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.

Using over a decade of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Wheatley Fellow Dr. Samuel Wilkinson's study finds that unmarried individuals are consistently at higher risk for suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts—and that the protective effect of marriage has grown over time, especially among those who have never married and young people have de-prioritized marriage as an important life goal.

The phrase ‘constitutional crisis’ is everywhere. But is it accurate?

The Constitution matters now more than ever