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Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
Legislating International Religious Freedom
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
With the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, the United States became one of the few countries in the world to make promotion of religious freedom an explicit foreign policy goal. The act, signed into law by President Clinton, established an Office of International Religious Freedom at the State Department, headed by an ambassador-at-large responsible for issuing a yearly country-by-country report on religious freedom. This year the office designated Uzbekistan, Burma, China, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Eritrea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan as "countries of particular concern" for their "systematic, ongoing, and egregious" violations of religious liberty.
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the American Academy of Religion and the Library of Congress' Kluge Center invited four distinguished experts to explore why the U.S. has made international religious freedom a priority and in what ways the policy has succeeded or failed.
In the following excerpts, ellipses have been omitted. Read the full transcript.
Speakers:
Thomas Farr, first director of the U.S. State Department Office of International Religious Freedom
Allen D. Hertzke, University of Oklahoma, author of Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Human Rights
Elizabeth H. Prodromou, Boston University, author of forthcoming books on pluralism in Greece and in Russia; vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, University of Buffalo Law School, State University of New York, author of The Impossibility of Religious Freedom
Moderator:
Timothy S. Shah, Senior Fellow in Religion and World Affairs, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
TIMOTHY S. SHAH: Almost precisely 25 years ago, on November 25th, 1981, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed a declaration on religious freedom, or in classic diplomatic language, the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.
Twenty-five years after that landmark declaration, only two countries in the world have made the advancement of international religious freedom an explicit and significant goal of their foreign policies. One is the Vatican city-state and the other is the United States of America.
The fact that the U.S. is virtually alone in the world in adopting a policy of not only promoting religious freedom at home but advancing it abroad is the starting point of this panel. We will tackle two main issues. One, how did the United States come to adopt a policy of promoting religious freedom abroad? Two, what kind of policy has it been?
With respect to the second, evaluative question, there are two sub-questions: Has a policy of promoting religious freedom been good or bad for U.S. foreign policy and for American national interests? Secondly: Has this policy been good or bad for the cause of international religious freedom in the world?
These questions are all the more important because religious freedom has become a salient and significant thrust of U.S. foreign policy today. Just how salient and significant was made apparent by President George W. Bush during his visit to Asia this month. While in Vietnam, the president attended an ecumenical service on Sunday morning at a Catholic cathedral, and afterwards he said publicly, "A whole society is a society that welcomes basic freedoms. My hope is that people all across the world will be able to express religious freedom."
ALLEN D. HERTZKE: I want to start by providing the context for the legislation. What were the conditions underlying the legislative initiative? The first condition is the globalization of Christianity. The tectonic shift of the Christian population to the developing world of Asia, Africa and Latin America created a constituency around the world that communicates with an American constituency here at home. Some two thirds of all Christians live in Asia, Africa and Latin America today, and the percentage is growing. Many of these Christians live amidst conditions of poverty, exploitation, war and religious persecution; these communities communicate with their counterparts here in the United States and sensitize many lay Americans to the problem of religious persecution.
The second condition is related to the importance of religion in the modern world. The pervasiveness of religious persecution has a lot to do with religion's importance. As Samuel Huntington noted in one work, "If religion is unimportant, it can be tolerated. If it is important, governments will insist on controlling it, regulating it, suppressing or prohibiting it, or manipulating it to their own advantage." That context helps explain why persecution endures in so many parts of the world today.
The pervasiveness of persecution and the globalization of Christianity also create the potential for allies in the campaign against persecution. What began initially in 1996 as a campaign primarily for persecuted Christians blossomed into a concern for persecuted religious minorities. Evangelical, Catholic and mainline Protestant Christians found allies among Tibetan Buddhists, Iranian Bahai, Buddhists in Southeast Asia and China, and Muslim Uighars in western China. Many U.S. Christian groups, which began with what we might call a parochial concern about their own, became sensitized to the issue, more broadly, of religious freedom and the persecution of minorities. This created what I call the "unlikely alliance" that made the legislation seem compelling to members of Congress.
The final piece of the puzzle had to do with church-based networks here in the United States, and, in particular, the activation of evangelical networks on behalf of the legislation. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has written about how the evangelical community has built, in the last quarter century, the most vibrant social movement network we have seen in recent years. Those social-movement networks were mobilized initially on behalf of domestic, conservative issues but were activated later on behalf of international religious freedom.
I want to turn to the legislative battle, which is a fascinating story. There were two opposing views about how best to address and remedy the issue of religious persecution abroad. One vision was public exposure, automatic sanctions and even unilateral U.S. action. This approach envisioned a tough and often blunt instrument to deal with religious persecution, and it was embodied in the so-called Wolf-Specter legislation that passed the House. The other vision emphasized quiet diplomacy and a wider menu of actions, including multilateral approaches. That vision was embodied in the original Senate alternative bill, the so-called Nichols-Lieberman bill.
You also had two different views on what the focus of the legislation should be. One, embodied in the House bill, was the focus should be on the most egregious persecution, the kind that would be impossible for Congress to ignore. The other view was there should be a wide focus on promoting religious freedom generally, including all aspects of discrimination as well as more severe persecution.
These multiple, competing visions produced a very contentious process. Who can be against persecution? There was a lot of cachet in the campaign against religious persecution -- it's very much a part of the American ethos -- but the views of the proper remedies were deeply divided. Interestingly, the division was not along conventional ideological Christian right, Christian left lines. The competing visions were often backed by competing teams of evangelicals, who had very different views about the proper way to approach this issue.
Ultimately, the legislation passed because it was consonant with the American tradition of religious freedom and because it appealed to such a wide array of religious constituencies in America. It passed because people were willing to suffer through the deliberative process; I often wonder if there's a theological point here. Had the legislation swept through Congress more easily, its impact would not have been as dramatic. Because there were such deep divisions, partisans continually groped for the proper solution. As it was, the contentiousness led to the last-minute passage of the legislation in the waning days of the congressional session in 1998.
To a degree, the law is working as the diverse partisans envisioned. The State Department report is a global resource, used not only by our own government, but by other governments, who view it as the most thorough compendium of the status of religious freedom around the world. It's widely distributed and widely read in the diplomatic community. Because State Department officials must meet with religious dissidents and develop relationships with religious communities, we now have a much better sense of what's happening on the ground in these various countries.
The U.S. Commission has elevated the profile of religious freedom issues through its hearings and its numerous trips around the world. [Members of the commission] have traveled to China; they've traveled to the Sudan to report on the implementation of the peace accord and the situation in Darfur. They have been successful in getting the release of a Tibetan Buddhist nun, working with the State Department. It has raised the issue of Saudi funding of literature intolerant toward Jews, Christians, or Sufis, Shiites and other minority Muslims. It's raised the issue of continuing persecution in China and Tibet, of the Muslim Uighars, of house-church Protestants and Catholics. It's raised the issue of the abysmal state of human rights in North Korea, and particularly the fate of asylum seekers who are victimized in China.
The commission has achieved an enormous amount of stature but has not achieved the prominence at least some partisans had hoped for, comparable to the high profile of the civil rights movements in the 1950s and early '60s.The State Department follow-through has been criticized for not tying the routines of our diplomacy to the promotion of international religious freedom. One of the reasons is foreign policy is a difficult business. There are competing interests such as economic interests and national security. But there's another reason: Religious freedom legislation and its implementation requires continued public support. Unless there's strong pressure from the public and pressure by Congress, the normal routines of diplomacy swallow up aggressive implementation of religious freedom legislation.
One possibility I alluded to in my book is that a recrudescence in the culture war could siphon energies away from the communities providing the most muscular, grass-roots support for the legislation. The energies of the evangelical Christian community, which provided a lot of the grass-roots muscle for the legislation, have indeed been siphoned away by the gay marriage issue, concern for the judiciary and other issues that continue to roil the body politic. That's a significant concern.
THOMAS F. FARR: What I hope to do today is describe the current operation of the law and why it's being so narrowly applied. Then I'll briefly outline what would be a more productive application of IRFA not only for the advancement of religious freedom around the world but also for our American national interests.
Last week, the State Department held a press conference and announced the governments that are, under IRFA, [International Religious Freedom Act] the worst religious persecutors. The department spokesman declared the goals of U.S. policy as follows: "To oppose religious persecution, to free religious prisoners and to promote religious freedom." Note the order of those three goals.
I would suggest that the first two are so dominant in the way the department has implemented IRFA that the third, promoting religious freedom, has been overshadowed. Over the long term, this almost exclusive focus on persecution and prisoners puts all three goals at risk.
Opposing persecution does not mean ending it, and even if we're able, by some combination of sticks and carrots, to convince a government to stop persecuting, that does not mean that country has religious freedom. Consider Afghanistan. When the United States deposed the Taliban in 2002, the horrible persecution of women and minority Shiites stopped. Prisons were emptied. The liberated Afghanis elected a democratic government and ratified a democratic constitution. But these developments did not add up to a political regime of religious freedom. In March of this year, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan citizen, was tried for apostasy for converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime meriting beheading under the court's interpretation of Afghanistan's democratic constitution.
State Department pressure induced the Afghans to permit Mr. Rahman to flee the country. But while that may have been a victory for opposing persecution and freeing prisoners, it was actually a defeat for religious freedom because American diplomacy failed to engage the real problem: Unless Afghanistan addresses the issue of human freedom in its religious, political and social institutions it will not achieve the kind of democracy that will endure or be able to resist the toxic ideas of the resurgent Taliban.
This approach has had some successes. Just last week, [Ambassador-at-large John] Hanford announced that his negotiations with Hanoi had produced enough progress to take Vietnam off the list. The danger, of course, is that Vietnam's decision to reduce persecution could be a short-term concession to secure favorable trade relations with the United States. If so, it would still constitute a positive step but would probably be temporary and easily reversed.
I'm not suggesting that all American diplomats become theologians. I am suggesting they become realists when it comes to the issue of religion, addressing religion much as they do economics and politics -- as a powerful, natural, human enterprise that influences how men, women and nations behave. We have to integrate this thinking into our strategies, whether we're trying to undermine Islamist extremism, counter China's anti-religion policy, or influence the Islamist political party that governs democratic Turkey.
Consider Egypt. For half a century, a secular autocracy has dominated that country, but it's widely acknowledged if elections were held today, they would be won by the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet the United States is not seeking to influence Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, or the more democratic Hizb al-Wasat, even though they -- and not our favored Egyptian secularists -- are likely to win elections. Even if we did engage those Islamist parties, we currently lack the discernment and the vocabulary to influence them. This must change. Our international religious freedom policy should be the vehicle for serious interaction with selected Islamist groups in Egypt and elsewhere through private and public diplomacy. Our goal should be, first, to assess the potential attraction of Islamist groups to liberal norms, and, second, when feasible, to demonstrate how a liberal political order can benefit their religious communities and their culture, with their truth claims.
Above all, this subject needs public debate, especially among scholars, policymakers and congressional representatives. That debate should be free as far as possible from the cant that often attends discussions about religion in America. This is not a red state, blue state issue; it is a question of the security and well-being of the American people, who expect and deserve a foreign policy that encounters the world as it is, not as we might wish it to be. That world, for better or worse, promises to be suffused with religion for the foreseeable future. American diplomacy must work to ensure it is also a world of ordered liberty.
ELIZABETH H. PRODROMOU: The decision to legislate international religious freedom as part of American foreign policy comes at a time of unprecedented religious pluralism in this country. [It also] comes at a time when the salience of religion around the world is producing real challenges to the foundations of the Westphalian international order that's existed since the 17th century. Given the complexity of the current historical moment, the decision to legislate religious freedom into our foreign policy was a bold and daring move.
Legislating religious freedom as part of our foreign policy reveals a new national security calculus, one that openly combines idealist and realist thinking. The bottom line says a marriage of values and interests can best improve our national security both at home and abroad: that's a qualitative shift in the way we think about security strategy. Has the goal been achieved?
The results are mixed. Without a doubt, the symbolic and real value of America's commitment to religious freedom has sent a powerful message to both our allies and our adversaries that violations of religious freedom can produce concrete consequences. We see this in a host of examples, whether it's the U.S.-led NATO bombardment of Serbia during the 1990s or decisions to place countries on the watch list and the CPC list. These decisions sometimes produce reevaluations of foreign economic assistance or export legislation.
Balanced against these gains are negatives and these give us cause for concern. One negative consequence of legislating religious freedom has been a palpable international perception that the U.S. policy of promoting religious freedom abroad is merely a façade for a new American imperialism built on cultural dominance and military conquest. What accounts for this perception -- or misperception -- and the negative blowback it's produced? A specific point of misunderstanding concerns the origins of the IRFA legislation: One view is the legislation is more a product of domestic political and electoral interests than an overriding concern with the promotion of religious freedom abroad.
A second factor is the application of IRFA. There have been inconsistencies in the use of the watch list and the CPC list and, in particular, the willingness of the State Department and the White House to bring IRFA's teeth to bear. In terms of action -- where and how we have intervened -- but also in terms of inaction -- where we have not intervened when it's clear there are very serious violations of religious freedom -- inconsistencies that have given traction to arguments that the promotion of religious freedom is nothing more than realism under the garb of idealism.
Another factor is the issue of defining religious freedom. Two issues in the last eight years have become central to controversies about the intentions and the capacity of the United States to protect and promote religious freedom abroad. The first issue is proselytism and whether or not proselytism always is equivalent to religious freedom. The second lightning-rod issue is the question of religious dress, the right to wear religious dress in the public sphere and, more specifically, in institutions and environments of government and state.
How do we develop a measure of consistent improvements in religious freedom? A research agenda that evaluates the effectiveness of legislating religious freedom would have to address the perception constraints I just mentioned. One question would be where has IRFA been focused and where has it averted its gaze? The criticism often leveled against the United States is that we've concentrated our religious freedom concerns on the Muslim world, but issues of aversion of gaze are equally important. Another topic needing research is how the internal components of the IRFA legislation work together. We analyze the reasons for cooperation, consensus, disagreement, and, ultimately, the outcomes at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and the State Department Office of Religious Freedom in particular cases like Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and China. Finally, we may want to do a more serious and systematic analysis of particular issues, as they tell a story about how the rest of the world understands our commitment to religious freedom and how we ourselves understand what constitutes religious freedom [including the] lightning-rod issues of proselytism and religious dress.
WINNIFRED FALLERS SULLIVAN: I'm here today because of my book, The Impossibility of Religious Freedom. How can anybody be against religious freedom? I'm not against religious freedom. I'm an American, and I believe in freedom -- freedom for everyone, religious and not religious -- from all forms of persecution. But I believe religious freedom to be impossible in a practical sense. It's not that it's bad; it's that we don't know how to do it in a fair and just way because we don't really know what religion is.
Let me talk about why I think it's impossible for these laws to work. It's very simple-minded, in a sense. Laws that protect religious freedom naturally require those who enforce them to distinguish between what is religion and what is not religion. In many countries that distinction is made by an office of religious affairs that licenses religious organizations. One must meet certain criteria and abide by certain rules in order to be a religion, officially. In most countries, then, individual conscience is protected by laws guaranteeing free speech and freedom of association, but freedom of religion, generally, is regulated through these special offices; unpopular, or unfamiliar, or foreign religions often have trouble making the grade.
In the U.S., we do not have any such central office. We have no centralized definition of religion. In the various armed services, the Internal Revenue Service, every state prison, there are thousands and thousands of laws that refer in some way to religion in this country, but there is no centralized place for deciding what religion is.
Let me give you a small-scale example of the problems of deciding who is entitled to protection under laws of religious freedom. The Florida Religious Freedom Protection Act says the government may not substantially burden your exercise of religion without showing the government has a compelling state interest that overrides your religious freedom.
The City of Boca Raton in Florida has a municipal cemetery, and the cemetery regulations limit memorialization to a small plaque about the size of a standard piece of paper, which has to be flat on the ground so it can be mowed over. But during the 1980s, the managers of the cemetery allowed people to build little constructions, or shrines, over the graves of the people whom they had buried there. These were ordinary Protestants and Catholics and Jews; this was not exotic from an American point of view. You had, for example, Jewish relatives who placed stone Stars of David. There were Catholic graves that had statues of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of Mary, of the saints. There was a Lebanese immigrant man, a self-described born-again Christian, who had constructed a four-foot cross covered with silk lilies on the grave of his wife. This cross was a centerpiece of this cemetery and was spoken of as inspiring many of the other plaintiffs.
Over the course of ten or 15 years, 400 of these graves were nonconforming. They were in violation of the law, and finally Boca Raton decided to remove them all and restore the capacity to simply mow over the graves. The ACLU brought a lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, arguing that this violated Florida law because it substantially burdened the exercise of religion. The issue at trial was: Was what they did religious? After much testimony, including testimony by experts in religion, including myself, the court concluded that what they had done was something the judge called "purely personal preference." He saw it like a decorating decision, not "real" religion because it was not mandated by scripture or an official church body.
This is something I would call the rich religious diversity of the United States. It was tremendously moving to be in the courtroom when the plaintiffs talked about why they had done what they had done on these individual graves. Religious authority in the United States resides in each individual, I would argue, and law cannot protect the disaggregated, deregulated religion we have here.
I'm not sure isolating religion as something that needs to be protected makes sense in the 21st century, when religion has become as disestablished and as complex and mobile and pluralistic as it has.
My other concern is that exporting our notion of religious freedom, which tends to focus on the individual, around the world may cause both misunderstandings on the part of other people and distort our own capacity to listen to how other countries have arranged their religious lives and understood religious freedom. Such an effort may undermine our capacity to work together with other countries to advance liberty.
If you look at the documents produced over the years by IRFA, there's a continual claim to the uniqueness of the American legacy and a real suggestion of perfection in the American achievement of religious liberty. Many people admire our vision of religious freedom, and at its best it makes spaces for many religious cultures. But at the worst, exporting our American version of God's plan -- and that's how it's described in many IRFA documents -- may lead us to uncritically support the State of Israel, insist on abstinence as a cure for AIDS, and restrict access to family planning and reproductive rights. Not everyone will agree the issues on that list, but you can add your own.