Litigation Update: Legal Developments Surrounding Tithing and Religious Donations

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.

Past Wheatley Scholar Gabriela Coca wrote an article for the Institute of Family Studies about the negative effects of pornography on youth.

Wheatley Institute Fellow Justin Dyer co-authored an article for Deseret News with findings from a recent study on toxic perfectionism in Latter-Day Saint youth. He addresses the common attitude that being highly religious leads to dangerous levels of perfectionism, and explains how research shows that religion is the solution, rather than the cause, of these problems.

Wheatley fellow, Brian Willoughby, emphasizes the importance of parents talking to their children about pornography in an interview with the New York Times.