Matthew J. Franck

My friend Stephen Barr misunderstands me, I’m afraid. He writes, in defense of Charles Krauthammer, thatit is a truth accessible to reason unaided by divine revelation that human beings have a spiritual nature, in the sense of being rational and free and having a soul that is not reducible to . . . . Continue Reading »

There are few more gifted conservative columnists working in journalism today than Charles Krauthammer. On so many issues, from executive power to foreign policy to limited government, Krauthammer is reliable, insightful, and employs a gleefully sharp pen to eviscerate his adversaries. But every now . . . . Continue Reading »

The Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby—whose religious freedom the Obama administration is attempting to violate with the HHS mandate—has posted a video where they speak for themselves, as business owners and Christians.  It’s worth watching to remind ourselves of the real . . . . Continue Reading »

Every summer the Witherspoon Institute offers a seminar on the Moral Foundations of the Law, open to rising 2L and 3L students in law school, as well as those in LLM and JSD programs (and we’ve been known to have students in the seminar studying jurisprudence in other disciplines, like . . . . Continue Reading »

Next summer, July 28 to August 1, 2014, the Witherspoon Institute (where I direct the Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution) will host its third biennial Church and State Seminar.  From our website description:This five-day seminar will examine the relationship between religion and . . . . Continue Reading »

This weekend, December 13-14 at the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, the Religious Freedom Project of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center is hosting a conference on ” Christianity and Freedom: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives .” I will serve on two panels myself . . . . Continue Reading »

Three notable men died on this date fifty years ago. Most of the attention on this anniversary belongs to John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas by a lone communist (somehow it is necessary to use both the adjective and the noun to quash various conspiracy theories). A strong . . . . Continue Reading »

That’s the title of a lecture the Witherspoon Institute is very proud to sponsor, this Tuesday, November 19, at 4:30 p.m. on the Princeton University campus (co-sponsored by the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions).  It’s the first in a new annual lecture . . . . Continue Reading »

Intrepid New York Times reporter Laurie Goodstein has gone out and interviewed seven—-count ‘em, seven!—-individuals, three of them in the same room, each more or less “conservative” in his or her Catholicism, and she found some of them—-not all—-willing to . . . . Continue Reading »

When an experienced columnist makes an argument this bad, it’s hard to judge whether he is disingenuous or just dimwitted. Today’s example is from the Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne , who says that if conservatives were really pro-life, as they claim, they wouldn’t be . . . . Continue Reading »