The 2025 Wheatley Institute Seminar on Religion and Politics provided an excellent opportunity for political science and sociology graduate students from around the country to explore the role of religion in society. The seminar explored the history and current landscape of religious identity, influence, pluralism, and its impact on American politics and culture. Students also explored quantitative and qualitative methods and experiential wisdom in studying religion and politics from leading faculty in the field. Learning areas included how to explore data sources for research on religion, how to classify religious groups for more accurate measurements in surveys, how to measure religious behavior and belief, and how to study specific religious traditions.

Wheatley Institute partnered with the BYU International Center for Law and Religion Studies to host the 2025 Religious Freedom Annual Review. This year's theme was Religion, Peace, and Human Flourishing: Understanding the Whys of Religious Freedom. The Annual Review brought a broad array of perspectives to this issue, with religious, media, academic, legal, and thought leaders. These exerts addressed several questions. What role does religion play in building peace and fostering human flourishing? How does religious freedom’s respect for both individual choice as well as the human dignity of all increasingly matter in a fractious world? Experts on religious freedom and peacemaking explored the interconnections.

Wheatley Constitutional Government Fellow Hal R. Boyd gave a BYU Campus Devotional emphasizing the importance of a Christ-centered education and the dangers of drifting away from the faith-focused center of the BYU experience.

Tyson Reeder, an Affiliated Scholar for Wheatley Institute's Constitution Initiative, was awarded the prestegious George Washington Prize for his book Serpent in Eden. The book is an exploration of foreign meddling in early American politics, analyzing both the ways in which foreign powers swayed American democracy and the ways the new republic attempted to respond. The work was praised as "a blend of wonderful storytelling and intriguing characters along with perceptive historical analysis. . . . This important contribution stands out as an incredibly timely and relevant book for how we can use the past to understand the present."

I am not legally bound to honor the holy spaces of others, to make room for their beliefs and practices, or to respond to their religious speech with peace, tolerance and respect. But the norm of religious freedom creates a powerful social force encouraging me to do so.

Differences of opinion are part of life and differences of conviction are part of life too. I think we need to have the expectation that we're not always going to agree, even on the most important, even on the most personal, down-to-the-heart type of things. And that is okay. The way that we disagree is what's important.