The Religious Liberty Commission

In this class you will learn about the United States Commision on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). The USCIRF was created by an Act of the U.S. Congress in 1998, its primary purpose being to monitor and analyze violations of religious freedom outside of the U.S.

A few weeks ago, on 1 May 2025, Pres. Trump created the Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) by an executive order. The RLC has a similar purpose as the USCIRF but with a different domain. While the USCIRF focuses on religious freedom outside of the U.S., the RLC focuses on religious freedom inside of the U.S.

You can read the actual executive order creating the RLC on the White House's website. It's not too long. That same day, Pres. Trump appointed several members to server on the commission, and just a few days ago he also appointed more people to serve on advisory boards.

An interesting difference between the USCIRF and the RLC is that the USCIRF was created by an Act of Congress, while the RLC was created by an executive order. This means that the USCIRF is more permanent because it can only be disbanded by another Act of Congress or a court ruling. The RLC, on the other hand, can be disbanded by another executive order or a court ruling. For example, if the next president does not want the RLC to continue, then new president can just disband it, but if the next president does not want the USCIRF to continue, then they must work through Congress with no guarantee of success.

It will take some time to determine the value of the RLC and if it even continues past Pres. Trump. Like the USCIRF, the RLC will provide reports on religious freedom and advise the president on matters related to religious freedom. It is then a question of whether the president or others will take that advice.

However, even if the advice of the RLC is completely ignored, the RLC might provide interesting data. Reports created by the USCIRF were used to create measures of religious regulation in different countries for use in quantitative social scientific research (see p. 37 of the MM book). Maybe future scholars will find similar ways to create new data from RLC reports that they can use to do research on the U.S.

The creation of the RLC is something that you can remember from this quarter. In fact, it's a fun coincidence that it happened while you are taking Econ 17, which makes it good timing for you! It is a current event related directly to key ideas and concepts in our class, including Top Ten Principles 7-10.

The New Pope and the Existence of God

Many people were surprised when Robert Prevost was elected as the new pope of the Catholic Church on May 8. He is highly qualified and by all accounts an exceptional person, but he was not one of the betting favorites. He was also born in the U.S., making him the first American-born pope in the church's history. By taking the name Leo XIV, he also signaled a connection to prior popes of that name, including Pope Leo XII who led the church in the late 1800s and is known for his contributions to Catholic social teaching.

Pope Leo XIV has already made headlines with his first address to Catholic leadership in which he laid out his vision for the Catholic Church and expressed his thoughts about what he considers the most pressing issues facing humanity. Interestingly, among those are the rise of artificial intelligence.

But I want to draw your attention to something he wrote long before he was elected as pope. He majored in mathematics in college and undertook extensive theological training, and it is this combination of the mathematical and theological that caught my eye.

In 1990 he published a book called Probabilistic and Theistic Explanation that brings together his mathematical, theological, and philosophical interests.

As soon as I learned about this book, I looked to see if the UCI Library had it, and it did! So, I rushed  over to Langson, eventually got the book (after getting a library worker to reset the rolling shelf that wasn't working properly), checked it out, and read it over the next several days.

Remember Pascal's decision from way back in the first chapter and lectures of our class? Well, I think that the simplest way to describe Prevost's book to you is that in it he is confronting philosophical issues related to what variable p should be, i.e., what probability should be assigned to the existence of God. But the book is not about what specific value p should take. Instead, the book is about how people should think about how to determine what p is. What different types of logical and philosophical arguments can be used, what are the pros and cons of different types of arguments and evidence, and so on.

The main point he makes is two-fold. First, deductive arguments in which a person assumes a premise about the world and then deduces Gods' existence are less compelling for deciding what p is. Second, the most appropriate kind of argument is an inductive one in which a person considers a large body of evidence holistically and concludes that the existence of God best explains the evidence.

You do not need to read this book for our class, but you should know at the least that people continue to think deeply about key ideas that you've been taught. What probability should a person assign to the existence of God? How should a person even go about thinking about how to assign that probability? Are some ways of thinking about the existence of God more appropriate than others? These are questions that people--both religious and not religious--have been taking seriously for hundreds of years. And will take seriously for hundreds of years more.