Essay | Religion & Politics

Masterpiece Cakeshop: Meet the Christian Legal Group Behind the High-Profile Court Case

Alliance Defending Freedom has become one of the most influential legal interest groups in the United States.

By Daniel Bennett

How the State Department Has Sidelined Religion’s Role in Diplomacy

Gone are the days when the United States had the capacity to understand lived religion in almost any part of the world.

By Shaun Casey

Charlottesville, Exodus, and the Politics of Nostalgia

We may never reach the Promised Land, but we will become a better nation by remaining on the journey.

By Rachel Wheeler

How One Purist Tried to Save the Religious Right from the Republicans

Then, as now, the movement largely chose relevance, thinking it was better to be a power player accused of hypocrisy than to be uncompromised, but irrelevant.

By Daniel Silliman

Breaking the Ten Commandments: A Short History of the Contentious American Monuments

Where once the biblical passages were an anchor of the nation’s identity, they have now become the stuff of controversy and even rupture.

By Jenna Weissman Joselit

Why I Went Back to Church

I owe it to my daughter, my father, and Donald Trump.

By Max Perry Mueller

Reinhold Niebuhr, Washington’s Favorite Theologian

He has experienced something of a renaissance since 9/11.

By Gene Zubovich

The Theology of Stephen K. Bannon

His religious ideology combines aspects of Christianity with far-right nationalism, Islamophobia, and pseudo-historical narratives.

By Hugh Urban

Neil Gorsuch, the Supreme Court, and Religious Freedom

Were our politics not dysfunctional, Gorsuch would be confirmed—as Scalia was—unanimously.

By Richard W. Garnett

The Conservative Tradition of Welcoming Refugees

Nearly three decades after my family came to the United States, refugees today anxiously hold their breath because what seemed certain to us—that we would be welcomed in our new home—is no longer so obvious.

By Gene Zubovich

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