Have you ever played the acronym game? My first time was over a decade ago with a colleague at a nonprofit association. It’s simple, really. During a training for nonprofit leaders on sector excellence, whenever the trainer used an acronym or technical jargon without providing an explanation, she had to give candy to the first person who called her out. Spiritual Root Systems of Faith-Based Organizations In any field, subject-matter expert language becomes second nature when communicating with peers. After 15 years working in religious freedom, public policy, and faith-based nonprofits, I’m acutely aware that I do this myself. Acronyms […]

To read the full research behind this op-ed, visit our 2024 Hatfield Prize page here. Roughly every five years, Congress debates changes to the omnibus Farm Bill, a multilayered law covering a plethora of agricultural and food programs. The first Farm Bill was passed in 1933 to bolster food supplies during the Great Depression and help keep food prices in check for average Americans.  Today, one of the largest programs in the Farm Bill is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, which supports 41.1 million Americans every month by supplementing their grocery budgets. While SNAP benefits vary from […]

To read the full research behind this op-ed, visit our 2024 Hatfield Prize page here. At just 15, Carlos fled his home in Honduras to seek medical treatment for an eye condition, a better education, and safety from gang-related violence in his hometown. Carlos crossed the U.S. border alone and was immediately arrested and held at a Texas detention facility. Soon he was transferred to a Miami shelter care facility for unaccompanied children that was his home for the next two and a half months. After 82 days, Carlos was placed under the care of his “sponsor”— an aunt in […]

To read the full research behind this op-ed, visit our 2024 Hatfield Prize page here. My shirt is soaked with sweat after a long day framing on a residential construction crew in the sweltering Western Kentucky summer. I glance back on the day’s work, the house’s wooden exterior taking shape, before hopping into my truck. I think about how this journey began five years ago when I took a carpentry class at my high school’s vocational center. That class turned into another, and then another. Before I knew it, I was cutting boards and hammering nails the summer before attending […]

This article was originally published in Liberty magazine and can be accessed at Proceed with Caution. Faith-based charities come to grips with new church-state rules for government funding. The Biden administration recently has revised the regulations that govern how faith-based organizations can participate in federal, state, or local social service programs funded by federal dollars. These rules cover a broad range of services, from low-income housing and workforce development programs to welfare and homeless services, after-school programs, and more. That’s a wide and important sweep of services, so it is vital that the rules do not push out faith-based organizations […]

This article was originally published in the Journal of Christian Legal Thought, Volume 14, Issue 1 (2024). It is republished here with permission from the original publisher. Christians from many different theological streams share a conviction that our faith ought to have something to say about social-political issues. At the same time, Christians rightly perceive that our influence in the broader culture is waning. Fewer people call themselves Christians in America than ever before, while expressive individualism and its associated harms are culturally ascendant. Common good constitutionalism is one prescription for this diagnosis, a call to abandon positivism and viewpoint […]