This is the second in a two-part interview with James Skillen, the founder of the Center for Public Justice (CPJ). CPJ’s Chelsea Langston Bombino discusses with Skillen the themes of his newest book, God’s Sabbath with Creation: Vocations Fulfilled, the Glory Unveiled (Wipf and Stock, 2019) and how these themes connect to institutional pluralism, including the diverse spectrum of faith-based civil society organizations with varying mission focus areas. In his new book, Skillen explores how every part of human life, including the associational relationships and organizations we form, point beyond themselves to God’s purposes for creation and its fulfillment through Christ in the age to come. The first article of the two-part series explored both the perspectival and practical implications of this new body of work for sacred sector institutions. This article will expand on those themes, with a particular emphasis on how the creation story both reveals and anticipates the fulfillment of all things in the sabbath glory of God. In particular we focus on what Skillen identifies as the sixth-day identity of human creatures exhibited in associations and institutions. We take up complex questions about human organizations, specifically faith-based civil society organizations, that resist easy answers. We also attempt to make explicit how these biblical themes can impact and shape institutions that are established on the basis of explicit confessional principles and for distinctive confessional purposes.

This is the first in a two-part interview with James Skillen, the founder and former president of the Center for Public Justice. CPJ’s Chelsea Langston Bombino discusses with Skillen the themes of his newest book, God’s Sabbath with Creation: Vocations Fulfilled, the Glory Unveiled (Wipf and Stock, 2019) and how those themes relate to the just ordering of a diversified society, which includes faith-based organizations of civil society. In the new book, Skillen makes the case for how all of creation, including human institutions and organizations, are both revelatory and anticipatory of the fulfillment of all things in Christ. In this interview, Bombino and Skillen discuss big-picture ideas related to God’s dynamic purposes for creation, especially for humans created in God’s image. Skillen expands on how everything that humans do in this age, both personally and in associations, has significance for the age to come. These ideas have deep resonance and implications for explicitly faith-based civil society organizations and the services they render.

Contributing Editor Chelsea Langston Bombino, director of Sacred Sector, an initiative of the Center for Public Justice, spoke with Standards for Excellence Director Amy Coates Madsen about how this initiative, specifically in partnership with CPJ’s Sacred Sector, helps uphold public justice. Bombino begins the article by providing a framework for how CPJ’s Sacred Sector utilizes the Standards for Excellence resources to help nonprofit organizations. The article concludes in an interview with Amy Coates Madsen.   CPJ’s Sacred Sector is a learning community for faith-based organizations and emerging leaders within the faith-based nonprofit sector. This is a community where the diverse faith-based nonprofit organizations that make up the Sacred Sector can turn for resources, community and advocacy that help them to advance their sacred missions.  An integrative approach is vital for faith-based organizations to comprehensively embody their sacred missions to the fullest. This multi-dimensional approach must focus on mission-advancement at the intersection of organizational practices, engagement in public policy, and the shaping of a positive public perception.

A vision of religious freedom for all is one where persons of all religious faiths, and of none, are free not only to worship or refrain from worship as their beliefs require, but also free to live out their faith as citizens active in the public life of the nation and in the faith-based organizations they have formed. This vision for our nation is based on a commitment to religious freedom, pluralism, and tolerance. 

The result is a pluralist society: one where Catholics, evangelicals, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, nonbelievers, and others are free to live as citizens, health care providers, businesspeople, social-service providers, and public officials as led by their religious or nonreligious beliefs. Pluralism says that diversity such as this is to be expected in a free society and pluralism requires tolerance. Imposed uniformity is the opposite of freedom, pluralism, and tolerance, and we seek common ground where the beliefs, practices, and organizations of those of all faiths and of none are respected and their freedoms protected. Furthermore, a public realm that respects the diversity of belief and practice present in American society is ideal, rather than one that favors one group’s beliefs and practices over those of others.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is both deeply personal and communal, meaning it applies to both individuals and institutions. Different elements of the First Amendment reflect something fundamental about what it means to be human. But American society is experiencing deep pluralism and people ultimately answer questions about what it means to be human through the lens of their sacred animating belief systems. These animating belief systems, or worldviews, are shaped by certain fundamental identities we have as individuals.  

Many people have core animating beliefs that are explicitly shaped by spiritual values – what we hold most sacred. Everything, from what people eat, the products they purchase, the medications they take, and even civic actions – how people vote, what types of political activities they engage in, the types of policies they support or are engaged with, where they choose to donate their time or skills or money can all be influenced by animating beliefs. The First Amendment protects a series of fundamental freedoms and human exercises: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government. 

A public justice framework allows for both individuals and institutions to fulfill God's design for them and, in turn, allows us to learn something about what it means to be created in God's image. A public justice framework also aims to ensure human flourishing. To do this, the government must ensure the ability of diverse individuals and communities – especially in our pluralistic society – to continue to flourish.ar that touch on themes of furthering the mission and impact of an organization or a cause in the public square.