In the wake of criticism from religious leaders and political
experts, President Obama has moved to appoint a religious freedom
ambassador, a post he has allowed to remain vacant for the more than two
years he has held office.
On Feb. 7 the White House announced that the President had
re-submitted the nomination of pastor Suzan Johnson Cook as the
Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom, a position created by
Congress in 1998.
Her re-nomination came only days after Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
of Denver urged the president in a letter to demonstrate a stronger
commitment to global religious freedom.
Although President Obama had nominated Cook last June, her nomination encountered difficulties and expired in Congress.
Thomas Farr, the first head of the U.S. State Department's Office of
International Religious Freedom, said that the administration’s failure
thus far to appoint an ambassador shows a troubling indifference to the
issue.
In a Feb. 8 interview with CNA, he expressed concern with the
president’s nominee, citing Cook’s lack of any prior diplomatic
experience.
Cook is currently pastor of Bronx Christian Fellowship Baptist Church
in New York City and founder of the Worldwide Wisdom Center. She also
served as an advisor on President Clinton’s Domestic Policy Council and
as Chaplain to the New York Police Department.
“Frankly, it's hard to know whether the thing to do at this point is
to get behind the president's nominee,” said Farr, who heads the
Religious Freedom project at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for
Religion, Peace, and World Affairs.
He added that “there is an argument to be made” that the U.S. simply
needs “to get somebody in that job.” Cook, he said, is “an accomplished
woman of good will who wants to do the job well and can learn.”
However, Farr said that the crisis in Egypt shows the need for an
experienced diplomat and a strategic understanding of the religious
dimensions of foreign policy.
Farr said that if the ambassador’s post had been filled from the
start, the administration would have at least a working knowledge and
more thorough understanding of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Islamic group
is rising in prominence amid Egypt’s protests and is considered to be
the best-organized opposition to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's
National Democratic Party.
However, “we don't know their proximity to power and one of the
reasons we don't know is because American diplomacy does not do religion
very well,” he said.
“We have not thought very carefully about the
religious aspects of the Muslim Brotherhood in power or near power, but
we need to do that.”
“Imagine if we'd had somebody for the last two years,” he added, who
had “the resources and the authority” needed to effectively comprehend
the situation. We would be in a better position than we are today.”
Farr called the ambassador’s position crucial in terms of
representing the U.S.’s stance on protecting religious freedom to other
countries.
The religious freedom ambassador, he explained, “is empowered to go
anywhere in the world” and “have substantive talks with any group and
any government in the world on issues of religious freedom.”
The position also allows for appealing to Congress to fund programs
for the advancement of religious freedom and to “empower indigenous
forces” in countries throughout the world, including Egypt, he said.
“Unfortunately, I know nothing about this administration that
suggests they see any religious freedom issue in what's going on the
Egypt,” he said.
CNA contacted the White House on Feb. 8 to discuss Cook's re-nomination. A spokesperson declined to comment.
In a Feb. 1 letter, Archbishop Chaput – a former commissioner on the
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom – warned President
Obama of “a growing worldwide crisis in religious freedom.”
He urged the
president to fill the post of religious freedom ambassador and to
“develop an international religious freedom strategy that engages all
elements of our foreign policy establishment.”
“Some 70 percent of the world's people live in nations – regrettably,
many of them Muslim-majority countries – where religious freedom is
gravely restricted,” the archbishop wrote.
“The concern of many
Catholics in my own diocese – and I believe across the United States –
is that insufficient policy attention has been given to this mounting
problem.”