Our first freedom is in the crosshairs

On May 1 the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan government agency, released its annual report. In an era where some voices on both the political left and the political right argue for some form of isolationism, the very existence of USCIRF and other human rights mechanisms in U.S. foreign policy affirm that that the United States remains a city on a hill, a source of hope and an engine for justice worldwide.

Tragically, we live in a world where more than “more than 75% of the world’s countries had low or very low levels of religious freedom based on government interference.” Sadly, report reveals that not much has changed in places such as North Korea, China, Burma, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. Moreover, a number of countries have become more dangerous for Christians in recent years, most notably Cuba, Vietnam, Nicaragua, and especially violent Nigeria, where thousands of Christians are slaughtered each year.

That being said, religious freedom is our first and most fundamental freedom and it is both morally right and practical to champion it, as the United States does under the guidelines of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act. Religious liberty is not just the right of private worship, but much, much more. The International Religious Freedom Summit Charter, a document tied to an annual meeting of religious freedom experts in Washington, D.C., is a useful one-page affirmation that helps us understand the capacious nature of religious freedom at home or abroad.

The Summit Charter, originally drafted by former U.S. diplomat and religious freedom champion Thomas Farr, states that religious freedom should be understood as three interconnected rights. The first is “[t]he right of every human being freely to believe in religious truths, or not to believe, uncoerced by any human authority, especially the state with its extraordinary powers.” Religious freedom is rooted in humanity’s innate desire to know and have a relationship with God. Government, whether in Beijing or Sacramento, should never coerce or persecute individuals when it comes to matters of religious faith.

The second right listed in the IRF Summit Charter involves religious people and their communities, and this is a right “to join with others in a religious community, which also possesses religious freedom. This freedom includes the right to pursue the goods natural to religious communities, such as building houses of worship, training clergy, establishing religious schools, developing and upholding religious doctrines. It includes the rights of parents to raise their children within their chosen faith community. It includes the rights of individuals and communities to share their beliefs with others and to invite others to join their religious communities. It includes the rights of adherents to leave any religious community and to join another.”

Religious freedom is not only a private and individual right. People come together to worship, to share their faith, and to disseminate the teachings of their faith to their children. Religious freedom in communities means that not only can one generation transmit its faith to the next, but recognizes the right of individuals, based on their own conscience, to voluntarily join or exit a faith group. Yet, even in the West there are significant challenges to the freedom of religious families and communities. For instance, in democratic Germany Christian homeschooling parents have been harassed by the state because the government demands that children be educated under the authority of the secular education establishment rather than in the home by their parents. More and more, right here in the United States, Christian parents rightfully worry that they are being pushed out of the lives of their children and local schools.

The third assertion of the Charter affirms the right for religion-informed arguments to be made in the public square. Thus, “the rights of believers and of religious communities to live and act peacefully, within civil and political society, in accord with their religious beliefs. It includes the right of believers and their communities to draw on those beliefs as they participate in civic life. It includes the right to convey their religious views to the general public on issues of the common good, such as justice, peace, equality, and freedom.”

True religious freedom is achieved only when individual believers and their faith communities have full equality, not only to practice their faith in private, but also to make social and policy arguments in public and act on their faith in full view of their fellow citizenry. Unfortunately, in the West, we increasingly hear arguments that religious views are not welcome in public debate. This is simply wrong.

The 2023 USCIRF Report provides an important witness to the suffering of religious minorities around the world. America must continue to champion the rights of those minorities and be the beacon of hope for the persecuted, while reaffirming our commitment to religious freedom here at home.