About CFPSQ
Our Mission
To work toward improved relations in the Public Square and pathways toward policy change at the political level through Scholarship, Civic Engagement, and Track Two Diplomacy in four related areas: Religious Freedom, Justice, Public and Foreign Policy.
Core Values
Mutual Respect
Recognize and respect the inherent dignity and value of every person as created in the image of God.
Intentional Issue Oriented Engagement
Through intentional engagement leaders cooperate within and across faith communities to meet and discuss issues, policies, and practices in order to clarify differences and seek mutually agreed resolution.
Scholarship
Research and scholarship are essential aspects of the center where we seek to engage faith-based and policy leaders, theologians, philosophers, academics, and diplomats, across the academy and culture in conversations which will improve understanding between faiths in the public square.
Objective pluralism
Christ Centered. We hold to objective truth claims about our faith and stand in the Evangelical Christian tradition. Our claims may be epistemically exclusive but not socially. Thus we uphold difference but are not divisive. We are commanded to love our neighbor and seek the common good.
Religious Freedom
Central to our mission in the public square is the value of religious liberty both locally and globally, that religious freedom for one means religious freedom for all.
Track Two Diplomacy
Along with international religious freedom, the Center is committed to dialogue through Track Two (and Track 1.5) diplomacy whereby dialogue and problem-solving activities aim at the strategy and broader goals of religious liberty between Christianity and other faith traditions, as well as maintaining the faithfulness to our Christian values. At times, operating under a Track Two umbrella may mean our work is not always publicly available.
Commitments
In order to accomplish our mission and vision, we seek:
To work toward justice in the public square which upholds the dignity of the human person in public and foreign policy.
To facilitate conversations with religious, social, and political leaders from other faith traditions to clarify mutual understanding of our and their faith tradition in grounding religious freedom.
To produce an academic body of work by a network of scholars that will contribute to a better understanding of how Christianity can contribute to and engage in the public square.
To build a biblical Public Theology faithful to the Scriptures and the Evangelical tradition which seeks the welfare of the state and the common good.
History
The Center for Faith in the Public Square, initially named Center for Religious Freedom & Track Two Diplomacy, was founded by Don Smedley in 2011 as the first academic research Center of the Rivendell Institute at Yale. John Hartley joined the Center in 2018; with Darrell Bock coming on shortly thereafter. As a participant, both in the 2008 Workshop and Conference of the A Common Word [ACW] at Yale, Don recognized the need for Christians, particularly traditional Evangelicals, to engage Muslims on intentional issues of public policy particularly along the lines of Religious Freedom as a embodied in Track Two Diplomacy. As a result, in 2009, Don organized and convened an academic panel at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting, entitled, "Evangelicals and A Common Word," where the first Muslims, two co-authors of the ACW, presented at the society. That laid the groundwork for the founding of the Center.
Our team recognizes that those changes take place in the context of intentional discussion and building better relations nationally and internationally. Our commitment to religious freedom is global, such that religious freedom for one means religious freedom for all. In 2020, while our focus was still on Muslim-Christian relations, we expanded our footprint on religious freedom to include engagement with all faiths.
As we grew we recognized that our borders had expanded to include scholarship that reached beyond religious freedom broadening out to the role of faith in the public square particularly in areas of public and foreign policy. In 2023 we underwent a name change commensurate with our mission to the Center for Faith in the Public Square.
People
Our Team
-
Don Smedley
Senior Research Fellow, Rivendell Institute
Co-Director, Center for Faith in the Public Square
Steering Committee, CFPSq
-
John Hartley
Senior Fellow, Rivendell Institute
Co-Director, Center for Faith in the Public Square
Steering Committee, CFPSq
-
Darrell Bock
Steering Committee CFPSq
Executive Director of Cultural Engagement, The Hendricks Center; Senior Research Fellow, New Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary
-
Naomi Hoffman
Administrative Assistant, Rivendell Institute