The Foreign Service Journal, April 2009

A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 The Importance of Religious Freedom World of Faith and Freedom: Why International Religious Liberty Is Vital to American National Security Thomas F. Farr, Oxford University Press, 2008, $29.95, hardcover, 367 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID T. J ONES As its rather unwieldy title suggests, World of Faith and Freedom: Why In- ternational Religious Freedom Is Vital to American National Security is not a page-turning “easy read.” Much of the text is dense, written as if author Thomas Farr were a professor of com- parative theology or philosophy rather than a career diplomat. But for those willing to stick with it, the book makes a compelling case that the U.S. government does not really understand the role of religion in the actions of foreign societies, has poorly used the tools it has available to influ- ence such activities, and must change its approaches to address both the chal- lenges of militant Islam and the com- plexities of other societies in which religion plays a significant public/polit- ical role. In Farr’s view, Washington has for too long been sidetracked into focusing on rescuing the victims of individual cases of religious persecution. Al- though that obviously is a worthy task, it is an insufficient objective. Difficult as it appears, our concern should be di- rected toward advancing religious free- dom—not simply religious “tolerance” — as an accepted part of political ac- tivity throughout the world. Farr gets off to a shaky start in his opening section, “Intimations,” whose three chapters address the aforemen- tioned elements of religious freedom. In this regard, Farr is close to an abso- lutist regarding religious freedom. For him, it is not just one of the panoply of human rights listed in the First Amend- ment to the U.S. Constitution, but rather the most important of such rights, from which all others flow. Such an approach suggests a hierar- chy of rights, which was one of the main arguments against the passage of the 1998 International Religious Free- dom Act and its congressionally man- dated Commission on International Religious Freedom. Farr’s attempts to justify that approach are weak at best. The four chapters comprising the second part of the book (“Acts”) are much more persuasive. Farr outlines in engrossing detail the multifaceted struggle during the 1990s to create bureaucratic structures to promote religious freedom. He is well quali- fied to recount such specifics, having been part of the State Department IRF office virtually from its inception and serving as its interim head during the almost 20-month (2000-2002) interregnum between IRF ambassa- dors. Consequently, he outlines with pre- cision the effort to identify appropriate individuals to serve as State’s ambassa- dor-at-large for religious freedom and the bureaucratic infighting (both within and beyond the department) over per- sonnel, lines of authority and responsi- bilities. His analysis constitutes a solid management case study of the vicissi- tudes facing a new element in an or- ganization skeptical of its mission. The three chapters of the final sec- tion (“Particulars”) essentially derive from Farr’s travels in early 2001 to Saudi Arabia and China. This section is rich with engaging anecdotes demon- strating how difficult it is to advance a Western concept of religious freedom in cultures that are essentially hostile to such ideas. Curiously, Farr buries his key rec- ommendations, both for general U.S. foreign policy regarding religious free- dom and an attitude adjustment on the part of U.S. diplomats, in a generalized chapter on the challenges of Islam, rather than including them in his very brief “Conclusion.” Of course, given that his proposals include creating a re- ligion subspecialty for FSOs and a reli- gion specialist for every country desk where that issue plays a significant role (which is to say nearly all), perhaps they were deliberately buried! Ultimately, World of Faith and Free- dom comes to grief on the rocks of B OOKS