{"id":6589,"date":"2021-09-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2021\/09\/01\/freedoms-envoy\/"},"modified":"2021-09-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T00:00:00","slug":"freedoms-envoy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2021\/09\/01\/freedoms-envoy\/","title":{"rendered":"Freedom\u2019s Envoy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Brownback has a habit of defying expectations. His childhood on his parents\u2019 farm in the tiny community of Parker, Kansas\u2014population 277\u2014 offered few hints he would someday represent his state in the U.S. Congress, first in the House of Representatives and later in the Senate, before coming home to serve as the state\u2019s forty-sixth governor. As a Republican leader on the national stage, Brownback became known for his blunt, folksy style, uncompromising conservative Christian ethos, and hard-charging political approach. And so in 2017, when then President Donald Trump nominated Governor Brownback for the key diplomatic post of U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, many Democrats and liberal pundits protested he wasn\u2019t the right person for the job. When it comes to political skills, said one commentator, \u201cBrownback is, as Winston Churchill said of John Foster Dulles, \u2018a bull who carries a china shop with him.\u2019\u201d1<\/sup><\/p>\n

Yet during his three years as ambassador, Brownback defied typecasting, earning praise from many across the political spectrum, including his predecessor Rabbi David Saperstein, who served in the role under President Obama. Brownback led an ambitious, energetic, and religiously inclusive effort aimed at launching what he called a \u201cglobal religious freedom movement.\u201d He convened annual ministerials to advance religious freedom, which drew high-level government delegations from 100 countries along with more than 1,000 leaders of civil society organizations. He was also a key player in forming the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, which now counts 32 countries as members. <\/p>\n

In a recent interview with Liberty<\/i> editor Bettina Krause, Ambassador Brownback reflected back on his tenure at the State Department and the role of religious freedom advocacy within U.S. foreign policy. <\/p>\n

Bettina Krause:<\/strong> It seems like good timing that our conversation is happening the morning after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken released the State Department\u2019s annual report on international religious freedom. In recent years, it\u2019s your office that\u2019s been responsible for producing this report. I\u2019ve seen some press this morning suggesting that President Biden\u2019s administration is downgrading the State Department\u2019s focus on religious freedom\u2014that it\u2019s casting religious freedom as a \u201ccoequal\u201d human right rather than a foundational human right. How do you see it? Is this just a question of semantics, or is it something more?<\/i><\/p>\n

Ambassador Sam Brownback:<\/strong> It\u2019s more than semantics, but it\u2019s not as bad as people play it. The current administration is going back to an old approach to religious freedom, and it\u2019s the same approach taken by much of Western Europe. This approach says that all human rights are coequal, and no one right should be broken out or seen as more foundational than others. <\/p>\n

But what we did is to focus on religious freedom. We did this because we believed the human rights project, in general, was in decline; everyone had started throwing everything into the bucket labeled \u201chuman rights.\u201d And so, there are now things being labeled as \u201chuman rights\u201d that people simply can\u2019t agree on. For instance, I\u2019m pro-life, and so when they say a woman\u2019s right to choose is a human right, I\u2019m saying, \u201cWell, you lost me on that one. I don\u2019t agree.\u201d <\/p>\n

What we did was to return the idea of human rights to what was in the original United Nations Declaration of 1948, because the human rights listed there had global agreement. Then we said that the right to religious freedom is so foundational, it has been so misused and abused, and it affects so many people in the world, that we simply have to get this one right. It\u2019s like getting your cornerstone right; if we get it right, the rest of the building will be strong. But if we get it wrong, the rest of the building is going to be off. So we elevated religious freedom in that sense of calling it foundational. We believed that in working to get religious freedom right, it would inevitably help the rest of these human rights\u2014such as freedom of assembly and freedom of speech and so on\u2014to also flourish.<\/p>\n

But now the left has said, \u201cWe don\u2019t like the hierarchy of rights approach because that means you\u2019re excluding things like abortion.\u201d Secretary Blinken has said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to stand for religious freedom like we have in the past\u2014as one of many other rights.\u201d So they\u2019re going back to the old model, which I think was harmful to the human rights movement around the world, but it\u2019s not as disastrous as some people see it.<\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> The fact that the U.S. State Department is required to issue this annual religious freedom report actually goes back to 1998, to a piece of legislation that you helped usher through Congress when you were a senator from Kansas.2<\/sup> It seems, then, that prioritizing religious freedom is firmly baked into U.S. foreign policy. Is that right? <\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> Yes, and the importance of religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy has only grown through the years. When we first proposed the International Religious Freedom bill a number of people didn\u2019t want to involve religious freedom in foreign policy because they said it\u2019s getting too close to the First Amendment establishment clause language\u2014the prohibition against establishing a religion. But Madeline Albright, who was secretary of state then, said, \u201cNo, I think this is all right.\u201d And so, it edged across the line, but there was still a lot of discomfort with the topic. <\/p>\n

Over time, though, it\u2019s been recognized more and more that religion is absolutely central to so many issues. If we\u2019re ever going to get peace in the Middle East, for instance, we\u2019ve got to engage the religious actors. Previously, religion and religious issues were always held at arm\u2019s length.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also now a growing recognition that genocides are often centered on the mistreatment of a religious minority. Yazidis, Shia Muslims, and Christians were targeted by ISIS in northern Iraq and Syria. The Rohingya Muslims are the target of Buddhist nationalists in Myanmar. The current fighting in Nigeria is primarily militant Muslim groups against Christians. And so there\u2019s this growing understanding that religion is an important piece for understanding and engagement. It\u2019s my hope that we\u2019ll continue to keep growing in this field and that our aid programs will expand support for religious minorities. <\/p>\n

I would also like to see us going into places where groups like ISIS and Boko Haram have claimed religious authority; where they say, \u201cWe\u2019re the religious guys, and we have the correct interpretation of the Quran.\u201d Rather than just conceding the field to ISIS, we in the West can help facilitate debate and discussion in these places. We need to hear the voices of Muslim clerics who say, instead, \u201cYou can\u2019t claim that the Quran says to kill anybody who disagrees with you. That\u2019s just not here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> As you\u2019re speaking, I\u2019m reminded of a narrative gaining ascendence in some circles, which says religion itself is the problem. There\u2019s a suspicion that strongly held religious belief of any kind is the real source of violence and persecution. How would you respond to that?<\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> I would say it\u2019s the misuse of religion that has been the source of a great deal of conflict. Most Muslims in the world don\u2019t agree with Boko Haram or ISIS. In our own history here in the United States, we\u2019ve had the Ku Klux Klan, which claimed to be a Christian group. Yet it was not Christian. Fundamental for Christians is seeing every person as a dignified individual, a beautiful child of the living God, regardless of their skin color, their ethnicity, their beliefs, or anything else. But the misuse of religion, or I should say the opportunistic use of religion, has contributed to a lot of conflict in regions such as the Balkans, northern Iraq, and in many other places. But at the same time, religion is also part of the answer, too. Religion can and should be part of the equation for peace. We can\u2019t ignore the positive power of religion.  <\/p>\n

A few years ago I cohosted with the president of Albania, a summit in the Balkans on religion as an instrument of peace. I mean, this is an area of the world that\u2019s used religion for war for thousands of years, but they\u2019re all tired of fighting each other. They now have a process of reconciliation in place where you admit your past wrongs, you own up to them, and you ask for forgiveness so you can move forward. Just as a sidebar, I think we in the United States need to do that with Native Americans and African Americans, because we took the land from them, we broke treaties, we spilled innocent blood, and we enslaved a group of people. We always try to skip the step of admitting we did something wrong and asking for forgiveness, and instead we just immediately go to paying money.<\/p>\n

But this doesn\u2019t get to the root of the problem if we never admit what we\u2019ve done or ask forgiveness for doing it. It doesn\u2019t solve the problem, but admitting our wrong can help finally lance the boil and allow healing to begin.<\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> The office you led at the State Department has sometimes been criticized for taking a mainly \u201cfinger-wagging\u201d approach to countries violating religious freedom. In your annual report you were required to list \u201ccountries of particular concern.\u201d In a way it\u2019s a \u201cnaming and shaming\u201d approach. And the countries that are named each year clearly feel deep resentment when they\u2019re called out within the international community and reprimanded by the U.S. government. How effective do you think this is as a tool for promoting religious freedom around the world? <\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> I think this approach has its limitations. That\u2019s why we began instead to focus more on helping countries understand why<\/i> it\u2019s in their best interest to be religiously free and to protect their religious minorities. We started reaching out to countries and saying, \u201cIf you want to grow your economy\u201d\u2014and most countries do want to grow their economy\u2014\u201cyou can\u2019t just require that everybody be a Sunni Muslim.\u201d Why? Because it\u2019s going to limit the pool of people who can participate in the economy, it\u2019s going to limit the amount of capital that can be attracted into the country, and it\u2019s going to lead to conflict. It\u2019s also a security threat, because if you label everyone who\u2019s outside a certain religious group as \u201cthe enemy,\u201d then perhaps they\u2019re eventually going to work out ways to start fighting back.<\/i><\/p>\n

We now have clear data showing that the more open an economy and the more protection given to religious freedom, the more that economy grows. The data also shows that the more you protect your religious minorities, the fewer security issues you\u2019ll have. So we started saying to countries, \u201cIt is in your best interest to do this for yourselves.\u201d And we\u2019ve now seen countries such as Uzbekistan take hold of that understanding and begin to change. Just last year they released 2,000 religious prisoners and prisoners of conscience. In the same way, Sudan, which has been a pariah state, has now said, \u201cWe want to have a more open society.\u201d <\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> There have been a number of countries\u2014including Sudan and Uzbekistan\u2014which, during your tenure as ambassador, started taking these steps toward protecting religious and other rights. Yet your office has sometimes been criticized for praising these countries, which obviously still have a long way to go. They\u2019re taking \u201cbaby steps,\u201d but they\u2019re clearly not yet providing a democratic utopia for their citizens! How did you calibrate your engagement with governments that some would still see as repressive?<\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> This is difficult, but I\u2019m one who believes in relationships, and that life moves at the speed of relationships. If you have a bigger bandwidth within a relationship, you can move more information and data; when you have a smaller bandwidth, you move a lot less. And so I think we should build relationships with these governments. I\u2019ve been working with the Uzbeks, off and on, for 20 years. I carried the first Silk Road Strategy Act,3<\/sup> which was my first big bill when I was in the Senate in 1998. I\u2019ve traveled back and forth at different times to Uzbekistan, working with them, and so there was a trust that had built up. When I got into this job [as ambassador], I met with the Uzbek ambassador and said, \u201cYou guys ought to be the poster child for how you transition from an old Soviet police-style state to one that has basic human rights and an open society.\u201d Because I had that relationship, they knew I wasn\u2019t lecturing them, but I actually believed in their nation. And so last year when they took steps\u2014such as letting 2,000 people out of prison\u2014I\u2019m going to say \u201cGood!\u201d And I\u2019m going to praise a country such as Sudan for repealing its apostasy law. This is a big deal in a society such as Sudan that\u2019s very traditional. I\u2019m amazed at what they did.<\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> Yes, and it\u2019s even more stunning in light of the fact that some other Muslim-majority countries\u2014such as Pakistan\u2014seem to be moving in the other direction. In Pakistan there are some who say that even life sentence for blasphemy is not sufficient; the death penalty should be mandatory. <\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> And I think that reflects the growth of the relationship between Pakistan and China, and the decline of the one between Pakistan and the United States. I\u2019ve worked with the Pakistanis for years, and they were not always as favorable toward China. But as the U.S. relationship with India grew, it declined with Pakistan. And Pakistan, instead of being engaged with the West, shimmied over toward China, which has a closed society. China doesn\u2019t believe in individual human rights\u2014it believes in community rights, which are established by the state. It\u2019s not surprising, then, that Pakistan recently blocked all Ahmadi Muslim literature from being accessed online. Like China, Pakistan has a firewall around the Internet. This is what I mean about the importance of relationships. <\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> You mentioned China, and it seems to me that we\u2019re entering a new era in international religious freedom challenges, in part because China is exporting not just its ideas but also its technology. As you look to the future, what alarms you? What gives you sleepless nights?<\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> The use of technology really concerns me. In my job [as ambassador], China was my target number one. And that\u2019s not because they\u2019re worst in the world on religious persecution. North Korea, Eritrea, and a handful of other countries are even worse. But China is developing new technological systems with artificial intelligence, facial recognition, ubiquitous cameras in public spaces, the ability to track everybody\u2019s cell phone traffic, and genetic sampling. They\u2019re going to be able to isolate people of faith with the use of social credit scores. You may not be thrown in jail, you may not be shot, but you\u2019ll be isolated within the economy and society. Anybody who calls you will get your same low social credit score; you\u2019ll be excluded from going to schools or traveling.<\/p>\n

The issue I\u2019m really watching now, and one I\u2019m deeply concerned about, is China\u2019s digitizing of all their money. Once they do that, if they pull that off, they\u2019ll be able to track every financial transaction in the country. So if they don\u2019t like you, if they decide Seventh-day Adventists are bad people, it\u2019s a turn of the switch, click of the button, and you no longer have any access to money. <\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> As I\u2019ve read about your career\u2014in Congress and as governor of Kansas\u2014it\u2019s striking to me how often you\u2019ve engaged with issues of international religious freedom, even while you\u2019ve served in roles that are primarily domestically focused. What initially sparked this interest in you? Where did that come from?<\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> I had the good fortune of having cancer in 1995. It was a relatively simple one, I didn\u2019t have to do radiation or chemo, but it really grabbed my attention. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen\u2014if you\u2019re on top of it or not, or if this is going to be the end. And I had to ask myself, \u201cAm I happy with how I\u2019ve lived my life?\u201d As I looked back, I wasn\u2019t. I had given in to earthly things. And so I said, \u201cLord, my life is Yours. Now whatever You want to do, I\u2019ll sign up, and let\u2019s go.\u201d And that was very liberating in one sense.<\/p>\n

I remember the chaplain of the Senate giving a Bible study a year or two later, and he asked, \u201cHow many constituents do each of you have?\u201d Now, if you\u2019re a senator, you know exactly how many constituents you have, and you know what groups are broken up into and what it will take to keep you at 50 percent plus one. So, everyone\u2014going around the group\u2014gives numbers. And the chaplain said, \u201cWell, may I suggest to you that you actually just have one constituent, and that\u2019s God. And if He\u2019s happy, everything\u2019s going to work out. And if He isn\u2019t, there\u2019s going to be real problems.\u201d And I thought, That\u2019s a great idea, that\u2019s a wonderful way of looking at things. That\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do. I\u2019m going to have a constituency of one<\/i>. And so I started saying, \u201cOK, I\u2019ve got one constituent, and He\u2019s a really good one. I wonder what He\u2019s interested in. Well, I know He\u2019s interested in the poor, I know He\u2019s the author of life, and I know He\u2019s interested in people\u2019s souls as paramount.\u201d And that really grew my focus in these areas. I remember about six months after I was into this project, thinking, I wonder if you can get reelected with one happy constituent!<\/i> And in fact, my poll numbers had gone up in that period of time. <\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> Well, that\u2019s one of the most interesting political strategies I\u2019ve ever heard! <\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> It\u2019s a delightful one. I get off track with it sometimes, I get nervous, I get worried about this or that. As a guiding philosophy it\u2019s hard, but it\u2019s also simple and it\u2019s beautiful, and I sleep well at night.<\/p>\n

Krause:<\/strong> When the Senate was considering your nomination as ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, some critics were saying, \u201cHe\u2019s too Christian for this role; he\u2019ll come at this too much from a certain mindset.\u201d But yet some of those same critics have since lauded your advocacy for people of all and any faiths. Was this idea of the importance of religious freedom for all people\u2014regardless of their faith tradition\u2014something you had to learn, or has that always been part of your understanding?<\/i><\/p>\n

Brownback:<\/strong> I had to learn it. Years ago my focus was on protecting Christians, and then I would get challenged on that. Over time, the more I read about Jesus, I realized He took all comers. He saw each person\u2019s soul. He didn\u2019t turn away the woman at the well, who was a Samaritan. Instead, He said, \u201cGive Me a cup of water.\u201d He just never excludes anybody. He was sent for all humanity, and He takes all of us where we are. He doesn\u2019t require us to take 10 steps toward Him, and then we\u2019re in. He just takes us where we are. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m convinced that it\u2019s not people of deeply developed faith who fight; it\u2019s people who aren\u2019t well formed in their faith who will always come into conflict with those who believe differently. They may have the exterior of their religion, but it\u2019s a faith that begins and ends in the head. They don\u2019t have it in their heart. And that\u2019s the difference.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1 Mark Silk, \u201cThe Nightmare of Sam Brownback,\u201d Religion News Service, July 28, 2017 (viewed on June 15, 2021, at https:\/\/religionnews.com\/2017\/07\/28\/the-nightmare-of-sam-brownback\/).<\/p>\n

2 The International Religious Freedom Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1998, was groundbreaking legislation aimed at promoting religious freedom as a foreign policy priority of the United States. It created infrastructure within the State Department, as well as an independent monitoring body that works to highlight violations of religious freedom internationally and to advocate on the behalf of those persecuted for their religious beliefs.<\/p>\n

3 This legislation, sponsored by then-Senator Brownback, passed in 1999 and expanded U.S. support for the economic and political independence of the countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sam Brownback has a habit of defying expectations. His childhood on his parents\u2019 farm in the tiny community of Parker, Kansas\u2014population 277\u2014 offered few hints he would someday represent his state in the U.S. Congress, first in the House of Representatives and later in the Senate, before coming home to serve as the state\u2019s forty-sixth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-6589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-september-october-2021","tag-september-october-2021"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}