http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... world/asia

'God gap' impedes U.S. foreign policy, task force says

American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and "uncompromising Western secularism" that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights, according to a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

The council's 32-member task force, which included former government officials and scholars representing all major faiths, delivered its report to the White House on Tuesday. The report warns of a serious "capabilities gap" and recommends that President Obama make religion "an integral part of our foreign policy."

Thomas Wright, the council's executive director of studies, said task force members met Tuesday with Joshua DuBois, head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and State Department officials. "They were very receptive, and they said that there is a lot of overlap between the task force's report and the work they have been doing on this same issue," Wright said.

DuBois declined to comment on the report but wrote on his White House blog Tuesday: "The Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnership and the National Security Staff are working with agencies across government to analyze the ways the U.S. government engages key non-governmental actors, including religious institutions, around the globe."

The Chicago Council isn't as influential as the Council on Foreign Relations or some other Washington-based think tanks, but it does have a long-standing relationship with the president. Obama spoke to the council once as a state senator and twice as a U.S. senator, including his first major foreign policy speech as a presidential candidate in April 2007. Michelle Obama is on the council's board.
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American foreign policy's "God gap" has been noted in recent years by others, including former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright.

"It's a hot topic," said Chris Seiple, president of the Institute for Global Engagement in Arlington County and a Council on Foreign Relations member. "It's the elephant in the room. You're taught not to talk about religion and politics, but the bummer is that it's at the nexus of national security. The truth is the academy has been run by secular fundamentalists for a long time, people who believe religion is not a legitimate component of realpolitik."

The Chicago Council's task force was led by R. Scott Appleby of the University of Notre Dame and Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. "Religion," the task force says, "is pivotal to the fate" of such nations as Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and Yemen, all vital to U.S. national and global security.

"Despite a world abuzz with religious fervor," the task force says, "the U.S. government has been slow to respond effectively to situations where religion plays a global role." Those include the growing influence of Pentecostalism in Latin America, evangelical Christianity in Africa and religious minorities in the Far East.

U.S. officials have made efforts to address the God gap, especially in dealings with Islamic nations and groups. The CIA established an office of political Islam in the mid-1980s. Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998 to make religious freedom a U.S. foreign policy priority. During the second Bush administration, the Defense Department rewrote the Army's counterinsurgency manual to take account of cultural factors, including religion.

The Obama administration has stepped up the government's outreach to a wider range of religious groups and individuals overseas, trying to connect with people beyond governments, said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The effort, he said, is more deliberate than in the past: "This issue has senior-level attention."

He noted that Obama appointed a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and created a new Muslim outreach position in the State Department. In the past year, he said, embassies in Muslim-majority countries have held hundreds of meetings with a broad range of people not involved in government.

To end the "episodic and uncoordinated nature of U.S. engagement of religion in the world," the task force recommended:

-- Adding religion to the training and continuing education of all foreign service officers, diplomats and other key diplomatic, military and economic officials. That includes using the skills and expertise of military veterans and civilians returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

-- Empowering government departments and agencies to engage local and regional religious communities where they are central players in the promotion of human rights and peace, as well as the delivery of health care and other forms of assistance.

-- Address and clarify the role of religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy. Cizik said some parts of the world -- the Middle East, China, Russia and India, for example -- are particularly sensitive to the U.S. government's emphasis on religious freedom and see it as a form of imperialism.

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http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfa ... aster.html

More religion in foreign policy: what the road to hell is paved with...

I have rarely read a document filled with more destructive premises and recommendations than the Chicago Council on Global Affairs' 99-page report to the White House, "Engaging Religious Communities Abroad: A New Imperative for U.S. Foreign Policy." The report's basic premise--that American foreign policy is characterized by "uncompromising Western secularism" and that secularism fuels religious extremism throughout the world--tells you everything you need to know about the biases of this group. We launched a war in Iraq after President George W. Bush used the word "crusade" and said he had consulted a "Higher Power" before making his decision. This is secularism? A wise secularist would surely have told the president that getting involved in ancient sectarian religious/tribal quarrels might, in the long run, prove to be a very bad idea.

I can heartily endorse just one recommendation of this report--that foreign service officers and other officials dealing with international affairs should be educated to understand more about religion's impact in various communities throughout the world. Religious literacy is part of cultural literacy and ought to be required of every diplomat. One aspect of this awareness, however, should be a respect for and understanding of the profound secular objections by many government officials in Europe and Asia to the religiosity, both real and perceived, that influences American policy.

Most of the other recommendations are stunning in their naivete. One major suggestion to the White House is that obstacles, real and perceived, "to constructive engagement with religious groups overseas" should be removed. The First Amendment, it seems, is one of those obstacles. The group doesn't recommend revoking the First Amendment, of course. It simply recommends that U.S. diplomats be disabused of any notion that they are constitutionally prohibited from engaging with religious communities overseas because of the separation of church and state at home. Considering the mischief and outright harm that has resulted from the engagement of American private citizens with religious groups abroad (such as the engagement of right-wing Christian homophobes with homophobic Christian groups in Uganda), one can only shudder at the thought of diplomats being urged to work more closely with religious groups. And exactly how are we to know which sects within religious groups shuld be engaged? Should U.S. diplomats in Israel sit down with ultra-right rabbis who strongly support the expansion of settlements? Or should we offend the right-wingers by meeting with Jewish groups in Israel that consider the settlements a moral disaster? There is a huge difference between being aware of the importance of religious differences in a society and directly engaging with such groups.

Another recommendation is that foreign policy-makers "clarify the role of religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy." Richard Cizik of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, one of the leaders of the task force, noted that in some areas of the world--including the Middle East, China, Russia and India--the U.S. government's emphasis on religious freedom is seen as a form of imperialism--even Christian imperialism. Well, that's true. The Russian government, while officially secular, is playing footsie with the Russian Orthodox Church and is quite hostile to proselytizers like Jehovah's Witnesses. The Chinese government doesn't like it when we support the rights of Tibetan Buddhists. Throughout the Middle East, fundamentalist Muslims see our upholding of universal human rights--such as the rights of women--as an insult to their religion. I am not even sure, after reading the report, what we could possibly say to "clarify" these issues. Should we say that we support women's rights--but not if this position offends someone else's religion? Do we or do we not think it's a good idea to have American missionaries proselytizing in places where any misunderstanding has the potential to set off a major foreign policy crisis? Or should we perhaps tell the rest of the world that while religious liberty is guaranteed by our Constitution, other countries may conduct beheadings for heresy, and we won't say a word, if their cultural or religious traditions permit such acts?

The role of religion around the world, and in individual nations and regions, is so complicated that I cannot imagine anything good resulting from American diplomats becoming more closely involved with religious communities abroad. How do we know, for example, which group of imams in Nigeria is likely to approve of polio vaccination and which is likely to denounce vaccinations as a Christian-Zionist-imperialist plot?

One thing is clear about this task force: it was anything but impartial. This report was not written by vigorous upholders of the separation of church and state. Many of the people who prepared this unwise set of recommendations are dedicated to the idea that there should be more religious involvement in government at home, so it was entirely predictable that they would recommend that America become more involved with religion abroad. President Obama should deal with this report the way Abraham Lincoln dealt with Protestant ministers who, during the Civil War, asked him to support a Christian amendment to the Constitution that would declare Jesus Christ the source of all governmental power. Lincoln promised to "take such action as my conscience and my duty to my country demand." His action was to take no action at all.

I can get behind this report. After posting with you for a few years, I'm still not really sure what harm religion can do to foreign policy. Can you please explain it one more time for me?

Hey, I'm not the one who wrote the report.