The Religious Freedom Center of the Freedom Forum Institute is a nonpartisan national initiative focused on educating the public about the religious liberty principles of the First Amendment.

Reorganized in 2010 to expand on religious liberty initiatives begun by the First Amendment Center in 1994, the Religious Freedom Center has sponsored numerous public programs at the Newseum, developed partnerships with national and international organizations, and convened a broad range of religious and civil liberties groups.

Lessons on religious liberty from the acclaimed curriculum.   Prepared with the broad support of educational and interfaith leaders. See especially Lesson 10: “Tribespeople, Idiots or Citizens” pp 162 – 177.

The word “civility” may be complicated — but we can start having the conversations we want to be hearing. The Civil Conversations Project is an evolving adventure in audio, events, resources, and initiatives for planting relationship and conversation around the subjects we fight about intensely — and those we’ve barely begun to discuss.  A series of podcasts from NPR and other resources.

This guide  is intended to help ground and animate a gathering of friends or strangers in a conversation that might take place over weeks or months. It provides a flexible roadmap you can adapt for your group and intentions. We created it as producers, but more as citizens, out of what we’ve learned in more than 15 years of conversation on On Being.  (download the PDF)

Engaging others in a deeper way begins with inner work — six grounding virtues before ground rules.

The Williamsburg Charter is a document that was drafted in 1986 by several Americans, each a member of a prominent religious community and/or non-religious philosophy in the United States. The Charter was signed by 100 nationally prominent figures on June 22, 1988, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Virginia’s call for a Bill of Rights. Among the signers were Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter; the late Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court William Rehnquist; the late activist Coretta Scott King (wife of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Junior) and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. The lead drafter was Os Guinness.