William James once quipped that “in this age of toleration,” no one “will ever try actively to interfere with our religious faith, provided we enjoy it quietly with our friends and do not make a public nuisance of it.”

Unfortunately -- at least for the privatizers and the secularists -- religion is a very public matter for a simple reason: most religions make definitive moral claims that implicate the common good. So says Rabbi David Novak in his new book about religious liberty, why it is endangered, and why it should be protected.

His is not, however, a book about attacks on religious freedom in Saudi Arabia or China. It is about liberal democracies such as the United States and Canada, where religious actors and institutions are increasingly vulnerable because of their public dissent to emerging laws and norms on issues like same-sex marriage.

Novak, a Professor of Jewish Studies and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, will discuss the perils and the remedies - including the need to ground democratic religious liberty once again (as did America's founders) in divine law.

Readers of APP who are interested in attending this discussion, to be held this Thursday, January 21, at Georgetown's Berkley Center, may read about the event and rsvp here.

Your scribe will moderate what promises to be a lively evening.

Despite Barak Obama's conspicuous references to religious freedom in his Cairo speech and during the U.S.-China strategic talks, the President has not yet announced a nominee for the post of Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom (IRF), a position established by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.

Meanwhile, Obama's nominee for Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), Mike Posner, may become de facto head of the religious freedom operation at State. IRF supporters hope that the IRF ambassador's nomination will emerge soon so that the issue will begin to get some sustained high level attention at Foggy Bottom.

Unfortunately, indifference to the IRF nomination is not new.

After George W. Bush took office, it took only 6 months for his DRL assistant secretary to arrive at State, but 16 months for his IRF ambassador. In the interim  Secretary of State Colin Powell seriously considered "double hatting" the DRL assistant secretary as IRF ambassador, which would have effectively killed the IRF initiative.

In the end, thanks to pressure from Rep Chris Smith and others, Powell did not do this. Instead he simply followed the precedent set by his predecessor, Madeleine Albright. When the IRF ambassador, John Hanford, finally arrived at State, he was placed under the DRL assistant secretary (despite the fact that an ambassador at large was, in the Department's nomenclature, senior to an assistant secretary).

All this meant that the office and the function were effectively isolated at Foggy Bottom during the Bush years, with little impact on American foreign policy. At the time there was little attention to this problem by Congress, the administration, or the media.  

Fortunately, that is beginning to change. Some of these issues are explored in a current "America Abroad" radio program on U.S. International Religious Freedom policy, which includes interviews by Ray Suarez of earlier IRF ambassadors and your scribe (available here).  Moreover, the administration is said to be conducting a review of religion and foreign policy, and is paying attention to policy recommendations such as those published by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and the Center on Faith and International Affairs. Another set of recommendations will come in October from the Chicago World Affairs Council.

Supporters of religious freedom should pay close attention to the Obama administration's nominee, where he or she is placed in the State Department, and whether the President's fine words on religious liberty have concrete policy consequences. International religious freedom is more than a humanitarian matter that can safely be placed in the diplomatic backwater at State. It is a subject that implicates the fundamental interests of the American people, including their interest in national security and the defeat of Islamist terrorism. As such it should receive a much higher priority than it has to date.

[photo: state.gov]

At the end of his speech he noted that there were also disagreements, about which he had this to say:

"Just as we respect China's ancient and remarkable culture, its remarkable achievements, we also strongly believe that the religion and culture of all peoples must be respected and protected, and that all people should be free to speak their minds. And that includes ethnic and religious minorities in China, as surely as it includes minorities within the United States."

Once again, as he did in his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama has given prominent mention to the issue of international religious freedom. This is a welcome and unexpected development, for which he and his advisers deserve credit. But thus far his words are just that -- "prominent mentions" without policy significance. Secretary Clinton did not touch on the issue of human rights, let alone religious freedom, in her speech to the plenary session or in her July 27 Wall St. Journal editorial with Tim Geithner. In her closing remarks July 28, all she could manage was an amemic: "In areas where we do not always agree, such as human rights, we had candid and respectful exchanges."

The danger here is twofold. First, the Obama admininstration risks having its paeans to religious freedom be viewed abroad -- and within Foggy Bottom -- as an ad hoc rhetorical device to appease domestic constituencies. So understood, U.S. international religious freedom policy can safely be ignored by American diplomats and our "strategic partners" overseas.

Second, the administration is treating the subject of religious freedom as if it had nothing to do with "the real world" of economics and politics. When she wrote of China's need to "take additional steps to lay the foundation for balanced and sustainable growth,"  Secretary Clinton might well have made a critical link: without religious freedom, neither China nor any other country with large numbers of religious believers is likely to achieve sustained economic growth and political stability. The administration would do well to consult the work of sociologists Brian Grim (available here or here with subscription) and Roger Finke, whose studies, derived in part from State Department reports, make this link clear.

In sum, the United States should move its policy of advancing international religious freedom into the mainstream. It is not a "nice to have" humanitarian issue to be shoved aside when more "strategic" imperatives (the environment and trade) loom. Religious liberty is intimately connected to all human affairs, including the defeat of those who, in the President's well-crafted words,  "would murder innocents." It should be treated as such. 

Since 1998 every president has had a statutory mandate to advance international religious freedom as part of U.S. foreign policy. Hampered by State Department foot dragging, neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration compiled much of a record in this area. This has left a considerable opportunity for the Obamites but -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- there is little sign that the Hilary Clinton State Department is taking religious liberty any more seriously than its predecessors. Not yet, at least.

In his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama correctly identified religious freedom as one of the "sources of tension" between the U.S. and Muslim-majority countries, and even mentioned Egypt's Coptic minority. Moreover, this section of the speech followed one on democracy, a sequence that at least permitted the inference that the two -- religious freedom and democracy -- are linked in the President's mind. But my friends at Foggy Bottom tell me there is no sign of diplomatic follow through on either issue.

And, while many other senior State positions have been filled, the post of Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom has not. When it comes, however, that nomination will tell us a great deal about the administration's intentions. If the ambassasor is someone with a seminary degree (or the equivalent) but no foreign policy experience, that may signal a greater desire to shore up a domestic constituency than to advance religious freedom abroad.