2025 | Good Faith Stories To Watch

With the first days of 2025 already behind us, Good Faith Media has hit the ground running to fulfill our mission of amplifying freedom, inclusivity and justice.

We can rarely predict the stories that will most shape the world in the coming year. But we are keeping an eye on several that will receive our and our readers’ attention throughout 2025. We asked our team of writers, editors, content creators and executives to look ahead and point out stories to watch. 

Kali Cawthon-Freels, Contributing Correspondent

Anxieties in the American LGBTQ+ community are high concerning how the incoming administration will negatively impact our families.

Many LGBTQ+ people, including my wife and me, are consulting lawyers to ensure that our powers of attorney, wills and other important documents are in order so we can take care of one another, regardless of what the law says about our marriages. Parents with transgender kids are exploring options to protect their children, including moving to other states or leaving the country.

In that vein, I’ll be watching legislative changes in the states to LGBTQ+ rights. I’ll also be watching measures at the federal level to see which protections they codify and which they eliminate.

More than that, though, I’ll be watching the responses of moderate and progressive churches to legislative attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.

Will they keep preaching business as usual? Will they claim that the supposed separation between church and state prohibits them from getting involved? Will they put their heads in the sand and pretend nothing’s wrong? Or will they take bold stances to protect the LGBTQ+ people in their pews and neighborhoods?

The time is quickly coming for these churches to be honest about whether they consider us their neighbors and what genuinely helpful care for neighbors like us looks like to them. I’ll be curious to see which churches walk the walk versus which ones say more than they do.

Justin Cox, Contributing Correspondent

I’m watching for stories about the end of “purple churches.”

I have heard this term used for over a decade to describe faith communities with equal numbers of conservative and progressive members. While this identifier may have once been used to express theological interpretations, it has recently become synonymous with political ideologies.

With the rise of MAGA churches and Christian Nationalism, will faith communities finally admit that purple churches rarely work when the gap between ethical and moral understandings is too wide or counter to one another?

Miguel A. De La Torre, Contributing Correspondent

Many people this year will be paying attention to mass deportation, tariff warfare, economic downturn, a weaponized Justice Department, revenge politics, or an entrenching of a plutocracy led by Elon Musk. These are certainly life-changing and life-threatening stories to watch in 2025.

However, the real story to watch is whether Trump’s incompetence (on display as he blew up the bipartisan funding bill) and the lack of experience of many of his nominees for Cabinet positions will stifle his ability to accomplish his goals.    

Craig Nash, Senior Editor

In the October 7, 2023 attacks, Hamas militants savagely murdered 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals. Since then, several hostages have also died. In response, Israel’s war to destroy Hamas has killed over 45,000 Palestinians in Gaza. Many of these deaths have been of women and children in hospitals, residential areas, and even in humanitarian caravans.

Setting aside contentious debates about Israeli sovereignty and justifications for war, a crucial question must be asked: Has there ever been a mass casualty event at this level that hasn’t resulted in historic blowback against the strongest aggressors? This is a question Israel must ask itself, but it is also one U.S. citizens must reckon with.

Since October 7, our country has invested almost $18 billion into Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon. With a government “of, by and for the people,” this means many of those bombs that have destroyed hospitals have our names written on them. (For one of our most prominent politicians, this is literally the case.)

To the original question, the answer is actually “yes.” After dropping atomic bombs on Japan, effectively ending a world war, the U.S. and its Western allies spent years and billions of dollars rebuilding Japan. 

We helped create a society and economy that has been an envy of the world. Japan instituted a new constitution that extended sovereignty to its citizens and gave women the right to vote.

With a ceasefire seemingly on the horizon, will Israel and its primary ally begin to adopt a similar approach to occupied territories? With the nomination of a U.S. ambassador who believes that Jews must rule the region so Jesus can come back and send them all to hell, that is doubtful. If it doesn’t, I’ll be looking at the blowback beginning in 2025 and beyond.

Mitch Randall, CEO and Director of GFM’s Faith and Democracy Initiative

Several stories in the realm of faith and democracy are worth watching. The upcoming year will be full of compelling stories and issues that will inspire and challenge everyone.

As President Donald Trump takes the oath of office on January 20th, the implementation of Project 2025 will come into focus. Trump has targeted migrants for deportation, promised to end DEI programs across the country, close the door on the Department of Education, roll back the Affordable Health Care Act, raise tariffs, and end federal oversight of ecological and economic systems.

Another story to watch is how the mainstream media reacts to the recent settlement between Trump and Disney, ABC’s parent company. Before the election and soon thereafter, the mainstream media began warming up to Trump and his policies, possibly out of fear of retribution. 

They started to treat him and his policies as conventional business as usual. Media outlets outside the mainstream, like Good Faith Media, must critically reengage and analyze an unconventional president and his policies.

Finally, in addition to media coverage, the resistance movement to Trump and his policies will be fascinating to evaluate and measure its productivity. Will they remain focused on an existential threat to democracy, or will they return to everyday issues affecting millions? That decision might be the hinge on which the next two years will swing. 

Starlette Thomas, Associate Editor and Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative

There are a plethora of stories to watch for in 2025. They include the live-streamed genocide in Palestine and white Christian nationalism in America. Proponents of the latter have declared war on education, reproductive rights and women’s health, immigration, and books that challenge myths rooted in fear and unequal power distribution. There are also social justice issues and the state of the climate, forced to change due to its misuse. 

This is only to name a few. But, what I am most interested in is the North American church’s response to it all.

I will be keeping an eye out and an ear open to the resulting theological paradigm shifts, the liturgical contortion made to fit the empire’s pronouncements, the outright hypocrisy made evident in its members’ economic, political, and social alignment with “the powers that be” oppressing marginalized and racialized communities. I will be taking notes and continuing to keep my prophetic distance accordingly.