The Danbury Institute is an advocacy group comprised of churches and Christian leaders advocating for life and religious liberty. Founded in 2024, the Danbury Institute promotes Judeo-Christian values and seeks to influence public policy and American culture in support of a free and prosperous country. ¹

Background

The Danbury Institute’s three main tenets are faith, life, and liberty. It is a Christian organization that adheres to the principles of the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Danbury Institute is pro-life and claims that abortion is the greatest atrocity of current times. Along with supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Danbury Institute advocates for Christian fostering and adoption. It also seeks to protect children from ideologies that are inconsistent with the Bible, including critical race theory, human trafficking, and gender reassignment. Lastly, the Danbury Institute supports freedom of conscience, stating that it is an inalienable right. As a pro-democracy organization, the Danbury Institute supports capitalism, law enforcement, limited government, the state of Israel, and religious liberty. ²

Initiatives

In support of its mission to affirm a Biblical view of sexuality and gender, the Danbury Institute opposes any effort to encourage children to be promiscuous or engage in LGBT identification and sexual behavior. The Danbury Institute upholds the view that God created two unique sexes and advocates for a nuclear family that is God-ordained. To this end, the Danbury Institute has encouraged citizens to join an effort to override the veto of the SAFE Act in Ohio, which if left in place would have left children vulnerable to transgender procedures and allowed men in women’s locker rooms. The Danbury Institute was also successful in halting a bill in Maine that would have allowed the state to take a child away from a parent who did not allow that child to receive sexual or gender reassignment treatment. ³

The Danbury Institute supports the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death. As a right-to-life organization, it supports protections for pre-born babies that are the same as born people. In a statement published on April 8, 2024, the Danbury Institute expressed gratitude to the Trump administration for its success in overturning Roe v. Wade along with deep concern that a second Biden administration would prioritize expanding abortion access nationwide. The Danbury Institute advocates for pro-life policy that would protect all life and does not support abortion in any circumstance, claiming that it is never medically necessary to perform an abortion to save the life of a mother and that the injustice of rape or incest is only compounded when an innocent child is aborted. ⁴

People

Scott Colter is the CEO of the Danbury Institute and the director of strategic initiatives at the Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. Colter is a former executive director of the Sandy Creek Foundation and a former chief of staff to then-President Paige Patterson at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. ⁵

Collin Hain is the COO of the Danbury Institute and the director of communications at the Birchman Baptist Church. Hain sits on the board of the Conservative Baptist Network. ⁶

Richard Land is the chair of the advisory council at the Danbury Institute, president emeritus of Southern Evangelical Seminary, and the executive editor of The Christian Post. Land is a former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and former appointee to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. ⁷

1. “About.” The Danbury Institute. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://www.danburyinstitute.org/about.
2. “Who we are – Why we stand.” The Danbury Institute. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://www.danburyinstitute.org/who-we-are.
3. “Mission.” The Danbury Institute. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://www.danburyinstitute.org/mission.
4. “A Statement on the Sanctity of Life.” The Danbury Institute, April 8, 2024. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://www.danburyinstitute.org/post/a-statement-on-the-sanctity-of-life.
5. “Scott Colter, PhD.” Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://www.mabts.edu/directory/colter-scott-z/.
6. “Collin M. Hain.” LinkedIn. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/in/collin-m-hain-95246315a/.
7. ^[1] “Dr. Richard Land.” Southern Evangelical Seminary. Accessed April 23, 2024. https://ses.edu/people/dr-richard-land/.