Religion and Global Affairs: Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy

The promotion of religious freedom is an important foreign policy concern for the U.S. government; it has rightly begun to respond to public concerns about religious persecution in various parts of the world that have been voiced, in particular, by religious groups. In further developing its policy responses, the government should expand its concern, acknowledge the complexity of the problem, highlight its human rights approach, and work with nongovernmental organizations, especially religious communities.

In recent times, religion has obviously gained importance in international affairs. For that and other reasons the subject has increasingly presented new challenges to the U.S. government. How adequate government policies are for meeting those challenges requires some careful reflection.

Evidence abounds that the subject is salient. The United States is compelled to cope with religious militants, who either gain political control of their countries, as in Iran or Sudan, or who become potent and sometimes violent political participants, as in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Tibet, Burma, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In most of these cases the foreign policy stakes are extremely high.

Or, the United States finds itself called upon directly to mediate or help manage - occasionally at considerable expense - civil conflicts that are significantly affected by the impulses of religious nationalism. Bosnia is a major example of this, but Northern Ireland and the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians also come to mind.

Of special domestic urgency just now, is the matter of how the U.S. government should deal with the violation of the rights of religious freedom abroad. The Congress is in the process of responding to strong agitation from American religious groups and others regarding what was initially and widely characterized as “a worldwide trend of anti-Christian persecution” in Islamic countries, like Sudan, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia, and in Communist regimes, such as China, Cuba, and Vietnam. The trend is occurring, it has been claimed, “before an unknowing, indifferent world and a largely silent Christian community,” as well as before a government whose leaders “have generally shown indifference - even hostility to - Christians abroad, rarely taking religious oppression against them into account when devising foreign policy.” ¹

The “Freedom from Religious Persecution Act” (commonly known as the “Wolf-Specter Bill” ²), now being considered by Congress, has been broadened to include several religions in distress. However, its origins lie in the special concern for Christians. The bill, which will be revised and voted on presently in both houses, would establish a new office in the State Department to monitor and report on the incidence and character of religious persecution around the world. ³ The occupant of the office would determine whether in given countries such abuse was sufficiently “widespread and ongoing” to warrant applying an array of government-imposed sanctions on U.S. exports, as well as on some financial and other nonhumanitarian forms of assistance. According to the bill, once a determination is rendered, sanctions would be applied automatically unless the president could show such action to be ineffective, or in conflict with national security.

This bill has enormous foreign policy implications. If passed in its existing form, the bill would circumvent, as is its intention, normal foreign policy procedures on the basis of a single consideration, the existence of extreme religious persecution. Mainly because such legislation would disrupt the established diplomatic process in the name of “single-issue” policymaking, the Clinton administration opposes the bill. It is also opposed by many in the business community,including some religious conservatives, who allege that the bill would severely harm commercial and other legitimate U.S. interests.

The violation of the rights of religious freedom abroad as a U.S. foreign policy issue is not limited to the debate over the Wolf-Specter bill. Some tensions have recently arisen between the United States and close Western European allies - especially Germany, but also Austria, France, and Belgium - over the treatment of religious minorities. The State Department, in its annual human rights reports, has registered some sharp complaints against what is considered unwarranted discrimination or harassment of groups like the Scientologists, Jehovah’s...