Baylor University has tapped a retired congressman with a record of combating religious persecution across the globe to advance the university’s goals of protecting the freedom of religious practice.
Frank Wolf, a Republican who represented Virginia’s 10th District in the U.S. House for 34 years, has been chosen as the inaugural holder of the Jerry and Susie Wilson Chair in Religious Freedom at Baylor.
Wolf will be on-campus at Baylor at least one week per semester for lectures and mentoring opportunities with students, with his first scheduled visit next month.
But Baylor President and Chancellor Ken Starr said Wolf’s primary role will be to use his connections on Capitol Hill to push measures to ensure the freedom of religious practice.
For example, Starr would like to advocate a new training program for State Department staffers that would inform and shape diplomatic exchanges over cases of religious persecution.
People are also reading…
While Baylor is based on Christian principles, specifically Baptist ideals, Starr said the university’s aim is to champion people of different faiths who face oppression in practicing their beliefs.
“In articulating our vision about religious freedom, we have not put it in denominational terms — we have put it in terms of human rights, that every human being, as a matter of human dignity, should enjoy the right to religious liberty and freedom of conscience,” Starr said.
“We care deeply about the persecuted church, but our concern is not limited to the persecuted church. We are not going to turn a blind eye to the profound issue of religious freedom around the world and of different faiths.”
Starr said Baylor was considering creating the religious freedom chair when Wolf announced in 2013 that he would retire this year at the end of his 17th term in office, which presented a chance for a partnership with the congressman.
The university in December announced a $2 million gift from Dallas couple Jerry and Susie Wilson to create the endowment that funds the position.
While in Congress, Wolf wrote the International Religious Freedom Act, which created an Office of International Religious Freedom within the State Department to track cases of religious oppression throughout the world.
Wolf also has traveled to countries like Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia and Tibet, witnessing the aftermath of violence against people who were targeted because of their faith and religious beliefs.
“Where there is religious freedom for anyone, whatever their religious beliefs, things are usually better in those countries where people of faith can worship,” he said.
“If you believe in the words that (President Ronald) Reagan said that, ‘All men are created equal and endowed by their creator (and that the U.S. Constitution) is a covenant not only with us but with the world,’ then I think the more we educate and talk about it is important.”
Wolf last week traveled to Iraq, where he spoke with Christian refugees who faced retaliation and punishment from the Islamic State if they refused to convert to Islam.
He said a Syrian man told him that IS militants who assumed control of a local hospital barred his wife from access to chemotherapy treatment for her breast cancer when the couple affirmed their Christianity. His wife later died from her illness.
The findings from the trip will be included in a report by the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, a foundation Wolf is working with that is focused on uniting people of different faiths across the world to protect their right to freely practice any religion.
Other cases Wolf is tracking include Catholic bishops who are under house arrest in China; challenges people of the Baha’i faith have faced in Iran; Buddhist monks and nuns who have set themselves aflame in protest of persecution; and Chinese writer and activist Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, who was jailed in response to his calls for an end to communism, while his wife remains under house arrest.
Wolf said while religious freedom at one point was a topic that garnered great bipartisan support in Congress, attention to the issue has waned. He instead hopes that awareness campaigns spearheaded by churches and people of faith throughout the U.S. will increase pressure on elected officials to take action.
“I think it’s important for the church in the West and people of faith to be in solidarity with those who are being persecuted around the world,” Wolf said.
“The more American people know about that, the more they’re willing to advocate.”