Search Results

Under the presidency of George W. Bush, this chapter argues, religious identities and ethical commitments had a significant impact on U.S. foreign policy—and an even greater impact on perceptions of that policy abroad. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and the attacks of September 11, 2001, were critical junctures. The end of the cold war and religious mobilization in U.S. politics coincided with heightened awareness of religious persecution across many countries, culminating in the 1998 legislation. And in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the U.S., the struggle against Islamic radicalism became both a foreign policy priority and a rallying cry in U.S. domestic politics. The worldwide perception of a religious impetus in U.S. foreign policy has had a negative impact on America's standing in the world.

The passage of the 1998 International Religious Freedom (IRF) Act seemed to presage a new chapter in U.S. foreign policy—in effect, the elevation of America's “first freedom” to what many considered its rightful ascendancy in the nation's human rights policy. In retrospect, however, the fault lines in the law's conception and implementation have been quite significant. This chapter examines those weaknesses, including the desire of IRF supporters to bypass the State Department, the perception that the law is Christian-centered, and the concern by liberals that religious freedom should not be elevated to the top of a “hierarchy of human rights.” In describing the hierarchy objection the chapter analyzes the controversial but critical issues of proselytization, and the distinction between religious tolerance and religious freedom. The net result of these and other problems is that U.S. IRF policy has been narrowly construed, ignored by its supporters, and largely ineffective.

American diplomacy continues to insist that Afghanistan achieved religious freedom. Whatever the State Department meant by that term, it did not appear to exclude illiberal religious practices that were destructive of religious freedom and incompatible with the consolidation of democracy. What accounts for these anomalies in U.S. foreign policy, and in particular its approach to advancing international religious freedom? What have been the goals of international religious freedom (IRF) diplomacy, and what has been its relationship to broader policy purposes, including the “soft power” aspects of democracy promotion? This chapter explores these and other questions in assessing the policy mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). It begins with a brief discussion of the legislative campaign that produced the IRFA and follows with an exploration of the law's operation during the period 1998–2008. It then turns to the critics of the new initiative, who emerged from all sides of the American ideological spectrum. The chapter concludes with an assessment of U.S. IRF policy after its first decade.

This chapter examines the politics of fear underlying the antipersecution discourse that revolved around evangelical Christians at the turn of the twenty-first century. A video made by the U.S.-based Christian evangelical group Voice of the Martyrs showed that Christians are being persecuted all around the world. By the turn of the twenty-first century, a passionate concern with the persecution of Christians united conservatives as well as liberal and moderate evangelicals. The chapter shows how antipersecution discourse resulted in the passage of the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. It also considers the significance of spectacles of the violated body to the discourse of persecution and how intense attention to Christian persecution created a tension for evangelicals between the universalizing language of human rights and a specific commitment to the “persecuted body” of Christ. Finally, it explores how evangelicals' attention to Christian persecution intersects with Islamic concerns.

During the Cold War era, there was overt intolerance of Catholics, New Religious Movements, and Asian American religious communities, as well as ongoing resentment toward African American churches. A vicious animus towards Muslims began to show itself toward the end of the era. The United States remained a nation where the ideal of religious freedom was incompletely implemented. Americans continued to project their religious intolerance to overseas sites. The International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) was not about spreading religious freedom, but about locating and punishing intolerance, and almost all of the resources of IRFA were devoted to finding out and publicizing religious persecutions in foreign countries, especially of Christians.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the importance of religious freedom to international peace, development, and ordered liberty, especially in an emergent 21^st Century marked by powerful religious actors and ideas. It then explores why United States diplomats and their counterparts around the world have failed to promote religious liberty as a vital means of achieving strategic objectives. It demonstrates that intellectual assumptions and blinders lead foreign policy makers to view religious freedom as a humanitarian cause of peripheral concern to the main currents of international engagement. The chapter critiques the approaches of successive presidential administrations, but finds particular indifference in the actions of the Obama Administration. This is particularly troubling because European countries and western institutions provide even less grounded support for religious liberty in diplomatic circles. To the extent that leading nations in the West fail to grasp the centrality of religious freedom, stable democracy and international peace will be all the harder to achieve.

This chapter reviews the contents of the United States' anti-trafficking legislation, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, and documents this legislation's little-known religious history. I argue that the way human trafficking is depicted in the TVPA and the kinds of interventions that the legislation proposes as remedies for human trafficking are premised on conceptions of the interrelations of gender, sex, and freedom that animated and infused the earlier political movement on the issue of religious persecution that culminated in the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 and that, in crucial ways, are rooted in and express the moral sensibilities of Protestant Christianity.

This concluding chapter offers six recommendations for increasing the sphere of religious freedom in the Muslim-majority world and in the globe in general. These are drawn from the book’s foregoing analysis. The chapter calls for a “gestalt” shift by which religious freedom is recognized as a universal principle, not a Western value; for a recognition of Islam’s capacity for religious freedom; for a rejection of negative secularism; and for an expansion of religious freedom in the Muslim world. Then, the chapter turns its attention to the rise of religious freedom in the foreign policy of the United States and other Western states, recommending that these states “mainstream” religious freedom in their foreign policies. It also recommends building transnational networks involving religious freedom constituencies.

This chapter reviews the influential role that evangelical lobbyists played in shaping human rights legislation during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. It mentions how evangelical lobbyists placed their work on the International Religious Freedom Act within a larger historical context. The chapter traces the early history of effective evangelical lobbying efforts on matters related to human rights and U.S. foreign policy. It illuminates key moments when evangelical activism actually influenced the specific policy directions that government leaders pursued or the manner in which they discussed and understood global issues. It also reflects on the legacy of earlier evangelical foreign policy engagement in building the political capital and international networks necessary for effective advocacy at the turn of the twenty-first century.