Basilica of Saint Peter by Carlo Armanni from Pixabay. Pope Francis envisions human fraternity in his 2020 encyclical Fratelli Tutti. This essay explores how “fraternal pluralism” guides the Church’s respect for personal conscience. This teaching reflects aspects of earlier Church history and the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae, and it can be illustrated by examining…
In and Out of ChurchSteven Tipton The following is an adapted excerpt from Steven Tipton’s new book, “In and Out of Church: The Moral Arc of Spiritual Change in America.” With permission from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2025. Freedom of conscience runs deep in the American grain of religious practice and belief all the way…
What Might Make Life Better?: On Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values in Late Modern Pluralistic SocietiesJohn Witte, Jr. This essay is drawn from the fourth chapter of Michael Welker and John Witte, Jr.’s recently published book, What Might Make Life Better?: On Character Formation, Ethical Education, and the Communication of Values…
Image by David Vives from Pixabay. American politics have taken increasingly surprising turns in recent years. One of the more surprising of these has been the recovery of a nineteenth-century Catholic political theory known as integralism. Its proponents reject secular governance and free institutions (lower-case “l” liberalism) in favor of “political rule that must order…
Istanbul Skyline via Wikimedia Commons (CC0 1.0). This article is part of our virtual symposium and essay series, “Masking Religious Freedom Violations.” Read more here. One of the most grievous periods of Christian history in the land of Turkey spanned much of the 20th century. One episode was the Istanbul pogrom of September 6-7, 1955,…
Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev, Ukraine by Juan Antonio Segal (CC BY-SA 4.0). This article is part of our series on Transnational Christian Nationalism, and its impact on politics, the rule of law, and religious freedom. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. Post-election, no one in the U.S. or abroad is entirely…
“Christ Blessing the Children” by Lucas Cranach the Younger (CC0 1.0). This article is part of our “Religious Perspectives on Assisted Reproduction and Surrogacy” series. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. In April 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Dignitas Infinita, the most recent articulation of Catholic doctrine…
Oil painting portrait of Edmund Burke by James Barry (Public Domain) This article is part of our series on Transnational Christian Nationalism, and its impact on politics, the rule of law, and religious freedom. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. At the annual gala of The American Conservative magazine in Washington,…
Viktor Orbán, Hungary by Elekes Andor (CC BY-SA 4.0) This article is part of our series on Transnational Christian Nationalism, and its impact on politics, the rule of law, and religious freedom. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. In recent decades, Europe has witnessed the emergence of the Christian Right as…
Evangelical Church of the Holy Trinity and St. Elisabeth Church in Slovakia by Marcin Szala (CC BY-SA 4.0). This article is part of our series on Transnational Christian Nationalism, and its impact on politics, the rule of law, and religious freedom. If you’d like to explore other articles in this series, click here. Despite its relative size…