Religious Freedom Protects All People’s Humanity

Participants at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom

“The freedom to live out one’s faith is a God-given human right that belongs to everyone. The freedom to seek the divine and act accordingly—including the right of an individual to act consistently with his or her conscience—is at the heart of the human experience. Governments cannot justly take it away. Rather, every nation shares the solemn responsibility to defend and protect religious freedom.”

These are “the views of the United States government on the importance of promoting religious freedom, a universal human right,” according to the U.S. State Department’s recently-published “Potomac Declaration.” The Declaration is accompanied by the “Potomac Plan of Action” which addresses specific foreign policy actions that the US government will be taking to address religious freedom.

Sec. State, Mike Pompeo

"Potomac" the First of Its Kind

The “Potomac Declaration” was rolled out on the final day of a recent Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, hosted by the State Department on July 24-26. This first-ever such event gathered delegations from more than 80 countries around the world, including countries that the State Department rates as least respectful of religious freedom. They heard testimony from victims of religious persecution, discussed ways of making U.S. aid more effective, and boldly confronted some of today’s most egregious offenders.

Over the past several years we have seen growing violence against minority religions around the world. Christians are being killed every day in Nigeria. The Rohingya sect in Burma is being exterminated. In Iraq, Yazidis and Christians both are being brutalized by ISIS. Turkey has never publicly acknowledged their part in the Armenian Genocide, and even today is holding an American Christian pastor under arrest for preaching the Gospel.

The Chinese communist regime sends Muslims to re-education camps, restricts the rights of Tibetan Buddhists and imprisons pastors of Christian churches that seek independence from state control of their doctrine. Many of us have watched as one of the largest Christian churches in China was demolished because its cross was higher than regulations allow.

We have watched all these atrocities across the globe and have seen very little meaningful response from our leaders. When Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, named all these countries in his opening remarks, they were put on notice that America will be silent no more.

Then Vice President, Mike Pence, came to the podium. He returned the focus to Pastor Andrew Brunson in Turkey and threatened sanctions if he is not released to return to America. He called out the Ortega administration in Nicaragua for “waging war on the Catholic Church.” He turned up the heat on North Korea and Iran for their persecution of religious minorities.

Saving Lives Abroad While Helping At Home

All of this is a breath of fresh air from the State Department. Billions of human beings across the globe will benefit from this new initiative. A stunning 83 percent of the world’s population live in countries where religious freedom is either threatened or banned. America’s attention to their plight will save untold lives.

The State Department’s renewed focus will not only help our brothers and sisters in foreign countries. It will also help us here at home. Today we have a great opportunity to think more deeply about religious freedom and why it’s important to a thriving republic.

In America’s own public discourse, conscience rights and free speech rights are regularly dismissed as “the right to discriminate.” Such thoughtless slogans may seem like a great way to put down the religious opposition, but it is like dropping a grenade on the floor in order to win a quarrel.

It will certainly kill your opponent, but it will kill you at the same time. Make laws against someone’s religious speech and exercise today, and those same laws will be used against you tomorrow. That’s the law of the jungle.

Faith Is Way More Than Opinion

Part of the problem is that the very notion of “faith” is not very well understood. When people say things like, “I believe it’s going to rain today,” faith is cast as a personal opinion that may, or may not, be true. It is also a statement of so little concern that it doesn’t much matter whether it’s true or not.

But real faith is not like this at all. Religious faith has to do with the biggest and most important questions in life. Who am I? Why am I here? How do I relate to those around me? The way you answer such questions impacts your whole life—everything you say and do.

If I believe that I am merely a two-legged animal, differing from the ape only because my brain is bigger, I will behave like a smart ape. But if I believe that I am fundamentally different from every other animal, that I am uniquely created in the image of God, my entire understanding of self will depend upon my understanding of God. That’s a lot different than “believing it’s going to rain.”

A second thing about faith that is little understood is that it is neither an opinion nor an act of the will. I can’t decide to believe anymore than I can decide that two and two are four. Belief is conviction, it is a certainty that you cannot dismiss.

Once I see that two and two make four, I can have no opinion about it. There is no going back. No force in the universe can change that conviction. I may be tortured, like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984, I may even scream out a false answer to escape the torture. But I cannot stop knowing what I know.

Conscience Is About Humanity Itself

Winston Smith being forced to say 4 is 5

That is why conscience protections are so important. They treat us as the human beings that we are. They forbid us from using coercion—financial, social or physical—to change anybody’s convictions or faith. The only power capable of changing faith is the power of the truth itself. Any other attempts to conform a person to the faith of the community is inhumane, and a form of torture.

Religious freedom does not pretend that every religion is the same, or that every religion is true. It only claims that every religious person is a human being. You didn’t choose to be a human being; you were made that way. And part of being a human being is that we have this quality in us called “faith.” It is a “conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

Faith may be changed by a better understanding of the truth, but it cannot be coerced any more than love can be coerced. America was based on this idea. It permeates the US Constitution forbidding any religious test for public office. It is also reinforced in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” drawn up in 1948, proclaims in Article 18, “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion: this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or believe in teaching, in practice, worship and observance.” 

Now the U.S. State Department has joined the Department of Justice in making this fundamental right a focus of their efforts. They were right to do so. God grant them success.