If you’ve been listening to leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently, chances are high you’ve heard them talk about religious freedom. This issue is a growing concern to a church trying to find their way in an increasingly secular world. As the primary school owned and operated by the LDS Church, BYU is also heavily involved in the fight for religious freedom, not only for its own sake, but for the sake of practitioners of other religions as well. At 4:00 p.m. on January 17th, Dr. Daniel Mark will deliver an address on BYU’s campus regarding on this issue, one that has been recognized as universal but which has also proven to be, over the course of human history, one of the most difficult to define and uphold.
This forum, hosted by BYU’s Wheatley Institution, will be particularly useful to individuals interested in issues of religious freedom, contemporary politics, philosophy, family and marriage, and family law. As a political scientist, Dr. Mark researches heavily the role of religious freedom in America, and his forum address will contextualize and deepen our understanding of the realities of current religious freedoms and trends. Attendees will be able to educate themselves on what religious freedom means and does not mean for them.
Dr. Mark, an assistant professor of political science and a faculty associate of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for the Study of Free Institutions and the Public Good at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, holds the rank of Battalion Professor and serves as the university representative to the performance review board for Villanova’s Navy Reserve Officers’ Training Corps unit and is a mentor in the university’s Faith and Learning Scholars Program. Dr. Mark holds a BA, MA, and Ph.D. from the Department of Politics at Princeton University.
BYU’s Wheatley Institution’s mission is to “enhance the academic climate and scholarly reputation of BYU, and to enrich faculty and student experiences, by contributing recognized scholarship that lifts society by preserving and strengthening its core institutions.
Note: featured image provided by Flickr Creative Commons.
