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Our Team

Rev. Jennifer Butler

Founder and Executive Director

Rev. Jennifer Butler founded Faith in Democracy (FiD) in December 2023 after founding and leading Faith in Public Life (FPL) from 2005 to 2023. She chaired President Obama’s third White House Council on Faith and Neighborhood Partnerships from 2015-2016. Before founding FPL, Butler spent ten years organizing globally to address gender equality, the AIDS pandemic, children’s rights, and peace in the Middle East as the Presbyterian Church (USA) representative to the UN. Rev. Butler’s book Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized was the first to document the rise of a transnational religious right movement that could undermine democracy and human rights. She served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in a Mayan village in Belize from 1989-1991.

Gionathan Lo Mascolo

Deputy Director

Gionathan Lo Mascolo has worked for over a decade at the intersection of religion, politics, and extremism, supporting faith-based and secular NGOs, multilateral institutions, and progressive parties in Europe and beyond. As a Senior Project Manager, his work has focused on advocacy and on preventing and countering radicalization and violent extremism. Earlier, he worked as a journalist covering the Arab Spring and the Syrian War. He studied Intercultural Theology and Migration (BA, FIT Hermannsburg) and Terrorism, Security, and Society (MA, King’s College London). He is the editor of The Christian Right in Europe (2023), the first volume to analyze religiously motivated far-right networks across the continent.

Faith in Democracy does not list all staff and board members for security reasons.

Our Books

Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized
by Jennifer S. Butler

Published in 2006, this was the first book to analyze how the U.S. Christian Right was building transnational alliances to influence global policy. Drawing on her experience at the UN, Butler exposes how religious conservatives from the U.S., Russia, Latin America, and beyond coordinated efforts to undermine international human rights institutions, attack gender and LGBTQ+ rights, and reshape global norms—using faith as both shield and political weapon.

Buy a copy here →

The Christian Right in Europe
edited by Gionathan Lo Mascolo

Published in 2023, this book examines how religious right actors have expanded across more than 20 European countries. The volume, with contributions from over 35 leading experts, traces how strategies developed in the United States have been localized and advanced through close cooperation with Russian institutions and ideologues. What emerges is not a patchwork, but a remarkably cohesive network, one that blends legal advocacy, political influence, and media operations to challenge gender equality, minority rights and democracy itself.

Buy a copy or download free here →