By Susan A. Hughes
“We focus on preparing the next generation of Christian leaders to live out what it means to be a people of peace and goodwill in the world, equipping them to navigate polarization and conflict with empathy, compassion, and care.”
That’s how Christy Vines describes the work of the Center for Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation (formerly Ideos Institute) at Fuller Theological Seminary. Vines is the inaugural executive director of the newly established center with a mission to “equip Christian leaders to respond faithfully to rising conflict, division, and polarization in both church and society.”
But her path to peacebuilding and “empathic intelligence” (a term coined by Dr. Roslyn Arnold in a book by the same name) was not a direct one.
Vines’ career began in investment and finance, though she spent time consulting with small nonprofits on the business side of nonprofit management. Realizing the impact that policy decisions had on many of the organizations she worked with, Vines decided to apply to graduate schools for public policy.
“I come from a family of policy women,” says Vines. “My mother and my aunt were social work policy and sociology professors.” Living in California, she didn’t even consider Harvard Kennedy School until a friend convinced her HKS had just the program she needed.
It was a class on diplomacy with Nicholas Burns, the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, that changed her focus, and she ended up specializing in foreign policy and national security. Her first job after HKS was with the RAND Corporation, after meeting a guest lecturer in Douglas Dillon Professor of Government Graham Allison’s class. That led to the Institute for Global Engagement, which allowed her to bring her faith into the work of peacebuilding.
Faith has always been foundational in Vines’ life. As a Protestant Christian, she became immersed in an evangelical worldview, even as it challenged many of the beliefs and cultural norms she grew up with. Her husband became a pastor within the Southern Baptist tradition, and they raised their children in it.
“The diversity of ideas and experiences, and the way in which we would sit and talk about the challenges of the world before us, just opened me up to my purpose in the world.”
“Immersing myself in the Kennedy School community, and all the diversity that comes with that, challenged how I understood my own faith,” says Vines. She realized even her own faith community was unintentionally sowing seeds for conflict as far back as 20 years ago.
Vines founded Ideos Institute to help those within her faith tradition “humanize” others in the face of difference, or as her mentor told her, develop empathy. The first time she experienced empathy as an educational tool was through Arnold’s book. “The whole premise of Ideos was really advancing the idea of empathic intelligence,” Vines says. In 2022, Ideos released a documentary, Dialogue Lab: America, highlighting citizens attempting to engage on the most divisive issues facing Americans today.
Fuller has intentionally disconnected itself from American evangelicalism—as Vines and her husband have as well—and is grounded in a more global evangelical Christian tradition but not connected with any one denomination. “This has largely kept us out of the ideological and theological wars happening in American evangelicalism right now,” says Vines.
“Becoming a part of Fuller has provided me with a unique platform,” Vines says. “Within the seminary ecosystem, my work stands on the shoulders of Fuller’s current president, Dr. David Emmanuel Goatley, and past presidents Drs. Mark Labberton and Richard Mouw, who’ve been instrumental in my own understanding of what faithful peacebuilding looks like in practice. Fuller has a long history of hosting interfaith dialogues and inspiring more contemporary ways to think about challenging social issues.”
“I didn’t know it at the time,” says Vines, “but I think the Kennedy School helped me shape my perspective with the excellence of its faculty and the way in which they understood what it meant to change the world.”
She found her classmates were the key to her perspective: “The diversity of ideas and experiences, and the way in which we would sit and talk about the challenges of the world before us, just opened me up to my purpose in the world.”
“Seeing young people today lean into the challenges that have traditionally divided American society is really incredible,” she says. “They are creating a better future, seeing the diversity of our country and the world, and that gives me hope.”
