OURNALS O F THE U. S. D TAT E Democracy issues of · and Portuguese and Spanish language versions, and selected issues also appear in Arabic and Russian. • English-language issues

D e m o c r a c yi s s u e s o f

E L E C T R O N I C J O U R N A L S O F T H E U . S . D E P A R T M E N T O F S T A T E

V O L U M E 6 N U M B E R 2N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 1

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AS A

HUMAN RIGHT

The right to freedom of religion undergirds thevery origin and existence of the United States.Many of our nation’s founders fled religious per-secution abroad, cherishing in their hearts andminds the ideal of religious freedom. They estab-lished in law, as a fundamental right and as apillar of our nation, the right to freedom of reli-gion. From its birth to this day, the United Stateshas prized this legacy of religious freedom andhonored this heritage by standing for religiousfreedom and offering refuge to those sufferingreligious persecution.

International Religious Freedom Act of 1998

IN HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS to thenation in1789, George Washington remindedhis fellow citizens that religion as well as gov-ernment is a part of the fabric of life. “Religionand Morality are indispensable supports,” hesaid. “In vain would that man claim the tributeof Patriotism, who should labor to subvert thesegreat pillars of human happiness, these firmestprops of the duties of Men and Citizens.”

Washington saw that as well as good gover-nance, there must also be the right of the peo-ple to practice the faith that they deemed nec-essary for the “great pillars of humanhappiness.”

This electronic journal takes Washington’spremise one step further and looks at religiousfreedom as a universal human right. To begin,Tom Farr, the director of the Office of ReligiousFreedom at the Department of State explainshow the international religious freedom report,

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I n t r o d u c t i o n

Religious Freedom as a Human Right

From the Ed i tor s

which his office releases each year, came aboutand why it is so important in a world wheremany countries continue to violate the religiousfreedom of their people.

The United States has a longstanding com-mitment to religious liberty. America’sfounders made religious freedom the first free-dom of the U.S. Constitution. Following in thatvein, the International Religious Freedom Actof 1998 mandated that the United States pub-lish an annual report each year to draw atten-tion to those countries that prevent their citi-zens from enjoying religious freedom. We haveprovided the preface and introduction to the2001 Annual International Religious FreedomReport, with a link to the Department of State’sweb site, which holds the report.

Many people around the world, includingAmericans, are unaware of the richness of reli-gions in the United States today. But Dr. DianaL. Eck, a professor of comparative religion andIndian studies at Harvard University, has stud-ied this diversity and shows how the UnitedStates has become the world’s most religiouslydiverse society. In an excerpt from her recentbook, A New Religious America, Dr. Eckexplores the various religious cultures in theU.S. and talks about how Christianity, Islam,Judaism and a variety of other faiths co-exist.

Finally, Derek H. Davis, the director ofchurch-state studies at Baylor University exam-ines the four pillars of international religiousfreedom: the Universal Declaration of HumanRights; the International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights; the U.N Declaration on theElimination of All Forms of Intolerance andDiscrimination Based on Religion or Belief;

and the Vienna Concluding Document. He alsolooks at how we must continue to use interna-tional treaties to further religious freedomthrough legislation, education, and a separationof church and state.

The journal concludes with a variety of ref-erence resources—books, articles and Internetsites—affording additional insights on reli-gious freedom themes.

Issues of Democracy, IIP Electronic Journals,Vol. 6, No. 2, November 2001

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issues of Democracy

C o n t e n t s

November 2001

6

R O OT S O F T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L

R E L I G I O U S F R E E D O M R E P O R T

Tom Farr, the director of the Office of International Religious Freedom

at the Department of State, explains the roots and what defines the mission

and purpose of the International Religious Freedom Report.

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T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E L I G I O U S F R E E D O M R E P O R T

The U.S. State Department’s 2001 International Religious Freedom Report

describes the status of religious freedom in each foreign country,

including any violations and any trends toward improvement.

This section presents the preface and introduction to the report.

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A N E W R E L I G I O U S A M E R I C A

Dr. Diana Eck, a member of the faculty of divinity at

Harvard University looks at the new religious landscape in the United States.

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T H E E V O L U T I O N O F R E L I G I O U S F R E E D O M

A S A U N I V E R S A L H U M A N R I G H T

Derek Davis, director of church-state studies at Baylor University,

discusses the four pillars of international religious freedom and

how international treaty obligations might be more fully implemented.

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B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Articles and books on religious freedom themes.

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I N T E R N E T S I T E S

Internet sites that feature religious freedom themes.

The opinions expressed on other Internet sites listed here do not necessarily

represent the views of the U.S. government.

PUBL I SHER Judith Siegel

MANAGING EDITOR Anthony W. Sariti

CONSULT ING EDITOR Wayne Hall

INTERNET/TEXT EDITOR Deborah M.S. Brown

CONTR IBUT ING EDITORS Estelle Baird

Mona Esquetini

Stuart Gorin

Charla Hatton

John Jasik

David Pitts

REFERENCE SPEC IAL I STS Anita Green

Andrea McGlinchey

ART DIRECTOR Min Yao

GRAPH ICS ASS I STANT Sylvia Scott

ED ITOR IAL BOARD Judith Siegel

Leonardo Williams

The Office of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of State provides products and services that explain U.S. policies, society, and values to foreign audiences. The Office

publishes five electronic journals that examine major issues facing the United States and the international community.The journals—Economic Perspectives, Global Issues, Issues of Democracy, U.S. Foreign

Policy Agenda and U.S. Society and Values—provide statements of U.S. policy together with analysis, commentary and background information in their thematic areas. • All issues appear in English, French

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A N E L E C T R O N I C J O U R N A L O F T H E U . S . D E P A R T M E N T O F S T A T E

I S S U E S O F D E M O C R A C Y

R E L I G I O U S F R E E D O M A S A H U M A N R I G H T

N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 1

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The International Religious Freedom Report wasreleased on October 26, 2001. Below, Tom Farr,the director of the Office of International Reli-gious Freedom at the Department of State, whichreleases the report, explains its roots and whatdefines its mission and purpose. Moreover, Farrsays, the report characterizes “religious freedomas one of the foundational human rights. Toprotect this freedom means protecting somethingcommon to every human being.”

QUESTION: What is the International Reli-gious Freedom Act of 1998?

FARR: Congress passed this law to promotereligious freedom as a U.S. foreign policy goaland to combat religious persecution around theworld. The law identifies a wide range of diplo-matic and economic tools that might be utilizedto encourage freedom of religion and con-science throughout the world as a fundamentalhuman right. The most important of these toolsare the Annual Report on International Reli-gious Freedom, and direct U.S. advocacy—bythe Office of International Religious Freedom—with foreign governments. It also seeks to pro-mote U.S. assistance to newly formed democra-cies in implementing freedom of religion andconscience.

Q: What is the Office of International ReligiousFreedom and what is its mission?

FARR: The Office of International ReligiousFreedom in the U.S. State Department was cre-

R e l i g i o u s F r e e d o m a s a H u m a n R i g h t

Roots of the International ReligiousFreedom Report

by Tom Far r

ated by the secretary of state in the summer of1998, implementing a recommendation by thesecretary’s Advisory Committee on ReligiousFreedom. The Office was subsequently man-dated by the International Religious FreedomAct, and it is headed by an ambassador-at-large. The office is responsible for issuing anAnnual Report on the status of religious free-dom and persecution in all foreign countries bySeptember of each year. On the basis of thereport, the State Department designates “coun-tries of particular concern” for their “systemat-ic, ongoing and egregious” violations of reli-gious liberty. The report has become thestandard compendium on the status of religiousfreedom worldwide.

Q: How does the Office of International Reli-gious Freedom carry out its mission?

FARR: The office carries out its mission bymonitoring, on a daily basis, religious persecu-tion and discrimination worldwide. The ambas-sador and the office’s staff travel directly tocountries where problems exist and advocatewith host governments on behalf of those whoare victims of persecution and discrimination.In doing so, the office draws on internationalstandards of religious freedom.

The office also shines a spotlight on thestatus of religious freedom worldwide throughthe Annual Report on International ReligiousFreedom. Nations designated by the secretaryof state (under authority delegated by the pres-ident) as “countries of particular concern” aresubject to action, including economic sanc-tions, by the United States. The mission is alsocarried out through testimony to the U.S. Con-gress, and sponsorship of reconciliation pro-grams in disputes, which divide groups along

lines of religious identity. The key objective isnot to punish particular countries, but to pro-mote religious liberty.

Q: How does the Office of International Reli-gious Freedom differ from the U.S. Commissionon International Religious Freedom?

FARR: The Commission on International Reli-gious Freedom was created by the InternationalReligious Freedom Act of 1998 as a separateand independent source of policy recommenda-tions on religious freedom for the president,secretary of state and the Congress. The Com-mission issues its own report, which focuses ona few countries and—unlike the Department ofState’s Annual Report—makes recommenda-tions for U.S. action. The Commission is anentirely separate body from the Office of Inter-national Religious Freedom and the StateDepartment. The commission has advisory andmonitoring authority only, including the author-ity to hold hearings, unlike the executive officein the State Department that has the authority toact. The Commission is composed of threecommissioners selected by the president, fourby the leaders of the party in Congress not inthe White House, and two by the leaders of thepresident’s party in Congress.

Q: What is the root of U.S. concern with reli-gious freedom?

FARR: Religious freedom always has been atthe core of American life and public policy. Itis the first of the freedoms enumerated in theBill of Rights, the first 10 Amendments to theU.S. Constitution. The law was enacted in 1998after a period in which the perception of reli-gious freedom as a universal human right hadgrown enormously. Religious freedom was

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incorporated (Article 18) into the U.N. Univer-sal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in1948, and in a number of other postwar inter-national covenants. In addition, during the1980s and 1990s particularly, individuals andreligious organizations lobbied to focus U.S. for-eign policy on religious persecution abroad to agreater extent than heretofore. But the rootcause is the American passion for religious lib-erty—not the promotion of a particular reli-gion—but the conviction that every humanbeing has, by virtue of his or her existence, theinviolable right to seek religious truth and topractice his or her religion. This right is notgranted by the state, but existed prior to gov-ernments and society.

Q: The Annual Report on International Reli-gious Freedom was first issued by the StateDepartment in September 1999. What has beenthe general reaction to the report?

FARR: Governments that are criticized in thereports have, not surprisingly, reacted negative-ly. Some of them charge that the reports repre-sent a form of “cultural imperialism” by theUnited States, which has no right to impose itsmoral norms on others. Our answer is that weare measuring behavior on the basis of interna-tionally accepted norms, such as Article 18 ofthe International Covenant on Civil and Politi-cal Rights, which guarantees religious freedom,and to which most nations of the world havecommitted themselves.

Other governments have privately praisedthe reports, and use them. Most NGOs, humanrights groups and faith-based organizationshave praised the reports as the standard refer-ence on the status of religious freedom worldwide.

Q: What does the U.S. hope to accomplish withthe Annual Report?

FARR: Our goal is to tell the truth about thestatus of religious freedom around the world,with objectivity and integrity. The report doesnot make policy recommendations; rather, itserves as a factual basis for policy makers. Assuch, it is widely recognized as an effectivereport.

Q: How are the reports prepared and how havethey evolved? Specifically, what changes arereflected in this year’s report?

FARR: The first drafts of country chapters aredone by U.S. embassies abroad. The drafts arethen refined among the various State Depart-ment bureaus concerned. The most significantchanges in the report came last year whencountry chapters were reorganized to makethem more “user-friendly.”

Q: What in your view is the relationshipbetween religious freedom and human rights ingeneral, and between religious freedom anddemocracy?

FARR: Religious freedom is one of the founda-tional human rights. To protect this freedommeans protecting something common to everyhuman being—the sanctity of the conscience inmatters of ultimate truth, worship, ritual andcodes of behavior. This right was not created bygovernments, but exists prior to governmentsand societies. As the UDHR puts it, “All menare endowed with dignity and conscience.”

No government which fails to protect free-dom of religion and conscience is likely tovalue the other fundamental rights, such asfreedom from arbitrary arrest or torture. By the

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same token, the elevation of religious liberty isa sign of a healthy democracy—one which val-ues not only freedom of conscience, but theother rights necessary to religious freedom,such as free speech and assembly.

It is also true, as the president’s Faith-Based Initiative emphasizes, that religious free-dom facilitates the good works of religious people—works which contribute to civil society—such as care for the aged, the runningof hospitals and schools, and the building ofstrong families.

Q: The U.S. issues an annual report on humanrights. Why have a separate report on one par-ticular human right, namely religious freedom?Does the U.S. view this human right as moreimportant than any other?

FARR: No. Religious freedom is foundationalbecause it supports the other fundamentalrights. For example, it is intrinsically connect-ed to freedom of speech and assembly.

Q: How do you answer the charge that theAnnual Report is interference in the internalaffairs of other countries?

FARR: The standard we apply in our policy ofpromoting religious freedom—including theissuance of the Annual Report—is an interna-tional standard, accepted by virtually everynation of the world. The idea that religiousfreedom is inviolable and inalienable is not anAmerican invention—it is reflected in interna-tional instruments such as the Universal Decla-ration and in the International Covenant onCivil and Political Rights.

Q: The U.S. seems to have a very broad view ofreligious freedom compared with many othercountries. How would you define religious freedom?

FARR: Religious freedom is the right of everyhuman being, of every region or culture, to fol-low the dictates of his or her conscience in mat-ters of fundamental truth, worship and morality,within the due limits noted by internationalnorms (such as lawful limits to protect publicsafety or public health). This includes theright, either individually or in community withothers, and in public or private, to manifest areligion or belief in worship, observance, prac-tice and teaching.

This is not an American definition. Itcomes from Article 18 of the InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights.

In advocating this policy, we are notimposing the “American way” on other cul-tures. We are fulfilling our responsibilities tothe international community of which we are apart.


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The International Religious Freedom Report

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The U.S. State Department recently released the2001 International Religious Freedom Report,which is a vital part of U.S. human rights poli-cy. It describes the status of religious freedom ineach foreign country, including any violationsand any trends toward improvement. The pur-pose of the report is to advance the U.S. policy ofpromoting religious freedom internationally bydrawing on two traditions: the history and com-mitment of the American people and the stan-dards established by the international communi-ty. Below are the preface and introduction to thereport. To see the entire report, please go to:http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2001/

P R E FAC E

In August 1993, the Secretary of State moved tofurther strengthen the human rights efforts ofour embassies. All sections in each embassywere asked to contribute information and to cor-roborate reports of human rights violations, andnew efforts were made to link mission program-ming to the advancement of human rights anddemocracy. In 1994 the Bureau of HumanRights and Humanitarian Affairs was reorga-nized and renamed as the Bureau of Democra-cy, Human Rights, and Labor, reflecting both abroader sweep and a more focused approach tothe interlocking issues of human rights, workerrights, and democracy. In 1998 the Secretary ofState established the Office of InternationalReligious Freedom; in May 1999, Robert A.Seiple was sworn in as the first Ambassador atLarge for International Religious Freedom. Theposition has been vacant since AmbassadorSeiple left in September 2000.

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The 2001 report covers the period fromJuly 1, 2000 to June 30, 2001, and reflects ayear of dedicated effort by hundreds of StateDepartment, Foreign Service, and other U.S.government employees. Our embassies, whichprepared the initial drafts of the reports, gath-ered information throughout this period from avariety of sources, including government andreligious officials, nongovernmental organiza-tions, journalists, human rights monitors, reli-gious groups, and academics. This informa-tion-gathering can be hazardous, and U.S.Foreign Service Officers regularly go to greatlengths, under trying and sometimes dangerousconditions, to investigate reports of humanrights abuses, monitor elections, and come tothe aid of individuals at risk because of theirreligious beliefs.

After the embassies completed their drafts,the texts were sent to Washington for carefulreview by the Bureau of Democracy, HumanRights, and Labor and its Offices of Interna-tional Religious Freedom, Country Reports andAsylum Affairs, and Bilateral Affairs, in coop-eration with other State Department offices. Asthey worked to corroborate, analyze, and editthe reports, the Department officers drew ontheir own sources of information. These includ-ed reports provided by U.S. and other humanrights groups, foreign government officials, rep-resentatives from the United Nations and otherinternational and regional organizations andinstitutions, and experts from academia and themedia. Officers also consulted with experts onissues of religious discrimination and persecu-tion, religious leaders from all faiths, andexperts on legal matters. The guiding principlewas to ensure that all relevant information wasassessed as objectively, thoroughly, and fairlyas possible.

The report will be used as a resource forshaping policy, conducting diplomacy, andmaking assistance, training, and other resourceallocations. As mandated by IRFA, it also willbe used as a basis for decisions on determiningcountries that have engaged in or tolerated“particularly severe violations” of religiousfreedom. Countries involved in these and otherviolations according to IRFA are not identifiedas such in this report, but have been and will beengaged independently by the U.S. government.The report also will serve as a basis for the U.S.government’s cooperation with private groups topromote the observance of the internationallyrecognized right to religious freedom.

I N T RO D U C T I O N

“It is not an accident that freedom of religion isone of the central freedoms in our Bill of Rights.It is the first freedom of the human soul—theright to speak the words that God places in ourmouths. We must stand for that freedom in ourcountry. We must speak for that freedom in theworld.”

President George W. Bush

The 1998 International Religious Freedom Actrequires that the Secretary of State, assisted bythe Ambassador at Large for International Reli-gious Freedom, publish an Annual Report onInternational Religious Freedom each Septem-ber. The Annual Reports must include adescription of the status of religious freedom ineach foreign country, including any violations ofreligious freedom and any trends towardimprovement, as well as an Executive Summary.

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The purpose of these reports is to advancethe U.S. policy of promoting religious freedominternationally—to speak for that freedom inthe world. U.S. policy draws deeply on two tra-ditions: the history and commitment of theAmerican people, and the standards estab-lished by the international community. Thesetwo traditions not only are consistent but aremutually supportive.

The U.S . Commitment toRel ig ious L iber ty

The United States has a longstanding commit-ment to religious liberty. America’s foundersmade religious freedom the first freedom of theConstitution—giving it pride of place amongthose liberties enumerated in the Bill ofRights—because they believed that guarantee-ing the right to search for transcendent truthsand ultimate human purpose was a critical com-ponent of a durable democracy.

The Founders believed in the universalityof human dignity—that all human beings areendowed by the Creator with certain rights thatare theirs by virtue of their existence. Theserights were inalienable because they wereunderstood to exist prior to societies and gov-ernments, and were granted by neither.

A commitment to the inviolable and uni-versal dignity of the human person is at the coreof U.S. human rights policy abroad, includingthe policy of advocating religious freedom.Governments that protect religious freedom forall their citizens are more likely to protect theother fundamental human rights. Encouragingstable, healthy democracies is a vital national

interest of the United States. The spread ofdemocracy makes for good neighbors, econom-ic prosperity, increased trade, and a decrease inconflict.

The Internat iona l Norm ofRe l ig ious Freedom

Freedom of religion and conscience is one of thefoundational rights in the post-war system ofinternational human rights instruments. Begin-ning with Article 18 of the 1948 Universal Dec-laration of Human Rights, religious freedomalso is provided for in the InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights, theHelsinki Accords, the European Convention forthe Protection of Human Rights and Fundamen-tal Freedoms, and the U.N. Declaration on theElimination of All Forms of Intolerance andDiscrimination Based on Religion or Belief.

The belief that fundamental human rightsare not created by, but exist prior to, govern-ments is reflected in international instrumentsas well. According to the 1948 Universal Dec-laration of Human Rights—the foundationaltext for international human rights advocacy—“all human beings are born free and equal indignity and rights,” and are “endowed with rea-son and conscience.”

In recent years, the international commit-ment to religious freedom has increased. Forexample, in 1986 the U.N. Commission onHuman Rights established the office of the Spe-cial Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, nowthe Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religionor Belief. Since his appointment in 1993, Spe-cial Rapporteur Abdelfattah Amor has issuedreports on a variety of countries, includingSudan, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,

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Pakistan, Iran, Vietnam, India, Australia,Greece, Germany, and the United States. Hiswork provides substantial and continuing evi-dence of the commitment of the internationalcommunity to promoting religious freedom.

The Department of State presents this thirdAnnual Report on International Religious Free-dom (2001) both because it is a vital part ofU.S. human rights policy and furthers the inter-ests of the United States, and because of ourabiding commitment to the international stan-dard of religious freedom.

The report can be founded at:

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2001/


A New Religious America

By Dr. D iana L . Eck

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One of the bedrock principles of the UnitedStates is religious liberty and the separation ofchurch and state. The Founding Fathers regard-ed the ideal as so important that it was incorpo-rated into the Bill of Rights as the First Amend-ment to the U.S. Constitution. At the time theRepublic was founded more than two centuriesago, the overwhelming majority of Americanswere Christians. Since that time, however, as Dr.Diana L. Eck documents in her recent book, ANew Religious America, the United States hasbecome the world’s most religiously diverse soci-ety, especially during the last three decades.

(Dr. Eck is professor of comparative religion andIndian studies in the faculty of arts and sciences,and member of the faculty of divinity at HarvardUniversity. Following are excerpts from theintroduction to her book.)

THE HUGE WHITE DOME of amosque with its minarets rises from the corn-fields just outside Toledo, Ohio. You can see itas you drive by on the interstate highway. Agreat Hindu temple with elephants carved inrelief at the doorway stands on a hillside in thewestern suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. ACambodian Buddhist temple and monasterywith a hint of a Southeast Asian roofline is setin the farmlands south of Minneapolis, Min-nesota. In suburban Fremont, California, flagsfly from the golden domes of a new Sikh gurd-wara on Hillside Terrace, now renamed Gurd-wara Road. The religious landscape of Ameri-ca has changed radically in the past thirtyyears, but most of us have not yet begun to seethe dimensions and scope of that change, sogradual has it been and yet so colossal. Itbegan with the “new immigration,” spurred by

From the book A NEW RELIGIOUS AMERICA by Diana L.Eck, which is published by HarperSanFrancisco, a division ofHarperCollinsPublishers, Inc. Copyright © 2001 by Diana L.Eck. All Rights Reserved.

Diana L. Eck

the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act,as people from all over the world came to Amer-ica and have become citizens. With them havecome the religious traditions of the world—Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastri-an, African, and Afro-Caribbean. The people ofthese living traditions of faith have moved intoAmerican neighborhoods, tentatively at first,their altars and prayer rooms in storefronts andoffice buildings, basements and garages, recre-ation rooms and coat closets, nearly invisible tothe rest of us. But in the past decade, we havebegun to see their visible presence. Not all ofus have seen the Toledo mosque or theNashville temple, but we will see places likethem, if we keep our eyes open, even in our owncommunities. They are the architectural signsof a new religious America.

We are surprised to find there are moreMuslim Americans than Episcopalians, moreMuslims than members of the PresbyterianChurch USA, and as many Muslims as there areJews—that is, about 6 million. We are aston-ished to learn that Los Angeles is the most com-plex Buddhist city in the world, with a Buddhist

population spanning the whole range of theAsian Buddhist world from Sri Lanka to Korea,along with a multitude of native-born AmericanBuddhists. Nationwide, this whole spectrum ofBuddhists may number about 4 million. Weknow that many of our internists, surgeons, andnurses are of Indian origin, but we have notstopped to consider that they too have a reli-gious life, that they might pause in the morningfor few minutes’ prayer at an altar in the familyroom of their home, that they might bring fruitsand flowers to the local Shiva-Vishnu temple onthe weekend and be part of a diverse Hindupopulation of more than a million. We are wellaware of Latino immigration from Mexico andCentral America and of the large Spanish-speaking population of our cities, and yet wemay not recognize what a profound impact thisis having on American Christianity, both Catholicand Protestant, from hymnody to festivals.

Historians tell us that America has alwaysbeen a land of many religions, and this is true.A vast, textured pluralism was already presentin the lifeways of the Native peoples—evenbefore the European settlers came to theseshores. The wide diversity of Native religiouspractices continues today, from the Piscatawayof Maryland to the Blackfeet of Montana. Thepeople who came across the Atlantic fromEurope also had diverse religious traditions—Spanish and French Catholics, British Angli-cans and Quakers, Jews and Dutch ReformChristians. As we shall see, this diversitybroadened over the course of 300 years of set-tlement. Many of the Africans brought to theseshores with the slave trade were Muslims. TheChinese and Japanese who came to seek theirfortune in the mines and fields of the Westbrought with them a mixture of Buddhist,Taoist, and Confucian traditions. Eastern Euro-

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pean Jews and Irish and Italian Catholics alsoarrived in force in the 19th century. BothChristian and Muslim immigrants came fromthe Middle East. Punjabis from northwest Indiacame in the first decade of the 20th century.Most of them were Sikhs who settled in the Cen-tral and Imperial Valleys of California, builtAmerica’s first gurdwaras, and intermarriedwith Mexican women, creating a rich Sikh-Spanish subculture. The stories of all thesepeoples are an important part of America’simmigration history.

The immigrants of the last three decades,however, have expanded the diversity of ourreligious life dramatically, exponentially. Bud-dhists have come from Thailand, Vietnam,Cambodia, China, and Korea; Hindus fromIndia, East Africa, and Trinidad; Muslims fromIndonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the MiddleEast, and Nigeria; Sikhs and Jains from India;and Zoroastrians from both India and Iran.Immigrants from Haiti and Cuba have broughtAfro-Caribbean traditions, blending bothAfrican and Catholic symbols and images. NewJewish immigrants have come from Russia andthe Ukraine, and the internal diversity of Amer-ican Judaism is greater than ever before. Theface of American Christianity has also changedwith large Latino, Filipino, and VietnameseCatholic communities; Chinese, Haitian, andBrazilian Pentecostal communities; KoreanPresbyterians, Indian Mar Thomas, and Egyp-tian Copts. In every city in the land churchsignboards display the meeting times of Koreanor Latino congregations that nest within thewalls of old urban Protestant and Catholicchurches.

In the past 30 years massive movements ofpeople both as migrants and refugees havereshaped the demography of our world. Immi-

grants around the world number over 130 mil-lion, with about 30 million in the United States,a million arriving each year. The dynamic glob-al image of our times is not the so-called clashof civilizations but the marbling of civilizationsand peoples. Just as the end of the Cold Warbrought about a new geopolitical situation, theglobal movements of people have brought abouta new georeligious reality. Hindus, Sikhs, andMuslims are now part of the religious landscapeof Britain; mosques appear in Paris and Lyons,Buddhist temples in Toronto, and Sikh gurd-waras in Vancouver. But nowhere, even intoday’s world of mass migrations, is the sheerrange of religious faith as wide as it is today inthe United States. Add to India’s wide range ofreligions those of China, Latin America andAfrica. Take the diversity of Britain or Canada,and add to it the crescendo of Latino immigra-tion along with the Vietnamese, Cambodiansand Filipinos. This is an astonishing new real-ity. We have never been here before.

The new era of immigration is differentfrom previous eras not only in magnitude andcomplexity but also in its very dynamics. Manyof the migrants who come to the United Statestoday maintain strong ties with their home-lands, linked by travel and transnational com-munications networks, e-mails and faxes, satel-lite phone lines and cable television news.They manage to live both here and there in allthe ways that modern communications andtelecommunications have made possible. Whatwill the idea and vision of America become ascitizens, new and old, embrace all this diversi-ty? The questions that emerge today from theencounter of people of so many religious andcultural traditions go to the very heart of who wesee ourselves to be as a people. They are nottrivial questions, for they force us to ask in one

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way or another: Who do we mean when weinvoke the first words of our Constitution, “Wethe people of the United States of America”?Who do we mean when we say “we”? This is achallenge of citizenship, to be sure, for it has todo with the imagined community of which weconsider ourselves a part. It is also a challengeof faith, for people of every religious traditionlive today with communities of faith other thantheir own, not only around the world but alsoacross the street.

“We the people of the United States” nowform the most profusely religious nation onearth. So where do we go from here? It’s onething to be unconcerned about or ignorant ofMuslim or Buddhist neighbors on the other sideof the world, but when Buddhists are our next-door neighbors, when our children are bestfriends with Muslim classmates, when a Hinduis running for a seat on the school committee,all of us have a new vested interest in ourneighbors, both as citizens and as people offaith.

As the new century dawns, we Americansare challenged to make good on the promise ofreligious freedom so basic to the very idea andimage of America. Religious freedom hasalways given rise to religious diversity, andnever has our diversity been more dramaticthan it is today. This will require us to reclaimthe deepest meaning of the very principles wecherish and to create a truly pluralist Americansociety in which this great diversity is not sim-ply tolerated but becomes the very source of ourstrength. But to do this, we will all need toknow more than we do about one another and tolisten for the new ways in which new Americansarticulate the “we” and contribute to the soundand spirit of America.

The framers of the Constitution and theBill of Rights could not possibly have envi-sioned the scope of religious diversity in Amer-ica at the beginning of the 21st century. Whenthey wrote the sixteen words of the FirstAmendment, “Congress shall make no lawrespecting an establishment of religion or pro-hibiting the free exercise thereof,” they unques-tionably did not have Buddhism or the Santeriatradition in mind. But the principles they artic-ulated—the “nonestablishment” of religion andthe “free exercise” of religion—have provideda sturdy rudder through the past two centuriesas our religious diversity has expanded. Afterall, religious freedom is the fountainhead ofreligious diversity. The two go inextricablytogether. Step by step, we are beginning toclaim and affirm what the framers of the Con-stitution did not imagine but equipped us toembrace.

Religion is never a finished product, pack-aged, delivered, and passed intact from genera-tion to generation. There are some in everyreligious tradition who think of their religionthat way, insisting it is all contained in thesacred texts, doctrines, and rituals they them-selves know and cherish. But even the mostmodest journey through history proves themwrong. Our religious traditions are dynamic notstatic, changing not fixed, more like rivers thanmonuments. The history of religion is an ongo-ing process. America today is an exciting placeto study the dynamic history of living faiths, asBuddhism becomes a distinctively Americanreligion and as Christians and Jews encounterBuddhists and articulate their faith anew in thelight of that encounter or perhaps come tounderstand themselves part of both traditions.Even humanists, even secularists, even atheistshave to rethink their worldviews in the context

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of a more complex religious reality. With mul-titheistic Hindus and nontheistic Buddhists inthe picture, atheists may have to be more spe-cific about what kind of “god” they do notbelieve in.

Just as our religious traditions are dynam-ic, so is the very idea of America. The motto ofthe Republic, E Pluribus Unum, “From Many,One,” is not an accomplished fact but an idealthat Americans must continue to claim. Thestory of America’s many peoples and the cre-ation of one nation is an unfinished story inwhich the ideals articulated in the Declarationof Independence and the Constitution are con-tinually brought into being. Our pluribus ismore striking than ever—our races and faces,our jazz and qawwali music, our Haitian drumsand Bengali tablas, our hip-hop and bhangradances, our mariachis and gamelans, our Islam-ic minarets and Hindu temple towers, our Mor-mon temple spires and golden gurdwara domes.Amid this plurality, the expression of our unum,our oneness, will require many new voices,each contributing in its own way—like thevoices of Sikhs who will stand up for the “self-evident truth” of human equality not onlybecause it is written in the Declaration of Inde-pendence but also because it is part of theteachings of Guru Nanak and a principle oftheir faith as Sikhs. Hearing new ways of giv-ing expression to the idea of America is thechallenge we face today.

As we enter a new millennium, Americansare in the process of discovering who “we” areanew. Each part of the composite picture of anew religious America may seem small, buteach contributes to a new self-portrait of Amer-ica. One word may signal a shift in conscious-ness. For example, as Muslims become morenumerous and visible in American society, pub-

lic officials have begun to shift from speaking of“churches and synagogues” to “churches, syn-agogues, and mosques.” The annual obser-vance of the Ramadan month of Muslim fastingnow receives public notice and becomes theoccasion for portraits of the Muslims next doorin the Dallas Morning News or the MinneapolisStar Tribune. The fast-breaking meals called“iftar” at the close of each day have becomemoments of recognition. In the late 1990s therewere iftar observances by Muslim staffers onCapitol Hill, in the Pentagon, and in the StateDepartment. In 1996 the White House hostedthe first observance of the celebration of Eid al-Fitr at the end of the month of Ramadan, a prac-tice that has continued. The same year also sawthe U.S. Navy commission its first Muslimchaplain, Lieutenant M. Malak Abd al-Muta’Ali Noel, and in 1998 the U.S. Navy’s firstmosque was opened on the Norfolk Naval Basein Virginia, where Lieutenant Noel was sta-tioned. When 50 sailors attend Friday prayersat this facility, they signal to all of us a new eraof American religious life.

Hindus have begun to signal their Ameri-can presence as well. For instance, on Septem-ber 14, 2000, Shri Venkatachalapathi Samu-drala, a priest of the Shiva Vishnu Temple ofGreater Cleveland in Parma, Ohio, opened asession of the U.S. House of Representativeswith the chaplain’s prayer of the day. He prayedin Hindi and English and closed with a Sanskrithymn, all recorded on the temple’s web site.The occasion was the visit of the prime ministerof India to the United States, but the wider mes-sage was clearly that Ohio too has its Hindus,as does every state in the union. As Americans,we need to see these signs of a new religiousAmerica and begin to think about ourselvesanew in terms of them.

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America’s burgeoning interfaith movementgives us another set of signals about what ishappening in America today as people of differ-ent faith traditions begin to cooperate in con-crete ways. One example is of interest becauseit was led by Buddhists. In the spring of 1998,from the dazzling white Peace Pagoda, whichsits on a hilltop of maples in the rural country-side of Leverett, Massachusetts, a community ofBuddhist pilgrims launched the Interfaith Pil-grimage of the Middle Passage. Bringingtogether American “pilgrims” of all races andreligions, they walked 15 to 20 miles a day forseven months, visiting sites associated withslavery all along the coast from Boston to NewOrleans. From there, some of them continuedthe journey by sea to the west coast of Africa.The Buddhist community sponsoring the walk,a group called the Nipponzan Myohoji, wassmall in size, but, like the Quakers, this groupextends leadership far beyond its numbers. Itwas not the first time this group had walked forracial and religious harmony. It had also jour-neyed from Auschwitz to Hiroshima to remindthe world of the atrocities of the concentrationcamps and the atomic bomb. On a local level,every year this group walks for three days fromits hilltop pagoda to downtown Springfield,Massachusetts, to observe “Juneteenth,” theannual celebration of black liberation fromslavery. In each case, members walk to remindthe rest of us of our deepest commitments.

Envisioning the new America in the 21stcentury requires an imaginative leap. It meansseeing the religious landscape of America, fromsea to shining sea, in all its beautiful complexity.



The Evolution of Religious Freedom as a Universal Human Right

by Derek H . Dav i s

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In the years after World War II in particular, theidea of religious liberty evolved into an interna-tional human right that all nations of the worldare obliged to protect. In the following article,Derek Davis, the director of church-state studiesat Baylor University in Texas and an expert onreligion as a fundamental liberty, discusses thefour pillars of international religious freedomand how international treaty obligations mightbe more fully implemented.

THE 20TH CENTURY witnessedunprecedented progress toward the internation-alization of religious human rights. The World’sParliament of Religions was held in Chicago in1893 as part of the Columbian Exposition—along forgotten but important event in world reli-gious history. A founding principle of the meet-ing was that no religious group should be pres-sured into sacrificing its truth claims. In 1944,the U.S. Federal Council of Churches createdthe Commission to Study the Bases of a Just andDurable Peace. The Commission developed the“Six Pillars of Peace” that mixed tactical mea-sures such as the “reformation of globaltreaties” and “control of military establish-ments” with principles such as “autonomy forsubject peoples” and the “right of individualseverywhere to religious and intellectual liber-ty.” Another group, the U.S. Commission of theChurches on International Affairs (CCIA),helped promote the inclusion of religious free-dom in the Universal Declaration of HumanRights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

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Derek H. Davis

In addition to the Universal Declaration,three other significant international documentswere developed in the 20th century with theaim of promoting principles of religious liberty:the International Covenant on Civil and Politi-cal Rights (1966); the U.N. Declaration on theElimination of All Forms of Intolerance andDiscrimination Based on Religion or Belief(1981); and the Vienna Concluding Document(1989). Each of these documents promotesreligious freedom by expounding rights of suchsignificance that they should be universal.Each of these documents is described below.

The Four P i l l a r s o fInternat iona l Re l ig iousFreedom

Of the four major international documents thatuniversalized the principle of religious libertyin the 20th century, by far the most central isthe Universal Declaration of Human Rights,adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Thislandmark document recognizes several impor-

tant religious rights. Article 18 is the key text:

Everyone has the right to freedom ofthought, conscience and religion; thisright includes freedom to change hisreligion or belief, and freedom, eitheralone or in community with others andin public or private, to manifest hisreligion or belief in teaching, practice,worship and observance.

The Declaration vigorously asserts thatindividual religious differences must berespected. It embraces the political principlethat a key role of government is to protect reli-gious choice, not to mandate religious confor-mity. It took centuries, even millennia, of reli-gious wars and religious persecution for themajority of modern nation-states to come to thisposition, but the principle is now widelyaccepted, especially in the West. The modernprinciple of religious liberty, by which govern-ments declare their neutrality on religiousquestions, leaving each individual citizen, onthe basis of his/her own human dignity, to adopthis/her own religious beliefs without fear ofreprisal, is an outgrowth of the Enlightenment.It received universal recognition in the 1948Declaration, undoubtedly the major milestonein the evolution of international religious freedom.

The Declaration refers to “a common stan-dard of achievement for all peoples andnations.” Written in the aftermath of theunspeakable horrors of World War II, it pro-vides a standard by which the peoples of theworld may learn to live in peace and coopera-tion. If the world enjoys a greater measure ofpeace in the present millennium than in previ-ous ones, it is possible that future historians

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will look to 1948 as the beginning of the newera of peace, much as we now look, for instance,to 313 C.E. (Edict of Milan) as the beginning ofthe Constantinian union of church and state, or1517 (Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses)as the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.There is simply no way to overstate the signifi-cance of the Universal Declaration of HumanRights.

Whereas the Declaration imposed a moralobligation upon all signatory nations, later doc-uments went further in creating a legal obliga-tion to comply with its broad principles. TheInternational Covenant on Civil and PoliticalRights (1966), ratified to date by 144 nations,prohibits religious discrimination, as stated inArticle 2 (1), “without distinction of any kind,such as race, color, sex, language, political orother opinion, national or social origin, proper-ty, birth or other status.” Article 18 guaranteesthe same rights listed in Article 18 of the Uni-versal Declaration, then adds more, includingthe right of parents to direct the religious edu-cation of their children. Article 20 prohibitsincitement of hatred against others because oftheir religion, and Article 27 protects membersof ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities frombeing denied the enjoyment of their own cul-ture. Moreover, the 1966 Covenant provides abroad definition of religion that encompassesboth theistic and nontheistic religions as well as“rare and virtually unknown faiths.”

The United Nations Declaration on theElimination of All Forms of Intolerance and ofDiscrimination Based on Religion or Belief,adopted in 1981, is another key document pro-tecting religious rights. Articles 1 and 6 pro-vide a comprehensive list of rights regardingfreedom of thought, conscience and religion.

These include the right (1) to worship or assem-ble in connection with a religion or belief, andto establish and maintain places for these pur-poses; (2) to establish and maintain appropriatecharitable or humanitarian institutions; (3) tomake, to acquire and to use to an adequateextent the necessary articles and materialsrelated to the rites or customs of a religion orbelief; (4) to write, to publish and to dissemi-nate relevant publications in these areas; (5) toteach a religion or belief in places suitable forthese purposes; (6) to solicit and receive volun-tary financial and other contributions from indi-viduals and institutions; (7) to observe days ofrest and to celebrate holy days and ceremoniesin accordance with the precepts of one’s reli-gion or belief; and (8) to establish and maintaincommunications with individuals and commu-nities in matters of religion and belief at thenational and international levels.

Finally, the 1989 Vienna Concluding Doc-ument contains provisions similar to the 1948,1966 and 1981 documents, urging respect forreligious differences, especially among variousfaith communities. The participating nationsspecifically agree to ensure “the full and effec-tive implementation of thought, conscience,religion or belief.”

These international documents are, inreality, binding only on those nations that takesteps to give them legal status. In other words,they are not self-executing. While the religiousliberty protections contained in the internation-al documents do not carry the effect of law,however, they are already shaping human rightslaw in participating nations, and they are a keyfeature of a developing and, hopefully, morepeaceful world order. Nevertheless, today’sworld is one in which religion still is a source of

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great conflict, and fundamental principles ofreligious liberty are often more abused thanrespected. Can more be done to further reli-gious liberty?

Trans forming Internat iona lObl igat ions into Rea l i ty

Religious persecution continues to be a seriousproblem worldwide despite the significant stepstaken by the world community, particularlysince World War II, to combat it, a soberingreminder that declarations, conventions andother documents do not easily translate intoreality. Scholars have stressed at least fourareas where broad institutional approaches maybe effective in helping to make religious free-dom not only a worldwide ideal, but also aworldwide reality.

Treaty Implementation. Nations musttake seriously the provisions of internationalhuman rights treaties by integrating them intotheir own legal systems. It is perhaps tautolo-gous to say that religious freedom in the worldwould be a given if all the countries of the worldcomplied with the various Conventions andother documents that have been adopted sinceWorld War II. That it is not is reflective of thefact that too many governments afford them-selves the luxury of basking in the glow of theideals they signed on to while failing to take thenecessary legal and other actions to make thema reality.

Legislation. Governments around theworld should enact meaningful legislationdesigned to curb religious persecution. In 1998the U.S. Congress passed the InternationalReligious Freedom Act. This Act mandates anannual report prepared by the State Department

that assesses and describes violations of reli-gious freedom in each country. The Departmentalso considers the suggestions of a nine-mem-ber U.S. Commission on International ReligiousFreedom. Based on the annual report, the U.S.president may impose a range of penalties andsanctions on countries found to be violators.The legislation is controversial internationally,but the measure has thus far helped the causeof international religious freedom. The lawdoes not attempt to impose “the American way”on other nations. Rather, it draws on the uni-versally accepted belief in the inviolable digni-ty of all human beings and of the universalrights that flow from that belief.

Education. More needs to be done tomake the people of the world aware of the stag-gering level of religious persecution still preva-lent in too many parts of the world. More con-ferences and symposia could highlight thistheme, and more support (verbal and monetary)could be provided to human rights nongovern-mental organizations such as Human RightsWatch and the International Religious LibertyAssociation that monitor human rights abusesaround the world and report them to govern-ments and other concerned groups.

Separation of Church and State. Theremust be renewed efforts to increase respect byall political, religious and social institutions forthe modern view that political society’s primaryinterests are in fostering peace, justice, freedomand equality, not in advancing religion. This isthe basic meaning of the separation of churchand state. The obvious tension here, of course,is that historically, religion has been the basisfor every dimension of life, including the polit-ical. As the eminent Quaker William Pennnoted in 1692, “government seems to be a part

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of religion itself, a thing sacred in its institutionand end.” But of course Penn was a buddingchurch-state separationist, and he increasinglymoved to the view that religion is fundamental-ly a personal, individual concern, and govern-ment’s role should be the protection of all reli-gious outlooks rather than the advocacy of one.Since Penn’s day, nation-states have increasing-ly adopted this perspective, and the 20th cen-tury’s human rights documents have done thesame. As already suggested, this perspectiveneeds to be taught by educational institutionsthrough a range of curricula that confront theinteraction of religion and government in themodern world.

In the final analysis, we, as members of theworld community, owe it to ourselves and to ourprogeny to make religious liberty a reality foreveryone. There is no more important task aswe begin the 21st century.


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B i b l i o g r a p h y

Bloom, Irene, J. Paul Martin and Wayne L. Proudfoot, eds.Religious Diversity and Human Rights. New York:Columbia University Press, 1996.

Casanova, JosePublic Religions in the Modern World. ChicagoUniversity Press, 1994.

Eck, Diana L.“Muslim in America,” The Christian Century, June 6,2001, vol. 118, no. 18, p.20

Epps, GarrettTo An Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial.New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001.

Esposito, John. L.“Religion and Global Affairs: Political Challenges,” in“Symposium:The Impact of Religion on GlobalAffairs,” SAIS Review, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer-Fall,1998, p.19.

Evans, Bette NovitInterpreting the Free Exercise of Religion:TheConstitution and American Pluralism. Chapel Hill,NC:The University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Henkin, LouisThe Age of Rights. New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1990.

Hutson, James H., ed.Religion and the New Republic: Faith in the Foundingof America. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman andLittlefield Publishers, 2000.

Johnston, Douglas M., Jr.Religion,The Missing Dimension of Statecraft.Oxford University Press, 1994.

Little, David“Religion and Global Affairs: Religion and ForeignPolicy,” in “Symposium:The Impact of Religion onGlobal Affairs,” SAIS Review, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer-Fall, 1998, p.25.

Marshall, Paul“Religion and Global Affairs: Disregarding Religion,”in “Symposium:The Impact of Religion on GlobalAffairs,” SAIS Review, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer-Fall,1998, p.13.

Noonan, John Thomas and Edward McGlynn GaffneyReligious Freedom: History, Cases, and OtherMaterials on the Interaction of Religion andGovernment. New York: Foundation Press, 2001.

Fur ther In format ion on

Re l i g ious F reedom Themes

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Orsi, Robert A., ed.Gods of the City: Religion and the American UrbanLandscape. Religion and North America series.Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

Rickard, Stephen“Religion and Global Affairs: Repression andResponse,” in “Symposium:The Impact of Religionon Global Affairs,” SAIS Review, vol. 18, no. 2,Summer-Fall, 1998, p.52.

Sullivan, Donna J.“Gender Equality and Religious Freedom:Toward aFramework for Conflict Resolution,” New YorkUniversity Journal of International Law and Politics,vol. 24, 1992, p.795.

Thiemann, Ronald F.Religion in Public Life: A Dilemma for Democracy.Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,1996.

Thierstein, Joel and Yahya R. Kamalipour, eds.Religion, Law and Freedom: a Global Perspective.Westport, CT: Praeger, 2000.

Wald, Kenneth D.Religion and Politics in the United States. 3d ed.Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 1997.

Warner, R. Stephen and Judith G.Wittner, eds.Gatherings in Diaspora: Religious Communities andthe New Immigration. Philadelphia:TempleUniversity Press, 1998.

Witte, John Jr.“Law, Religion, and Human Rights,” ColumbiaHuman Rights Law Review, vol. 28, 1996, pp.1-31.

Witte, John, Jr. and Johan D. van der Vyver, eds.Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective: LegalPerspectives. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,1995.

Young, Michael.“Religious Liberties and Religious Tolerance: AnAgenda for the Future,” Brigham Young UniversityLaw Review, vol. 4, 1996, pp. 973-87.


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I n t e r n e t S i t e s

Academic Info: Religion Gateway

http://www.academicinfo.net/religindex.html

Independent directory of links to a universe ofsites associated with the study and practice ofreligions.

An American History of Religious Freedom

http://www.freethought-web.org/ctrl/quotes_liberty.html

Quotations that support the U.S. history ofreligious liberty.

The Establishment Clause and Public Schools

http://www.aclu.org/issues/religion/pr3.html

Legal Bulletin from the American Civil LibertiesUnion (ACLU) on the U.S. Constitution’s FirstAmendment.

Exploring Constitutional Conflicts: Free Exerciseof Religion

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/freeexercise.htm

Exploring Constitutional Conflicts: Introductionto the Establishment Clause

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/estabinto.htm

Maintained by the University of Missouri, KansasCity School of Law, these sites were created foruse by law students and others interested inunderstanding the U.S. Constitution.

FindLaw: U.S. Constitution: First Amendment

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/

A compilation of resources on the FirstAmendment includes an overview, case histories,articles, analyses and interpretations of the U.S.Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom.

Introduction to the Theory of Religious Freedom(ACLU)

http://www.aclu.org/aclu-e/course2_carroll1.html

American Civil Liberties Union lecture on themajor controversies about interpretation of thefree exercise clause of the U.S. Constitution.

I n ter net S i tes on Re l i g ious F reedom

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The Pluralism Project

http://www.pluralism.org/

http://www.pluralism.org/resources/links/index.php

Developed by Dr. Diana L. Eck at HarvardUniversity to study and document the growingreligious diversity of the United States, with aspecial view to its new immigrant religiouscommunities.

The Religious Freedom Page

http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/

A collection of historical documents, constitutions,laws, court decisions, information about religiousfreedom organizations and a broad array ofinformation pertinent to exploring religiousfreedom in every nation, from faculty at theUniversity of Virginia.

Religion in Politics:A Complicated Landscape

http://pewforum.org/issues/religionpolitics.php3

Links to speeches and interviews by politicians onthe topic of religious faith, from the Pew Forum onReligion and Public Life.

Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993

http://www.commonlink.com/~olsen/RELIGION/rfra.html

U.S. House of Representatives resolution “toprotect the free exercise of religion.”

UNESCO MOST Clearinghouse on Religious Diversity

http://www.unesco.org/most/rr1.htm

Links to conventions and declarations on religiousrights, national constitutions, journal articles andbibliographic resources.

U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy,Human Rights and Labor:

Office of International Religious Freedom

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/irf/

Links to fact sheets, legislation, and present andarchived issues of the State Department’s AnnualReport on International Religious Freedom.

United States Commission on InternationalReligious Freedom (USCIRF)

http://www.uscirf.gov/

Access to reports, congressional hearings andtestimony, press releases and country information.


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Documents

OURNALS O F THE U. S. D TAT E Democracy issues of · and Portuguese and Spanish language versions, and selected issues also appear in Arabic and Russian. • English-language issues