Meet Faith

KGI Global Director of Advocacy

KGI Global’s Director of Advocacy Faith McDonnell informs and motivates US church members about global persecution of Christians. She speaks to church groups, conferences, and educational/advocacy forums.

As International Religious Liberty Program Director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, DC for 27 years Faith organized rallies and protests at The White House, State Department, various embassies, and the UN.

Faith helped create the globally-observed International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church in the ‘90’s. She was part of coalitions to draft and pass the International Religious Freedom Act 1998, Trafficking Victims Protection Act 2000, Sudan Peace Act 2002, and North Korea Human Rights Act 2004. She defends persecuted Christians and other persecuted believers in North Korea, throughout the Middle East, Nigeria, China, Pakistan, Sudan, and South Sudan, etc.

Together with former LRA abductee Grace Akallo Faith wrote Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (2007, Chosen Books). She writes for The Stream, World, American Spectator, Front Page Magazine, Breitbart, PJ Media, Philos Project, Providence Journal, Juicy Ecumenism, and Patheos. She wrote a chapter in Sorrow & Blood: Christian Mission in Contexts of Suffering, Persecution, and Martyrdom (2012). She has been a guest on such radio shows as The Eric Metaxas Show, Janet Parshall’s In The Marketplace, and others. She has appeared on CBN, Fox News, and the Armstrong Williams television show, and spoken twice as a panelist on global Christian persecution at CPAC.

Now an Anglican and member of Church of the Apostles, Fairfax, Virginia since 1980, Faith grew up in The Salvation Army with Salvation Army officer parents. She graduated from Eastern Nazarene College, Quincy, MA, and received her master’s degree in English at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was married to Francis John McDonnell until his death in 2014. She adores her beautiful, feisty daughter Fiona, who spent much of her childhood demonstrating at the Sudanese and Chinese Embassies, meeting bishops and archbishops from around the world, having dinner with heroes like Dr. John Garang and North Korean defectors, and having other experiences that most children never have.

Faith serves on the board of Jubilee Campaign USA and of the Good Shepherd Foundation in Juba, South Sudan. She was a founding member of the Sudan Coalition, the Nigeria Task Force, Act for Sudan, the North Korea Freedom Coalition and Save The Persecuted Christians Coalition. She participates in the Anglican Church in North America’s “Every Tribe and Nation” group, and she is the co-leader of the Anglican Persecuted Church Network (New Wineskins Missionary Network) and of the GAFCON Suffering Church Network.