fbpx
Skip to Content

Rev. Jennifer Butler

Image

Founder in Residence
She/her

Rev. Jennifer Butler has spent the last three decades strengthening and rebuilding the progressive faith movement. She has dedicated her life to helping individuals and communities ground themselves in liberative spirituality that empowers them to speak out with a faithful voice to change the world. 

In 2005, she founded Faith in Public Life to amplify progressive faith voices and forge multi-racial, multi-faith and ideologically diverse faith coalitions to work for justice and the common good. In founding FPL, Rev. Jen drew on her decade long experience countering religious extremism with a faithful argument for democracy, the rights of women and LGBTQ people. Her book Born Again: The Christian Right Globalized (Pluto Press) remains a go-to resource for those tracking white Christian nationalism globally. 

Rev. Jen Butler served as CEO of Faith in Public Life from 2005 to 2022. Highlights of her work as CEO include mobilizing a multi-state faith strategy to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act and defeating Republican efforts in 2017 to gut the bill. She spearheaded faith based campaigns to defeat fake religious freedom bills at the state level by empowering ideologically diverse religious leaders to oppose discrimination in the name of faith. Rev. Jen also led FPL in the Trump years to draw a bright moral line in the sand against rising authoritarianism and racism.

Today, Rev. Jen is the Founder in Residence of Faith in Public Life. In this role she writes, speaks, teaches and advises both religious and secular social change leaders working at the intersections of religion, culture and politics. Her most recent book, Who Stole My Bible? Reclaiming Scripture as a Handbook for Resisting Tyranny, makes a biblical case for muti-racial democracy in the face of rising white Christian Nationalism and authoritarianism in the U.S. and around the world.

In 2022, Rev. Jen was named one of Center for American Progress’ Faith Leaders to Watch. She served as the chair of the White House Council on Faith and Neighborhood Partnerships (2015-2016). You can find her writing in Religion News Service, Sojourners and Red Letter Christians.


Rev. Jen was a Peace Corps volunteer in a Mayan village in Belize, Central America. A graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, she studied public policy and community organizing and graduated with a MSW from Rutgers University. She’s a graduate of the College of William and Mary. Rev. Butler lives in suburban Washington, D.C. For more on Rev. Jen, visit RevJenButler.com or go to Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

Rev. Jennifer Butler in the News

Rev. Jennifer Butler in Associated Press

“We see that convergence as highly symbolic, maybe even divinely ordained as our people need to reaffirm our shared values of love, freedom and justice in order to disrupt white Christian Nationalists’ attempts to decide what ideas, identities and practices are valued and respected,” said the Rev. Jennifer Butler, founder and chief executive of the Washington-based multifaith group Faith in Public Life.

Rev Jennifer Butler on the Nomiki Show

Rev. Jennifer Butler appeared on the Nomiki Show to talk about the threat of white Christian nationalism to our democracy. Check out this brief clip below, or watch the full conversation here.

Rev. Jennifer Butler in VICE

“When you look at the numbers of white Christians that have been sucked into this conspiracy theory, it’s really a sort of heresy,” Rev. Jennifer Butler, the CEO of Faith in Public Life, told VICE News.

Rev. Jennifer Butler in Religion News Service

“We call on the Biden administration to hold Border Patrol accountable for abuses, halt all deportations to Haiti, and end the use of Title 42,” Butler said in a statement.
Back to top