Should U.S. foreign policy be more religious?

By Michelle Boorstein

There's a lot more debate going on about the subject of international religious freedom than I could fit into my story today, which looked at allegations of religious bias at the government commission charged with promoting religious freedom.

There is a small but very passionate community of people who follow the question of how religion is treated by the people who make U.S. foreign policy. Are policymakers and embassy workers required to be educated about how it influences their region? Are they required to have a plan to deal with it? To promote religious freedom? Do they value it? See it as part of a path to democracy and financial progress?

While there are many critics who say the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has been ignored and left to become an ideological tool, an even more widespread criticism is that the subject itself -- religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy -- has been shelved by the current administration and by the previous one.

Thomas Farr is urging the Obama Administration to make the subject much more prominent. He's been making the rounds on this subject and is hosting a conference on possibly the most controversial aspect of all this -- whether the right to proselytize is an issue of religious freedom and what are the implications for the United States promoting it overseas.

Another prominent group is issuing a report on Feb. 23 with a similar goal -- getting religion and religious freedom to be better understood by U.S. policymakers. This crew includes former longtime National Association of Evangelicals lobbyist Richard Cizik and Notre Dame professor Scott Appleby, among others. There is definitely a push on this subject going on right now.

But it's not clear how the Obama Administration will react to all this, as there is another, competing narrative about religious freedom policy. That point of view, which is espoused by some high-level folks close to the president, is that U.S. policy (related to religious freedom) has too long been centered too narrowly, on specific cases of persecution, particularly among Christians trying to evangelize, set up churches, proselytize. In today's world, this group says, the main issue is wrestling with radical Islam, and that means engaging Muslims becomes much more important. This group may be arguing in the coming months (and years) to reshape U.S. religious freedom policy abroad.

By

Michelle Boorstein

 |  February 17, 2010; 8:26 AM ET  |  Category:  God in Government Save & Share:                 
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