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Friday, August 17, 2018

WTE: Religious Freedom Protects All People’s Humanity

“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.”

These are “the views of the United States government,” according to the U.S. State Department’s recently-published “Potomac Declaration.” It 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. They heard testimony from victims of religious persecution, discussed ways of making U.S. aid more effective, and boldly confronted some of the world’s most unjust regimes.

Globally there is growing violence against minority religions. Entire Christian villages are being wiped out in Nigeria. The Rohingya sect in Burma is being exterminated. In Iraq, Yazidis and Christians are being brutalized by ISIS. Turkey denies their genocide of Christians while continuing to hold an American Christian pastor under arrest. China sends Muslims to re-education camps, restricts Tibetan Buddhists and imprisons pastors of Christian churches that seek independence from state control of their doctrine.

When Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom, Sam Brownback, named all these countries in his opening remarks to the Ministerial, they were put on notice that America will be silent no more. Vice President, Mike Pence, kept up the pressure by officially threatening sanctions against Turkey if Pastor Andrew Brunson is not released. He called out Nicaragua for “waging war on the Catholic Church,” and turned up the heat on North Korea and Iran.

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. Conscience rights and free speech rights are too often dismissed as “the right to discriminate.”

Such thoughtless slogans may seem like a great way to put down the opponents, but it is extremely short-sighted. Make laws against someone’s religious speech and exercise today, and those same laws will be used against you tomorrow.

Part of the problem is that fewer and fewer citizens know the real meaning of “faith.”

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.

Faith 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. No force in the universe can change that conviction. Faith may be changed by a better understanding of the truth, but it cannot be coerced any more than love can. Coercive attempts to conform a person to the faith of the community is inhumane, and a form of torture.

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.

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. 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 “Potomac Declaration” means that religious freedom, both foreign and domestic, will be defended by the U.S. Department of State. This is good news for every human being. May God grant them success.

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