Berkley Center

The Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs at Georgetown University is pleased to announce it has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to extend and expand the work of its Strategic Religious Engagement (SRE) Hub.

Established in spring 2025 with support from the Henry Luce Foundation and Andrew Carnegie Foundation, the SRE Hub has worked to preserve and strengthen the U.S. government's capacity to engage religious dynamics and actors in diplomacy, development, and defense. Key activities have included efforts to sustain the institutional memory of U.S. government religious engagement units, curate related documents and resources, and convene practitioners, scholars, and current and former officials to explore innovative pathways for SRE initiatives moving forward.

With this generous new funding from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Berkley Center will launch a new initiative on Religion and the Future of Global Engagement (RFGE), building on the SRE Hub's work while expanding the Berkley Center’s broader efforts to build a comprehensive ecosystem for religious literacy and religion-aware engagement across civil society, development, humanitarian response, peacebuilding, diplomacy, and philanthropy. Building on decades of Berkley Center leadership at the intersection of religion and global affairs, initial RFGE activities will integrate the SRE Hub’s ongoing work with complementary efforts in religious landscape mapping, expert network development and cross-sector convening, professional training, and public engagement. Together, these efforts will extend the Berkley Center’s mission to a growing community of practitioners and institutions engaged in charting the future of religion and global engagement.

According to Berkley Center Director Thomas Banchoff, “This generous support from the Henry Luce Foundation will make it possible for us to scale up our work on strategic religious engagement and to have significantly greater impact across multiple sectors.”

Peter Mandaville, project leader of the Strategic Religious Engagement Hub, affirmed that “this new investment will allow us to begin transforming the SRE Hub into a broad and enduring platform for strengthening religious literacy and the capacity for thoughtful, effective engagement with faith actors across the many sectors that shape global affairs." Mandaville emphasized the timeliness of the new initiative:

At a moment when religion is increasingly intertwined with some of the world’s most pressing challenges, we hope the Berkley Center can help ensure that policymakers and practitioners have the knowledge, relationships, and tools they need to engage this dimension of their work well.

Over the next three years, the grant will support the Berkley Center’s ongoing efforts to build out an expanded ecosystem of tools, resources, and expertise to promote religious literacy in global affairs.