Christian conservative activists have long championed religious freedom restoration laws and parental rights laws as way of protecting their religious rights, especially in the way they raise their children. Those same activists were behind a new Texas requirement that an abridged version of the Ten Commandments be posted in public-school classrooms throughout the state.

But Texas opponents of the new Ten Commandments law see a contradiction there: In a lawsuit filed last week challenging the Ten Commandments mandate, three mothers going to a Harris County court hope to use state restoration and parental rights laws to keep the Commandments off the school walls. The three say the new requirements violates their religious freedom and their right to raise their children as they see fit.

At issue is Senate Bill 10, approved by the Legislature in 2025, which requires that a “durable poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments” be posted in “a conspicuous place” in every public elementary or secondary school classroom. The sign is not to include any text other than the specified version of the Ten Commandments and is to be “legible to a person with average vision from anywhere in the classroom in which the poster or framed copy is displayed.”

The law was challenged in federal courts in Texas almost immediately. Two federal district courts struck down the law, saying it violates the First Amendment provision prohibiting the establishment of religion. But on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit disagreed by the narrowest of margins: A 9-8 vote in April restored the law. The constitutionality of the law, along with similar laws in Arkansas and Louisiana, could ultimately be settled by the U.S. Supreme Court, but the plaintiffs in the new lawsuit don’t want to wait until that can happen.

The federal Supreme Court has settled the issue once before: In a 1980 case from Kentucky, Stone v. Graham, the court decided 5-4 that a law similar to the new one in Texas “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature.” But backers of the new law are hopeful that the court as it is constituted today would be willing to reverse that earlier decision as rulings in recent years have generally expanded the exposure of students in public schools to religious influences.

A key difference between the new lawsuit and the earlier ones against SB 10 is that it is making its claims under state law rather than the U.S. Constitution. The laws the plaintiffs say support their position are:

🟪 The state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1999 and modeled after a federal law going by the same name. It states that “a government agency may not substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion” unless the government action is “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.”

🟪 The state’s Parental Rights Amendment, also known as Proposition 15, which was approved by almost 70 percent of the voters in an election last November. It states that parents have the “fundamental right to exercise care, custody, and control of the parent’s child, including the right to make decisions concerning the child’s upbringing.”

The Ten Commandments law violates those parental rights in the way it exposes students to religious dogma contrary to parental wishes, the lawsuit claims.

None of the three mothers identifies with Christianity. According to a press release from the plaintiffs, Emily Roth raises her children without a religious emphasis; Audrey Rosa Nath raises her children following several religions that include Jainism, Hinduism, Judaism and Quakerism; and Sanjam Kaur Sohal is Sikh. All of them are from the Houston area.

Since the lawsuit was filed just last week, lawyers representing Texas have yet to submit their arguments.

The first legal brief has been field in the federal appeals court case that will determine whether a Ten Commandments monument can continue to be on display on the Arkansas Capitol grounds.

Attorneys for the First Liberty Institute, which often represents conservative Christian causes in religious freedom cases, and the Arkansas attorney general’s office filed the brief last week in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The argue, among other things, that displays of the Ten Commandments are part of the national heritage of the United States and have “historical and secular significance.” They claim that the lower-level ruling against the monument, written by Judge Kristine Baker of the U.S. District Court of the Central Division of the Eastern District of Arkansas, was based in part on U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have become outdated in recent years.

The brief called the district court’s decision “flawed throughout,” saying in part that it misapplied the Lemon test, named for Lemon v. Kurtzman, the landmark 1971 Supreme Court decision that set up a framework1 for determining when the government is violating the constitutional prohibition against establishment of religion. Cases before the Supreme Court in recent years have tended to weaken the Lemon test, making it easier for the government to get involved in religion.

In summarizing the legal arguments, the brief said:

Permanent Ten Commandments monuments are part of a longstanding national tradition of acknowledging the Commandments’ historical influence on American law. The Supreme Court and this Court have held materially similar monuments are constitutional, and the Display Act drew from those precedents. Yet the district court improperly distinguished those cases based on matters such as the monument’s age, the identity of donors who contributed to the monument, and cherrypicked statements by one legislator.

The case is Cave v. Jester. Donna Cave is the lead plaintiff in the case, which began in 2018 when the state erected the monument, one made to replace another than had been vandalized. Cole Jester is the secretary of state for Arkansas. The Satanic Temple is also involved in the case as an intervenor, as its attempts to set up a monument on state grounds led to the law that authorized the current monument. The plaintiffs and the Satanic Temple have not had time to respond to the defendants’ brief of last week.

Original article (April 6, 2026): Judge rejects placing of Ten Commandments monument on Arkansas Capitol grounds

More than a decade after the Arkansas Legislature first passed a law authorizing the establishing a Ten Commandments monument on the Arkansas Capitol grounds, a federal court judge has found the display of the three-ton sculpture unconstitutional.

In her ruling last week, Judge Kristine Baker of the U.S. District Court of the Central Division of the Eastern District of Arkansas invalidated the law authorizing the monument and ordered it to be removed. The part of her order involving the removal does not go in effect until either any appeals of her ruling are resolved or the deadline for filing an appeal has passed.

The monument has a convoluted history: The Legislature first passed the law authorizing a Ten Commandments monument in 2015, claiming that the Commandments “are an important component of the moral foundation of the laws and legal system of the United States of America and of the State of Arkansas.” The Satanic Temple then sought permission to install a monument of the pagan deity Baphomet, resulting in a 2017 law that set up a process for approval of monuments on state lands near the Capitol, a process that rejected the Satanists’ plan.

A Ten Commandments monument was installed in 2017, but it was almost immediately destroyed by a vandal using an automobile. A new monument, the one that was the subject of the lawsuit, was put up in 2018, this time protected by four concrete bollards.

In ruling against the monument, Baker found:

🟪 That the “primary purpose” of the 2017 law was to promote the Ten Commandments.

🟪 That “historical tradition or practice does not support” the law, a finding that was used in part to distinguish the case from Van Orden V. Perry, a 5-4 Supreme Court decision from 2005 that allowed a very similar Ten Commandments monument in Texas to remain on display.

🟪 That the law favored Christianity and deprived the Satanist group from promoting its beliefs on an equal footing.

🟪 That a discriminatory intent was a motivating factor behind the law.

Baker was appointed to her post by President Barack Obama.

As would be expected, Baker’s ruling received both praise and acclaim.

Among those happy with the ruling was Amitai Heller, the legal director of the American Humanist Association, which, among other things, promotes church-state separation. He said on his group’s website:

State capitols should be welcoming to all citizens, and this ruling rightfully rejects this effort to promote one specific set of religious beliefs above all others — including the right to not believe at all. This decision affirms the First Amendment’s bedrock constitutional principle of church-state separation, which ensures these very freedoms.

Meanwhile, Jason Rapert, a former state senator who had sponsored the monument legislation, condemned the ruling in a video on Facebook, saying:

The judge, Kristine Baker, has released this decision on the eighth anniversary [of the monument’s placement] ..., which I think is very, very interesting that she released a decision against the Ten Commandments during Holy Week, which is really just a slap in the face of Jews and Christians. ... This is Mosaic law. This is literally as much a Jewish symbol as a Christian symbol to some people.

Rapert promised that Baker’s ruling would be appealed.

Leaders of a Native American religious organization have gone to the U.S. Supreme Court in their effort to prevent the city of San Antonio, Texas, from continuing with park developments that the group says would irrevocably damage a sacred site that has been used by Native Americans for centuries.

At issue are plans by the city to refurbish a part of Brackenridge Park on a bend of the San Antonio River using funds from an $8 million bond measure that local voters approved in 2017. The plan would involve the removal of some trees that are part of an area where large white cormorants, a type of aquatic migratory bird, annually nest.

Petitioners Gary Perez and Matilde Torres, ceremonial leaders of the Lipan Native American Church, filed suit against the city in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in 2023 when they and other worshipers were barred from an area of the park due to development work. They claimed that the city’s actions, particularly its removal of trees and efforts to deter the nesting of cormorants, infringed on their religious freedoms. They sought an injunction that would provide them access to the site, preserve the “spiritual ecology” of the site by limiting tree removal and allowing cormorants to nest, and order the city to develop alternative plans that would accommodate the Native Americans’ religious beliefs.

Perez and Torres so far have been unsuccessful in their legal actions. The district court sided with the city, finding, among other things, that the plaintiffs had not established that their religious rights were substantially burdened in light of the city’s compelling government interest in carrying out the park project.

The plaintiffs lost their appeal to a panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, and in February the full appeals court voted 11-6 not to have the entire court rehear the case.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs, represented by the Liberty Institute with support from the University of Texas Law and Religion Clinic, is asking for consideration of two legal issues:

🟪 Whether the First Amendment allows courts to override the sincere judgment of a claimant’s sincere theological judgment about what religious exercise is required by the religion.

🟪 Whether a government that has the obligation to show that its actions are the “least religiously restrictive means available” has done so if it “failed to consider any workable alternatives prior to litigation.”

Steven Collis, director of the Law and Religion Clinic, said in a prepared statement about the legal action:

Both the courts and the city are aware that our clients can worship nowhere else but this site, yet both have told them they are mistaken in their religious beliefs and can just go somewhere else. That violates the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, as does refusing to do available, less-destructive alternatives.

Meanwhile, the city attorney’s office earlier said of a ruling favoring the city:

This ruling affirms the City’s ability to responsibly preserve and manage public lands — including the voter-approved 2017 bond project to improve Brackenridge Park — while continuing to respect and accommodate religious practices. We are hopeful that work can begin soon on the long-delayed, voter-approved improvements to Brackenridge Park.

The lawsuit is referred to as Perez v. San Antonio. If the Supreme Court agrees to consider the case, a hearing would probably be held during the term that begins in October.

Lipan religious beliefs explained

As part of the proceedings, the federal appeals court had asked the Texas Supreme Court for its understanding of whether a provision of the state Constitution applied in this case. As part of its ruling, the court gave this explanation of the Lipan religious beliefs:

The Church believes that life on earth began at a spring along the Yanaguana, which is now known as the San Antonio River. A particular bend in the river, which resembles the shape of the constellation Eridanus, serves in the Church’s faith as a sacred connection between the physical and spiritual worlds.

According to the Church’s teaching, the spring created the Blue Hole, in which a spirit in the form of a blue panther resided. Another spirit, taking the form of a cormorant, appeared at the Blue Hole, but the panther spirit startled the bird spirit and caused it to flee, dropping water from its tail that produced life throughout the San Antonio River Valley.

Church members believe that at certain times throughout the year they must participate in certain religious services in the “Sacred Area” — a twenty-by-thirty-foot space among cypress trees on the south shore of the river bend — facing north so they can observe the trees and the cormorants nesting and flying within the “spiritual ecology.”

Evidence exists that indigenous peoples have conducted similar religious services in and around the Sacred Area for thousands of years.1

The Texas Supreme Court said that the city’s project in this case wasn’t a type of government action covered by a religious-freedom provision in Texas Constitution.

As most deadlines have passed for lawmakers and petitioners to place measures on state ballots for November’s elections, conservative Christian voters and their allies have succeeded in sending to voters in five states measures that would restrict the ability of transsexuals to express their self-identified gender in various ways.

Specifically, at issue in November elections would be plans to limit the ability of trans females1 to participate in school sports for girls or college-age women, prohibit certain transition treatments for minors, and/or restrict the use of restrooms and locker rooms based on sex.

The state that most recently was added to the list of those with a trans-related measure on the November ballot was Nebraska, where a record-setting 211,000 signatures were turned in at the end of June for the proposed Nebraska Sex Requirement for School and College Sports Amendment, which would amend the state’s Constitution. Although state officials have yet to certify that sufficient signatures were turned in, it is a virtual certainty that the requirements were met: Under state law, about valid 126,000 signatures were needed, meaning that organizers approached getting double the requirement. An unprecedented number of signatures would have to be invalidated to keep the proposal off the ballot.

Most of the measures in the five states have advanced to the ballot with support from Catholic organizations and/or evangelical groups such as Focus on the Family. Nearly all are facing opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood and/or LGTBQ groups.

A closer look at the Nebraska proposal

The Nebraska amendment would apply to public schools through the university level. Schools would be required to designate all athletic teams or sports “based on biological sex” as being for males, men or boys; females, women or girls; or coed or mixed. Essentially, the female teams would not be open to biological males, although both male and mixed-gender sports would be open to females.

The amendment does not define “biological sex.”

The campaign for signatures was organized by Fairness for Girls under the auspices of the Nebraska Family Alliance. The alliance describes itself as a nonprofit policy research and educational organization “advocating for Biblical values, marriage, families, life, parental rights, and religious freedom.” The organization says its vision is that Nebraska be a state “where God is honored, marriages and families thrive, life is cherished, parental rights are protected, and religious liberty flourishes.”

At last report, Fairness for Girls had received $3.1 million in cash contributions for its campaign, all of it from Restore the Good Life Inc. Little is known about Restore the Good Life, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that does not maintain an online presence. As a “dark money” organization, it is not required to publicize its sources of income and has more flexibility to be involved in political campaigns than do the better-known 501(c)(3) nonprofits.

According to Nebraska Public Media, the group’s treasurer, Tanner Lockhorn, did not respond to repeated questions about the organization. Nebraska Public Media also said that in the 2022 election cycle, Restore the Good Life was the sole source of income for the Say No to RINOs PAC, which spent money opposing moderate Republican gubernatorial candidate running in the primary against Gov. Jim Pillen,

As of the most recent campaign-filing reporting deadline, there was no organized opposition to the amendment. Organized opposition could develop now that the amendment appears to have qualified for the ballot.

Measures on ballots in other states

The other states with trans-related measures on the ballot this fall are Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Washington. Colorado voters will face two measures.

Here’s a quick look at the proposals:

Arizona: Protect Girls’ Sports in Arizona Act

A proposed law that would make changes designed to require trans students in athletic activities to compete with members of their biological sex was approved by the Arizona Legislature earlier this year and sent to voters for adoption. The proposed law, which covers both K-12 public schools and the college system, would make these two changes to state law:

🟪 Prohibit schools and athletic associations (private sports-related organizations that work with schools) from authorizing students and others of a particular sex to use a restroom, locker room, shower room, or other private space that is not designated for their sex. Current law is silent on that issue.

🟪 Provide that only males could participate on sports designated for males. Current law allows females to participate in male sports. The existing ban on males in female sports would continue.

The law defines defines a student’s sex as “biological status as male or female as recorded at birth on the individual’s original birth certificate.”

Groups that have formally endorsed the measure include the Center for Arizona Policy and Liberty Counsel Action. Opponents include the Arizona Education Association (a teachers union), the ACLU and several LGTBQ-oriented organizations.

To date, no campaign expenditures have been reported for either side2.

Colorado: Protect Women and Girls Sports Act

Colorado Initiative 109 is designed primarily to keep biological men and boys from participating in girls’ and women’s athletics. It also would prevent females playing on male teams except when a school or athletic program doesn’t provide the same sport for females. The proposal applies to public K-12 schools as well as the state’s college and university system.

The proposal was placed on the ballot by petition.

The initiative defines a female (a term including women and girls) as someone “whose biological reproductive system is organized around the production of ova.” A male is defined as someone “whose biological reproductive system is organized around the production of sperm.”

The main organizations supporting the campaign so far are the Colorado Catholic Conference and Focus on the Family. The main opponents are the Interfaith Alliance, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, and several LGTBQ-oriented groups.

At last report, opponents had raised nearly $600,000 to campaign against the measure, much more than the $116,000 raised by supporters.

Colorado: Protect Children from Irreversible Sex Change Surgery Act

Colorado Initiative 110 is the result of a petition drive that was organized in 2025 in response to the Colorado Legislature’s adoption that year of the Protect Access to Gender-Affirming Health Care Act, which prevented insurance companies from denying coverage for certain types of gender-affirming care. The initiative is aimed at that law as it applies to children, prohibiting most surgical gender-affirming care for minors.

Specifically, the proposed law would provide that health care professionals could not “perform, prescribe, administer, or provide any surgery to a minor for the purpose of altering biological sex characteristics.” It also would prevent health insurance or public health programs from paying for such surgeries.

The initiative makes exceptions for male circumcision and for children “born with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development or treatment for acquired physical or chemical abnormalities.”

The campaign-finance reports for Initiative 110 mirror those for Initiative 109, which opponents far outpacing supporters.

Missouri: Prohibit Abortion and Gender Transition Procedures for Minors Amendment

Missouri Amendment 3, which would change the state Constitution, tackles both abortion and medical or surgical gender transition treatments for minors. It was placed on the ballot by the Missouri Legislature last year on a 103-51 vote in the House followed by a 21-11 vote in the Senate. Only a simple majority was required in each chamber.

Specifically, Amendment 3 would make these changes:

🟪 Repeal the constitutional right to reproductive freedom that voters approved in 2024.

🟪 Prohibit most abortions except in cases of medical emergency, fetal anomaly, rape or incest. Abortions in cases of rape and incest would be permitted only through the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

🟪 Prohibit gender transition surgeries for minors as well as the use of cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs for the purpose of gender transition.

Major supporters of the measure include the Missouri Catholic Conference and Missouri Right to Life. Opponents include the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the League of Women Voters.

With about $5.2 million in contributions as of the last report, opponents are far outpacing supporters in building a campaign war chest. Supporters have raised about $1.6 million.

Washington: Defending Equity in Interscholastic Sports Act

Initiative Measure No. IL26-638 is designed to prohibit students it defines as biologically male from competing in school athletic activities intended for female students only. It would enforce the provision in part by requiring students wishing to participating in female athletics to provide a statement from a healthcare provider verifying that the athlete is biologically female.

The proposed law provides that the statement of biological eligibility could be based only on one or more of the following: “The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”

An organization known as Let’s Go Washington has been organizing the campaign with support from groups such as Moms for Liberty, the Washington State Catholic Conference and XX-XY Athletics. Let’s Go Washington had raised nearly $7 million at last report.

Opponents have raised nearly $1.7 million through an entity called No Hate in WA State. Opponents include the ACLU, the Washington Education Association and several LGTBQ interest groups.

Vice President JD Vance's second book1, Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, is primarily a spiritual account, once that focuses on his conversion from the sort of unsophisticiated evangelical Christianity that he inherited as a child from his dysfunctional family to a self-styled atheism to a thoughtful Roman Catholicism. But it’s difficult to read his about his faith journey without thinking about its political implications — and they aren't what you might suspect if all you know about him is the unavoidably restrained vice presidential role he has played as one of President Donald Trump's key supporters.

Unfortunately, nearly all of the book was written before Vance became Trump's running mate in 2024, and it includes very few details of his short career as a U.S. senator before that. So it’s hard to know how, or even if, he reconciles his faith with his current political life, which includes support for policies, such as harsh anti-immigration action, that contradict Catholic social doctrine. But in the time period covered by the book, Vance comes across as sincere, searching and anxious to find ways in which his new faith can provide answers to problems facing American culture as well as personal meaning in light of his troubled upbringing.

Vance suggests that he sees himself in many ways as a Christian in general more than a Catholic per se, but that his choice of Catholicism came about in part because of its distinctives, which include a historical richness that ties the faith to a stable tradition.

Vance’s love for Christianity comes about in part because of what Christians often call its fruits: From Vance's perspective, although he does not see the United States as a Christian nation in some sort of legal sense, he sees its accomplishments as coming a legal system and culture based originally on Christian principles. Christianity, he writes, has been responsible from providing a framework for flourishing in the United States and elsewhere. “It's not a surprise that virtually all the modern theories of government arose in Christian societies,” he writes.

More to the point, he says:

I'm not demanding that you become a Christian, though I'd welcome it. I’m proposing that we have now run an experiment of replacing a Christian culture with something else for decades. And the fruit of that experiment includes rising racial strife, a gender gap among our young people, falling rates of love and partnership, and a society with a declining population.

In one of the most telling comments with political implications, one in which he splits from part of the MAGA political base, he criticizes Republicans and Democrats alike. Republicans, he says, frequently worship the economic markets and assume that they lead to good — when in fact they may lead to negative consequences such as business leaders taking jobs away from honest American workers and shifting them to Asian sweatshops. Several times, he even praises labor unions as helping shift some balance away from businesses and toward the workers. Vance displays a type of populism, one different than Trump’s version of populism.

Of course, Democrats come under fire too: They, he writes, “are far too willing to idolize the self and assume that everything done in the name of self-discovery is good.”

Vance's most entertaining observations in the book are those involving the nation’s culture of elite, of which he of course he has been a part of as a Yale law graduate since well before becoming a senator. His disillusionment with that culture is part of what led him to begin studying Christianity. And, as he tells it, his family life, which includes having three children with his wife, Usha, means far more to him than his social status possibly could. What he implies near the end of his book is even clearer: He cares more about becoming a good father than he does about being a good politician.

That idea comes across in another way as well: Traditional political issues don't seem to capture Vance’s interest in the way that does his concern over young adults living in a culture that fails to value friendship and the kind of connection that leads to the formation of families. Vance may have his views on tariffs and tax policies, but he appears to care far more whether young adults find love.

Where will that lead to in terms of Vance's future as a political leader? It's hard to say. But while the constraints of the office he holds limit his ability to focus on the issues he seems to care about the most, the book suggests that it may well be that a Vance unleashed would be, for better or worse, a surprising kind of politician in terms of the issues he would prioritize.

The vast majority of American Protestant pastors are using artificial intelligence in their work — but only about a fourth of them are using it in the writing or editing of sermons.

These details on the pastoral use of AI comes from the Barna Group, a for-profit nonpartisan organization that follows trends related to faith and culture. Barna’s study of pastoral AI use comes from its ongoing State of the Church initiative along with Gloo, which provides services to churches and other faith-based organizations such as schools. Numbers on AI use and perspectives come from surveys conducted among 1,514 U.S. adults last November and 442 pastors in December.

Only 13 percent of the pastors interviewed said they don’t use AI at all. The most common AI use by pastors is for brainstorming and generation of ideas: An even 50 percent use it for that purpose.

Other common uses for AI by pastors include:

🟪 Graphic design or visual creation, 37 percent.
🟪 Research of Biblical or theological topics, 36 percent.
🟪 Generating discussion questions or small-group materials, 34 percent.
🟪 Administrative tasks such as scheduling, email and document preparation, 34 percent.
🟪 Social-media or communications content, 28 percent.

The percentage using it in the editing or writing of sermons was 24 percent — double what it was a year and a half earlier.

Barna’s report did not further provide details about how the pastors use AI for editing and writing sermons. But a strong majority, 71 percent, of pastors said that they were “cautious” about the use of AI in their work. A large minority say they have negative feelings about AI use, as 40 percent said they were “conflicted” and an identical amount said they were “skeptical.” Almost a third, 30 percent, said they were “distrustful” of AI, and a small proportion, 9 percent, said they were fearful.

In general, pastoral attitudes toward AI were were more negative than those of practicing Christians in the survey. About 36 percent of practicing Christians said they were “cautious” of AI, or about half the rate for pastors. Fewer practicing Christians also said they were “conflicted” (18 percent) or “skeptical” (25 percent).

Ironically, more practicing Christians, about 19 percent, double the pastors’ rate, described themselves as “fearful.”

Barna’s analysis of this survey and others about pastoral job satisfaction suggested that pastors are using AI the most for the tasks where they find the least personal satisfaction:

When asked to identify which parts of their work they enjoy most, enjoy least, and find most time-consuming, pastors reveal a persistent mismatch: the tasks they find most meaningful — preaching and teaching, discipling believers, developing leaders — are not the ones consuming the most hours. Organizing church events, volunteer and staff management, and administrative work collectively dominate pastors’ calendars, despite ranking low on their list of what they find fulfilling. AI, as pastors are currently deploying it, maps directly onto that gap.

The use of graphic design reflects a related reality. For many smaller churches that lack the budget or staff to support dedicated communications roles, AI appears to be filling a gap that would otherwise go unfilled. Visual content creation has become an essential part of how churches communicate, and AI has made it accessible to ministry leaders who would otherwise have to go without.

Rulings on birthright citizenship and transgender rights received all the attention Tuesday as the U.S. Supreme Court also announced that it had decided to accept the case of an Orthodox Jew who claims he was harassed in his attempts to organize regular meetings of other Jewish men in his home.

The case is Grand v. City of University Heights, and it becomes the second case related to religious issues that the court has agreed to hear during its 2026-27 term that begins in October. The other is St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy, where a Catholic preschool is trying to get admitted to Colorado’s state-funded universal preschool program. The court added that dispute to its 2026-27 roster in April.

No date has been set for either of the cases to be heard.

Here is a quick overview of the two cases:

Grand v. City of University Heights

According to the account of Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jew living in University Heights, Ohio, he emailed a dozen male friends in January 2021 asking them to join him in prayer as a minyan, a group of at least 10 Jewish men, on a Saturday. Before the minyan could convene, however, city officials got wind of the planned meeting and sent a cease-and-desist letter telling him he couldn’t use his home in a residential zone as a place of religious assembly.

Grand then applied for a special-use permit but was confronted with what his lawyers called “a rugged process using an adversarial ‘quasi-judicial approach.’” He then withdrew the permit application saying he had no desire to operate a house of worship as defined by city ordinance. According to his petition to the Supreme Court, Grand was then threatened with legal action if gatherings “consistent with” religious use were held in his home, and that the mayor asked neighbors to report if there were any such activities. Grand notes in legal papers that Orthodox Jews don’t drive on Saturdays, so the men would have arrived at his home on foot, creating no traffic problems, and that such gatherings would have no more effect on neighbors than someone inviting a similarly sized group over for card games.

Grand then went to federal court seeking legal relief but was denied by the trial court and the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before filing a petition with the Supreme Court. The main legal issue in the case is whether “a credible government threat that deters the exercise of fundamental rights constitutes a complete and independently actionable constitutional injury.”

The city, however, said in its legal document asking the high court to reject the appeal that it would be premature for the high court to decide in Grand’s favor:

While Grand claims he subjectively felt he could not pray in his house the way he wanted, this record did not support that he was precluded from doing so, as there was no enforcement action against him, he used the house in the manner he wished, and Grand remains free to file a new action if the City applied the ordinance to him in a way that violates his statutory or constitutional rights.

Grand is represented in part by the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the major law firms involved in religious-freedom cases.

St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy

This case involves a lawsuit by two Catholic parishes in Littleton and Lakewood, Colo., and the Archdiocese of Denver, which operate a preschool, against the state of Colorado. Two parents, Daniel and Lisa Sheley, are also plaintiffs. Specifically, the defendants are Lisa Roy, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, and Dawn Odean, director of Colorado’s Universal Preschool Program.

Roy’s department launched the preschool funding program in 2023, providing eligible families with about $6,300 to cover the costs of 15 hours per week of preschool. The program was designed to give families the flexibility to enroll their children at public, private, or faith-based preschools.

According to the Becket law firm, representing the plaintiffs, 1,500 children attending 30-some Catholic preschools were excluded from the program because the schools limit enrollment to Catholics. But, the lawyers say, various secular preschools have also limited who is eligible to attend, calling this a double standard.

The state argued in response to the plaintiffs’ Supreme court petition that it is not applying a double standard, that it is seeking “to ensure, through a neutral and generally applicable program, that preschoolers have equal opportunity to enroll in and receive publicly-funded preschool services regardless of their, or their parents’, protected-class status.” In fact, Colorado described itself as “a national leader in providing universal preschool through a ‘mixed-delivery system’ that affirmatively includes faith-based providers.”

During upcoming arguments, both sides are likely to focus on the applicability of Carson v. Makin, a 2022 ruling that strictly limited how religious groups could be excluded from government programs.

In a pair of cases watched closely by conservative Christian activists, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that Idaho and West Virginia acted constitutionally by enacting bans on transgender females1 in female sports.

The 6-3 ruling was decided on both constitutional grounds and interpretation of Title IX, a federal law designed in part to expand athletic opportunities for female students.

The two cases were Little v. Hecox, in which two athletes, one of them a transgender woman, is fighting Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which requires competitors in the state’s public K-12 schools, colleges and universities to be biological females; and West Virginia v. B.P.J., in which a mother and her transgender daughter, Becky Pepper-Jackson, challenged a West Virginia law similar to Idaho’s.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion, supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas,Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch. They form the conservative majority on the court. The three more liberal members — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.

Idaho and West Virginia are among the 27 states that have enacted laws that maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females. Most of those states passed the laws with the strong support of evangelicals, many of whom believe that God created humankind in two genders that are immutable, making full acceptance of transgender persons as belonging to their desired gender a rejection of the divinely created order. Some evangelical groups argued against the athletes’ legal positions in friend-of-the-court briefs, claiming that invalidating such state laws would raise concerns about religious liberty. But those arguments were not addressed in today’s ruling.

In essence, the court found that Title IX, which allows schools receiving federal funds to create separate sports teams for males and females, was written with the intention of referring only to biological males and females — a conclusion in which the minority generally concurred with, although Jackson wrote in her dissent that it was “plausible” that the law could be interpreted in a more “capacious” manner.

On the constitutional issue, the court found that while laws making sexual distinctions are subject to scrutiny, the two states did so reasonably because of the undisputed fact that there are inherent physical differences between males and females that affect their ability to compete athletically. The majority also noted that the science remains unsettled over whether medical treatment such as puberty blockers can eliminate the advantage that biological men have:

The Court’s holding today is straightforward. The Equal Protection Clause allows schools to maintain separate teams for female and male athletes. Schools may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ teams based on biological sex. That policy is constitutionally justified by the vitally important interests in safety and competitive fairness so as to provide equal opportunities for women and girls to participate in sports. And when a sex-based classification is justified as a constitutional matter, as it is here, States need not make case-by-case exceptions — for example, schools need not make individual exceptions to allow certain biological males to compete in women’s and girls’ sports.

Second, we do not accept the dissent’s assumed monopoly on understanding the effects on individuals involved in disputes over transgender athletes. We are acutely aware of the difficulties sometimes faced by boys who identify as girls (and by girls who identify as boys) in middle school, high school, and beyond. And we greatly admire the desire of all students, of all students, including transgender students such as B.P.J., who want to participate in sports.

The court minority would not have handed a win to the transgender athletes outright, but would have sent the case back to lower courts to consider whether the athletes had an unfair advantage in fact. Rather than making the decision with scientific matters unsettled, the court should have sent the cases make to lower courts to consider them, Sotomayor wrote for the minority:

This litigation implicates deeply sensitive, contentious, and evolving issues. These circumstances demand exercising judicial restraint, not rushing to answer conclusively difficult questions without sufficient evidentiary development. In opting otherwise, the majority extends great sympathy to those it favors: the young cisgender girls and women who play sports. I share that sympathy. Playing sports can lead to benefits that are immeasurable, and many are understandably invested in ensuring that competition stays fair and safe. Because the majority, however, inflicts a hardship on those it disfavors without giving them the fair and full opportunity the Constitution requires to litigate their contentions, I respectfully dissent.

Although today’s ruling settles the constitutional and statutory questions of whether female sports in public schools can be restricted to biological females, it leaves unresolved some other key issues, such as how biological sex should be determined.

Does Christianity need government support to thrive — or even to survive? The evangelical right seems to think so.

Politically conservative evangelicals are the most powerful they have been in the history of the United States. They hold enormous sway over the presidency, the House and the Senate. The speaker of the House is one of them. And although the Supreme Court is overwhelmingly Catholic — seven of the nine justices are affiliated with the Vatican-based church — its conservative members have increasingly sided with evangelical activists on matters such as church-state relations, abortion and LGTBQ issues. Although only about a fourth of Americans identify as evangelical, they influence is such that they appear to be acting like a political majority. A recent taxpayer-funded gathering for the celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary was little more than a full-day evangelical Christian concert and pep rally with less than a handful of token non-evangelicals — but still political conservatives — thrown in the leadership mix.

And yet all this isn’t enough for the evangelical activists: 2026 so far has been an extraordinary year in terms of the relationship between church and state, but perhaps no day carries with it as much long-term significance as last Friday:

🟪 The Texas Board of Education added Bible selections to its required reading list for its public school students, starting with a storybook presentation of the story of Noah’s ark for first-graders and the love chapter of 1 Corinthians 13 for graduating seniors1. Although many school systems throughout the country for years have used Bible selections in various types of social-studies and literature classes, Texas appears to be the first state to include Bible excerpts in an overall mandatory reading list that includes the secular classics.

🟪 President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, led by a Southern Baptist who has proclaimed that there’s no such thing as a constitutional separation of church and state, issued a report that aligns with a long list of evangelical grievances, such as certain laws that require fair treatment for LGTBQ persons and even laws requiring vaccinations.

In a technical sense, that chairman, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, is correct: Nowhere does the Constitution use the words “separation of church and state.” But the Constitution, in the First Amendment, does prohibit “an establishment of religion” and demands the “free exercise” of religion. Originally, that amendment applied only to the federal government, but with the passage of the 14th Amendment the restrictions on government power were applied to the states as well.

The First Amendment provides a setup that has largely kept the government out of churches’ (as well as synagogues’ and mosques’) business and kept religious adherents from imposing their will on others not of their faith. Students are free to pray privately before their tests and even schedule gatherings with their fellow believers in the same way that students who share secular interests can do so, and teachers aren’t allowed to dictate what students should pray. And under a federal law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and similar laws in various red and blue states, religious adherents can receive protections even beyond those guaranteed by the Constitution.

Also, under various civil rights laws religious protections are extended to even the private sector: Employers are required to make reasonable accommodations to the religious needs of employees and not discriminate against persons of any religion (or no religion) in their hiring.

In short, we have a type of church-state separation that has worked fairly well, even if not perfectly.

An attempt to tilt the balance

But now, the evangelical, often Christian nationalist, right is seeking to tilt the balance that has developed over the past two centuries. It is hard to see the move by the Texas Board of Education as anything other than an attempt to reinforce conservative Christianity as the dominant religion in Texas. The move comes at a time when state officials have been attempting to limit the influence of Islam, and when the Legislature has promulgated the posting of a sectarian version of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

And the concern here doesn’t come from a belief that the Bible has no place in public education: The Constitution has long been understood to provide for teaching about religion, and no education would be complete without a recognition of the role that religion has played in history and even jurisprudence. It does come partly out of a concern the movement interferes with one of the most sacred or rights, that of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. As a Christian parent whose children are now adults, I would not have wanted the government telling me which parts of the Bible are worthier than others, nor would I have wanted my tax dollars being used to pay teachers to tell my children how they should understand various Bible passages.

And if I were a non-Christian, I wouldn’t want my government teaching my children in ways that suggest that the story of Adam and Eve is anything other than mythology, for example, nor the explicitly religious passages such as the 23rd Psalm or the story of Moses and the burning bush. Don’t get me wrong: I find the 23rd Psalm is one of the most beautiful passages of the Bible, but it’s up to me to teach my children about the gracious God of the psalm, not the job of the government.

Conflation of religion and politics

And I can’t help but note how the Texas board decided not to teach some of the Biblical passages that run counter to the conservative political agenda. No study of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) is complete without noting its passages calling for hospitality toward foreigners, just as no study of the New Testament is complete without learning of Jesus’s admonitions to care for the least of these. But these passages, constantly violated by the supposed Christians in the Trump administration, are nowhere to be seen in the Texas list.

This conflation of political views with religious ones can be seen as well in recommendations made by Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission. Although the 224-page report does pay lip service to liberties for non-Christians, it relies on a distorted historical narrative and gives credence to misleading claims by evangelical Christians that they have been persecuted mercilessly. No doubt there have been evangelicals subjected to ridicule or otherwise mistreated — but in multiple cases in the report of mistreatment by government, even the report acknowledges that the errors have been corrected by courts.

The commission’s recommendations aren’t necessarily mistaken: Of course, it’s a good idea to make clear to school school districts what the religious rights of their students are, and existing unlawful discrimination, which does occur, should not be tolerated. But by focusing on the particular cases it does and bringing up superfluous grievances, the report gives the impression that religious freedom belongs almost solely to one branch of Christianity.

Although they appear to be trying to help Christianity, both the Texas board and the Trump commission are causing harm to true faith by suggesting that faith can’t bring personal meaning and strength on its own without government mandates. The two panels are actually reducing faith to just another political issue rather than recognizing the moral clarity and courage that it offers.

The U.S. Supreme Court has strengthened religious liberty in recent years, but that trend was at least paused today as the court ruled 6-3 that a Rastafarian whose hair was forcibly cut by Louisiana prison guards in 2020 cannot sue prison officials.

The prisoner, Damon Landor, had filed suit under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that requires states to provide, among other things, various religious-liberty protections in prisons that receive federal funds. Because other legal avenues weren’t available to him, Landor filed his suit against prison guards and other prison officials in their personal capacities, but that attempt was rebuffed in lower courts. RLUIPA is a companion law to the more widely known Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Both RLUIPA and RFRA are intended to protect religious rights that are beyond those guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. So today’s ruling focused on technical issues related to how RLUIPA should be interpreted rather than on constitutional issues.

The court ruling was divided along ideological lines, with the six conservative justices siding with prison employees and the liberals siding with Landor. Ironically, Landor had the support of the Donald Trump administration as well as two law firms, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the American Center for Law and Justice, known for their support of Christian conservatives, among others, in religious-freedom cases.

The case was Damon Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety. For details of the incident in which Landor’s hair was cut, see this earlier article.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing the majority opinion, said that well-settled contract law determines the case’s outcome. Because the prison officials weren’t the ones who made an agreement with the federal government, he wrote, there was no contract in which they agreed to assume liability for violation of federal law:

Before us, LDOC [the Louisiana Department of Corrections] does not dispute that it is a recipient of federal funds. It does not question that it has agreed to answer certain RLUIPA suits as a condition of accepting those funds. But as it comes to us, this case does not involve claims against LDOC. It involves only claims against individuals in their personal capacities. And Mr. Landor does not allege that any of those individuals has entered any agreement with the federal government, let alone that any of them has voluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits under RLUIPA.

To know that is enough to know the Court of Appeals was correct. Mr. Landor does not have a federal RLUIPA cause of action against the officers.

The ruling drew an unusually strong rebuke from the minority, whose opinion was written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. She noted that RFRA allows lawsuits against private parties, and the RLIUPA has identical wording. To base a ruling solely on contract law, is akin to “pulling this rabbit out of the hat” and ignoring “decades of precedent,” she wrote. She continued:

In the end, the Court reduces some of Congress’s greatest legislative achievements — federal laws that secure civil rights, environmental stability, healthcare, and more — to nothing more than the wheelings-and-dealings of an especially wealthy private party. Because I would not so trivialize a federal statute or the constitutional powers pursuant to which it was passed, I respectfully dissent.

This case was the last case focusing on religious freedom to be decided by the Supreme Court in its current term, which will probably end next week. Additionally, a pair of cases that have drawn strong interest from Christian conservatives, cases involving transsexual athletes, remain to be decided.

Calling a proposed section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall “offensive to Catholic values and teachings,” a Catholic diocese has gone to court to block the Trump administration from using its power of eminent domain to build the section on diocese-owned property near a popular shrine that features a statue of Jesus overlooking Sunland Park, N.M.

The diocese claims in court papers filed Friday that the proposed property seizure violates both the First Amendment, which provides for freedom of religion, and the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was written to expand religious protections beyond those provided by the Constitution.

The Roman Catholic diocese says in the papers that construction of the border wall there “would profane this holy site” and “deprive the Diocese of its ability to act as a steward of the land.” The diocese also calls the plans “an affront to religious liberty.”

The diocese filed the papers in response to a decision by U.S. District Court of New Mexico Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, who ruled June 15 that the U.S. Department of Justice could deposit $183,071 into a bank account as compensation for property it intends to seize. The amount is based on the presumed fair-market value of the land, as is normal in eminent domain cases. Although the proposed section of border wall would not close the shrine or block the route to it, there is disagreement between the Trump administration and the diocese about whether the fence would interfere with the experience of the tens of thousands of pilgrims who visit the site each year.

The case is United States of America v. 14.259 Acres of Land.

Gonzales, a Barack Obama appointee, made his ruling on technical grounds involving the Declaration of Taking Act, which regulates the procedures for federal seizure of property for government use. Gonzales said that his ruling is not a final decision on the property’s disposition, that the federal government doesn’t get immediate possession, and that the diocese still has the right to seek judicial relief. Gonzales did not address the religious-freedom concerns that the diocese has raised.

The 29-foot-tall monument portraying Jesus atop the 4,675-foot mountain was completed in 1939 by sculptor Urbici Soler, world-famous at the time. The hike pilgrims take to the top of the mountain is 5-mile round trip. Some pilgrims crawl on their knees to the site as a sign of devotion. As many as 40,000 people in one day have been reported to visit the site on religious festival days.

The Department of Justice has been trying to obtain the site for at least several months, hoping to fill in a gap in the border wall, a gap that has been often used for illegal crossings. The legal fight is new, however, as the government first filed documents May 7 to start the seizure process.

In contesting the judge’s ruling, the diocese disputed claims by the federal government that the visitors to the site would not be affected:

The Government insists in conclusory fashion that its proposed course of conduct “will not impact the Diocese’s access or use of Mount Cristo Rey” and that the mountaintop shrine “will be accessible in the same manner as it had been prior to the taking.” ... There are several reasons to doubt the Government’s representations. First, former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem waived compliance with a host of statutes and regulations that safeguard culturally, historically, and environmentally sensitive sites in connection with border-wall construction. ... The Government therefore did not undertake the careful review that ordinarily would accompany a federal construction project of this sort. Without such a review, the harms that the Government’s actions will inflict on the mountaintop shrine, access to the same, and the natural landscape that inspired its creation in the first place are simply unknowable. Accordingly, there is no reason for this Court to credit the Government’s barebones assurances regarding the impact of wall construction on the shrine or access paths.1

The diocese also said that the federal government “has shown little respect for Mount Cristo Rey” during the preparatory work it has done so far in the area. The diocese pointed in particular to a federal promotional video that said the mountain “will undergo a face lift” even though “the only face on Mount Cristo Rey is that of Christ the King.”

The federal government has yet to file a response to the diocese’s papers. A court hearing has been tentatively scheduled for July 23, according to news reports.

Protestant pastors in the United States are split almost down the middle as to whether it is important to include patriotic elements in worship services near the Fourth of July.

According to a survey conducted by Lifeway Research1, 45 percent of Protestant pastors said that such elements are important for the national holiday, and 53 percent disagree. Only 2 percent said they weren’t sure. The survey, published this week, included 1,003 Protestant pastors across both conservative and liberal denominational lines and was conducted by phone last September. Lifeway said the margin of error for the survey was 3.3 percent, although the chance of statistical error is higher for subgroups when pastors are separated by factors such as age and denomination.

Surveys were conducted using the same methodology in 2016 and 2021, and the survey shows a smaller percentage of pastors supporting the use of patriotic elements now than in years past. The level of support was 56 percent a decade ago and 61 percent five years ago.

The survey found for this year that 16 percent of the pastors strongly agreeing that it is important to include patriotic elements for Independence Day with 29 percent strongly disagreeing. About 29 percent somewhat agreed with the patriotic elements, and 24 percent somewhat disagreed.

A slightly higher percentage said their churches “should do something special” this year for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. An even 50 percent agreed with such a plan, with 47 percent disagreeing. Since the survey was made months before publicity about official government celebrations, some of which have emphasized American religious heritage, it is possible that the level of support has changed since then. And, of course, decisions about church services are often made by church ruling boards or someone other than the pastor, so the survey may not accurately indicate how church services related to the holiday will be conducted this year. The Sunday closest to Independence Day this year is July 6, two days after the holiday, although some churches may observe the holiday on June 28.

The survey shows that it is common for churches to make some accommodations for Independence Day as matter of course. A majority of pastors said their churches recognize living veterans (62 percent), those with family members in the armed services (59 percent) or those who have lost loved ones in service to their country (51 percent). A bit more than half, 55 percent, include music honoring the country. About 28 percent said they include “special ceremonies” to honor the country; a small group, 15 percent, said no changes are made at all to services around the holiday.

The survey found some sharp age differences, with pastors 65 years or older most likely to agree that patriotic elements to celebrate America are important (63 percent) and pastors 44 and under the least likely to agree (29 percent). In other words, the oldest group of pastors are more than twice as likely to support such services than the youngest ones.

Pastors with no college degree are also more likely to find patriotic services important (68 percent).

There were also denominational differences: Pentecostals were most likely to support such services (64 percent) with Presbyterian/Reformed churches the least likely (29 percent).

When Southern Baptists at their annual meeting last week affirmed their longstanding position that the Bible does not authorize churches to put women in certain leadership positions, such as pastor, they were not alone: Some of the largest Christian denominations take the same position, among them the Catholic Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), the Eastern Orthodox churches and the Presbyterian Church in America. So do many evangelical denominations as well as many so-called nondenominational1 churches.

The opposite view also is held by many churches, most notably mainline Protestant churches such the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church, which tend to be liberal theologically and socially. But the recognition of women as pastors or other types of leaders isn’t limited to the liberal churches: Many historically black churches lean toward egalitarianism, as do quite a few theologically conservative, Pentecostal and/or evangelical churches: The Assemblies of God, the Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel are among them.

In other words, even some churches that have a high view of the Bible, viewing the Bible not only as inspired by also as the ultimate authority for faith and practice and infallible in its original manuscripts, see the Bible as allowing for women to lead churches. This viewpoint is often called egalitarianism, which contrasts with the males-as-leaders view called complementarianism.

So who’s right about what the Bible really says about women in ministry? Perhaps evangelical theologian Preston Sprinkle, who heads The Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, is among those best suited to answer that question. He is the author of several books and maintains visibility in social media — and has been criticized by fellow evangelicals both for being too liberal, such as when he says he is fine with calling trans people by their preferred pronouns, and for being too conservative, particularly for his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Having no conclusion on the issue is where Sprinkle begins his newest book, From Genesis to Junia: An Honest Search for What the Bible Really Says About Women in Leadership. He begins like this:

I’m writing this introduction in real time. It’s May 2022, and I’m about to embark on a theological journey to figure out what I think the Bible says about women in church leadership.

I’m a bit nervous about this journey, since I don’t know my destination. I honestly don’t know where I’ll end up. Authors typically write their book’s introduction last, after they’ve written the rest of the book and sorted out their conclusions. That’s how I wrote most of my previous books.

But this one is different. I’m not starting with a settled conclusion and then writing the book to convince you of it. Rather, I’m inviting you to peek over my shoulder as I journey through Scripture to figure out what I believe it says about this contentious issue.

I’m not going to tell you in this review where he ends up; I don’t care to spoil the adventure for readers. But I will tell you how Sprinkle tackled his task.

As an evangelical, Sprinkle was compelled by his belief system to look at each word carefully and fit them together into a coherent whole where more liberal scholars might be willing to read the text with more of a 21st-century perspective end in mind. It isn’t always easy, and Sprinkle’s frustration shows at times, but it’s the type of frustration that leads him to dig deeper for insight, going to studies of ancient Israelite and Greek culture, for example, or seeing how secular Greek writings used certain words. Although Sprinkle does his best to keep his book accessible to those who haven’t done graduate-level Biblical studies, most nonacademic readers are likely see the book as getting bogged down in places.

The Junia of the book title is mentioned only once in the Bible, in Romans 16:7, which refers to her in the context of apostles. Sprinkle’s analysis of that verse shows the challenges he faced in coming to conclusions. As he points out, while Junia is a woman’s name, there has been debate about whether the original text referred to a Junia or a male Junias. It’s also not perfectly clear whether the verse calls her an apostle. And it’s not clear that even if she is an apostle whether she’s the kind of apostle that is a leader.

Sprinkle writes that the most difficult passage he has ever studied in his life is 1 Corinthians 11:3-12, in which Paul talks about women being the glory of man and that they should wear head coverings “because of the angels.” The passage, Sprinkle says, is full of “odd statements” and apparent contradictions. But that doesn’t keep him from writing 23 pages about the matter, plus voluminous footnotes.

He uses twice as much ink on 1 Timothy 2-3 — a section that some opponents of equal gender roles claim seals their case. In that chapter especially, Preston not only examines the Biblical passages but also looks line by line at what scholars on both sides of the issue have written.

I’ll give this much away about the book’s ending: Sprinkle ends up admitting that both sides of the argument have strong cases to make. Near the end, he writes:

It should be clear by now where I’ve landed in this debate. I believe [redacted]. I don’t hold this view with the same level of confidence as I hold doctrines like the Trinity or the deity of Christ. I still think some [differing] arguments have exegetical credibility. But after a long and sometimes tedious journey, I believe [my current] view is more biblically persuasive.

And so it is that readers who believe, as Southern Baptist delegates did last week, that women don’t belong in key leadership roles can find plenty of ammunition in Sprinkle’s book if they care to debate the topic. So will those Wesleyans and Pentecostals who want Biblical backing for their egalitarian views.

It isn’t so much the destination that makes From Genesis to Junias so compelling: It’s the journey. The thoroughly sourced book will almost certainly find itself on the shelves of seminarians and inquisitive churchgoers for decades to come.

Delegates to this week’s annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly approved a proposed change to the denomination’s constitution to make clear that local churches would not be allowed to have women as pastors.

After a brief debate at a large convention hall in Orlando, Fla., almost three-fourths of the messengers, as the delegates are called, approved the amendment. Under the denomination’s rules, the amendment has to be approved by a two-thirds vote at next year‘s convention before it can go in effect.

The amendment had been proposed by Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and one of the country’s best-known evangelical leaders. The vote was 74.66 percent in favor and 25.09 percent against with the tiny remainder of the votes invalidated.

Specifically, the proposed amendment would require that local Southern Baptist churches, which operate autonomously, may not “affirm, support or endorse a woman serving in the office or function of a pastor/elder/overseer, specifically preaching to the assembled congregation” if they wish to remain affiliated the SBC, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States.

The subject of women in ministry has been coming up at the convention annually in recent years. If the ban becomes part of the constitution, future debate over the issue would be limited.

Earlier, the messengers selected Willy Rice, pastor of the Calvary Church in Clearwater, Fla., as the next SBC president. Rice, who is generally viewed as an outspoken conservative, received a decisive 57.6 percent majority.

The messengers also gave approval to a long list of resolutions detailed below. Among them were resolutions denouncing assisted suicide and honoring the United States on its 250th anniversary.

Original article (June 10, 2026): Delegates to annual Baptist meeting expected to debate women’s church roles, immigration

An expected 20,000 Southern Baptists are gathering in Orlando, Fla., for their annual meeting this week — and there is likely to be no shortage of controversy.

The Southern Baptist Convention, an association of more than 40,000 churches made up of some 12 million members, is the second-largest Christian denomination in the United States, behind the Catholic Church, and the largest Protestant one. Although the churches are autonomously run, they annually send delegates, known as messengers, to a convention that sets denominational policies and organizes or supports programs such as seminaries and missionary outreach.

It has become almost a tradition that the convention discusses and votes on controversial issues, which in recent years have focused matters of women’s church roles and sexual abuse scandals as well as political matters. Such concerns are coming up again this year as messengers face a flurry of resolutions ranging from the routine (expressing appreciation to the host city) to the national issues of the day such as antisemitism and political violence.

The resolution that likely will have the most influence on how churches operate if it is adopted is one designed to clarify where the SBC stands on women’s roles in the church. As with many other conservative Protestant denominations, Southern Baptists maintain that men and women are of equal worth in the eyes of God but that only men are authorized to authorized to hold roles that the New Testament refers to as pastor, bishop, elder or overseer. Even so, some SBC churches have had women serve in various pastoral roles, ones not including the head pastor of a church, that the churches claim are permitted by the New Testament.

The proposed resolution would “encourage Southern Baptist churches to maintain clarity and integrity in their ministerial titles and practices so that nomenclature is not used in ways that obscure or contradict the Convention’s adopted statement of faith regarding the pastoral office; specifically, we encourage churches to use the titles ‘pastor,’ ‘elder,’ and ‘overseer’ in a manner consistent with the biblical office described in Scripture and affirmed in The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 and not to use these titles in ways that separate the title from the office and function of pastor.”

Politics at the forefront

Of the 11 resolutions scheduled to be voted on, five are related to today’s political issues. The resolution drawing the most attention is one on immigration. It attempts to thread the political needle, calling for compassion for immigrants while also calling for “lawful immigration enforcement carried out justly” and rejecting “amnesty, understood as forgiveness of legal violations without accountability.”

Specifically, the proposed resolution calls on Southern Baptists to “reject racism, nativism, ethnic supremacy, and dehumanizing rhetoric, affirming that Scripture alone defines our identity, worth, and unity in Christ and that no person bearing the image of God should be reduced to a slur, statistic, or political problem.”

But it also notes that “[l]arge-scale and often disorderly migration has strained communities, harmed migrants and American citizens, and diminished confidence in the rule of law, underscoring the need for immigration systems marked by order, clarity, due process, timely adjudication, integrity in asylum processes, fairness, and humane enforcement.”

Other politically oriented resolutions facing the messengers would:

🟪 Affirm Southern Baptist support for religious liberty and call on Southern Baptists “to pursue national renewal through biblically informed civic engagement, including advocating for just laws that are rooted in God’s natural law and consistent with the witness of holy Scripture, and electing public officials who will do the same.” The resolution also calls the United States’ 250th anniversary a “historic milestone to remember and reflect upon God’s providential blessings.”

🟪 Call on governments “to resist efforts to legalize or expand assisted suicide, and to promote policies that affirm the inherent dignity and worth of every person.”

🟪 Call for civility in public discourse, noting that “we reject hatred, malice, slander, dehumanization, intimidation, reckless speech, and contemptible conduct as inconsistent with Christian discipleship, while also rejecting a false peace that refuses necessary truth.”

🟪 Condemn a “new surge of antisemitism in all its forms, including violence, cultural hatred, and conspiracy theories of Jewish controlled cabals, as sinful, unchristian, and an assault on both biblical truth and basic human dignity.”

Church governance also at issue

Other proposed resolutions:

🟪 Express appreciation to the city of Orlando in hosting the convention.

🟪 Call on Southern Baptists to develop or expand plans for inclusion of persons with disabilities.

🟪 Express gratitude to pastors and ministry leaders who have “labored faithfully over many years and finished well, keeping the faith and maintaining a testimony above reproach to the end.”

🟪 Express “heartfelt gratitude to Southern Baptist bivocational and volunteer pastors for their faithful and sacrificial service to Christ and his church.”

🟪 Call for “the responsible use of digital technologies and platforms as aids to ministry, while recognizing that such tools cannot fulfill the biblical functions of the gathered church, cannot replace the personal ministry of pastors and members, and should be used to support and encourage connection to the embodied life of a faithful local church.”

The Pentagon today changed its list of religions prepared for use by chaplains, responding to strong pushback from Latter-day Saint senators and social-media influencers.

The list, which was published last week, listed 21 varieties of Christianity but put the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a category of its own, implying that the LDS church is non-Christian even though its members worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

The new list, which includes 31 religions or belief systems in total, is unchanged in substance. The new list takes churches that had been listed as Christian and uses just their names without the theological identifier. Thus, for example, the new version lists Lutherans as Lutheran only, not as Christian (Lutheran).

The Department of Defense said in a post on X (formerly called Twitter) that the list from last week “included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed. … The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks.”

Original article (June 8, 2026): Military chaplains get a sloppily produced list as Pentagon updates religious classifications

Ever since Pete Hegseth took over the Department of Defense, it has been accused by its critics of operating in chaos as half-baked plans take effect and policies shift without rhyme or reason.

Certainly politicians and pundits making their partisan talking points will continue debate over whether that criticism is justified, but last week’s slashing of a list of religions recognized by the Pentagon appears to fit that pattern.

The official list appeared to be sloppily made, even spelling the names of two religions incorrectly1. It used theological divisions that made little sense, a step that could make it more difficult for military chaplains to meet the needs of military members — the purpose of the list.

Specifically, the list of religions is used by the military’s chaplains to provide spiritual and counseling support to service members; by law and tradition, the chaplains provide support to service members even when they belong to religions other than their own.

The military formally announced Friday that the list of religions, shown at the end of this article, was being streamlined, reducing the number of recognized faiths from 211 to 31. The list does not affect the military status of personnel and has little use beyond the needs of the chaplaincy.

The changes, which were officially adopted May 20 and signed by Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata, were the first made to the list since it was first issued in March 2017. “The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata wrote in a memo.

But will the new list actually be better for chaplains? In shortening the list, the military made two huge changes: First is that the shorter listen inevitably left out a number of religions; while it list did include agnosticism, atheism was left out, as were Wicca, Rastafarianism, Native American religions, Eckankar and, among others, any number of religions that might be loosely classified as New Age. Second is that widely different expressions of faith are lumped into much broader categories than existed before.

For a chaplain, those two changes could make their tasks more difficult if they have a need to know something about a service member’s religious outlook before meeting with him or her. The list seems to assume, for example, that all Presbyterians are alike, but they aren’t. The country’s largest Presbyterian church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is theologically and socially liberal, even solemnizing same-sex marriages and ordaining pastors to the clergy if they are in a same-sex marriage. But some smaller Presbyterian denominations are at least as conservative as the mainline Presbyterian church is liberal. The small Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly, to use one example, does not allow women to preach or serve as elders and sees homosexual behavior as sinful. A chaplain who prepares to meet the first type of Presbyterian is unlikely to be equipped to meet with the second kind.

Latter-day Saint lawmakers and influencers raise objections

When it came to the list’s handling of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — putting one of America’s largest denominations in a category of its own rather than listing it as a Christian denomination — the reaction from LDS members using social media was immediate. By the hundreds, maybe thousands, they echoed the thoughts that appeared in a headline of the Salt Lake Tribune: Are Latter-day Saints Christian? The U.S. Defense Department doesn’t appear to think so.

Of course, the LDS church views itself as a Christian denomination, and influencers saw their church’s placement in the list as offensive. Among those joining the fray were Utah’s two U.S. senators, both of them church members.

Said the state’s junior senator, John Curtis on X, formerly known as Twitter:

Latter-day Saints are among the most patriotic, service-oriented individuals in our country. They are also unequivocally Christian — just look at who is in the name of the Church.

It is unacceptable for a government entity to characterize a faith in a manner that contradicts the religion’s own foundational tenets. I am working now to ensure a correction is made.

And Utah’s senior senator, Mike Lee, posted the following above the church’s logo, which features a drawing of Jesus:

If only we, as Latter-day Saints, belonged to a church that had “Jesus Christ” in its name and His image in its logo“The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks.”“The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks.” ...

Oh wait

The idea that Latter-day Saints aren’t Christian stems in part from the fact that the church rejects the Nicene Creed, particularly its formulation of the Trinity2. The debate over whether acceptance of that understanding is part of what it takes to truly call oneself a Christian has been waging for hundreds of years. The Catholic, Orthodox and nearly all Protestant churches hold to the traditional
Trinitarian view of the Nicene Creed.

It’s impossible to know what the LDS church’s views on the Trinity had to do with the way it was listed, but the church to which Hegseth belongs, the conservative Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, is one of those that would not be inclined to see Latter-day Saints, nor even some theologically liberal Protestants, as Christian.

Even so, there are two denominations listed as Christian in the military list that do not accept the Trinitarian formulation of the Nicene Creed:

🟪 Jehovah’s Witnesses, who believe that Jesus is separate from God.

🟪 Christian Scientists, who teach a strict form of monotheism in which “Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God,” according to the writings of church founder Mary Baker Eddy3.

Also in the list of Christians are the Quakers, who are a diverse set of small organizations that grew out of the Christian tradition. However, not all those groups today consider themselves to be Christian or even believe in a personal God.

The LDS church itself has not issued any statement about the military list, nor have any of its top leaders.

Legal implications?

Does the Pentagon’s placement of the LDS church outside its list of Christian churches have any legal implications? Maybe, suggests David French, a New York Times columnist who is an evangelical Christian, critic of Hegseth and former religious-freedom attorney. He wrote on X on Sunday:

The issue with the Pentagon list excluding the LDS church from Christianity has nothing to do with theology and everything to do with the Establishment Clause.

I’ve spent my whole life around Christians who draw different lines around the faith. It’s a 2,000 year-old argument that will continue for another 2,000 years or until Christ comes again. But that’s a church argument, and it’s none of the state’s business.

Concerns come from other religions as well

Latter-day Saints aren’t the only group that has raised questions about the list. One of them that has is a group that didn’t make the cut of the new list, the Unitarian Universalist Association, generally seen as liberal. According to the Associated Press, it said in a written statement: “This may make it more difficult for our uniformed UUs to access the spiritual care that they need.” The denomination said it is working on a strategic response to support UU service members.

And the Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and leader of the Interfaith Alliance, raised similar concerns in a written statement:

Stripping away status from many religious traditions escalates the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist takeover of the Department of Defense. Religious freedom in the military must mean religious freedom for everyone who serves, not just those this administration finds politically useful.

Secretary Hegseth is not “streamlining” anything. He is elevating one narrow religious worldview from the top of the chain of command. That is dangerous, discriminatory and fundamentally un-American. The First Amendment does not allow the government to create a hierarchy of faiths, and it certainly does not allow the Pentagon to decide which beliefs are worthy of recognition.”

Hemant Mehta, who writes as the Friendly Atheist, also raised questions about exclusion on his Substack site:

If you’re an atheist, like I am, the only sensible category would be “No Religion.” What about people who no longer buy into organized religion but still think there’s a Higher Power somewhere up there? They would also be listed under “No Religion.” What about people who never think about religion at all? “No Religion.”

It’s a catch-all term that erases open atheists from the military by lumping them in with people who don’t share their views at all.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is dismissing concerns raised by its religious critics. In his own written statement Friday, Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, said:

This decrease in religious affiliation codes is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of “officially approved” religions. Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups.

The official list

Here is the current list of religions recognized by the U.S. military for purposes of guiding chaplains. For ease of reading, it has been reformatted and edited for typographical errors:

🟪 Agnostic
🟪 Baha’i
🟪 Buddhism
🟪 Christian (Assemblies of God)
🟪 Christian (Baptist)
🟪 Christian (Brethren)
🟪 Christian (Catholic)
🟪 Christian (Church of Christ)
🟪 Christian (Church of God)
🟪 Christian (Church of the Nazarene)
🟪 Christian (Episcopal/Anglican)
🟪 Christian (Evangelical)
🟪 Christian (Jehovah’s Witnesses)
🟪 Christian (Lutheran)
🟪 Christian (Methodist)
🟪 Christian (nondenominational)
🟪 Christian (Orthodox)
🟪 Christian (other)
🟪 Christian (Pentecostal)
🟪 Christian (Presbyterian)
🟪 Christian (Quaker)
🟪 Christian (Reformed)
🟪 Christian (Christian Scientist)
🟪 Christian (Seventh-day Adventist)
🟪 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
🟪 Hindu
🟪 Islam
🟪 Judaism
🟪 No religion
🟪 Other religions
🟪 Sikh

When a 4-4 Supreme Court tie vote last year had the effect of preventing the opening of a Catholic virtual charter school in Oklahoma, it quickly became clear that the next step for advocates of taxpayer-funded religious schools was to come up with a new proposal that could secure a tie-breaking fifth vote on the court.

And so it is that now, a bit more than one year later, advocates of at least three such schools have taken concrete steps needed to get the issue before the Supreme Court again. If the high court agrees with the schools, the decision would radically upend the state of public education in America, allowing the possibility that taxpayers would be funding religious schools across the country, at least in any state that allows for charter schools.

The high court’s split decision last year involved the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Charter School that had been approved by a statewide school board in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the plans violated by the Oklahoma and U.S. constitutions, and that decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. With Justice Amy Coney Barrett abstaining, apparently due to a conflict of interest, the high court’s split vote allowed the Oklahoma ruling to stand.

Now, organizers have advanced plans for three other religious charter schools, any of which are extremely unlikely to begin operating without Supreme Court approval:

🟪 Last year, the Florida-based National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter Foundation proposed to the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board, the same board that had approved the St. Isidore plan, the creation of a Jewish virtual charter school. But citing the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision, the Oklahoma board rejected the plan. Now, the Becket law firm, one of the country’s leading litigators involved in religious-freedom cases, is taking Oklahoma to court on behalf of Ben Gamla.

🟪 In Knox County, Tenn., the proposed evangelical Christian Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville last year tried to get the Knox County Board of Education to approve a charter. But the board said no — leading to a lawsuit by the school and the intervention of the American Civil Liberties Union in opposing the school. As with the Ben Gamla proposal, the Wilberforce plan will be decided by a trial court and then, in all likelihood, appealed regardless of which side prevails.

🟪 Most recently, Union University, a Kentucky-based evangelical school with about 2,700 undergraduate and graduate students, received approval from the Jackson-Madison County School System Board on April 30 to sponsor a K-12 charter school, Union Academy.

Union Academy has the support of the Alliance Defending Liberty, another major litigant in religious-freedom cases. So far, there have been no lawsuits to prevent the school from opening as planned in the fall of 2027, although such as lawsuit is inevitable. Not only does the school raise constitutional questions, it also is in conflict with a state law that prevents the creation of charter schools that have a religious mission.

The ADF is looking forward to defending the school. It said in a written statement:

Tennessee parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer. The Jackson-Madison County School System Board was right to approve Union Academy’s request to operate as a charter school and should be commended for refusing to engage in unconstitutional discrimination based upon the school’s religious character. Alliance Defending Freedom wholeheartedly supports Union Academy in its endeavor to become the nation’s first religious charter school, opening up educational options and freedom for more Tennessee families.

Of course, opponents disagree. Although the ACLU has yet to weigh in specifically on the Union Academy plan, it has spoken about religious charter schools in general:

Church-state separation is a cornerstone of our democracy. It’s critical to preserving the right of every person to decide for themselves — without pressure from the government — which religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice. It also ensures that the government doesn’t undermine religion either by co-opting it for political purposes or rendering religious institutions dependent on the state to spread their faith. Indeed, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the separation between religion and government is particularly crucial in our public schools, which, by design, freely serve all students equally regardless of religious background or preference.

Such a legal fight over religious charter schools became inevitable with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Carson v. Makin. In that 2022 case, the court ruled 6-3 that Maine’s school voucher program could not exclude religious schools from the program simply because they are religious than nature. Backers of religious charter schools are trying use the logic of Carson to support their cause, although there are substantial differences between vouchers and charters. Most significantly, in a voucher program, government funds go to parents, who then have discretion about how they are used. If they are used for religious schools, those schools remain privately owned and operated.

But in charter programs, the funds go straight to the schools, raising issues, in the case of religious schools, about government hiring of persons based on their religious beliefs. The charter schools remain privately owned but are operated as a sort of government/private hybrid. Also, voucher programs generally do not pay 100 percent of students’ tuition, while parents who send their children to charter schools pay no tuition.

Like other charter schools in Kentucky, the proposed Union Academy would be required to admit students regardless of their religious beliefs or practices. But, according to its charter application, it would hire only teachers which agree with the school’s statement of faith — which consists of typical evangelical belief statements including one on sexuality: “God created only two genders and He fashioned each one of us as either male or female. Sexual relationships are designed by God to be expressed solely within a marriage between a man and a woman.”

Union Academy’s application describes its purpose in part like this:

Union Academy will be a Christ-centered, academically rigorous public charter school designed to serve families in Jackson, Tennessee and the surrounding communities who are seeking a high-quality, tuition-free education grounded in Christian values. The school’s mission is to provide Christ-centered education that promotes excellence and character development in service to Church and society.

Union Academy will deliver a strong academic program to K-12 students with an emphasis on literacy, mathematics, science, critical thinking, and great texts of the Western tradition interconnected with Biblical worldview.

The school is projected to have 320 students in its first year and 530 in its fifth year with a total potential enrollment of 780. It would start as a K-5 elementary school and ultimately include students through high school.

At least for the time being, the U.S. Supreme Court isn’t going to get involved in a class action lawsuit involving allegations that the Catholic Church did not spend money donated to an annual collection known as Peter’s Pence in the way promised.

The high court said in an unsigned brief order yesterday that it would not hear an appeal from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in United States Conference of Catholic Bishops v. O’Connell. The appeals court had agreed with a trial judge court that the plaintiff, David O’Connell, could use the discovery process to seek information about how the church used money donated to the fund and how it conveyed information about it to parishioners nationwide. The USCBB appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing, among other things, that a legal principle known as the church autonomy doctrine prevents such an inquiry.

To hear an appeal, four Supreme Court justices must agree to take the case; there was no indication in the order to indicate whether any of them did. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate in deliberations due to unstated circumstances that might call her neutrality into question.

A decision by the Supreme Court to not hear a dispute has no value as precedent, and the ruling does not necessarily indicate disagreement with the Catholic Church’s position. It also does not preclude further litigation of legal questions that could be raised as the case proceeds.

The Catholic Church had received the legal support of a wide variety of churches and other religious organizations who wanted the top court to dismiss O’Connell’s lawsuit. They generally claimed that court inquiries as to how a church manages or talks about its funds can get courts entangled in internal church decisions in a way that would violate churches’ First Amendment rights to freedom of religion.

O’Connell, a Catholic parishioner from Rhode Island, had filed his lawsuit in 2020, claiming that had been misled in church about how donations to Peter’s Pence would be used. In seeking dismissal of the suit, the bishops’ organization had taken the position that courts do not have the constitutional ability to second-guess churches about how they spend their money. But in disagreeing with the church, the trial and appeals courts had said that the lawsuit could proceed as long as the church was treated the same as secular organizations without the discovery process intruding into matters of church doctrine or religious practice.

The appeals courts had said that “district courts have ample tools at their disposal to limit discovery, tailor jury instructions, and dismiss claims as necessary to safeguard against infringements of the church autonomy doctrine.”

Yesterday’s ruling means that O’Connell’s lawsuit can proceed under terms set by the trial court.

Obviously alarmed by a world that seems to see armed conflict as a normal fact of life, Pope Leo XIV today issued an encyclical calling on world leaders as well as ordinary citizens to build a “civilization of love” and “peace through justice.” Without ever mentioning the military policies of the United States nor any other country by name, the encyclical offers a sharp contrast to the “peace through strength” American mindset and other attitudes that seek to justify continual wars and other types of violence.

Although the document, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, was designed primarily to call attention to the moral questions raised by the use of AI, at the heart of its philosophy is a view of humankind that sees the human person as “created in the image of God” and worthy of being treated with dignity. Although the document doesn’t reject a right to self-defense, it offers an alternative to the long-standing Catholic view of “just war,” calling it outdated, partly because of the way in “which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war.”

The encyclical was the first for Pope Leo, the first pope from the United States. An encyclical is a type of pastoral letter to the entire Catholic church. While an encyclical is sometimes considered to be a source of doctrine and seen as having apostolic authority, it is not treated as infallible.

Part of the problem, the encyclical says, is that military might has become part of the economic core of many countries:

The growth of the military-industrial complex has become a defining feature of the current political landscape and has become a key sector in the economy of various countries. The close link between economic interests, the military apparatus and political decisions produces an “armed nation,” in which war appears as a natural extension of politics, and the arms market becomes an autonomous driving force behind military decisions. Nor can we ignore the enormous economic interests behind war. The armaments industry, and countries that supply weapons, profit from a market that thrives precisely on conflicts. In this sense, there are also financial interests that contribute to fueling tensions in various regions of the world.1

In contrast, the document calls for “building the civilization of love,” and the pope sees that as beginning with individuals:

The first contribution we can make toward a more humane civilization is to be mindful of our words. “Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world.” 2 Words have enormous power, something we experience in our daily interactions; for example, spoken words can change our mood for better or for worse. “Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.” 3 We must all, therefore, examine our conscience regarding the words we use, the prejudices we have and the explicit or implicit aggression that lies within them. We have a real opportunity to contribute to the common good each time we speak the truth, offer wise advice, support those in need of comfort, denounce injustice and give a voice to the voiceless.

The document suggests different ways in which that civilization of love can be built:

🟪 Following the counsel of the late Pope Francis to “‘touch the wounded flesh’ of those who suffer, look at their faces, listen to their stories and acknowledge their wounds.”

🟪 Adopting an attitude of “healthy realism” that avoids the type of idealism that distorts the facts and also avoids the type of cynicism that gives up on changing the world.

🟪 At the individual level, engaging in a dialogue that “involves acquiring an attitude that seeks to forge bonds of fraternity built on listening, an open demeanor, making time for each other and even wasting time together. For if we experience authentic encounters with others, with those who are different, strangers and migrants, it becomes much more difficult even to imagine war.”

🟪 At the political level, shifting “from the ‘culture of power’ to a genuine ‘culture of negotiation,’ in which dialogue and diplomacy become the standard means of resolving conflicts.”

🟪 Recognizing that “international organizations, particularly the United Nations, are essential instruments for promoting a civilization of love, for they can foster dialogue among nations and promote the peaceful resolution of conflicts, the integral development of peoples, the protection of the most vulnerable, disarmament and the care of creation.”

The document calls on the world’s Christians to elevate human dignity in the way they lift the marginalized:

For the Christian community, social justice is a concrete way of following Jesus and remaining faithful to the Gospel. In the New Testament, Jesus proclaims the “good news to the poor” and identifies himself with the lowly, the sick, the imprisoned and strangers. He thus teaches us that justice is born from, and fulfilled in, fraternity, because the way we approach and relate to the least among us becomes, in concrete terms, the measure of our relationship with God and with our brothers and sisters. Justice, however, concerns not only the behavior of individuals, but also the way in which the structures of society are conceived and organized. In this regard, the Second Vatican Council reminds us that every institution is called to serve the human person and his or her dignity. Social justice is, therefore, characterized by the capacity of a social, economic and political order to allow everyone — particularly the weakest — to live a truly dignified life, without leaving anyone behind.

Lobbyists for the country’s leading atheist public-interest group, American Atheists, haven’t exactly been enamored with legislators and other political figures in Oklahoma during recent years: Oklahoma has been a state that has had a school superintendent attempt to infuse the Bible into the statewide curriculum, a state House that has passed a resolution honoring Christ as King, a statewide school board approve the creation of a state-funded religious school, and lawmakers who considered requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools. Arguably, at least, Oklahoma has been the state most ready to breach the wall traditionally separating church and state.

So it came as a surprise a few days ago when the the news page of Americans Atheists led with this headline: Atheists Praise Passage of Child Marriage Ban in Oklahoma.

In the annals of church-state conflict, the development isn’t all that big of a deal. After all, in order for the ban to become law, which will take effect Nov. 1, it needed the approval of the state’s Christian supermajority, and the legislation wasn’t fought primarily on religious grounds. All that is noteworthy is that the American Atheists found something to applaud lawmakers for.

For the record, the law is Senate Bill 504, which enacted the removal of all exceptions to the state law setting 18 as the minimum marriage age. The bill earlier this year passed the state House unanimously, although it did receive opposition from some conservative Republicans in the Senate, where it passed 51-36. The main argument made by opponents is that it would interfere with parental rights, and they argued that in some situations, such as when a child pregnancy is involved, parents should be allowed to authorize marriage for their children.

The Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, had taken no position on the bill. Because he neither signed nor vetoed it by the deadline, it became law (with delayed implementation) last Wednesday.

Here’s what Nick Fish, the president of American Atheists, had to say about the development:

This is not only a tremendous victory for the committed advocates who have worked tirelessly to advance this issue in Oklahoma and throughout the United States, it is a victory for the countless minors who, until today, were at risk of being forced into these abusive, exploitative marriages.

The devastating effects of child marriage on these young people are crystal clear, and the stories of survivors are heart-wrenching. This law come too late for the 3,500 minors, mostly girls wed to adult men, who were married in Oklahoma between 2000 and 2021, but it is a vital step toward ending child marriage in all 50 states.

I am grateful for the partnership of the team at Unchained at Last and the National Coalition to End Child Marriage and to the hard work of our members and volunteers in Oklahoma who fought so hard to get it done.

According to Fish, Oklahoma has become the 17th state to outlaw all child marriages. The states that allow minors to marry require court and/or parental approval for a license to be issued.

Slightly more than half of American adults, 52 percent, agree that conservative Christians have gone too far in trying to push their religious values in government and the public schools. And a similar number, 48 percent, say that liberal nonbelievers have gone too far in keeping religious values out of the government and the public square.

So says the most recent survey from the Pew Research Center, which also found that Americans are sharply divided on a variety of issues related to religion and the public square.

Although they are far from unanimous, Americans do reach a consensus of sorts on a few key issues. Only a small minority, 17 percent, for example, say that Christianity should be declared the official religion of the United States. And strong majorities among both Democrats and Republicans don’t want to see churches endorse political candidates.

But on some more general issues related to the role of religion in the country, U.S. adults are more narrowly divided:

🟪 A bit more than half of Americans, 55 percent, see religion has having a general positive view regarding the influence on American life. Almost a fourth, 22 percent, see the influence as negative, with the reminder having divided or undecided views.

🟪 A bit more than half, 51 percent, say that the Bible should have at least some influence on U.S. laws. Nearly all of the remainder, 48 percent, say the Bible should have no or not much influence on laws.

For both of those two questions, there is a strong partisan divide, with Republicans having the far stronger pro-Bible view.

Pew’s numbers are based on a nationally representative survey conducted April 6-12 among 3,592 U.S. adults.

In its report on the survey, Pew highlighted that there is growing familiarity with the term “Christian nationalism,” and that for the first time a majority say they have read or heard about the movement at least a little. Only 40 percent said they had heard nothing at all about the ideology, compared with 54 percent for surveys done in 2022 and 2024.

As more people have become familiar with the term, the numbers of people expressing both positive and negative views of Christian nationalism have grown, Pew noted:

On balance, sentiment toward Christian nationalism remains more negative than positive. Today, 31% of U.S. adults say they have an unfavorable view of Christian nationalism (up 6 percentage points since 2024), while 10% view it favorably (up 5 points).

Pew also highlighted that there is a growing number of Americans, although still a minority, who believe that the role of religion in American life is on the upswing. The survey found that 37 percent see a gaining influence, a figure that ties and is the highest since a survey in 2002 asked a similar question. A majority, 61 percent, see religion losing influence.