Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.

Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley

All Author Content

Author Articles

Author Podcasts

Author Videos

Post-Protestant Nirvana

The latest World Happiness Report ranks all the world’s countries by happiness, based on polling of residents plus levels of GDP, life…

Reagan, Missile Defense & Religious Right

On March 23, 1983 President Reagan delivered his famous “Star Wars” speech urging that the USA pivot away from a…

Spanish Civil War Survivor

Del Berg, age 100, died last week, reputedly the last of several thousand Americans who fought in the 1930s Spanish…

Sedate & Sober Strength

Seventy years ago today Winston Churchill gave his Iron Curtain Speech, articulating what is obvious today but was not fully…

America, Ike & Islam

Can you imagine an American president today greeted by hundreds of thousands with acclaim and American flags as he rides…

Trump, Iraq, Reagan & Vietnam

Donald Trump has denounced the Iraq War as a “horrible mistake,” and “one of the worst decisions in the history…

Korea, America & Providential Duty

Last week a delegation of delightful South Korean students visited our office.  They all stood respectfully when I arrived, took…

Iran & “God’s Deed”

The several USA citizens of Iranian background recently released after imprisonment on contrived charges in Iran coincidentally, or not, arrived…

13 Hours in Benghazi & C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis wrote that a virtuous patriotism becomes “militant only to protect what it loves.” This theme animates 13 Hours:…

Lockerbie, Libya & Bloody Human History

A Libyan bomb blew up New York-bound Pan Am Flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland 27 years…

 ⏰ Sponsor a student for Christianity & National Security 2024

Providence's biggest event of the year takes place the final Thursday and Friday of each October, attracting close to 100 students and professors from around the country to spend two days hearing lectures and discussing the intersection of Christian ethics and foreign policy. For $300, Providence can afford to feed and house a student flying in from California, Texas, and other parts of the country for the conference. Christianity & National Security is unique; there is no other such event examining national security in light of Just War Theory and realist ethics in the Christian tradition. Please consider making a donation to allow us to continue hosting Christianity & National Security.

Christianity & National Security 2023

Sponsor a student