RealClearReligion Articles

If you had to provide the actual date for America’s first official day, what would you list it as? Of course, one could easily argue that it was July 4, 1776, when 56 men, representing three million people back home in 13 different colonies of British North America, agreed by voice vote the final wording of the Declaration of Independence. We celebrate America at 250 because of that famous July 4th. But I would submit a different candidate as the first official day as a nation, as noted below. Interestingly, this last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, which coincided as the Sunday before...

On Sunday, May 17, I had the privilege of kicking off the Rededication 250 gathering in Washington DC by declaring the following “America is not done with God and God is not done with America.  God is up to something. Hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered together, not for a protest or a political rally, but to pray. They gathered to give thanks and to rededicate this nation to the God who blessed it when it was founded. The media may not have seen it coming. The polls did not predict it. But people of faith showed up anyway. The idea that spirituality is dead in America is a...

Giving USA reports that over the last 40 years, religious giving has fallen from 63% to 24% of total charitable contributions. For church leaders and ministry executives, it may be tempting to blame the economy. Inflation, household debt and financial pressure are squeezing families from every direction. Those forces matter. But reducing this challenge to a budget problem misses the deeper story. Generosity in America has not disappeared. Total charitable giving recently reached $592.5 billion, marking 3.3% growth after adjusting for inflation. What has changed is where that money flows, and...

Before he died, Thomas Jefferson expressed his desire that his three biggest accomplishments be listed on the obelisk that marks his grave at Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia. They were that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence (the acceptance of which we celebrate in America at 250) and the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (written in 1777 and adopted in 1786), and the founder of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville). Missing in those three accomplishments is that he was our third president or that he negotiated the largest...

When Graham Staines and his two young sons were brutally martyred in Odisha State in 1999, it shook the conscience of the nation and sparked a wave of nationwide prayer and Christian solidarity. It was in the shadow of that tragedy that the All India Christian Council (AICC) was born — a non-ecclesiastical alliance dedicated to protecting the Church and serving the marginalized communities among whom Graham had laboured. For the past four years, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) has been convening ecumenical gatherings, bringing together heads of various churches...

Augustine of Hippo finished The City of God in 426 A.D., just as the Roman Empire was coming apart at its seams. He had watched the eternal city sacked. He had watched Christians scramble to make theological sense of a collapsing political order. His answer was one of the most consequential arguments in the history of Western thought: there are two cities — the City of God and the city of man — and the great temptation of every age is to confuse one for the other. Sixteen centuries later, that confusion is back. And for those of us who study the long arc of religion and politics...

Antisemitism has permeated the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Most troubling, Matthew Ynglesias, Ezra Klein, and Jonathan Chait have all suggested that non-leftist Democrats should recommend ending military aid to Israel.  They contend that Israel-related policies should not estrange centrists like themselves from the leftwing of the party. They also are willing to keep Hassan Piker in the big tent; someone who favors Hamas over Israel.  Whenever the progressives are criticized, they contend that only the Democratic Party pursue social justice initiatives.  However,...

In a time of deep division at home and instability abroad, one area of enduring consensus among millions of Americans is support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, especially within our nation’s faith communities. That’s why our organizations are bringing together a coalition of 300 rabbis, pastors, and faith leaders to Capitol Hill this week to advocate for strengthening U.S. support for Israel, confronting the rise of antisemitism, and ensuring the security of faith-based communities. Our presence in Washington is deeply informed by a somber historical predecessor that we see as...

Since the time of Hippocrates (460–370 B.C.), the Father of Medicine, physicians have traditionally subscribed to doing no harm and prescribed what is in the best interest of their individual patients; in other words, putting patients first. This concept is known as individual-based ethics or patient-oriented medical ethics. Today’s bioethics movement, as actively being practiced in Canada, the Netherland, and many other Western countries, and some states in the U.S. on the other hand, subscribes to population-based ethics, in which physicians become obligated to make decisions...

As more Gen Z men explore religion and alternative career paths, while their peers increasingly embrace socialism and communism, the feast of St. Joseph the Worker — May 1st — takes on a new relevance. This convergence of trends presents a timely opportunity for the Church to re-emphasize Joseph, the foster father of Jesus Christ, as a model for young men seeking stability and purpose amid shifting cultural currents. In an April Gallup survey, 42% of American young men say religion is “very important” — which is not only an increase from 28% in 2022-23, but also...

I was scrolling through Apple News before bed when I saw the headline. My body registered it before my mind did: disbelief, then denial. I read the first paragraph and couldn’t read another word. I put my phone down. But I couldn’t let it go. I opened the article again and read every word. Then came the numbingly familiar cycle: betrayal, anger and that weary thought (not another one). One of my favorite Christian authors, whose books shaped my faith as a young believer and guided me for decades, a man I thought was above reproach, had confessed to a years-long affair after 55...

America needs the Bible more than ever. Thankfully, at the Museum of the Bible last week, they had various leaders read through the whole book. Even the president participated. Two months before it happened, I wrote about it, calling it “An Ambitious Bible Reading Plan.” AmericaReadsTheBible.com explains their vision: “In honor of the 250th birthday of the United States, America Reads the Bible serves as a spiritual celebration of our nation’s founding ideals and a call to rediscover the truth that still anchors us today.” Just as in...

A new film opened this month that moved me in ways I did not fully anticipate — and I did not come to it unprepared. I have spent years researching, lecturing, and writing about America’s Christian founding, building the case document by document that the moral framework of this Republic was not incidental to its founding but foundational to it. So when I sat in that theater, I experienced it not as surprise but as recognition — the feeling of watching a storm gather on a horizon you have studied for years. That is what great historical storytelling does. It does not merely...

Are we done bullying nuns yet? Apparently not, as evidenced by a new lawsuit in New York. And it’s not actually “we”; it’s left-wing ideologues doing the bullying. Fresh off spending more than a decade trying to make the Little Sisters of the Poor — an order of nuns that run nursing homes for the destitute poor — pay for things like abortion pills in their healthcare plans, they have turned their attention to a different order of nuns that care for the most vulnerable. This time they’ve trained their eye on the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, New...

Pope Leo XIV said something last month that needs to be heard, examined, and answered honestly. Not politically, but biblically. The first American pope in history stood before tens of thousands in St. Peter's Square and declared that Jesus "does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war." He called for an end to the conflict in Iran. He warned against the weaponization of God's name to justify military campaigns. He cried out for peace. On several of those points, he is right. Completely and without qualification. Let me start there. When political leaders reach for Scripture to...

Catholicism’s rise in America is a reaction to, and a rejection of, the Left’s relativism. Today, self-styled “progressives” are in the vanguard of America’s Left and at the core of progressives’ agenda is a vacuous relativism.  Both ends of America’s political press, the New York Times and Washington Times, recently ran features on Catholicism’s rise in America. Data from 140 of America’s 175 Catholic dioceses showed the number of converts to Catholicism jumped 38% during the last Easter weekend: 139% in...

For more than a century, America’s response to homelessness was rooted in faith. Churches, rescue missions, Catholic Charities, and the Salvation Army fed the hungry, sheltered the vulnerable, and most importantly, walked alongside them toward restoration. They innately understood a fundamental truth: Homelessness is a human transformation challenge requiring recovery, accountability, and the restoration of purpose. Over the past decade, however, policymakers were increasingly steered toward a different conclusion. A one-size-fits-all approach was supposed to end homelessness and...

I was cleaning up the yard on a recent Saturday afternoon. For too long, sticks — snapped during months of rough New England wintry weather — littered the backyard. But that nice early spring day, the time came to roll up my sleeves and avoid being a neighborhood blight. As I bent and burned debris in my fire pit, I listened to the rosary. Though the Joyful Mysteries were prayed, my mind and heart were weighed down by a lack of self-confidence — both in my work and as a soon-to-be husband to my wonderful fiancée. Questions pressed in: How will I provide for our...

It had been over three hours by now. Three hours with the crown of thorns pressed into His head. Three hours with the nails piercing His hands and His feet. Three hours with His raw and bleeding back pressed against a rough, wooden cross. Three hours of anguish and suffering. Now, though, at about three in the afternoon, it was coming to an end. Those who stood within shouting distance of the cross heard the first scream: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” They thought He was calling for divine intervention, a miracle of salvation from God to deliver Him from imminent...