Why You Should Follow the Money in Any Religious Institution
We talk about religion as doctrine, as ritual, as private comfort. That framing is no accident. It’s a tidy way to keep religious institutions outside the kind of hard-eyed audit we bring to corporations or government agencies. But scratch the surface and you find something much earthier: every religious body, from the storefront chapel to […]
The Difference Between Religious Belief and Religious Power
Religious authority often takes physical form in grand institutional spaces. When a bishop settles onto a throne or a mufti issues a fatwa, most onlookers see religion and leave it at that. They miss the chasm between a private, inner conviction and the machinery that converts that conviction into a political and social asset. Failing […]
How Religious Tax Exemptions Affect Civic Life More Than Most People Realize
The Architecture of a Hidden Subsidy When a city council argues about a new fire station or a school board scrapes for art-program funding, nobody mentions the cathedral on Main Street. Or the mosque that just paved a second parking lot. Those buildings—plus thousands of parsonages, seminaries, and religious charities—sit cleanly outside the tax base. […]
Sacred Exemptions, Civic Consequences: What Religious Tax Breaks Really Cost Us
There’s a corner lot downtown. Prime location. Across the street, the city wants to build a new library—light-filled, modern, a place for kids after school. The bond measure that would fund it will add about $120 a year to the average homeowner’s property tax bill. But that corner lot? It belongs to a major denomination, […]
Why the Most Interesting Thing About Any Religion Is How It Handles Dissent
By Dr. Yael Nussbaum Analysts love to tally adherents, parse sacred texts, or count rituals. That’s the easy stuff. If you want to see how a religious system actually works—where authority lives, how much friction it can stand, what it does when its monopoly on truth bumps up against reality—watch what happens when someone inside […]
The Problem With Treating Religious Freedom as an Unquestionable Good
In policy circles, religious freedom gets treated as if it’s self-evidently good—a foundational liberty democracies should defend without a second thought. The rhetoric practically preaches: “religious liberty is the first freedom,” “faith is a fundamental human right,” “restrict religion and you restrict the soul.” But the moment you stop treating religious freedom as a moral […]
Religious Freedom Is Not a Halo
In Washington and on op-ed pages, religious freedom still floats above the fray, gilded and unquestionable. Suggest it might have a dark side and you get branded a bigot or worse. I’ve spent my career watching how religious institutions gather and spend power, and this reflexive sanctimony strikes me as intellectually dishonest and politically reckless. […]
When Freedom Becomes a Shield: Rethinking Religious Liberty as Public Policy
In Western policy circles, religious freedom still shows up draped in the language of universal rights. Unimpeachable. Self-evident. Not up for discussion. For decades, scholars, diplomats, and legislators have treated it as a first-order good—a cornerstone of liberal democracy that needs protecting before anything else gets a look-in. I want to push back on that. […]
How Faith-Based Lobbying Shapes Policy in Ways Secular Groups Cannot Match
Most legislators don’t decide how to vote on family leave, criminal justice reform, or foreign aid because one crisp policy memo landed on their desk. Lobbying, when it actually works, is a slow grind of credibility, networks, and sheer relentlessness. Religious organizations come to that fight carrying assets that secular nonprofits and corporate interests can’t […]
Why Religious Institutions Are Political Actors Whether They Admit It or Not
Every time the World Council of Churches puts out a statement on debt relief for developing nations, or a local diocese files an amicus brief in a Supreme Court case, the responses split down a predictable seam. Some people applaud the moral clarity. Others grumble that religion should keep its nose out of politics. Both […]