James W. Skillen, PhD
Jim Skillen directed the Center for Public Justice from 1981 through 2009, and served as a senior fellow on sabbatical from October 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010.
Now retired from the Center, Skillen is engaged in full-time writing, mentoring, and speaking on political thought, statecraft, and public policy. His major writing project is focused on the biblical story as foundation for the human responsibility of governance in God's world; the challenge that story presents to the ways Christians have exercised political responsibility from earliest times to the present; and the profound resources of that story for the continuing work of governance, citizenship, and statecraft in our day.
Among the books Skillen has written or edited are the following (all available through our bookstore):
- The Prospects and Ambiguities of Globalization: Critical Assessment at a Time of Growing Turmoil, editor (Lexington Books, 2009).
- With or Against the World?: America's Role Among the Nations (Rowman & Littlefield and Center for Public Justice, 2005).
- In Pursuit of Justice: Christian-Democratic Explorations (Rowman & Littlefield and Center for Public Justice, 2004).
- A Covenant to Keep: Meditations on the Biblical Theme of Justice (Grand Rapids: CRC Publications and Center for Public Justice, 2000).
- Recharging the American Experiment: Principled Pluralism for Genuine Civic Community (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994).
- The Scattered Voice: Christians at Odds in the Public Square (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990).
- Co-editor with Rockne M. McCarthy, Political Order and the Plural Structure of Society (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), No. 2 in Emory University Studies in Law and Religion, ed. by John Witte, Jr.
For a bibliography of Skillen's published writings through 2008, view Skillen Bibliography.
Skillen received his B.A. from Wheaton College in philosophy and a B.D. from Westminster Theological Seminary. After graduate study in philosophy at the Free University of Amsterdam, he completed his M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University, both in political science. He is married to Doreen Skillen, the Center's administrator. They have two children, Jeanene and James.
Email: jim@cpjustice.org
