Faith leaders met on Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. to discuss religious liberty and human dignity in the Americas. The conference was sponsored by the Interreligious Forum of the Americas and highlighted Christian, Muslim, and Jewish voices.
“Religious liberty is a major concern,” said Elias Szczytnicki, regional secretary general of Religions for Peace in Latin America. Mankind has always struggled to protect religious freedom, he explained, but recently we have seen “the incarceration of bishops” in the Americas. “This hasn’t happened for many years, and it’s alarming.”
Leaders at the conference were not shy about expressing their rising concerns – especially in wake of the recent incidents that Szczytnicki mentioned.
“We have to do more to prevent restrictions on religious liberty,” said Rashad Hussain, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. “We’ve watched the deterioration of religious freedom In Nicaragua in the case of Bishop Alverez.”
Bishop Rolando Álvarez was sentenced to 26 years in prison and stripped of his citizenship in Nicaragua after being charged with treason for his outspoken criticisms of his country’s increasingly authoritarian left-wing president, Daniel Ortega. In February, Álvarez refused to board a plane to the U.S. with 222 other political prisoners and is now serving out his sentence in prison rather than exile.
For many authoritarians, religious authority is seen as a threat. This is certainly the case for someone like Ortega as he looks to consolidate power in a country whose people are deeply Catholic and loyal to the church. But even in many democracies, political leaders sometimes view religion as a nuisance if not a threat.
“Many political leaders look at religion as a can of worms they’d prefer not to open,” said Cole Durham, president of the G20 Interfaith Forum Association. “In the U.S. we talk about separation of church and state, but that can be taken to extremes.” Like many advocates of religious liberty, Durham argued that when governments draft policies and pass laws, “religious perspectives are often not taken into account.”
This sentiment resounded throughout the day, but some participants at the conference argued that the preservation of religious freedom goes beyond petitioning governments to play fair with faith groups.
In one of the more provocative messages of the conference, Azza Karam, secretary general of Religions for Peace, challenged her audience to think of religious freedom within a broader context of freedom for all people. “It’s as if we think we can pursue religious freedom on its own. But we can’t,” she said. “We can’t silo women’s rights, and we can’t silo religious freedom. They are connected – just as all forms of phobia are deeply intertwined.”
Rather than only pointing fingers at secular institutions, Karam said that the interfaith movement could use some “critical self-reflection” when it comes to human rights. “It’s not as if every religious institution is genuinely a paradigm of virtue.”
To further the cause of religious freedom around the world, Karam said faith groups can do more than lobby governments and point fingers. Instead, they can bolster efforts to use their influence in advocating for the freedom and rights of all people.
The arrest of Bishop Álvarez and other similar incidents are not simply matters of religious freedom but freedom in general. As Ambassador Hussain put it, “When democracy suffers, so too does religious freedom.”
In the face of that reality, there seemed to be little disagreement among faith leaders and freedom advocates at the conference that democracy is taking hits in the Americas and beyond.
