Faith and Law

James Forsyth, senior pastor of McLean Presbyterian Church, will examine John 6:26, where Jesus exposed the political motivation of the crowd who followed him. He'll ask key questions, such as, "How did the crowd's political vision for Jesus keep them from truly seeing him? In what ways can our politics distort our view of Jesus? What does it look like to pursue Jesus because he is...

Jeremy Everett is a noted advocate for the hungry and poor. He calls Christians to work intentionally across ideological divides to build trust with one another and impoverished communities and effectively end America's hunger crisis. Everett, appointed by US Congress to the National Commission on Hunger, founded and directs the Texas Hunger Initiative, a successful ministry that is helping t...

Hadley Arkes has been a member of the Amherst College faculty since 1966, and since 1987 he has been the Edward Ney Professor of Jurisprudence. Since 2016, he has assumed emeritus status. He has written five books with Princeton University Press: Bureaucracy, the Marshall Plan and the National Interest (1972), The Philosopher in the City (1981), First Things (1986), Beyond the Constitution (1990),...

On June 27, 2003, Rear Admiral Barry C. Black (Ret.) was elected the 62nd Chaplain of the United States Senate. He began working in the Senate on July 7, 2003. Prior to coming to Capitol Hill, Chaplain Black served in the U.S. Navy for over twenty-seven years, ending his distinguished career as the Chief of Navy Chaplains. The Senate elected its first chaplain in 1789. Commissioned as a Navy Chapl...

Academic and popular authors regularly assert that America’s founders were deists who created a godless Constitution and desired the strict separation of church and state.  Professor Hall explains why these claims are false, and shows how the founders were influenced by Christian ideas in important ways.  He concludes by arguing that America's founders shared a commitment to protecting religi...

Mark Lutz grew up in South Africa, the son of missionary parents. Living for twenty years under apartheid shaped him to become an advocate for justice. Visits to fifty countries have sharpened his vision for a world free from extreme poverty. Mark is Senior Vice President of Global Philanthropy at Opportunity Inter- national, a non-profit microfinance organization. They loan out two billion dollar...

Dr. Aaron Rhodes’ book, The Debasement of Human Rights: How Politics Sabotage the Ideal of Freedom , identifies a dangerous trend in the international human rights movement. Increasingly, the natural rights of individuals, like religious freedom and freedom of speech and conscience, are being conflated with manufactured rights that are the social and economic policy priorities of particular groups...

At this Friday Forum, the Clapham Group will premier a short film on The Role of the Faith Community and the Fight to End AIDS through PEPFAR and the Global Fund.   A panel of experts will respond including: Mark P. Lagon is a practitioner and thinker on global health, human rights, and human trafficking, and global institutions.  He is Chief Policy Officer at Friends of the Global Fight Against A...

At this Friday Forum, author and social critic Os Guinness will discuss his latest book, Carpe Diem Redeemed: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times.  Guinness argues that you only live once―if then. Life is short, and it can be as easily wasted as lived to the full. In the midst of our harried modern world, how do we make the most of life and the time we have? In these fast and superficial times,...

Mary Eberstadt is an American author of several influential works of non-fiction, including How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization ; Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution ; and It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies . Her 2010 novel The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism was adapted for stage and premie...

Culture is upstream from politics.  In other words, government is like a giant mirror reflecting the soul of the nation.  While the clarity of that reflection will shift from administration to administration, we generally get the government we deserve. As Plato argued, the state is the soul writ large.  What we love and what we hate are shaped less by laws than by our habits of the heart.  And tho...

Katherine Haley is the senior director of K-12 education programs for The Philanthropy Roundtable. Prior to joining the Roundtable, Katherine spent 13 years working for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Most recently, she served for seven years as the chief policy adviser for education, workforce, antipoverty, global health, and other social issues for former Speaker of...

Heather Rice-Minus serves as Vice President of Government Affairs & Church Mobilization at Prison Fellowship, the nation's largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, former prisoners, and their families. She is a powerful, knowledgeable voice articulating the case for restorative criminal justice solutions. As leader of Prison Fellowship's policy staff, Rice-Minus directs lobbyin...

At the 2019 Faith & Law Annual Dinner, Os and Jenny Guinness and Senator Ben Sasse and Melissa Sasse were honored with the Charles Colson Award for Public Service. Following the presentation of the awards, Senator Sasse and Os spoke about Divided Politics and Lonely Americans , moderated by Cherie Harder, President of the Trinity Forum and member of the Faith & Law board.  About the Charle...

Canon Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda will share his personal story of living with HIV and about his work and leadership against stigma, shame, denial and discrimination, inaction and mis-action.  Further, he will discuss his ministry and theology to uphold the human dignity and rights of people living with and most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS.  Then, Dr. Jenny Dyer will  will reflect on the critical r...

Paul Marshall is a research professor in the Department of Political Science as well as the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR). Marshall was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, particularly religiou...

This Faith & Law Friday Forum will focus on tribalism and identity politics with Georgetown University Professor Paul Miller. Dr. Miller asserts that civilization is fixated on stories about the journey to discover our identity, and how the discovery of our identity is the key to unleashing our inner power and mastering our world. In this lecture, he will address this myth by sharing where it...

Former Congressman and US Ambassador Tony Hall was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is one of the leading advocates for hunger relief programs and improving international human rights conditions in the world. He served the Third District of Ohio for more than 20 years and was sworn in as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Septembe...

Fred W. Beuttler is the associate dean for Liberal Arts Programs at the University of Chicago’s Graham School. He received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1995. Prior to coming to Graham in June 2015, he was director of general education and taught history at Carroll University in Wisconsin. From 2005 to 2010, he was the deputy historian of the US House of Representatives, in...

The hour is critical. The American republic is suffering its gravest crisis since the Civil War.  Conflicts, hostility, and incivility now threaten to tear the country apart. Competing visions have led to a dangerous moment of cultural self-destruction. This is no longer politics as usual, but an era of political warfare where our enemies are not foreign adversaries, but our fellow citizens. Yet t...

When Kimberly Kuo graduated summa cum laude from Stanford University and studied at the London School of Economics, she never imagined that she would be speaking about assisted suicide and euthanasia. She married the love of her life, David Kuo, who became special assistant to George W. Bush and deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. After David was diagnosed with...

Anne Snyder is the Director of The Character Initiative at The Philanthropy Roundtable , a pilot program that seeks to help foundations and business leaders strengthen “the middle ring” of morally formative institutions in the U.S. She is also a Fellow at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism , a Houston-based think tank that explores how cities can drive opportunity for the bulk of their citizens....

Donald Larson is the CEO/Founder of Sunshine Nut Company in Mozambique. In 2011, he gave up a successful career in the corporate food industry and moved his family to Mozambique to start Sunshine Nut Co. The road to Mozambique began in 2007 when Don turned down a major career move and left his corporate life for a spiritual journey to discover God’s true purpose for his life. It was in this season...

In this lecture, Os Guinness discussed the questions, "What does it say of us as human beings that we  see ourselves as 'post-Auschwitz,' 'post-Hiroshima' and now 'pre-Singularity'? What does the Bible have to say to humanity on the verge of transhumanism, and those who claim that through science and technology we are now 'the gods of planet earth'?&quo...

Trillia Newbell is the author of  Enjoy: Finding the Freedom to Delight Daily in God’s Good Gifts (2016),  Fear and Faith: Finding the Peace Your Heart Craves (2015) and United: Captured by God’s Vision for Diversity (2014). Her writings on issues of faith, family, and diversity have been published in the Knoxville News-Sentinel , Desiring God , True Woman , Christianity Today , The Gospel Coaliti...