Charles Haynes

Charles C. Haynes, Ph.D., is a senior fellow for religious liberty at the Freedom Forum. Founder of the Freedom Forum’s Religious Freedom Center, Haynes has worked for more than three decades to promote liberty of conscience, religious literacy and civil discourse in American public life. He was the principal drafter of eleven consensus guides on the role of religious freedom in public education, with three such guides sent to every public school in the nation by the U.S. Department of Education in 2000. Haynes is the longtime chair of the Freedom Forum Committee on Religious Liberty, a forum with members from some 90 religious and civil liberties organizations. He has also authored or co-authored fourteen books, including “Finding Common Ground: A First Amendment Guide to Religion in Public Schools” and “First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights in America.” He has additionally served as chair of the board of the Character Education Partnership and been a member of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, Islamic Networks Group and the Committee on Public Education of the American Bar Association.