**4. Critique 2: Secularist Objections**

The construction of IRF as a conceptual framework is problematised by critiques of the trend towards mainstreaming IRF in international politics and US foreign policy in particular. Rather than being an outworking of the UDHR Article 18, as advocates claim, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd portrays IRF as a means of control, 'a modern technique of governance, authorizing particular forms of politics and regulating the spaces in which people live out their religion in specific ways' (Hurd 2015, p. 38). Religious freedom advocacy is presented as historically specific and divisive in a ffording legitimacy to certain forms of religion and not others. Critical approaches to IRF situate religious freedom advocacy as a 'regime', with a Western-centric understanding of religion, which privileges belief as the main designator of what constitutes religion, and which seeks to prescribe what is meant by belief and unbelief (Bettiza 2019; Castelli 2010; Hurd 2015).

Essentialising or privileging religion as a distinct category restricts the appreciation of identity as anything other than a religious one, when identity is inherently multifaceted and multidimensional. If individuals or communities do not neatly fit into such a categorisation of religion, they risk marginalisation or neglect. When religion is the 'o fficial marker of di fference', a fixed religious identity eclipses 'other modes of belonging' (Hurd 2015, p. 42). In the religious advocacy regime, all issues and events are problematised as religious, rather than recognising the complexities of all situations in historical, social, economic, political and geographic context (Bettiza 2019; Hurd 2015; Sullivan 2005; Mahmood 2015; McAlister 2019). For Bettiza:

... the regime actively contributes to religionizing world politics through mechanisms of categorization. Its institutions, discourses, and practices regularly (re)present and (re)produce a world dominated by religious categories and realities. (Bettiza 2019, p. 92)

In so doing, the regime is able to deflect 'attention away from caste, class, colonial history, economic justice land rights, and other factors' (Hurd 2015, p. 42).

If people are forced into religious categories, what is to become of those who identify with more than one category, or identify with a non-traditional, unprotected group or with no religion at all? When religion is the main determinant of identity, who gets to speak for a particular religious group? When people are categorised by religious belief, then they are incentivised to frame demands or requests for asylum in the language of religious rights, thereby further strengthening the religious freedom advocacy regime's framing schema (Hurd 2013, 2015, pp. 37–64). This contributes to a desecularising trend in international politics, which secularists consider harmful and particularist, in the sense that it universalises an American or Western interpretation of religion, overlooking other causal explanations for events in international politics, and opens up space for all aspects of international politics to be religionised (Bettiza 2019, p. 95).

Further criticism of religious freedom advocacy centres on a perceived Christian bias in the IRF agenda, particularly in terms of its incorporation within US foreign policy strategy. The demand for IRF as a foreign policy strategy, and as the impetus for IRFA, is traceable to concerns about the persecution of Christians in the post-Cold War environment. The identification of specific areas of concern as the remaining communist countries (Vietnam, North Korea, China and Cuba), and Muslim majority countries dovetailed with countries where the United States has ongoing concerns, leading to accusations that a focus on the persecution of Christians was overplayed and co-opted, in order to pursue other US foreign policy goals (Castelli 2007; Hertzke and Shah 2016; Hurd 2015, pp. ix–xii; McAlister 2018, 2019; Moss 2013). The dominance of Christian actors in promoting IRF as activists, advocates, practitioners and drivers of policy in Congress, the OIRF, and the executive is a cause for concern from secularists seeking to re-establish the privatisation of religion, recontextualise understandings of religion away from a focus on belief to one which includes practice, community and

the ethereal, and to prevent an exclusivist conceptualisation of Christian su ffering overshadowing that experienced by other faiths, beliefs and none.

The problem with this argumen<sup>t</sup> is that it does not fully account for the prevalence of religious discrimination faced by others, and it promotes a sense of unique victimization in a context in which a broad variety of religious and ethnic groups are under threat. (McAlister 2019, p. 111)

Secularists have legitimate concerns about the active engagemen<sup>t</sup> by white evangelicals steering IRF discourse. The intimate relationship between conservative white evangelicals and the Republican Party is a contributing factor in the polarisation of the American polity, which also problematises the IRF agenda. The anti-Muslim sentiments and statements expressed by leading figures in the Christian Right, including those involved in the IRF, such as Trump appointees on the USCIRF Gary Bauer, President of American Values, Johnnie Moore, and also Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council and Chair of the USCIRF, who has opposed the construction of mosques and the protection of Islam under the First Amendment (Tashman 2015). Given the prominent position occupied by conservative evangelicals, the concern is that they will pursue an agenda which privileges Christianity, highlighting Muslim majority state human right abuses, while ignoring anti-Muslim discrimination, including travel bans from specified Muslim majority countries, restrictions on refugees and Islamophobia domestically (McAlister 2019, p. 111). The extension of IRF to incorporate Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB) is interpreted as a rhetorical device cloaking the less benign motivations of evangelicals to enable Christians to proselytise in Muslim majority and other countries, where religion is a matter of practice, culture and community, and not individual belief, which can be adopted and disregarded at will:

These views collide with other conceptions of religion that tie religious identity and practice to blood, soil, family, and community, notably in Judaism, Hinduism, and Confucianism, as well as in many Asian and African folk religions and traditions. In most Muslim milieus, while conversion into the faith is encouraged, conversions out of it are heavily discouraged. These understandings of what constitutes a religious person and community are hardly reconcilable with views of religion as easily, rightfully, and freely changeable individual belief. (Bettiza 2019, p. 85)

For conservative evangelicals, IRF does not stand as a distinct foreign policy, but rather, one which places US Christians alongside their religious brethren across the world, many of whom are indeed experiencing real persecution, harassment and discrimination. IRF challenges legal interpretations of the separation of church and state domestically, enabling conservative evangelicals and others to portray themselves as being denied religious freedom when facing censure in the courts and wider society for opposing same sex marriage, challenging LGBTQ+ legislation, opposition to abortion and advocating prayer in schools. In reifying religion in international contexts, critics of IRF are fearful of the policy provides succour for countries, under the guise of IRF, to continue to discriminate and deny rights to other marginalised groups including LGBTQ+ and retard progress on women's rights.

In designating IRF as a key component of US foreign policy strategy, religion is being co-opted to serve national security and the strategic objectives of the United States, rather than an altruism based on genuine concern for the plight of those su ffering persecution on account of their faith. Hurd's objection is that: 'The United States relies on religious actors to secure access to local populations and garner support for American political and strategic objectives in conflict and post-conflict situations' (Hurd 2015, p. 49). The recent track record of US involvement in these situations has been poor. In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, US actions have contributed to greater instability and increased religious persecution. Rather than IRF being seen as a necessary precursor to a positive peace, its close association with US foreign policy calls into question the motivation and the willingness of other countries to be selectively judged and held to account by OIRF and USCIRF reports, with action pursued on the basis of US national interests, rather than the legitimacy of the human rights violation investigated.

### **5. Evaluating the E** ffi**cacy of International Religious Freedom Promotion**

Having considered both the outworking of US IRF advocacy and critiques from IRF advocates and secularist opponents, we are now able to evaluate criticism of IRF and begin to tentatively sugges<sup>t</sup> what an e fficacious IRF strategy would look like. The first critique examined was from the standpoint of e ffectiveness, and presents four criticisms of IRF in practice. The first criticism charges successive administrations with being insu fficiently committed to the task, because the State Department operates with a secularist bias and is ill-disposed towards factoring religious belief and practice into US foreign policy decision making. While this may have been true in the early years of the IRFA, during the Obama and Trump administrations, considerable progress has been made. Foreign Service O fficers have been provided with online religious training programmes, and serve in an environment where religious freedom is increasingly prioritised (Birdsall 2012). The sense of OIRF being marginalised has been arrested through high profile events centring on the OIRF and Ambassador-at-Large Sam Brownback's close working relationship with Pompeo. The ministerials, the UN event on IRF and the establishment of an International Religious Freedom Alliance have moved IRF centre stage. Second, the lackadaisical approach in appointing Ambassadors-at-Large for International Religious Freedom may reflect a lack of due attention to IRF. Obama did not appoint Suzan Johnson Cook until almost the end of his first term, suggesting a disinterest in promoting religious freedom, but then took a further fourteen months to appoint her successor. However, as we have seen, the appointment of David Saperstein provided a new dynamism to the role, and he was supported in the role by Secretary of State Kerry with increased resources. The rabbi's successor Sam Brownback's nomination was delayed through determined opposition by Democrat senators, and did not reflect a lack of engagemen<sup>t</sup> or commitment to IRF by the administration. On the contrary, once the appointment was confirmed, he lost no time in working closely with Secretary of State Pompeo in arranging ministerials to build international support and cooperation in promoting IRF.

Third, the charge that successive administrations failed to consider religious freedom strategically in involving religious actors and encouraging religious plurality in Afghanistan and Iraq when devising constitutions and exit strategies. This criticism is cogent, and reflects a dearth of post conflict planning in both countries, however, this planning failure points to the need for such planning in any future interventions, rather than indicating any ongoing lack of commitment for IRF. Birdsall points out that 'Religious freedom did not receive significant attention in the National Security Strategy or the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. As the Arab Spring unfolded, the Administration could have more vigorously linked religious freedom to democratic reform' (Birdsall 2012, p. 38).

Fourth, critics point to successive administrations' unwillingness to hold countries to account for their actions or inaction. While rhetoric chastising countries for their violations of religious freedom has continued, there remains a wariness about challenging US allies such as Saudi Arabia or India for their poor records in defending religious freedom. While USCIRF will seek to categorise states it considers egregious violators of religious freedom as CPCs, the OIRF will often avoid this categorisation, especially where US national interests are at stake, or where they are optimistic more subtle diplomacy would produce the desired results. USCIRF's 2020 IRF report highlights religious freedom abuses by Burma, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam (USCIRF 2020). Whereas the OIRF has so far not designated India, Russia, Syria and Vietnam as such (OIRF 2019). The State Department did, however, make Pakistan the first new addition since 2016 to its list of CPCs, for severe violations of religious freedom, which had been recommended for such designation by USCIRF since 2002 (USCIRF 2019).

In our examination of the secularist critique of IRF promotion, we observed six specific claims. Firstly, the accusation that IRF is a means of control, a form of governance or regime, which authorises particular forms of politics over others and determines what constitutes legitimate and acceptable religious practices (Hurd 2015; Bettiza 2019). Although it might have been the intention of the IRFA 1998 to make use of US power in a unipolar world to advance US national interests through the imposition of sanctions to control how other countries deal with religion, this has proved impossible to

deliver. Indeed, IRF is a soft rather than a hard power instrument, and in both the Obama and Trump administrations there has been a reluctance to use sanctions to punish IRF miscreants, unless there were other strategic interests at stake. Second, the secularist discourse positing an IRF advocacy regime seeking to essentialise religion with a historically specific Western-centric focus on individual belief and privilege does, if accurate, stand in contrast to more community orientated approaches, where religion is marked by cultural identity, rather than individual beliefs that can be changed or adapted. However, religious freedom as a basic human right for the individual and community is enshrined in the UDHR, ICCPR and Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. This may be a source of regre<sup>t</sup> to secularists seeking to return religion to the private sphere, but here I agree with Robert Joustra that the complaints: 'against religious freedom seem to me complaints about liberalism and political secularism generally' (Joustra 2016, p. 131).

Third, essentialising or privileging religion as a distinct category is seen as problematic, obscuring the complexities of multifaceted disputes. Seeing the persecution of the Rohinga in Myanmar or Uighur in China in religious terms does indeed simplify complex ethnic, economic and social reasons elevating their religious identity as Muslim as the only issue at stake. However, as Brownback explains:

What makes you also want to do it is in the work that I do I see all these conflicts that have religion as a component of them, whether it's the Rohingya being kicked out of Burma. People say, "Well, that's ethnic." And I said, "No. If these guys were Buddhists they wouldn't be getting kicked out of Burma. But they're Muslims." And so you're just seeing so much of a religious component.

When I was in Nigeria, they're saying, "No, it's ethnic and it's regional and it's resource-driven." And all those are pieces to it, but it is also there is a religious component to this.<sup>17</sup>

The real secularist concern is that IRF is part of a process to desecularise international politics and US foreign policy in particular. Religious actors have a vested interest in influencing the policy, and ye<sup>t</sup> this does not negate the e fficacy of IRF, but rather is in tune with contemporary acknowledgement of a post secular world, where it is no longer possible or desirable to seek to contain religion in the private sphere.

Fourthly, the criticism that IRF is biased towards the Christian faith and therefore neglects other religions has a very weak evidential base. Although Christians have made up the majority of USCIRF commissioners, Ambassadors-at-Large, members of the OIRF and Secretaries of State since the IRFA 1998, significant emphasis has been placed on those su ffering persecution of other faiths, including Muslims, Jews, Bahai, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Yazidis, Jehovah's Witnesses and Zoroastrians (OIRF 2019), In Brownback's Special Briefing to the press on IRF in November 2019, the Ambassador-at-Large was accused by a reporter of 'presenting a world in which Muslims are more vulnerable to governmen<sup>t</sup> mistreatment than Christians' to which he replied that he was 'trying to present a world where you've go<sup>t</sup> just a lot of religious-based oppression that's happening.<sup>18</sup> A further secularist concern is that IRF is premised on what they believe to be a false notion of Christian persecution, where claims that Christians are the most persecuted religious grouping is rejected. Such persecution is real, however, and overwhelmingly situated in South Asian countries such as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan, where religious nationalism encourages a Buddhist or Hindu hostility towards other faiths; Muslim-majority countries; residual communist countries, including Vietnam, North Korea and China; and authoritarian states, including, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Myanmar, Uzbekistan,

<sup>17</sup> Samuel D. Brownback, Special Briefing. Washington, D.C. 21 November 2019. Available at https://www.state.gov/ ambassador-at-large-for-international-religious-freedom-samuel-brownback/ accessed 4 May 2020.

<sup>18</sup> Samuel D. Brownback, Special Briefing. Washington, D.C. 21 November 2019. Available at https://www.state.gov/ ambassador-at-large-for-international-religious-freedom-samuel-brownback/ accessed 4 May 2020.

Turkmenistan and Belarus (Allen 2013; Fox 2006, 2016; Marshall 2016; Open Doors 2020; Pew Research Center 2019; Shortt 2013; Wolf 2011).

Christians persecuted in these countries experience churches being destroyed, imprisonment, torture, abduction, forced marriage and even death. While critics of IRF are right to point out that there is no hierarchy of su ffering, and that believers of other faiths also su ffer persecution, even that there may be multiple causes for su ffering persecution, nonetheless, the extensive persecution of Christians, largely overlooked in the media and public discourse, is a growing cause for concern, according to the Bishop of Truro's Independent Review for the British Foreign Secretary (Mounstephen 2019). A further concern for secularists is that IRF enables Christians to proselytise in Muslim majority countries. Successive administrations have been explicit that this freedom also extends to other faiths, and that to seek to dissuade or prevent people sharing their faith leads to the persecution of those dissenting from the norm within that community.

Fifth, the charge that IRF policy is driven largely by white conservative evangelicals is self-evident within the current administration, several, though not all, USCIRF commissioners, and leading supporters in Congress. It is perhaps worth pointing out, however, that the Ambassador-at-Large is Catholic, and his predecessor was Jewish, the President is not evangelical, and previous members of the OIRF would not fit neatly into the designation of conservative evangelicals, and that IRF has been and remains a bipartisan undertaking. However, undoubtedly Mike Pompeo, a committed Christian who openly discusses and shares his faith, has a close working relationship with fellow conservative evangelicals and Vice President Mike Pence. No previous Secretary of State, since the introduction of IRFA, has been as open about their faith while in o ffice, and as committed to promoting IRF as an outworking of not just US foreign policy but as a faith conviction.<sup>19</sup> The Trump administration enjoys a symbiotic relationship with white conservative evangelicals, consistently his chief supporters since winning the Republican nomination in 2016. This is a concern for liberals and secularists alike, fearful that IRF promotion, spearheaded by evangelicals, becomes part of America's on-going culture wars, and threatens progress on reproductive, gender and LGBTQ rights around the world. However, the internationalisation of IRF under Saperstein and Brownback, with backing from Secretaries Kerry and Pompeo, dilutes the Americanness of IRF and incorporates religious freedom alongside other human rights.

Finally, the criticism of IRF being a vehicle to co-opt religious actors to deliver US foreign policy objectives is the most prescient. It is di fficult to persuade domestic audiences of the necessity or desirability of spending resources on international a ffairs for diplomacy, aid or democracy promotion, without it being contextualised as being in the US national interest. Nations are rarely altruistic, and seek di fferent tools to enhance their security, prosperity and influence. IRF as a national security strategy is inherently problematic, as other competing interests can trump concerns over promoting religious freedom. It is far easier to talk and act tough and see positive results on religious freedom with smaller countries dependent on US trade or security, than with regional powers, such as India, China or Saudi Arabia, where trade may well have more importance, and they are less likely to take kindly to interference in their internal a ffairs (Teater 2020). The US has used CPC status and records on religious freedom to castigate political opponents and rivals, including North Korea, China and Iran. Religious actors have been used to highlight human rights abuses in such countries, undermining them while also projecting American soft power as respecters of religious freedom.

IRF is a long-term project, which, over the past two decades, has brought a few tangible gains, such as Sudan's transitional constitution ensuring the freedom of belief and worship and Uzbekistan, improving religious freedom (USCIRF 2020). Numerous prisoners of conscience have been released through a combination of US pressure and diplomacy, including Pastor Andrew Brunson from Turkey.

<sup>19</sup> Michael R. Pompeo. Being a Christian Leader. Speech to American Association of Christian Counsellors, Nashville, Tennessee, 11 October 2019. Available at https://www.state.gov/being-a-christian-leader/ accessed 1 April 2020.

The most significant achievement of IRF advocates, however, has been bringing IRF to the forefront not just of US foreign policy thinking, but also to an international alliance committed to working with all faiths and countries in advancing IRF as a universal value. Religious persecution continues across much of the world, but in establishing a norm of religious freedom and being an effective voice for those suffering religious persecution, there is potential to improve the lived experience of millions of people of faith across the world.
