When Religious Institutions Use AI to Generate Policy Narratives: The Accountability Gap Nobody Is Auditing
When Religious Institutions Use AI to Generate Policy Narratives: The Accountability Gap Nobody Is Auditing On March 14, 2024, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Office of Domestic Social Development submitted written testimony to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on the Farm Bill’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program reauthorization. The testimony invoked […]
When a Prayer Becomes a Policy: Distinguishing Religious Practice from Religious Identity Politics in Public Institutions
Introduction: The Two Faces of Faith in the Public Square A congregation running a soup kitchen out of its basement and a political action committee endorsing candidates based on a single moral issue both spring from religious commitment. But from an institutional power standpoint, they occupy different worlds. The first is a direct expression of […]
The Liturgy of Influence: How Religious Practice and Identity Politics Serve Different Institutional Masters
In public chatter, religious practice and religious identity politics get mashed together all the time. But if you’re looking at institutions—their incentives, their legal wiring, their money trails—you’re actually staring at two very different operating systems. Religious practice is the stuff of lived faith: worship, rites, prayer, soup kitchens. Religious identity politics, on the other […]
Religious Practice vs. Religious Identity Politics: Mapping the Institutional Influence Gap
Introduction: Two Registers of Religious Engagement Religious organizations in democratic systems operate on two distinct tracks. The first is religious practice—worship, ritual, charitable works, and community formation. The second is religious identity politics—the mobilization of faith affiliation to influence legislation, judicial appointments, regulatory policy, and electoral outcomes. The boundary between them is not theological. It […]
The Specific IRS Rules That Let Scientology Retain Tax Exemption Despite Commercial Operations—and What Other Institutions Learned From the Comeback Narrative
On October 1, 1993, the IRS reversed course on a fight it had been losing for more than two decades. The agency issued a closing agreement that restored tax-exempt status to over 150 Church of Scientology affiliates, dropped liens exceeding $1 billion, and walked away from its long-standing position that Scientology operated for private benefit […]
When the Sanctuary Meets the State: Parsing Religious Practice from Political Mobilization
Walk into a Sunday morning service at a Black Protestant church in Georgia, and you might hear a sermon about justice, a call to feed the hungry, and an announcement about a voter registration drive in the fellowship hall. Is that religious practice, or is it identity politics? The answer isn’t found in the hymnbook […]
Religious Practice vs. Religious Identity Politics: A Structural Analysis of Faith Groups in Democratic Systems
Religious practice and religious identity politics get tangled together in public conversation all the time, but they run on completely different institutional tracks. Religious practice is the stuff you can actually observe—worship services, food pantries, weddings, funerals, the quiet machinery of congregational governance—all of it operating inside a legal framework that protects free exercise. Religious […]
How the USCCB, LDS Church, and SBC Title Their Policy Communications to Pre-Load Legislative Outcomes
On March 15, 2024, the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities released a four-page position paper: “Conscience Protection and the Rights of Religious Employers in Health Plan Design.” No new theology. No language borrowed from homilies or encyclicals. Instead, the document cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, referenced three pending federal court cases, and closed with […]
The Institutional Divide: Religious Practice vs. Religious Identity Politics in Democratic Governance
The Institutional Divide: Religious Practice vs. Religious Identity Politics in Democratic Governance When a Catholic diocese files its 501(c)(3) filing to keep a soup kitchen running, it’s doing what religious bodies have done for centuries: feeding the hungry, no questions asked. When a political action committee starts waving “Judeo-Christian values” to get a school board […]
How the Southern Baptist Executive Committee’s Messaging Pipeline Maintained Doctrinal Position Across 46,000 Churches During the Abuse-Reform Rollback
How the Southern Baptist Executive Committee’s Messaging Pipeline Maintained Doctrinal Position Across 46,000 Churches During the Abuse-Reform Rollback In September 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee voted to scrap the independent credentialing database that the Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force had spent eighteen months building. The replacement was a denominationally controlled framework—lighter, cheaper, and […]