Program Overview

• Hosts: Ray Suarez
• Length: 51 minutes
• Original Airdate: Sep 2009

“And I had foreign officials saying, "Why do you Americans care so much about religious freedom?" They'd never run into this with any other governments.”
–John Hanford, former Ambassador-at-Large at the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom

Chalk that up to the Pilgrims, or perhaps James Madison. After all, he established religion as the first freedom in the Bill of Rights. Since then, religious liberty has been an American institution. But it wasn't until 1998 that Congress commanded the US to promote religious freedom around the globe. And, in a world where religious intolerance and abuse is on the rise, the secular-minded State Department is conflicted over this mission of freeing the faithful and punishing the persecutors. Often, the promotion of religious freedom is sacrificed on the altar of strategic and economic worship.

Segment 1: Ray Suarez and Tom Farr discuss the whys, hows and trade-offs in promoting international religious freedom. Listen to this segment.

Guests: Tom Farr, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and former Director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and Saba Moritz, a Baha'i from Iran.

Listen to Ray's full interview with Tom Farr.

Segment 2: Sean Carberry travels to Pakistan, where violence against minority faiths is on the rise, to measure the gap between the laws and the practice of religious liberty. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Asma Jahangir, Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; Jerry Firestein, Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Pakistan; Shireen Mazari, Spokesperson for the Movement for Justice political party; and Mohammed Ibrahim, Senator from the Northwest Frontier Province.

Segment 3: Ray Suarez explores how officials in the US Office of International Religious Freedom sought to further religious liberty in Vietnam. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Robert Seiple, former Ambassador-at-Large at the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom; John Hanford, Sieple’s successor at the Office of International Religious Freedom; and William Inboden, former Special Advisor in the Office of International Religious Freedom.

Segment 4: Matt Ozug travels to Vietnam, to look at what US diplomatic pressure has yielded for that nation’s faithful. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Rev. Nghia Trung Tran, General Secretary of the Vietnamese Presbyterian Church; Nguyen Van Kien, Vietnam-USA Society; Michael Michalak, US Ambassador to Vietnam; Quang Nguyen, Mennonite Pastor; Le Quoc Quan, Human Rights Attorney; and Father Peter Nguyen, Catholic priest.

Segment 5: Ray Suarez examines the efforts of lobbying groups to win the ear of a US government balancing the promotion of religious freedom in China with a host of other interests, from trade and finance to security. Listen to this segment.

Guests include Anne Yang, Volunteer for Falun Dafa Practitioners Association; Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA); Ping Yu, Falun Gong Practitioner; Tom Farr, Senior Fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs; Scott Flipse, Director of East Asia Policy and Programs at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom; and Dennis Wilder, former Senior Director for East Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

*Correction: The date of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue was misstated in this segment. It took place in July, not August 2009.

The First Freedom / Executive Producer: Aaron Lobel / AAM Producers: Monica Bushman, Sean Carberry, Matt Ozug, Monica Villavicencio and Chris Williams / Interns: Natalie Friedman, Alex Taylor and Jake Yarmus / Photo Credit: Matt Ozug

Music heard on this broadcast:

“Vindaloo” by Four Piece Suit
“Rhytm (Arabi)”
“Magic Lantern” by Pham Duc Thanh
“Heer” by Junoon
“Missionary Man” by Eurythmics
“Islamabad Calling” by Carlos Peron
“The Whale Song” by Modest Mouse
“Day Dream” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
“In Christ There is No East or West” by John Fahey
"Desert Capriccio" by Tan Dun & Yo-Yo Ma