Is a long-standing commemorative cross on public land socially divisive and a governmental endorsement of religion? Or, to the contrary, is a constitutional challenge to that cross an act of gratuitous social divisiveness? Recently, in American Humanist Association v. Maryland, the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling of the federal district court of [...]
In favor of Trinity Lutheran, the Supreme Court ruled that a government program cannot require a church “to renounce its religious character in order to participate in an otherwise generally available public benefit program for which it is fully qualified…” In its decision in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer this week, the Supreme Court took another [...]
President Xi has initiated a campaign of national renewal based on a return to China’s traditional values. But at the same time, an astonishingly large number of ordinary Chinese people are turning to Christianity. In a recent essay for the Catholic Thing, Mary Eberstadt focuses on reasons for hope and cheerfulness in the midst of America’s [...]
A poignant passage in Immaculée Ilibagiza’s book Left to Tell recounts how her father, a proud and prominent Tutsi in their village, resisted leaving Rwanda in the spring of 1994, shortly before the genocide. The signs of brewing violence were becoming increasingly obvious, but Ilibagiza’s father was determined to be a sign of hope for [...]
The Religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by [...]
The “Naked Public Square” is Clothed—with Intolerance When Richard John Neuhaus published The Naked Public Square in 1988, his book captured the imagination of a generation of religious conservatives. Neuhaus expressed the concerns of millions of Christians in particular, who saw public life being stripped of religious symbols and content. He went on to argue [...]
Over the years I have gotten into trouble more than a few times for things I have written or said in public, but I suppose the chief cause of my notoriety is a speech I gave to the freshmen of Yale College suggesting that they would be wise to make the study of Western civilization [...]
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It has the best of times for HSBC, the giant British bank caught using American personnel and facilities to launder money for Mexican drug cartels and various rogue states. How so? HSBC’s stock value has continued to rise since the U.S. government announced a [...]
One of the sadder aspects of Christmas time in America is the display of ignorance on the part of so many Americans regarding the constitutional tradition of our country. Why at Christmas? Because it is at this time of year that we hear the whining call of “that song” or “that play” or “that display” [...]
Edmund Burke, the eighteenth-century British statesman, has long been a popular figure for political conservatives to cite. But his views on religion get relatively little attention. This is a shame, because Burke has a lot to offer those concerned about matters of religion, morality, and politics in contemporary American life. He is a figure who [...]
This is adapted from my 1993 short book, John Witherspoon and the Presbyterian Constitution. It is intended to tell part of the story of the early American understanding of religious liberty, and to leave to the reader its bearing upon the current controversy, so utterly wrongly pictured by many as a “Catholic” issue or one [...]
In the US, the so-called contraception mandate proposed by the Obama administration has been bitterly contested by the Catholic bishops and others—such as Steve Krason of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in his “Call to Action”, and President William Fahey of Thomas More College in his “Open Letter”. Requiring Catholic employers to provide (or [...]
Roman Catholics have always been uneasy Americans, a religious minority in a country dominated by Protestants often hostile to their beliefs. Much more is to be dreaded from the growth of POPERY in America than from Stamp-Acts or any other Acts destructive of men civil rights. —Samuel Adams, 1768[1] Roman Catholics have always been uneasy [...]