Fueled by news reports of religious persecution, there is much talk these days, often urgently expressed, about the need for Americans to take responsibility for the promotion and enforcement of rights to religious freedom around the world. The project has broad and enthusiastic support from legislators, within churches, and among the general population. In addition to private initiatives promoting religious freedom abroad, and in response to intense lobbying, the U.S. Senate has recently unanimously passed and the president has signed into law, the International Religious Freedom Act. The new act is quite elaborate. It creates a special State Department office to monitor religious persecution and requires preparation by that office of annual reports describing religious freedom violations in every country in the world, as well as special training of foreign service officers and immigration officials and the opening of American embassies to religious activities. A special adviser on international religious freedom is to be added to the National Security Council. To oversee these new civil servants, the act provides for the creation of an independent watchdog advisory commission on religious freedom. Finally, the president is directed to take action, on the basis of the annual reports, to promote religious freedom around the world.

It should not need saying that everyone should deplore murder, torture, and unjust imprisonment of identified minorities, for whatever reason, and that everyone should be tireless in finding ways to promote a more tolerant global community. But maybe that has to be said before challenging something as basic to American identity as the promotion of religious freedom.

What, if anything, should Americans do about stories of religious persecution, or, more broadly, of limitations on religious freedom, outside the United States? Should religious freedom, as a legally protected right, be enforced as a universal goal, and, if so, does this act, and the movement that supports it, actually do that? The act, and its predecessor versions, some of which targeted only the persecution of Christians, have been criticized by experts in the international human rights community (and by Commonweal in its August 15, 1997, editorial) for failing to acknowledge: (1) that what is called religious persecution is often actually motivated by a complex mix of racial, ethnic, and political animus; (2) that prioritizing religious persecution over other human-rights abuses may unfairly allocate resources in such a way as to discriminate against those persecuted for other reasons; and (3) that such attention may in some cases do more harm than good to the very people it is intended to help. While finding each of these criticisms important, I will focus here on a prior issue. Even if these criticisms could be addressed by better drafting, have we properly thought through the underlying rationale for this policy? Should Americans be undertaking the policing of international religious freedom at all?

To begin with, what does the International Religious Freedom Act mean by "religion"? Legal language demands clearly defined boundaries, boundaries that are hard to come by when talking about religion. It is difficult to set such boundaries without privileging a certain kind of religion. Section 2 of the new act (which can be found on the web at frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/congress), titled "Findings," asserts that:

The right to freedom of religion undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States. Many of our nation’s founders fled religious persecution abroad, cherishing in their hearts and minds the ideal of religious freedom. They established in law, as a fundamental right and as a pillar of our nation, the right to freedom of religion. From its birth to this day, the United States has prized this legacy of religious freedom and honored this heritage by standing for religious freedom and offering refuge to those suffering from religious persecution.

Well, sort of. This is not history. This is myth. While religious freedom has undeniably been a proud hallmark of American political life, religious freedom has had a rockier career in the United States, particularly in the beginning, than is usually acknowledged. Who are "they"? If by "our nation’s founders" is meant those who fought the revolution and wrote the Constitution, none of them fled persecution. If "they" means the colonial founders, a few "cherished" religious liberty, William Penn, Roger Williams, and arguably Lord Baltimore. Most did not. The last sentence of section 2 is simply untrue. The United States has continuously denied religious freedom to some of its own citizens, African-Americans, Mormons, Catholics, and Native Americans, among others, and it has refused to admit refugees persecuted for their religion, including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

Are these simply an academic’s quibbles? What do these myths do apart from making us feel smug about being Americans? The story told by the "Findings" section of the act, a story which could be recited by any American schoolchild, by its broad and inclusive language, conceals the theological assumptions underlying the American promotion of religious freedom and conceals the complex reality of religious life. Its comprehensive claims discourage questions. If one reads through this new act with a more nuanced understanding of American religious history, one is continually struck by the way in which it promotes a peculiarly American understanding of what religion is. Religion is understood by this act, and indeed by most Americans, to be individual, chosen, private, believed, and separate from other institutions and identities. For most of the world, religion is communal, given, public, enacted, and intertwined with other institutions and identities. This new act is clearly not intended to promote freedom of religion. It is intended to promote freedom of a certain kind of religion, religion as it has been shaped by American law and history, religion that has been set apart and contained by the secular state. Much religious activity is simply not intended to be protected: religiously motivated refusal of medical care for children, the exclusive use of sacred public lands by indigenous peoples, religiously motivated restrictions on education, family coercion in religious matters, and, of course, religiously motivated violence, among others. Yet all of these are historically a major part of religious practice.

Is it inevitable that freedom be, in fact, freedom of the right kind of religion? Is there any way to avoid the paradoxical result that what sounds absolute is in fact quite circumscribed? Is there a principled way to separate religion that should be protected from religion that should not? Or to separate religious from nonreligious activity? Careful attention to what we mean by religion is indispensable. Religion is at the heart of the modern identity crisis. In many ways it has been the "other" against which modern secular democratic society has constructed itself. The promotion of religious liberty puts into relief the existential situation of the modern global citizen: how to reconcile a commitment to individual liberty with an acknowledgment that individuals are formed in the context of shared histories, histories not entirely of their making or of their choice. Religious histories, institutions, ideas, and people shape those histories, for better or worse, and religious histories, institutions, ideas, and people are deeply compromised, by Original Sin, if you will.

One could argue that religious freedom is being promoted, in part, at this point in human history because of the realization that the secular state may have been too quick to dismiss religion as incompatible with modern rational society. Maybe people cannot live and be whole without religion. But the difficulty is that, while we find ourselves, at this new historical moment, in a new global situation, one that is acknowledging the importance of religion, we have not revised our peculiarly modern and American understanding of religion. In promoting religious freedom we are still relying on a stripped-down understanding of religion that finds its origin in Protestant and Enlightenment theories of the state and of religion-one that sees religion’s role as one of teaching virtue to its citizens through the training of private consciences-and which often simply refuses to acknowledge cultural aspects of religious life. If the Enlightenment model of religion is abandoned because it has been found to be discriminatory against other kinds of religion, if all religion is readmitted to the public space-it turns out that religion is a pretty unwieldy partner in the promotion of democracy and freedom.

Certainly governments need to be more informed about and more sensitive to religious issues. But because of the complexity and deep ambiguity of religious reality, might it not be better for the U.S. government to condemn torture, unjust imprisonment, murder, and abridgment of freedom, however motivated, while religious communities participated in rethinking modernity’s critical assessment of religion? Perhaps it would be better to promote religious understanding and tolerance through education and dialogue than through overambitious legislation.