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Daniel Philpott

Daniel Philpott is Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his Ph.D. in 1996 from Harvard University and specializes in religion and politics, focusing on religious freedom, reconciliation, the political behavior of religious actors, and Christian political theology. He is currently writing a Christian account of justice. His books include Revolutions in Sovereignty (Princeton, 2001), God’s Century: Resurgent Religion in Global Politics (Norton, 2011, coauthored with Monica Duffy Toft and Timothy Samuel Shah), Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (Oxford, 2012), and Religious Freedom in Islam: The Fate of a Universal Human Right in the Muslim World (Oxford, 2019). He has promoted reconciliation as an activist in Kashmir and the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

Religious freedom

Religious Freedom Deserves a Right of Its Own

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Religion is a basic good for all human beings everywhere, therefore religious freedom is a universal human right. It is neither unfair nor parochial, but a requirement of justice.
woman hands bound prisoner in room, hands bound

A Christian Case for Racial Reparations

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Slavery, Jim Crow, and distributive discrimination assaulted natural rights and the dignity of persons made in the image of God on which these rights are based. They leave behind wounds, the most central of which is the standing victory of injustice, the moral fact of injustice itself that persists in time unless it is repudiated. While constitutional amendments, legislation, and policies have countered and delegitimated these injustices, the lack of a formal apology and reparations has left them still standing.
jacques maritain

Where Have You Gone, Jacques Maritain?

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Today, Jacques Maritain’s optimistic vision of Christian liberalism is often contested or dismissed as outdated, but a revival of his emphasis on Christian participation in society and politics is urgently needed—and is in many ways already in evidence in Christian political activity in America.
Nursing home

Amid Cries for Justice, a Surge of Mercy

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Justice, in the Bible and in the Christian tradition, demands that we protect and remember every vulnerable and isolated person, made in the image of God. As reopening moves ahead, a surge of mercy to protect the elderly and others who are confined might prove a healing tonic for a bitterly riven society—and for the Christian church.

Secretary Pompeo: Don’t Forget That Human Rights Depend on Natural Law

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When the champions of human rights promote rights that are not grounded in natural law, they undermine their credibility to speak for all human beings. Those who understand the truth about human rights—as every rational person has the capacity to do—will cease to trust the human rights community.

Vetoing Life, Vetoing Women’s Care

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One would think that a politician like Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who aspires to national office on a message of unity and inclusion, would push his party toward common ground—like the common ground that the Women’s Care Center occupies. Why, then, would he veto this pregnancy center’s zoning request?

Neither Reformation nor Enlightenment: The Seeds of Religious Freedom Within Islam

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Contrary to what one often hears in Western media, Islam needs neither a Reformation nor an Enlightenment. Islam must—and can—find resources from within its tradition to defend the full human right to religious freedom. The second in a two-part series.

Religious Freedom in the Muslim World: A Nuanced Appraisal

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What is the status of religious freedom in Islam, and what are its prospects? An answer to this question must begin with a nuanced appraisal of the political theologies that govern different Muslim nations. The first in a two-part series.
Public Discourse

The Implications of Extending Marriage Benefits to Same-Sex Couples

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It is morally indefensible for Catholic institutions to recognize and incentivize same-sex marriages by extending marriage benefits to employees who declare themselves legally married to a person of the same sex.
Public Discourse

Why We Can’t Just “Lighten Up” Over the HHS Mandate

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Preserving the freedom to witness to the truths one believes, not merely avoiding cooperation with evil, is what’s primarily at stake in the HHS mandate debate.
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