John DuBois fled the religious persecution of the French Revolution that destroyed his order. Today, challenges to religious liberty exist across the globe. How should the Mount he founded serve religious liberty so valued by the Church and needed by society and believers? This forum brings together several perspectives regarding religious liberty in theory and practice to aid our reflection.
President, Religious Freedom Institute. After leading the Religious Freedom Institute’s (RFI) public policy work and its nationwide and international initiatives in secondary and higher education, David Trimble now serves as RFI's President. Within that context, he brings a wealth of experience to the academy and civil society in international affairs, domestic and foreign policy, law, and higher education.
Throughout his career, Trimble has focused on the intersection between religious freedom and policy. He is recognized in the U.S. and abroad for his international religious freedom advocacy on behalf of ethnic and religious minorities worldwide and for his acute knowledge of legislative process. Over the past decade, Trimble provided leadership in the drafting and passing of key genocide declarations and statutes shaping current U.S. policy on international religious freedom and the recovery and stabilization of ethnic and religious minorities in the Middle East. He has also provided counsel to leaders in East Africa regarding democracy reforms and fundamental human rights protections.
Since 2021, Mr. Trimble has delivered keynote lectures on religious freedom in Europe and the Middle East, co-developed a religious freedom education plan for secondary schools in Poland and the Visagrád Four, provided training to senior parliamentary staff and legal counsel in Iraq, launched seminal training programs for college students in the U.S. and RFI’s first transatlantic advanced student seminar in the United Kingdom, and conducted religious freedom training for foreign pastors and priests on behalf of the U.S. Department of State.
Ismail Royer is the Director of the Islam and Religious Freedom Action Team for the Religious Freedom Institute. He converted to Islam in 1992. After becoming involved with an extremist group in Kashmir, Royer pleaded guilty to violating United States neutrality law and served nearly 14 years in prison. Now, he works with nonprofits to promote friendship and cooperation among faiths for the common good. His work has been published in many outlets, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Newsday, First Things, and American Conservative. He is the co-editor of a forthcoming book on virtue ethics in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Stanley Carlson-Thies is founder and senior director of the Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance, which promotes the religious freedoms that enable faith-based organizations to make their distinctive contributions to the common good. IRFA is a division of the Center for Public Justice, a Washington, DC-area independent, nonpartisan Christian organization devoted to leadership development, policy research, and civic education.
He is the organizer and host of a monthly multi-faith gathering of religious freedom advocates and leaders of faith-based organizations, the Coalition to Preserve Religious Freedom, which monitors federal policymaking and advocates to Congress and the executive branch for laws and regulations that respect institutional religious freedom.
Carlson-Thies is the co-author of Free to Serve: Preserving the Religious Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations (2015), The Freedom of Faith-Based Organizations to Staff on a Religious Basis (2004), and A Revolution of Compassion: Faith-Based Groups as Full Partners in Fighting America’s Social Problems (2003). In the early 1990s he directed a project on Christian perspectives on welfare reform and co-edited the resulting book, Welfare in America: Christian Perspectives on a Policy in Crisis (1996).
He served on the initial staff of President George W. Bush’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (2001-2002) and in 2009-2010 on the church-state taskforce of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. He has advised federal departments and states on how to construct productive and respectful relationships with faith-based and secular community organizations. He advises faith-based organizations and associations on their freedoms and on partnerships with government, and he mobilizes them for advocacy.
He has received numerous awards across his career for his defense of religious liberty. His research work explores how the Dutch constitution, government, and society were transformed from the 1870s to the 1970s under the leadership of the Reformed activist Abraham Kuyper and his Protestant and Catholic allies into a full pluralism that respects public and social participation by all faiths. He was born in Tokyo, Japan, to missionary parents.