Yesterday, I had the opportunity to join LiveNOW from FOX for a conversation about faith, public life, pluralism, and the recent “Rededicate 250” prayer gathering in Washington.
To be honest, I did not expect my first national television appearance to happen at 4:00 in the morning.
But I was grateful for the opportunity to bring a different kind of Christian voice into the conversation.
As someone who cares deeply about faith, spirituality, and the moral life of our country, I found parts of the gathering genuinely beautiful. I believe there is something profoundly important about people gathering together in prayer for the nation. I also thought some of the reflections on love, responsibility, and public faith were sincere and moving.
But I also found myself wrestling with a deeper question:
What else is being asked of us?
As a priest, that is one of the questions I always try to ask whenever faith becomes intertwined with power, politics, identity, or national mythology. Christianity contains beautiful language about peace, justice, sacrifice, belonging, and love. But discernment requires more than emotional resonance. We have to ask where our spiritual loyalties are leading us, and what kind of people they are forming us into.
The central point I tried to make during the interview was simple:
My religious freedom only works if yours does too.
Real faith cannot be coerced. It cannot be legislated into the human heart. Religious devotion, if it is to mean anything at all, must remain a free and sincere offering of the soul.
And that means mature faith should not be threatened by encountering other people’s sincerely held beliefs, traditions, questions, or doubts. In fact, some of the deepest spiritual growth often happens precisely in encounter, dialogue, and shared humanity.
At a moment when America feels increasingly fragmented, lonely, and suspicious of one another, I believe authentic faith should move us toward compassion, humility, freedom of conscience, and deeper care for one another, not away from it.
If you’d like to watch the conversation, I’ve included the clip above.
Over the last several months, something remarkable has been happening here.
What began as a small Substack community of a few hundred readers has grown into more than 6,000 subscribers, while our videos now reach millions of people every month across social media.
And I think that growth reveals something deeply important:
People are hungry for a different way of talking about faith.
Not fear.
Not outrage.
Not culture war performance.
People are searching for a faith that is intellectually honest, emotionally human, spiritually grounded, and still capable of compassion in a fractured world.
That is what we are building together through Message From the Margins.
And increasingly, I’m hearing from people who feel spiritually homeless, exhausted, or disconnected from the versions of faith they’ve encountered elsewhere.
One subscriber recently wrote:
“As someone who was raised Catholic, 12 years of Catholic school and feeling I have lost the faith that helped me through many difficult moments, your posts have given me hope and a renewed faith.”
That is why this work matters.
Yesterday’s FOX interview was not really about television. It was about bringing that kind of voice into larger public conversations, and proving that there are still people across this country longing for a more thoughtful, humane, and spiritually mature Christianity.
If you believe in that mission, I want to invite you to become a paid subscriber.
Your support helps expand these conversations into new spaces, grow this ministry, create more writing and media, and continue building a public voice rooted in compassion, conscience, pluralism, and authentic faith.
Together, we really can help reshape the way this country talks about religion, spirituality, and one another.
Thank you, as always, for walking this road with me.
