Friday, 21 November 2003 00:00
Christians have often been portrayed strictly as missionaries complicit with colonial persecutors, rather than as victims of religious persecution. Why do you think this has been the case, and is it changing?
I am Roman Catholic, so in my scholarship I probably come at this issue somewhat more sympathetically than someone outside the Christian community. What has struck me as I've attended meetings and events over the years is how un-patronizing mission activity has become, and the fact that foreign Christians are often featured as major speakers — heroes, role models, Christians who have suffered for their faith and shown the cost of discipleship…. For example, in 2000 the Billy Graham Association had a big meeting in Amsterdam, and the big story was not about Billy Graham, but rather about one local pastor in Papua, New Guinea who had built up 300 churches in 20 years. That changed my whole image of missions.
America is certainly sending a lot of missionaries abroad, but most of the missionary activity is now being done by indigenous groups. Some are even coming back to the United States to evangelize to us! For example, a Nigerian group is coming here to evangelize Houston and Dallas. So I think that the old picture in our heads that many of us carry of the white missionary following on the heels of colonial power is just becoming more and more outdated. It is more of a stereotype than a reality. Nowadays, in order to appreciate what is going on and get a sense of what is on the horizon, you must change the picture in your head of what a missionary really looks like.
You have recently published on the topic of evangelical Christians' international civic engagement. What are the most important examples and practical implications?
Actually, there was a surprisingly good piece in the New York Times on October 26th, which dealt with Evangelicals in regards to two issues. One is the major peace agreement signed by the parties of Sudan, potentially ending a twenty-year civil war. That would not have happened without the leavening influence of Christians and Jews and others involved in this issue. I think the agreement is absolutely dramatic because this was an issue that was largely off the radar screen of the elite press, of human rights groups, and certainly of the foreign policy agenda. The Bush administration made real efforts because the groups involved brought real pressure, and had a demonstrative impact on the ground in Sudan, a nation with probably one of the worst human rights situations in the world.
The other good example is the human trafficking issue. Young girls, women, and others in various forms of bondage — particularly forced prostitution — have literally been set free because of the efforts of Christians. The efforts of the State Department and of NGOs like International Justice Mission have resulted in a crackdown on trafficking crime syndicates. Girls have been freed and placed under care of Christian charitable organizations. This is real, tangible policy impacting real people's lives.
The issue that initially drew evangelical Christians into the international arena was, of course, the concern about persecution of Christians, which is a serious problem. This drew them into alliances with other faith groups like Jews, Buddhists, and so forth. But there was always this lingering suspicion of engagement by Evangelicals, or Christians more generally, because of the assumption that Evangelicals may be trying to promote missionary activity or trying to create open spaces for proselytizing. So their activity could be stereotyped or stigmatized as self-interested rather than truly concerned with human rights. But it was because these groups were drawn into international concerns over religious freedom that they got involved in other issues like Sudan and North Korea.
Many scholars and commentators are belatedly coming to appreciate the rising importance of evangelical Christianity in the public life of Third World countries. What do you think the implications of these trends are (and/or should be) for the worldwide Body of Christ's engagement in international affairs?
It is estimated that upwards of 70% of Evangelicals and 60% of all Christians live outside of North America and Europe. I argue that the underlying force behind that is the churches' globalization. Obviously there has always been a charitable/justice impulse in the church, but the fact that Christianity is now largely located in the Third World or "Global South" demographically, and that the church is growing so rapidly in places where the people are poor, persecuted, and suffer violence, naturally filters back to the more comfortable churches in the West. Not just stories of persecution, but also stories about AIDS, poverty, violence, and stories of the kinds of extremities people deal with in the developing world are now more a part of our conscience than they once were.
I know that some secular groups were surprised by the Evangelical support for international debt relief for Third World countries, as advocated by the Jubilee Campaign. There was a major Congressional bill, which appropriated over $400 million for debt relief. The leader of that effort was a liberal Episcopalian who very much lauded the worked of conservative Evangelicals in supporting that legislation. So that issue, as well as the AIDS issue, have left liberal and secular groups pleasantly surprised at Evangelical support and action.
In your chapter in the book, The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups & U.S. Foreign Policy, you pointed out, using religious persecution as a case study, that often Christianity's diversity can undermine its solidarity in working for a single cause. Is a united campaign for this or other issues possible despite persistent culture wars?
I have concluded that it is not possible to have a totally united campaign amongst Christians. But you can get close. On the domestic front, you had close to that with the battle over the judicial narrowing of religious freedom in the United States. A lot of groups have worked together to try to reestablish a generous religious freedom guarantee domestically, and that process made them more keenly aware of both friendships and partnerships that are possible and necessary both here and abroad.
But even the seemingly universal appeal of promoting religious freedom was quite complicated when extended to the international front. How do you do it? Can you do it? Will you create unintended consequences? There were fierce, legitimate debates about that. I think there is less debate about that now because there is a greater sense that the new law [the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA)] is enabling us to promote religious freedom and that we can all agree this is valuable. Maybe we haven't achieved as much as we wanted, but I have a feeling that, right now, there is probably more unanimity on promoting religious freedom as a specific issue.
Those who care about religious freedom sometimes disagree on the best method to advance the cause, with some preferring a more "punishment" oriented approach (exposing, confronting, sanctioning, etc.) and some preferring a more "promotion" oriented approach (quiet diplomacy, economic engagement, etc.). How would you advise Christians who are trying to evaluate this debate?
There still is a disagreement on how to go about this. Some months ago in Christianity Today there was a debate that included your own Robert Seiple. His perspective was one that advocated a more quiet, diplomatic approach, and there are others who would say what is needed is more exposure and pressure by media and other sources….I think that the various methods are complementary, and in some ways that is what I say in my book. I think it is a false dichotomy, and I know it is a cliché, but I think that the good cop/bad cop routine actually does work when it comes to diplomacy.
If the Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom or the Secretary of State or some other U.S. official is meeting with foreign officials, and is pressing them on their religious freedom record, they are doing the quiet diplomatic routine. That has more clout if the Ambassador can say that "we have got this Commission [the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom] made up of people who are really tough, and they like to really expose this stuff and make public announcements, and if I can't get some support out of you folks quietly then there's going to be some bad publicity." It seems to me that that is what works, so I think they can be complementary as long as the actors work together.
In a recent letter to the U.S. House of Representatives, Nina Shea (Director of the Center for Religious Freedom) argued that the drafting of a new constitution in Iraq, which establishes Islam as the state religion, is not ensuring real freedom of religion at all. She connects freedom of religion to freedom of expression, and claims the issue of religion will be the main idea leading into other human rights issues for the region. In your view, what should religious freedom mean in Iraq?
The same issue has been raised, in fact, about Afghanistan and its constitution not really providing any guarantees of religious freedom. There are real dangers here. Yet there is no inherent incompatibility between recognizing a dominant religious tradition (even possibly declaring it as the state religion) and religious freedom. I mean, the Church of England is technically still the state church of Britain, and it does have certain privileges. But the English Constitution also guarantees the freedom of other churches to operate. There are societies that have either recognized some form of dominant tradition, or established it in some sort of rhetorical, official way yet still provides generous guarantees of religious freedom in a free, civil society.
I think what Nina Shea and the Commission members are concerned about in both Iraq and Afghanistan is that those constitutions are not just providing some vague or general acknowledgement of the Islamic heritage, but that they are going to be establishing an Islamic culture that discriminates against other faiths or even other expressions of Islam. And that would be in their mind (and mine too), tragic. This is the opportunity to establish a truly pluralistic guarantee of religious freedom within Islamic countries.
