Faith and Law

Mary Eberstadt is an American author of several influential works of non-fiction, including How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization; Adam and Eve after the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution; and It's Dangerous to Believe: Religious Freedom and Its Enemies. Her 2010 novel The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism was adapted for stage and premiered at the Catholic University of America's Hartke Theater in fall 2016. She is also editor of the anthology Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys. A frequent contributor to magazines and journals including TIME, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and First Things, Mrs. Eberstadt (nee Tedeschi) has also served as an editor at The Public Interest, The National Interest, and Policy Review. She has been associated with various think tanks, and in 2016 became a senior research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute. In 2011, she founded a literary organization called the Kirkpatrick Society that has mentored hundreds of writers. In 2014, she delivered the Commencement address at Seton Hall University, which awarded her an honorary doctorate in humane letters.During the Reagan administration, Mrs. Eberstadt spent two years as a speechwriter to Secretary of State George Shultz. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University with a double major in philosophy and government. In summer 1981, she became the first female voting member of the student body at formerly all-male Deep Springs College.Support the show

Culture is upstream from politics.  In other words, government is like a giant mirror reflecting the soul of the nation.  While the clarity of that reflection will shift from administration to administration, we generally get the government we deserve. As Plato argued, the state is the soul writ large.  What we love and what we hate are shaped less by laws than by our habits of the heart.  And those habits are shaped far more powerfully by the songs we sing, the movies we watch, and the books we read.  It’s been wisely written, “Give me the songs of a nation, and it matters not who writes its laws.”  This reality has important implications for how we pursue cultural change.Bill Wichterman was Special Assistant to President George W. Bush in the White House, Policy Advisor to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Chief of Staff to Congressman Joe Pitts and Congressman Bill Baker.  He has been a senior advisor on several Presidential campaigns.  Bill is the author of the book, Dying to Live: Finding Joy In Giving Yourself to God (Oakton Foundation Press, 2014), and he authored an influential essay entitled, “The Culture: Upstream from Politics,” which appeared in the 2001 Eerdmans book, Building a Healthy Culture (ed. Don Eberly). He co-authored an essay entitled, “Making Goodness Fashionable” in the Stroud & Hall book Creating the Better Hour: Lessons from William Wilberforce (Ed. Chuck Stetson, 2007). He is co-founder of Wedgwood Circle, channeling investments into mainstream arts and entertainment that tells the truth about the world.  Bill is President of the Board of Faith & Law.  He holds an M.A. in Political Theory from the Catholic University of America, and a B.A. from Houghton College.Support the show

Katherine Haley is the senior director of K-12 education programs for The Philanthropy Roundtable.Prior to joining the Roundtable, Katherine spent 13 years working for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. Most recently, she served for seven years as the chief policy adviser for education, workforce, antipoverty, global health, and other social issues for former Speaker of the House John Boehner. Motivated by the belief that all students deserve access to a great education, Katherine was instrumental in the successful reauthorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. She previously served as a policy adviser and legislative assistant for Representative Pete Hoekstra, and a legislative aide for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.A native of Arizona, Katherine received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Duke University and her master’s degree in government from Johns Hopkins University. She serves on several boards in the Washington, D.C. area, and is actively involved with Opportunity International.Support the show

Heather Rice-Minus serves as Vice President of Government Affairs & Church Mobilization at Prison Fellowship, the nation's largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, former prisoners, and their families. She is a powerful, knowledgeable voice articulating the case for restorative criminal justice solutions.As leader of Prison Fellowship's policy staff, Rice-Minus directs lobbying, research, and legislative campaigns on pivotal criminal justice issues at the state and federal levels. She also spearheads its efforts to build coalitions with advocacy groups, think tanks, faith-based organizations, and other key stakeholders in Washington, D.C.Rice-Minus has contributed to stories about criminal justice reform in outlets including Slate, CBN News, PBS' Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, and WORLD magazine. She is the co-author of Prison Fellowship's Bible study curriculum, "Outrageous Justice." A valued shaper of the criminal justice reform debate because of her wide-ranging policy expertise, Rice-Minus is also personally vested in justice reform as someone who has both been a victim of crime and walked alongside a family member during his incarceration.A native of Virginia, Rice-Minus resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband and daughter. Prior to her tenure at Prison Fellowship, she managed advocacy efforts on behalf of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. She is a graduate of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and Colorado State University. She is a member of the Virginia State Bar.Support the show

At the 2019 Faith & Law Annual Dinner, Os and Jenny Guinness and Senator Ben Sasse and Melissa Sasse were honored with the Charles Colson Award for Public Service. Following the presentation of the awards, Senator Sasse and Os spoke about Divided Politics and Lonely Americans, moderated by Cherie Harder, President of the Trinity Forum and member of the Faith & Law board. About the Charles Colson Award for Public ServiceChuck Colson spoke many times during the first three decades of Faith & Law and was a significant supporter of our effort. Faith & Law Founder John Palafoutas says, “I'll never forget the time he spoke to Faith and Law in the Senate Caucus Room, the same room in which the Watergate Hearings were conducted. His testimony eventually led to his criminal conviction and prison sentence, and by the Grace of God, his conversion to Jesus Christ.”In 2016, Faith & Law awarded its first Charles Colson Award for Public Service. This award is given to those who exemplify what it means to be a Christian working in the public square, integrating a biblical worldview with service to our nation.Past Colson Awardees:2016Former Congressman Joe Pitts, represented PA-16 from 1997-20172017Former Congressman Frank Wolf, represented VA-10 from 1981-20152018Sam Brownback, Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom and Michael Cromartie, Vice President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, awarded posthumously for his impact on religion and journalism in the public square2019 Colson Awardees:Dr. Os GuinnessOs Guinness is an author and social critic. Great-great-great grandson of Arthur Guinness, the Dublin brewer, he was born in China in World War Two where his parents were medical missionaries. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of London and his D.Phil in the social sciences from Oriel College, Oxford. Os has written or edited more than thirty books, including The Call, Time for Truth, Unspeakable, A Free People’s Suicide, and The Global Public Square. His latest book, Last Call for Liberty: How America’s genius for freedom has become its greatest threat, was published in 2018. Since moving to the United States in 1984, Os has been a Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Studies, a Guest Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum and the EastWest Institute in New York. He lives with his wife Jenny in the Washington DC area.Jenny GuinnnessJenny Guinness was born in California and studied at the University of Southern California. She became a photographic fashion model with Eileen Ford, and as a Vogue cover girl had the privilege of working with such legendary photographers as Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. During that time she began a spiritual search and journey toward faith that led to studies at L’Abri in Switzerland where she met and married her husband Os. Their son, Christopher, was born in Oxford, England where Os was engaged in doctoral studies and Jenny worked with a London television production company. Jenny has recently written the story of her search for meaning in the midst of the “vanity fair” of the New York fashion world. The Guinnesses live in Mclean, Virginia.Senator Ben SasseBen is a U.S. Senator representing the great state of Nebraska. A fifth-generation Nebraskan, Ben grew up walking beans and detasseling corn, experiences that taught him the value of hard work. He came to the Senate having spent the previous five years as a college president. When he was recruited to take over the failing Midland University, Ben was just 37 years old, making him one of the youngest college presidents in the nation. The 130-year-old Lutheran college was on the verge of Support the show

Canon Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda will share his personal story of living with HIV and about his work and leadership against stigma, shame, denial and discrimination, inaction and mis-action.  Further, he will discuss his ministry and theology to uphold the human dignity and rights of people living with and most vulnerable to HIV and AIDS.  Then, Dr. Jenny Dyer will  will reflect on the critical role of faith leaders to shape policy and funding for Global AIDS since the beginning of the Bush Administration. She will look at the sustained support over the past three Administrations and the success of legislation, in part, thanks to their advocacy.In 1992, Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda became the first religious leader in Africa to publicly announce that he was HIV positive. Before long, others came forward and Byamugisha founded the African Network of Religious Leaders Living with and Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS (ANERELA+), now an international organization with 10,000 members in 48 countries. Byamugisha holds a B.A in Education (Honors) from Makerere University, Kampala, a Bachelor of Divinity (First Class) from ATIEA Nairobi, and a Masters in Contextual & Applied Theology (University of Birmingham, United Kingdom). For his pioneering leadership, St Paul's Cathedral, Namirembe Diocese (Kampala, Uganda 2001), and Holy Cross Cathedral, (Lusaka Diocese, Zambia, 2003) conferred upon him the ecclesiastical title of Canon in the Anglican Church. Canon Gideon, born in 1959, is the eldest of 14 children. In 1991, he lost his wife, Kellen to AIDS. Their daughter, Patience, is now 29. In 1995, Canon Gideon married Pamela (herself HIV positive and widowed by HIV/AIDS at a very young age). Thanks to advances in the prevention on Mother-to-Child Transmission, Pamela and Gideon have two HIV-negative children, Love, 15, and Hope, 13. Jenny Dyer is the Founder of The 2030 Collaborative. As such, she directs the Faith-Based Coalition for Global Nutrition with support from the Eleanor Crook Foundation.Dyer teaches Global Health Politics and Policy as a Lecturer in the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, and she has taught Religion and Global Health as a Lecturer at Vanderbilt School of Divinity.Dyer formerly served as the Executive Director for Senator Bill Frist, MD’s Hope Through Healing Hands from 2008-2018, and prior to that, she was the National Faith Outreach Director for the DATA Foundation and The ONE Campaign, Bono’s organization, from 2003-2008. In these roles, she has worked with religious leaders, authors, artists, and other faith-based leaders to promote awareness and advocacy for global health and development issues.Dyer has written several academic articles and opinion pieces on the intersection of religion and global health. She has been published in TIME, Forbes.com, Huffington Post, Roll Call, Christianity Today’s Her.meneutics, Patheos, Relevant Magazine, Christian Post, Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, and The Tennessean, to name a few.She is a contributor of Why Save Africa: Answers from around the World (2011) and a co-compiler of The Mother & Child Project: Raising Our Voices for Health and Hope (2015) and The aWAKE Project: Uniting Against the African AIDS Crisis (2002). Her forthcoming book as a co-editor, The End of Hunger: Renewed Hope for Feeding the World, will release in October 2019 with InterVarsity Press.Dyer holds a B.A. in Religion from Samford University (1999), a Master of Theological Studies from Vanderbilt Divinity School (2001), and a Ph.D. in History and Critical Theories of Religion from Vanderbilt University (2007).She lives in Franklin, Tennessee with her husband, John, and two boys, RhSupport the show

Paul Marshall is a research professor in the Department of Political Science as well as the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR).Marshall was formerly a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C. He is the author and editor of more than 20 books on religion and politics, particularly religious freedom, including Persecuted: The Global Assault on Christians (2013, with Lela Gilbert and Nina Shea), Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide (2011, with Nina Shea), Blind Spot: When Journalists Don’t Get Religion (2009), Religious Freedom in the World (2007), Radical Islam’s Rules: The Worldwide Spread of Extreme Sharia Law (2005), The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003), Islam at the Crossroads (2002), God and the Constitution (2002), The Talibanization of Nigeria (2002), Massacre at the Millennium (2001), Religious Freedom in the World (2000), Egypt’s Endangered Christians (1999), Just Politics (1998), Heaven Is Not My Home (1998), A Kind of Life Imposed on Man (1996) and the best-selling, award-winning survey of religious persecution worldwide Their Blood Cries Out (1997).Marshall’s current research is focused primarily on understanding how Muslims and Christians are able to live and work together peacefully in Indonesia – the world’s most populous Muslim country.Marshall is in frequent demand for lectures and media appearances and has been featured on ABC Nightly News; CNN; PBS; FOX; the British, Australian, Canadian, South African and Japanese Broadcasting Corporations; and Al Jazeera. His work has been published in, or is the subject of, articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, First Things, New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Reader’s Digest and many other newspapers and magazines.Marshall also is a Senior Fellow at the Leimena Institute, a Christian public policy think tank in Jakarta, Indonesia, and was previously a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Sharif Hidayatullah Islamic University (UIN), also in Jakarta.Support the show

This Faith & Law Friday Forum will focus on tribalism and identity politics with Georgetown University Professor Paul Miller. Dr. Miller asserts that civilization is fixated on stories about the journey to discover our identity, and how the discovery of our identity is the key to unleashing our inner power and mastering our world. In this lecture, he will address this myth by sharing where it comes from, historically and spiritually. Next, he will tease out its political implications and show how it gives rise to both identity politics and to the current wave of nationalism sweeping much of the world. While demands for identity recognition are understandable, they raise serious social, political, and cultural problems without any corresponding solutions. Then, Dr. Miller will propose answers to the questions of identity, calling for a renewal of classical liberalism, federalism, and devolution as answers to identity politics, nationalism, and the centrifugal forces of tribalism that threaten to tear our polities apart. Finally, he will conclude with a note on the spiritual roots of this problem, suggesting where our need for identity and recognition come from, and what the answer might ultimately be.Dr. Paul D. Miller is a Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He serves as co-chair of the Global Politics and Security concentration in the MSFS program. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.As a practitioner, Dr. Miller served as Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council staff; worked as an intelligence analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency; and served as a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army.His most recent book, American Power and Liberal Order: A Conservative Internationalist Grand Strategy, was published by Georgetown University Press in 2016. In his first book, Armed State Building (Cornell University Press, 2013), Miller examined the history and strategy of stability operations. Miller taught at The University of Texas at Austin and the National Defense University and worked at the RAND Corporation prior to his arrival at Georgetown.Miller blogs on foreign affairs at Elephants in the Room. His writing has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Survival, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Orbis, The American Interest, The National Interest, The World Affairs Journal, Small Wars and Insurgencies, and elsewhere. Miller holds a PhD in international relations and a BA in government from Georgetown University, and a master in public policy from Harvard University.He is a contributing editor of the Texas National Security Review, a contributing editor of Providence: A Journal of Christianity and American Foreign Policy, a co-editor of the Naval Institute Press’s Series on the Future of Global Security, a research fellow at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, a member of the advisory board for the Philos Project, and a member of the Texas Lyceum.Support the show

Former Congressman and US Ambassador Tony Hall was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is one of the leading advocates for hunger relief programs and improving international human rights conditions in the world. He served the Third District of Ohio for more than 20 years and was sworn in as United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in September 2002, "putting into action America's commitment to alleviate hunger and build hope in the world."Ambassador Hall was a founding member of the Select Committee on Hunger and served as its chairman from 1989 until it was abolished in 1993. In response to the abolishment of the Hunger Committee, in April 1993, Mr. Hall fasted for 22 days in order to draw attention to the needs of hungry people in the United States and around the world. Ambassador Tony Hall is also founder and was chairman of the Congressional Hunger Center, a non-governmental organization dedicated to fighting hunger by developing leaders.Support the show

Fred W. Beuttler is the associate dean for Liberal Arts Programs at the University of Chicago’s Graham School. He received his PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1995. Prior to coming to Graham in June 2015, he was director of general education and taught history at Carroll University in Wisconsin. From 2005 to 2010, he was the deputy historian of the US House of Representatives, in Washington, DC, and from 1998 to 2005, he was the associate university historian of the University of Illinois at Chicago.Support the show