Faith and Law

The culture of freedom we enjoy in the United States is deeply shaped by religious minorities seeking to honor God in their beliefs and orders of worship from the colonial period to the present day. Marc Wheat, General Counsel for Advancing American Freedom,  introduced the historical and legal context for the First Amendment, thereby establishing the foundation for our Friday Forum titled “Religious Liberty and Parental Opt-Outs: School Choice at the Supreme Court” in partnership with Becket. 

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Most Americans either do not understand legislative politics, or if they do, they are repulsed by the process.  But Congress is the most important institution in the American government because without it, democracy is impossible. Working in Congress gives you the opportunity to do good for thousands, perhaps millions of people. Where else in the world can you do that, so early in your career?

Mark Strand, former President of the Congressional Institute and current member of the Faith and Law Board of Directors joined us for a lecture titled “Politics and Sausage Making” about glorifying God through work on Capitol Hill. 

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In 1988, Ben Spencer was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit. He spent 34 years wrongfully imprisoned. Now, Ben has teamed up with award-winning journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty to share his story – and larger story about the flaws in the legal system that allow mistakes to occur, and how some states are trying to fix them.

Conversation was moderated by Scott Peyton, director of government affairs at Prison Fellowship.

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Many Christians talk earnestly about ‘the Christian roots of America,’ but never say what they were. Equally the MAGA movement aims to ‘make America great again,’ but never stops to say what made America great in first place.

Dr. Os Guinness, foreign admirer of the US, joined us to discuss what it was that gave the American republic a freedom like no other – which needs to be recovered today.

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Ed Simcox, author of In the Room and Indiana’s 55th Secretary of State joined us for a reflection on his personal encounters with Chuck Colson and the early days of the national justice movement. As Prison Fellowship marks its 50th anniversary, this discussion explored how faith shaped a generation of public leadership and why the call to second chances remains vital for policymakers today. 

Our conversation was moderated by Scott Peyton, Director of Government Affairs at Prison Fellowship. 

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People with disabilities are created in the image of God, imbued with the same intrinsic value and bestowed the unalienable rights declared in our  nation’s founding document. However, the history of disability policy and social norms have not always mirrored this foundational truth. 

Drawing from her experience, surviving a life threatening and rare spinal cord tumor that left her as a quadriplegic and her decades working on Capitol Hill, Rachel Barkley director of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Able Americans program, first discussed what the Bible says about people with disabilities, then in light of this, how we should approach disability policy.

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Is the purpose of religious liberty to end religious oppression or is it to change, perhaps even eradicate, religion as it has been known across history? That question has been at the heart of America’s debates about religious liberty since the founding era and it still plagues us today.

Dr. Richard Samuelson, Associate Professor of Government at Hillsdale College, presented a study of this founding era debate to help us understand this important tension that has persisted across American history.

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In his 1962 book, Propaganda, Jacques Ellul outlines three conditions for propaganda’s success. Bombard people with excessive information so they will forget, always have “breaking news” so they do not reflect or think critically, and have no North Star or standard to measure deviation. As Christians we are called to remember, called to think, and called to follow our certain and firm North Star. Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College and chief academic officer for Ligonier Ministries, discussed how a Christian worldview speaks to these conditions and encourages us to both speak and live truthfully in difficult times.

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During a time when political conversations are marked by deep division, polarization, and challenging moral questions, what resources do evangelicals have to think and act critically, coherently, and theologically about public life?

In their new book, Hopeful Realism: Evangelical Natural Law and Democratic Politics, political theorists Dr. Jesse Covington of Westmont College, Dr Bryan T. McGraw of Wheaton College, and Dr. Micah Watson of Calvin College lay out an evangelical theory of the natural law and show how it can be employed within the context of our pluralist democratic order.

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Dr. Amy E. Black, Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College (IL) joined us to share ideas from her forthcoming book, Civil Religion and the Renewal of American Politics. Dr. Black rejects strict secularism and Christian nationalism, suggesting instead that an inclusive civil religion is the best model for the interplay of religion and politics in a pluralist democracy like the United States.

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