Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Acton Line podcast: Religious liberty at the Supreme Court
Acton Line podcast: Religious liberty at the Supreme Court
Nov 7, 2026 8:35 PM

The latest term of the Supreme Court, which wrapped up on July 8th, saw the Court decide several cases with major implications for religious liberty. While the es of Espinoza v. Montana, Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru and Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania have been largely viewed as victories for advocates of expanding religious liberty in America, the court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch and holding that an employer who fires an individual for being gay or transgender violates Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has been viewed as potentially having adverse consequences for the cause of religious liberty.

What are we to make of these latest developments in the Supreme Court’s religious liberty jurisprudence?

David French – Senior Editor at The Dispatch and a former constitutional litigator with Alliance Defending Freedom and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education – joins us to discuss the current status of religious liberty, both in the courts and in the culture writ large.

Espinoza v. Montana: A victory for school choice – but for how long? – Rev. Ben Johnson

Little Sisters, big victories – Rev. Ben Johnson

The Case for Religious Liberty Is More Compelling than the Case for Christian Power – David French

Whatever Happened to Baby Blaine? – David French & Sarah Isgur

Little Sisters 2: Vacated and Remanded – David French & Sarah Isgur

The Supreme Court Tries to Settle the Religious Liberty Culture War – David French

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Reflections on ETS Day Two
Got back from the annual ETS meeting yesterday and finally have a chance to sit down and summarize the events of the last couple days. Thursday morning was highlighted by parallel sessions. I attended one on Melanchthon and his shifting view of free will, in addition to papers on economic imagery in the Scriptures and the prospects for natural law theory as a strategy for political discourse. The latter was part of a session that revolved around evangelicals and natural...
Bonhoeffer on Church and State, Part 2
The following is the text of a paper presented on November 15, 2006 at the Evangelical Theological Society 58th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, which was themed, “Christians in the Public Square.” Part 2 of 3 follows below (series index). Relationship between Church and State It must first be noted that Bonhoeffer’s conception of mandates was a statement about the ontological ordering of God’s rule in the world, not a particular statement about the precise form that rule would or...
The Good Kind of Skepticism
[UPDATE: Goldberg at the Corner invokes a variation on the skepticism theme: "Anti-clericalism was certainly partly driven from the suspicion that priests and other clergy were preaching their versions of the gospel simply to empower themselves. I’ve long argued that one of the reasons Washington-based reporters are liberal, or statist, is that if the subject they cover is considered hugely important, then they in turn will be considered hugely important." A reader responds with Cui bono.] University of Colorado’s R....
Natural Law and Christian Social Thought
Two new and intriguing books from Cambridge University Press have crossed my editorial desk recently. Anticipate reviews to appear in the Journal of Markets & Morality sometime next year; but in the meantime I wanted to give them each a plug. Both draw on the philosophical tradition of the natural law to address contemporary debates in social/political thought. The argument of Christopher Wolfe’s Natural Law Liberalism is summed up in a blurb by Notre Dame law professor Gerard Bradley: “No...
Milton Friedman, R.I.P
December 10, 1976: My science is a er, the Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel having been established only in 1968 by the Central Bank of Sweden to celebrate its tercentenary. That circumstance does, I admit, leave me with something of a conflict of interest. As some of you may know, my monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced puters geared to provide a steady rate of growth in...
Bonhoeffer on Church and State, Part 1
The following is the text of a paper presented on November 15, 2006 at the Evangelical Theological Society 58th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, which was themed, “Christians in the Public Square.” Part 1 of 3 follows below (series index). Introduction Ever since his untimely death in 1945, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life and work have gone through a variety of appraisals and reappraisals in the succeeding scholarship. The fragmentary and partial nature of his Ethics manuscripts, as well as the attention...
The Art of Freedom
From time to time, e across something that forces me to stop, step back, and marvel at the wonder of human creativity. The movie below is one of those things. Airplanes are monplace that we often take them for granted. Here at Acton, many of my colleagues are regularly catching flights to all sorts of points on the globe, and it isn’t unusual for me to hear some grumbling about the airlines and the annoyances e along with modern air...
Bonhoeffer on Church and State, Part 3
The following is the text of a paper presented on November 15, 2006 at the Evangelical Theological Society 58th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, which was themed, “Christians in the Public Square.” Part 3 of 3 follows below (series index). War and Peace I will conclude with a brief word about Bonhoeffer and pacifism, given the ongoing claims about Bonhoeffer’s mitment to the practice of nonviolence.[i] First, it should be noted, with Clifford J. Green, that it is invalid to...
Wait – You Mean Taxpayers DON’T Have to Pay for Stadiums?
Refreshing news from Major League Baseball: In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say, I have loved the Oakland Athletics for a long time now. I love how they are the anti-Yankees, consistently fielding winning teams despite having one of the lower payrolls in the game, and losing superstar after superstar to richer teams. I love their plucky spirit and their annual belief-defying August winning streaks. I love Billy Beane’s flair for the dramatic. I love that they...
Generous Conservatives
Desperate Philanthropist? In a recent column in the National Post, David Frum looks at an “astonishing” new book on charitable giving due out this month from Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks. In “Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth of Compassionate Conservatism,” Brooks contends that conservatives are really “more generous, more honest and more public-spirited” than liberals. Frum starts his column with a quote from Desperate Housewives actress Eva Longoria, who asserts: “Everyone on Wisteria Lane has the money of...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved