Andrea Picciotti Bayer

Friday

Andrea Picciotti Bayer

Could Trump 2.0. herald a new era of religious liberty in America?

From our UK edition

36 min listen

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, director of the US-based Conscience Project and a friend of Holy Smoke, joins Damian to talk about what the incoming second Trump administration could mean for religious freedoms in America. Andrea argues that the Biden administration waged an unprecedented assault on such freedoms during his term. What could happen over the next four years on issues like gender, abortion, adoption and religious discrimination? And what are the nuances between federal and state laws? (2:06) Also on the podcast, Damian speaks to The Spectator’s Will Moore, Lara Prendergast and Freddy Gray about the nomination of Cardinal Robert McElroy to be the new Archbishop of Washington.

Wednesday

Andrea Picciotti Bayer

Should devout Christians be scared of a Joe Biden presidency?

From our UK edition

17 min listen

The next president of the United States is, we are told, a devout Catholic who scrupulously attends Sunday Mass. This is in sharp contrast to the current president, who has never been more than an occasional churchgoer with, to put it politely, ill-defined religious views. So why are many Christians worried that a Joe Biden presidency poses an unprecedented threat to America’s constitutional guarantee of religious freedom?  In this episode of Holy Smoke I talk to Andrea Picciotti Bayer, director of the Washington-based Conscience Project, about the continuing ideological assault by US officialdom on religious believers whose passionately held convictions challenge the closest thing the 21st-century United States has to an official creed – identity politics.

Sunday

Andrea Picciotti Bayer

The crucial Supreme Court case defending Catholic foster care services

On the day after the presidential election, Amy Coney Barrett, now beginning her career as a Supreme Court justice, will hear oral arguments in one of the most significant civil rights cases to come before the Court in decades. The case is Fulton v. Philadelphia. The point of contention in the case could hardly be more sensitive, since it pits the protection of religious freedom against the interests of same-sex couples — and the context is the foster care of children. Its journey to the nation’s highest court has been long and bitter. In 2018, city officials in Philadelphia insisted that the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s foster care agency certify same-sex married couples as foster parents.

foster