By BJC Staff Reports
On January 3, 2017, Amanda Tyler began her work as the sixth executive director in the 81-year history of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
Tyler joins the staff after spending the last eight years working in Congress, serving various roles in the office of U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett in both Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C. She has a long history with the BJC, first joining the staff as a college student in 1999. Throughout her career, she stayed connected to the organization: Tyler is a longtime monthly financial supporter and she served on the board from 2010-2016. For more on her story and career, visit BJConline.org/Amanda-Tyler.
At the BJC, Tyler’s priorities include implementing the BJC’s visioning statement to expand the outreach, mobilization and response efforts of the BJC to face current religious liberty challenges. “We are very concerned about intolerance and the marginalizing of people of minority faiths,” Tyler told a reporter from the Deseret News during her first week on the job. “Defining and defending religious liberty in our age of increasing pluralism is a challenge that manifests itself in many different areas.”
Tyler’s schedule for her first few months include plans to speak at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta, participate in the Walter B. and Kay W. Shurden Lectures on Religious Liberty and Separation of Church and State at Campbell University in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and give a keynote address at the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies gathering in Richmond, Virginia.
Tyler is also meeting with coalition partners across the country and in Washington as she works to continue longstanding partnerships and develop new ones. Her predecessor, Brent Walker, is working part time at the Baptist Joint Committee in an executive consultant role to ensure a smooth transition.
“The Baptist Joint Committee, with its rich history and deep expertise, is uniquely positioned to be a voice for all people who want to defend and extend God-given religious liberty for generations to come,” Tyler said. “I truly believe that our entire world has never needed the BJC as much as it does right now, and there is no limit to what God can do through us to preserve religious liberty for all of God’s children.”
From the January/February 2017 edition of Report from the Capital. You can also read the digital version of the magazine or view it as a PDF.
