Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A Draft Agreement in the Caucasus—and U.S. Engagement

Earlier this month, Armenia and Azerbaijan initialed a draft peace agreement at the White House. The agreement, brokered by the Trump administration, has not yet been signed or ratified, but its key terms are now public—and deeply controversial.

Under the deal, Armenia formally renounces its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh and grants the United States a 99-year lease on a new transit corridor through its southern border, part of what the administration is calling the TRIPP initiative. In return, Azerbaijan pledges to recognize Armenia’s current borders and allow reciprocal, unimpeded transit.

For Armenia, the concessions are painful—particularly after the ethnic cleansing of Karabakh’s Armenian population in 2023. But the deal may offer short-term stability and give Armenia time to rebuild. Christian advocacy groups in the U.S., long concerned about religious prisoners and displaced Christian communities in the region, played a notable role in urging American involvement. President Trump’s public reference to “Christian” detainees was no accident.

In a new piece for First Things, I explore what this draft agreement means for the region, why the U.S. chose to intervene now, and whether the engagement we’re seeing today signals a deeper and more lasting American commitment—or simply a pause before the next crisis.

You can read the full essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Caviar Diplomacy at the Vatican

Over the past year, Azerbaijan has increased its presence in Rome—funding the restoration of St. Paul Outside the Walls and co-sponsoring interfaith conferences at the Gregorian University. These initiatives have been welcomed as gestures of tolerance and dialogue. But they also raise difficult questions.

In First Things Magazine, I explore what Azerbaijan’s “caviar diplomacy” means for the Vatican’s moral witness—particularly in light of Baku’s ongoing campaign of cultural erasure against Armenian Christians. If the Church is serious about ecumenism with the Christian East, it must be willing to speak plainly, even when uncomfortable.

Read the full piece here: https://firstthings.com/the-vaticans-duty-to-armenian-christians/.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

“The Best Man,” Sixty Years Later

For people who are interested, over at Law & Liberty, I have an essay on the 60th anniversary of Gore Vidal’s classic film on presidential nominating conventions, 1964’s “The Best Man.” I’ve always loved the film, which captures some of the fun and banality of democratic politics–as well as its deeply cynical, even nihilistic side. Very relevant this election year. Here’s an excerpt:

This year marks the 60th anniversary of perhaps the greatest political film of all time, 1964’s The Best Man. Based on a play of the same name by Gore Vidal, who also wrote the screenplay, The Best Man tells the story of a deadlocked political convention at which two candidates vie for their party’s presidential nomination. Sixty years on, the film remains tremendously entertaining: clever, suspenseful, with an exceptional cast. The dialogue is outstanding. Considering what we have witnessed in the current presidential campaign—and it’s only August—Americans might again find interest in Vidal’s depiction of the backroom intrigue that determines a nomination.

The Best Man holds up for its mordant but profound observations about American democracy. There’s not much idealism here. The film’s most principled character has flaws that make him unfit to lead and the ultimate nominee is a “nobody” whose lack of record is his best quality. But there are important lessons about the sort of person who seeks high office in a democracy—and the sort of person high office requires. Perhaps surprisingly, given that Vidal was a man of the Left and had a rather acid personality, The Best Man offers a basically fair, even forgiving, depiction of progressives and conservatives. Neither are wholly good nor wholly bad, just human.

You can read the whole essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On the Oklahoma Charter School Decision

Earlier this week, in a much-watched case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a charter school, St. Isidore of Seville, is unconstitutional under state and federal law. In a post at the Volokh site today, I argue that this ruling was probably correct. As a charter school, St. Isidore is a hybrid, a cross between a public and a private school, and that makes its legal position complicated. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s not quite as clear as the Oklahoma court makes it seem, but the decision is probably correct, at least respecting the federal constitutional claims. Legally speaking, St. Isidore is caught in a dilemma—a dilemma that its hybrid nature as a charter school creates. If St. Isidore qualifies as a public school, there’s an obvious Establishment Clause problem. St. Isidore argued that it shouldn’t be seen as a public school, but as an independent contractor. But the Oklahoma statute specifically provides that charter schools are “public.” And that’s not just a matter of form, but also substance. As a charter school, St. Isidore is funded entirely by the state, must take all students who apply, and must comply with curricular and other requirements that don’t apply to private schools.

On the other hand, if St. Isidore is a private actor, the US Supreme Court’s recent free exercise cases may not help it too much. In Carson and Espinoza, the Court ruled that the state cannot exclude private religious schools from tuition assistance programs simply because they are religious—that would violate the schools’ right to practice their religion. That seems correct to me. But in those cases, the Court stressed that public funds went to private schools through the filter of parental choice. Parents who received tuition assistance designated which schools would receive the money.

St. Isidore would be entirely free, by contrast, and Oklahoma would be funding the school directly. True, the amount of money St. Isidore would receive would depend, presumably, on the number of students it enrolled—and that would depend on parental choice. But the state is more in the foreground (and the parents more in the background) in this case than in either Carson or Espinoza, and it feels different, somehow.

You can read the whole post here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Making American Religion Moderate

At the Law & Liberty site this morning, I review a new documentary on the history of religious freedom in America, “Free Exercise.” The film shows how minority religious communities–Catholics, Mormons, and others–have changed America over time. But, I argue, America has changed minority religions as well. Here’s an excerpt:

ike the Quakers, who went from being bottle-breaking radicals to sober citizens, Catholics and Mormons themselves changed in ways that made them less threatening to the American majority. One major point of contention between the Catholic Church and the wider American society had to do with religious liberty itself. The nineteenth-century Church was the Church of the Syllabus of Errors (1864), a papal document that condemned freedom of conscience and the separation of church and state as dangerous heresies. America’s Protestant majority saw this document and the values it espoused as hostile to fundamental American commitments. In the 1928 campaign, The Atlantic published an open letter questioning whether a Catholic like Smith could serve as president, citing the Syllabus and other papal pronouncements on church and state.

A hundred years later, though, and largely through the efforts of American Catholics like Fr. John Courtney Murray, the Second Vatican Council adopted Dignitatis Humanae, a document that specifically endorses religious liberty as a civil right. Catholic scholars have argued that Dignitatis Humanae and the Syllabus of Errors can be interpreted consistently with one another and that, from a theological perspective, there was no change. However theologians understand the situation, though, after Dignitatis Humanae, something had indeed changed as a practical matter. A major point of tension between the Catholic Church and American culture had disappeared, largely because of American influence.

Or consider the LDS Church. A primary source of conflict between Mormons and the wider American society in the nineteenth century had to do with plural marriage, the issue in cases like Reynolds and Davis. In 1890, however, the LDS Church officially ended the practice—making it possible for Utah to be admitted as a state six years later. Practically speaking, Mormonism changed in a way that made it much less threatening to the wider American public. Mormons conformed to social convention, and relations between the LDS Church and other Americans have been better ever since.

What causes religions in America to move toward the mean over time? Some argue that the Lockean ideology that underlies our First Amendment is designed to encourage religious moderation—to minimize religious “enthusiasms” that threaten social peace. If that’s the case, Lockeanism certainly seems to be working. Or perhaps another factor explains things. Two hundred years ago, Tocqueville wrote about the strong pressures for social conformity that exist in the United States, where he observed “little independence of mind.” Whether as a result of ideology or social norms, or both, the pattern is apparent.

You can read the full essay here.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

My Remarks on Prof. Robert George’s “Making Men Moral” at 30 Years

I was delighted and honored to participate in a two-day conference marking the 30th anniversary of Professor Robert George’s deeply important book, Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality, organized by the Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition at The Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law, Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, and the American Enterprise Institute.

I was joined by my friends, Professors Joel Alicea and Steven Smith, with Judge Thomas Griffith moderating, on the final panel concerning constitutional theory. The recording, which I’ve posted below, begins at 6:49:29 and my own presentation starts at 7:06:35. But I highly recommend all of the panel presentations and discussions.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

The Best Thanksgiving Film

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! It’s not the usual Forum fare, but over at First Things, I’ve written a little essay on one of my favorite films, Woody Allen’s “Broadway Danny Rose”:

Thanksgiving doesn’t inspire many movies. Yet it has a central role in one of the best movies ever made, about Thanksgiving or any other holiday: Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose (1984). I make a point of watching it every November—and so should you. 

True, the film trades in broad, ethnic stereotypes: It features a fast-talking, nebbishy Jewish talent agent and a crass Italian mob widow with big sunglasses. Not everyone will appreciate its Runyonesque sentimentality about New York in the early ’80s. But Broadway Danny Rose manages to be both funny and sweet. Americans nowadays don’t think of Thanksgiving as a religious holiday, but Allen foregrounds religious themes, including the need to show gratitude to God by reaching out to others. For a film by a self-consciously Jewish atheist who famously rejects religion, its meditations on God, humility, guilt, and forgiveness make Broadway Danny Rose one of the most Christian films I know. 

You can read the whole essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian on RFRA and the Rise of the Nones

The Emory Center for the Study of Law and Religion has published my essay, “RFRA and the New Thoreaus,” which I presented in last week’s online symposium. Here’s an excerpt:

In short, the question whether RFRA’s definition of “religion” includes idiosyncratic, personal beliefs is not entirely clear. To be fair, when Congress enacted RFRA in 1993, one could dismiss the question as peripheral. As I have explained, at the time, more than 90% of Americans claimed a religious affiliation, and the question of idiosyncratic convictions did not have great legal significance. The Rise of the Nones has changed things. As Nones become more established in our religious culture, one can imagine many claims for exemptions based on idiosyncratic spiritual commitments: a vegetarian diet in prison, for example, or the right to wear certain clothing or insignia in the military–or, as has already occurred, an exemption from public health requirements, like vaccination and mask mandates. 

The rise of the Nones thus makes it likely that courts will have to grapple seriously with the definition of religion for purposes of RFRA–as well as the Free Exercise Clause and other laws. As I have argued elsewhere, the best approach would be a flexible one. At its core, religion means a collective phenomenon, a community of believers that exists through time, not a solitary spiritual quest. In common understanding, religion has always suggested a group of people linked together in worship. As sociologist Christian Smith writes, “religions are almost invariably social activities—communities of memory engaged in carrying on particular traditions.” Without a communal structure to give them meaning, religious practices such as prayer, fasting, and so on are incoherent, “simply the strange doings of odd people.” 

You can read the whole essay here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On Human Rights Hypocrisies

In a new podcast from Parallax Views, I discuss the situation in Karabakh right now. Not for the first time, great power rivalries and human rights hypocrisy have led to the destruction of a vulnerable religious minority–this time, Armenian Christians. The host, J.G. Michaels, and I spend a lot of time on Western hypocrisy, in particular, and how Mideast Christians fail to gain much traction in Western politics. Mideast Christians are too Mideast for the Right and too Christian for the Left. Listen in: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-vdntv-14ba395

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Ethnic Cleansing and the Rule of Law

In COMPACT Magazine today, I write about the ethnic cleansing of Armenian Christians now underway in Karabakh. Largely, what’s happening is the result of great powers looking the other way. Here’s an excerpt:

In fact, the ethnic cleansing of Karabakh probably serves many interests. For the Russians, it’s a way of pressuring Armenia to overthrow its pro-Western government. For the United States and Europe, it ends an embarrassing moral quandary and allows them to continue to curry favor with Azerbaijan and Turkey. Just as Moscow tries to pull Ankara to its side, Washington wants very much to keep Ankara in the NATO tent.

And for Turkey and Azerbaijan, it’s another victory in a plan to eliminate the Armenian Christian presence in the South Caucasus and create a pan-Turkic empire stretching from Istanbul to Central Asia, a dream that goes back to the time of the First Armenian Genocide a century ago, during which the Ottoman Empire killed up to 1.5 million Armenians in mass deportations. In fact, Baku already claims Armenia proper as “Western Azerbaijan”—a country that has never existed—and both it and Turkey insist on a sovereign corridor across Armenia to link Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan. Erdogan promises to “fulfill the mission of our grandfathers in the Caucasus.” Will the United States stop him? Will Russia?