was trying “to wrest the spending power away from Congress and into the hands of the president and his appointees.”

“The system of checks and balances the Founders designed does not give the president unchecked power to execute only the laws passed by Congress that he agrees with,” they wrote. “When Congress appropriates funds, the president must spend them.”

The order put a temporary freeze on hundreds of billions of dollars, impacting a vast array of services provided by thousands of nonprofits working in education, social services, science research, health care, or refugee resettlement, who were unable to access federal government systems used to withdraw funds as last week began.

Though judges have ordered a temporary pause on the administration’s efforts to freeze federal fundingand the OMB memo was rescinded by a two-sentence notice on Jan. 29, uncertainty continues for faith-inspired and faith-based nonprofits like Found House.

Compounding the fear across the faith-based services sector, the back-and-forth with federal funding comes as the Trump administration also put a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is shutting down payments to federal contractors.

On Sunday, Musk shared a post by Michael Flynn on X, Trump’s former national security adviser who previously plead guilty to lying to the FBI, listing what purported to be payments to Lutheran charities that receive government funding, ranging from Lutheran Social Services to Global Refuge — formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

Musk tweeted, “corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time” and claimed DOGE is “rapidly shutting down” payments to the charities.

Though the OMB memo was rescinded, nonprofit leaders remain nervous, anxious about what the future holds for their organizations, staff, and the families and individuals they serve.

“The question becomes: What do we actually have to work with?” said Burge.

Found House’s current contracts with the Department of Housing and Urban Development go through the end of June, but Burge and colleagues are openly questioning if those are safe. “The honest answer is: We are not sure.”

In wake of fires, faith leaders look to rebuild with equity

As images from the cataclysmic firestorms engulfing Los Angeles County emerged, one word came up consistently in the captions: apocalyptic.

The devastating effects of unusually wet winters followed by record-dry foliage and the incendiary whip of Santa Ana winds created the conditions for what Sammy Roth, the Los Angeles Times’ climate columnist, called “apocalyptic infernos.”

But for faith and justice leaders in LA, the fires were apocalyptic in another way. 

“In addition to the houses, lives, and histories lost, this was a reckoning,” said theology professor and interfaith leader Najeeba Syeed, who splits her time between LA and Minnesota and was in LA as the fires erupted.

That reckoning, Syeed told Sojourners, has presented both invitation and challenge to local leaders who are looking to not only meet immediate needs, but build a more just and equitable future for the City of Angels from the ashes.

The Southern California wildfires have burned down hundreds of homes and dozens of places of worship, displaced one hundred thousand people, contaminated air and water, and left lingering policy questions in their wake.

Since they began in early January, some fires have been contained while others continue burning. Local faith and justice leaders remain busy helping their neighbors and congregations who have lost homes or been displaced.

Rev. Zachary Hoover, executive director of LA Voice, a multiracial, multi-faith community organization partnering with congregations across the metro area, said they are listening to those impacted and looking for ways to meet needs both physical and spiritual.

“As we have always done in times of crisis, spiritual communities and community organizations are pouring abundance into LA County,” Hoover said.

Reporting on faith in polarized times

In a slight departure from my usual column at Patheos (“What you missed without religion class”), I was asked by my editors to respond to the following prompt, as part of their new initiative on Faith & Media:

“Faith Amid the Fray: Representing Belief Fairly During Polarized Political Times - Explore the role of media in shaping perceptions of faith during politically charged times. As we have a government in transition and the world becomes less stable, how should the media work to accurately reflect faith’s place in all this? ”

As outgoing president of the Religion News Association and Editor of ReligionLink — a premier resource for journalists writing on religion — I’ve spent time thinking about what religion reporters write about and how it’s best done.

Looking back on my 14 years on the beat, and looking ahead to the role of news media in shaping perceptions of faith in the politically charged times we have ahead of us, I believe religion reporters have the opportunity to approach the next year with “curiosity” — as The New Yorker’s Emma Green put it — and recommit to the balance, accuracy and insight that best characterizes our beat.

I encourage all those who care about faith and media in polarized times to take a deeper look at the link below…