RFI President Emeritus Tom Farr and RFI President David Trimble co-authored an op-ed for The Hill this week on the implications of a recent State Department reorganization for U.S. international religious freedom policy. They write:

It is both ironic and tragic that the Department of State ​has ​​implemented​​ a massive reorganization, ​which may have troubling implications for ​America’s international religious freedom policy.

As recently approved, the reorganization subordinates the International Religious Freedom Office to the agenda and operational authority of the human rights bureau, foreshadowing a return of religious liberty to its former bureaucratic isolation.​​​ ​​ ​​​ ​ ​ ​​ ​

If this move stands, it ​may​ harm international religious freedom policy during the Trump administration, and provide a dangerous precedent that the next progressive Secretary of State will certainly exploit.

Here’s the irony: In his first term, Trump issued an executive order accurately declaring that religious freedom is a “moral and national security imperative,” and ordering steps to strengthen America’s largely ineffective international religious freedom policy.

That policy, which was established in 1998 by the International Religious Freedom Act, had languished within the State Department’s liberal bureaucracy since its passage.

It began to flourish under Trump’s international religious freedom ambassador, Sam Brownback, when the International Religious Freedom Office was elevated out of the bureaucracy and finally given a degree of authority and responsibility commensurate with its foreign policy significance.

The tragedy is that the vast potential of this policy, both for the global victims of cruel religious persecution and for the national security of the United States, may again go unfulfilled ​with ​the International Religious Freedom Office and the ambassador ​returned to ​​their former station within the State Department’s vast bureaucracy​.

Read the full article: “Religious Freedom is at a Crossroads in U.S. Foreign Policy.“