{"id":234,"date":"2008-10-28T20:40:32","date_gmt":"2008-10-28T20:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/international-religious-freedo.html"},"modified":"2008-10-28T20:40:32","modified_gmt":"2008-10-28T20:40:32","slug":"international-religious-freedo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/international-religious-freedo.html","title":{"rendered":"International Religious Freedom: The orphan issue of 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amid the final campaign push, the 10th anniversary of the nation’s landmark covenant on international religious freedom passed largely unnoticed on Monday. That is more than a shame. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president who proved to be better promoting this issue than his ostensibly faith-friendly successor, George W. Bush.  <\/p>\n

This issue is not only one of the pressing moral concerns of the day, but good for national security, as well–and smart politics, if either campaign had noticed. The issue is one I have spent a good deal of time researching, and I wrote about IRFA and the lost opportunity in an op-ed for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey<\/a> on Sunday. An excerpt: <\/p>\n

\n

For Obama, the benefit is obvious. Despite his church-going, Bible-quoting bona fides, the Democrat continues to lag behind McCain with regular worshipers, especially the white evangelical Christians whom Obama would like to peel away from McCain’s Republican base. Displaying an understanding of the varied travails of believers in different regions could also burnish Obama’s foreign policy credentials. <\/p>\n

For his part, McCain is looking to put daylight between himself and George W. Bush, and — ironically, given the president’s faith-based rhetoric — experts and advocates in the field give Bush mixed grades at best on promoting religious freedom overseas. (The Beijing Olympics was the most recent, and most visible, disappointment.) <\/p>\n

At the same time, McCain could buff his credentials with a religious right that is increasingly key to his election hopes. Moreover, attack ads haven’t been working for McCain, and embracing this issue would be a chance for him to showcase the kind of world leader he could be and has been: One of McCain’s acknowledged legacies is his push to normalize U.S.-Vietnam relations. Yet religious repression endures there, and addressing it could be a convincing way for McCain to connect his expertise with his experience as a POW. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the piece I also cite Georgetown scholar-in-residence and former diplomat Tom Farr, and his excellent new book, “World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty Is Vital to American National Security.”<\/a> <\/span>Read an in-depth essay by Farr at The Immanent Frame<\/a>. <\/p>\n

And let’s hope that whoever wins on Tuesday, they’ll appreciate the advantages and virtues of promoting religious rights abroad. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid the final campaign push, the 10th anniversary of the nation’s landmark covenant on international religious freedom passed largely unnoticed on Monday. That is more than a shame. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}