America’s role in defending religious freedom

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Religious freedom.

It’s a key U-S foreign policy priority. The Office of International Religious Freedom goes back to 1998 … when President Bill Clinton signed a law that created an ambassador-level position responsible to address violations.

NICK EICHER, HOST: How is the U-S using its influence to stand up for oppressed religious minority groups around the world?

Joining us now is Sam Brownback…he served as a US senator from Kansas until he became governor. When he left the governor’s mansion in 20-18 … President Trump named him Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom. He’s co-chairing that organization’s annual summit meeting today and tomorrow in Washington.

REICHARD: Governor, good morning!

SAM BROWNBACK, GUEST: Good morning. Mary. Great to join you.

REICHARD: So glad you're here. Well, President Trump has not yet nominated anyone to fill the position of ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom. You have a deep knowledge of the job, though, so tell us about it and why it's necessary in today's world.

BROWNBACK: What the job really entails is using the United States to push for this basic human right that's in Article 18 of the UN Charter of Human Rights. That's our first amendment right to free exercise. That's, I think, the human right that God gave us, the human right of the soul to choose whatever you want to do with your own faith, with your own beliefs, with your own eternal soul. Yet many governments around the world stomp on this right, and particularly totalitarians, they hate it, and the communists absolutely fight with it. China's at war with faith. So it's one of those very key, clear things that the United States can stand for as a human right that touches the entire world and that really sets us off against our enemies as being different. We view this as a fundamental right. They view it as an existential threat, and it's clear to me that most of the world sides with us on this ideology, and not with China, the communists and the dictatorial regimes around the world.

REICHARD: After your term as ambassador, President Biden appointed the first Muslim to fill the role . Did that White House do anything differently from the first Trump administration?

BROWNBACK: They didn't nullify a lot of the programs that we started. So we started an international religious freedom of belief alliance of nations. And when we started, there was 17 in it. There's over 40 in it. Now that continued. So they that grew during that period of time, they continued to support religious freedom. It just it wasn't a top priority issue. They said, it's a it's a right of other rights. We would push it as a central right and pursuit of freedom. So I, you know, I think they continued other things. I didn't think Rashad Hussein, Ambassador Hussein got much top cover. He didn't get much help from the president or the vice president or the secretary of state, and that really hurts in this role. When, when you travel around the world, if they don't think you're getting backing from the top people, they just really don't do much. If they think you are getting cover from the top people, and they're concerned, they'll listen and they'll do a lot more.

REICHARD: Let's talk about some good news now, always like to have that in there. Where is the U.S. really helping to protect religious freedom, either here or abroad?

BROWNBACK: You know, really by standing up for it. President Trump did a fabulous job on this his first term. He held the first ever meeting at the UN on religious freedom with world leaders. Nobody else has ever done that before. We hosted at the State Department the first ever religious freedom summits of foreign ministers from around the world to talk about this fundamental right. So I look and I hope for a continuation of that. And my real hope is that the Trump administration will say we're going to relaunch the global human rights movement, because it's fallen in such disrepair the last 20 years, and it's going down. Human rights have been declining over the last 20 years. We're going to relaunch it around the fundamental rights in the UN Declaration, and we're going to make the cornerstone religious freedom. It's the freedom of freedoms. You can build your other freedom of assembly and freedom of speech around this one, if you can get this one right. And my hope is that you're going to see those sort of actions coming out of the White House, how the State Department Marco Rubio has been a strong champion of religious freedom on a going forward basis.

REICHARD: Well, speaking of President Trump, when his first action was to order a 90 day pause in foreign aid payments, the plan is for federal agencies to do a review on how organizations are spending that money around the world and make sure American dollars actually are doing good and not harm. I do wonder, though, what this pause means for nonprofits that do religious freedom work internationally. What do you think?

BROWNBACK: It’s had some impact. There's no, there's no question about it. We're hearing from different groups. But I also I tell people say, Look, this is early on. This is not an unusual thing for a new administration to come in and say, Look, wait, we want to review everything. And, you know, let's, let's hope that these groups that do human rights work get, get supported. But you know, President Trump was brought in to really shake Washington up. That's if, if there's one message he ran on that people heard it was that, you know, I'm, I'm going to shake the swamp up, and they expect it to happen. And I think that's some of what you're seeing.

REICHARD: Are there any programs though, that you think the U.S. should permanently stop funding based on what you know?

BROWNBACK: There was any number of federal grants that I looked at even while I was in State Department, going, why are we doing this? And, you know, somebody would say, well, this group has worked with us on this for a long period of time, and you're just kind of going, if you tried to explain that in the coffee shop in Topeka, Kansas to people, good luck. I'm getting out of there alive, you know, because they just look at that and say, that is a complete waste of my money. You'd be far better to bring it back and say, Okay, what are you really after? We're really after religious freedom. We're really after clean water. We're really after basic health issues. We're after supporting children and then all the other stuff. Just say, You know what? Maybe nice might be good for somebody to do it. We're not doing it, and we're out of here.

REICHARD: I’m wondering, Governor, WORLD’s listeners are praying people … Is there a prayer that you hope that we would offer up?

BROWNBACK: I, my prayer at night has often been that the United States would use its power and influence to open these gates of religious freedom around the world. I mean, you talk about a gift that the United States can give to the world. It would be to allow people of faith to freely pursue what their heart directs them to do. I also pray often that the United States would would continue to be a restrainer of evil in the world.

REICHARD: Sam Brownback is the former ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom, and is co chair of the IRF Summit in Washington this week.

Governor, thank you for your time.

BROWNBACK: Thank you, Mary.

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