Baptist Joint Committee seeks prominent offices

WASHINGTON — Emphasizing the need for a prominent “Center for Religious Liberty” on Capitol Hill, directors of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJC) kicked off a multimillion dollar capital campaign during their annual meeting Oct. 3–4.

The theme of the yearlong campaign is Our Challenge — Their Future: Securing Religious Liberty for Our Children and Grandchildren. It is designed to mark the organization’s 70th anniversary in 2006.

The project has a goal of raising as much as $5 million to purchase and renovate a property near the U.S. Capitol to serve as the BJC’s offices. The center will also contain research space for visiting scholars, meeting space for the group’s legislative coalition partners and a training center for equipping supporters to relay BJC’s message of defending religious liberty and church-state separation.

BJC officials determined that they could purchase a historic townhouse in the same neighborhood as their rented office suite — located a block from the Capitol and across the street from the Supreme Court and Senate office buildings — and transform it into the envisioned 5,000–6,000-square-foot center for approximately $4 million. The $5 million goal is a “challenge goal.”