Welcome to the new and improved American Sentry.

For those who have followed this project before, you will notice that much has changed. The design is cleaner, the presentation is more modern, and the scope of what we intend to do has grown considerably. But the purpose remains the same: to examine the relationship between religion, liberty, conscience, and power with seriousness, historical perspective, and independence.

The American Sentry exists because questions of religious liberty rarely remain abstract for long. They emerge in courtrooms, legislatures, schools, churches, workplaces, communities, and increasingly across the digital public square. They appear whenever governments define the boundaries of belief, whenever religious institutions seek influence over civil authority, whenever minorities find their convictions tested by majorities, and whenever society must decide how much freedom it is willing to extend to those with whom it strongly disagrees.

Our aim is not merely to report that these controversies exist. We want to place them in context.

History repeatedly demonstrates that disputes over conscience are seldom as new as they first appear. The names, political movements, technologies, and institutions change, but many of the underlying questions remain remarkably familiar: What belongs to the individual conscience? What properly belongs to civil government? Where should the authority of religious institutions begin and end? When does persuasion become coercion? And can we defend the liberty of people whose convictions we believe to be profoundly mistaken?

These are the questions The American Sentry intends to pursue.

The renewed site will feature original essays, historical analysis, explanatory journalism, commentary, interviews, and an expanding range of multimedia content. We also intend to look beyond the United States. Although this publication is rooted in the American religious-liberty tradition, freedom of conscience is not an exclusively American concern. Developments around the world can illuminate both the strengths and weaknesses of our own assumptions about liberty.

This News section will serve a somewhat different purpose from our longer-form work. Each week, we will gather and examine important developments touching religious liberty, church-state relations, freedom of conscience, civil rights, and related questions of religion and public life. Some stories will warrant only a brief explanation. Others may become the starting point for deeper analysis elsewhere on the site.

The goal is simple: to help readers remain informed without becoming overwhelmed by the constant churn of the news cycle.

We do not expect every reader—or every contributor—to agree on every theological, political, or philosophical question. In fact, meaningful liberty assumes disagreement. What we do hope to maintain is a consistent principle: the rights of conscience do not become less important simply because the conscience in question is not our own.

That principle deserves vigilance.

So whether you are returning to The American Sentry or discovering it for the first time, welcome. We are glad you are here.

There is much ahead.

Stay informed. Stay vigilant. And stand for liberty of conscience.