Ed Ward, honorary trustee of the Mt. Soledad Memorial Association, hosted a fundraising gathering at his home Sept. 25. Amid the spread of delicious picnic-style fare and friendly banter among old friends at Ward’s Mt. Soledad home, special guest Kelly Shackelford, president and CEO of the Liberty Institute, was also present to enlighten the crowd about Liberty Institute’s history, its efforts to defend religious liberty in America and its vision for the future. The protection of the Mt. Soledad Memorial cross is among Liberty Institute’s many efforts as a nonprofit legal firm. “Sometimes you meet someone in your life who changes your way of thinking and influences your thought process on subjects that I think are vital to me in my heart, and to us and our country,” said Ward. “That man is Kelly Shackelford.” Shackelford, a graduate of Baylor University, a distinguished Constitutional attorney and guest speaker, and correspondent on a number of national news organizations, has helped lead the institute for 15 years now with a mission that is near and dear to his heart. “Liberty Institute is a legal organization that represents people free of charge,” he said. “Basically, our mission is to protect and defend religious liberty and to restore that founding principle across America.” Despite receiving a number of tempting offers from top law firms throughout his career, Shackelford determined that his passion lies in using his legal skills to help pastors and churches in their religious freedom efforts. He pursued this passion by donating his time on pro-bono cases to protect religious freedom. “That was a quarter of a century ago that I started doing this, and now we’re the largest legal organization in the country that focuses exclusively on religious freedom,” he said. “The attacks on religious freedom are about the worst I’ve ever seen. There’s so many of them and they’re coming with such rapidity. The good news is that we are perfectly capable of handling these attacks if we just do what we need to do to handle those.” Shackelford stressed the importance of what America’s forefathers named as the nation’s first Constitutional amendment right. “The founders called this our ‘first freedom,’” he said. “If you don’t have religious freedom, you won’t have political freedom. Ask anybody in any other country who has lost his or her freedoms. They’ll say that religious freedom is one of the first things that has to go.” Liberty Institute’s model is based on garnering voluntarism from some of the top lawyers in the country. “We’ve gotten to the point where we have the most powerful law firms in the world not just doing our cases pro bono, but fighting over who gets to do our cases. They want to be involved, and they want to be able to serve in this way,” he said. “For the first time, all their gifts, all their talent, all their training, all the tricks they’ve learned are lined up with their passion and with their faith, with their country.” Shackelford said the nonprofit gets quite a bang for its buck and boasts a win rate of more than 99 percent. “It works out, result-wise,” he said. “For every $10,000 we spend on a case, on average, we get $60,000 in time donated. With a little money, we can really multiply [successes] because of all the people who are really giving of themselves.” Despite having so many litigators at the starting line, the institute still has to turn cases away because of a lack of initial funding to get the legal team started on a case, he said. “We give 15 percent on a case and the attorney gives 85 percent. Without our 15 percent, they can’t give anything. There are certain things they have to do to do their job,” he said. “It’s almost like we have all these Ferraris that are free and they’re sitting in the garage, and there’s all these people that need to get somewhere fast, but there’s no gasoline. We’re the bridge between all this need and these attorneys who want to give and be involved.” For more information about the Liberty Institute, visit www.libertyinstitute.org.