Within Washington's current administration there exists a confluence of often opposing interests: evangelical Christian ideology and neo-liberal economic theory. Evangelical interests in recent years have pushed for the expansion of religious freedom, the abolishment of sex trafficking and the protection/expansion of conservative social values. Neo-liberal economic interests push for the expansion of free markets, greater financial transparency and maintaining stability within the global financial sectors.
While at times these interests have aligned, as in the war in Afghanistan, they are generally in conflict, as in the peace negotiations for Sudan's North-South conflict. The evangelical approach towards foreign policy is similar in some aspects as that of the neo-conservatives who dominate the current administration, but, on some issues, there is great divergence. Although the evangelical foreign policy is not the dominant policy of the current administration, it is gaining clout and its proponents are becoming better organized. Should George W. Bush be reelected in November, there is a chance that this new school of foreign policy could gain greater traction as the neo- conservatives lose credibility and the evangelicals increase their lobbying position.
Evangelical foreign policy has seen great transformation and growth since the mid-1990s, but the current agenda shares some common characteristics with that of its predecessors during the Cold War. The John Birch Society and the Christian Crusade led efforts to disengage the U.S. from the United Nations, for pragmatic reasons and because of a biblical interpretation of the role of the organization in the world. The multilateral institution was seen as the greatest threat to the U.S. as a "redeemer nation," and it undermined Washington's efforts to destroy the threat of communism spreading around the globe.
With the end of the Cold War, there was a period of time in which foreign policy was off the radar for most leaders in the evangelical movement, but a series of events in the mid-1990s brought the issues into the forefront. In 1995, Michael Horowitz, a neo-conservative scholar at the Hudson Institute, drafted an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, "New Intolerance between the Crescent and the Cross," which described what he saw as the U.S.' indifference to the religious persecution of Christians around the world. This helped to mobilize the largest evangelical organizations into adopting a "Statement of Conscience," which expressed outrage at religious persecution abroad. The statement was well received by an evangelical community that was already expanding its foreign operations. From 1996 to 2001, the number of Americans participating in missions abroad led by major Protestant agencies increased by a factor of eight. Many of those who participated in missions returned with stories of persecution and oppression.
In this climate, a coalition of evangelical Christians formed in order to lobby for Washington's adaptation of their agenda. Elliot Abrams and Nina Shea helped to push a reluctant Clinton administration to adopt the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, which created an ambassador-at-large for religious freedom and mandatory punitive actions for countries that repress religious expression. This act was widely condemned by the business community and proponents of neo- liberal economic theory because it threatened action against important trading partners like China and Saudi Arabia, but it found support from human rights groups which were growing increasingly hawkish in their approach to foreign policy following the events in Bosnia.
Skeptics feared that the act was essentially designed to aid and protect missionary workers abroad while attempting to convert non-Christians. In the end, the act's language was muted to protect business relationships with non-complying countries and the possible punitive actions were expanded to fifteen, giving the president discretion in the act's enforcement, but many see the act as creating a post within the State Department for proponents of the evangelical cause.
After success in legitimizing religious persecution as an area of focus in U.S. foreign policy, evangelical Christians, led again by Michael Horowitz, took up the cause of global sex trafficking of women. Human rights groups were once again brought into an alliance for the cause, and they were joined by several feminist groups. Again, the Clinton administration was skeptical of the language pushed by evangelical groups, and with the help of Senator Paul Wellstone, they were able to expand the act to encompass all forms of trafficking, not just sex trafficking. The 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act ties U.S. aid to efforts to crack down on trafficking in humans, and is widely seen as a good piece of legislation by groups that promote social justice.
For those interested in crafting an evangelical foreign policy, the election of George W. Bush was a godsend because it allowed the movement to expand its reach beyond human rights issues and lobby for acts that spread or protect conservative social values abroad. George W. Bush's role in his father's 1988 campaign was to reach out to the evangelical community that was skeptical of his tendency to look for a multilateral solution to foreign affairs. His personal history of overcoming a drinking problem through prayer helped to encourage the evangelical community that his father would be sympathetic to their concerns. The election of a president with established ties to evangelical leaders, who is comfortable quoting from the Bible in foreign policy speeches, has allowed for an open dialogue on the issues of concern for advocates of the evangelical mission abroad.
The movement's skepticism of the United Nations and multilateral solutions has been most pronounced in the area of spreading conservative social values abroad, and often evangelical Christian leaders find themselves opposing what they perceive as an encroachment of U.S. power by such institutions. Although there is a great diversity of views within the evangelical community, the current foreign policy debate is largely dominated by conservative voices. Recent successes for the movement in this area have included the denying of funding for the United Nations Population Fund (U.N.F.P.A.) in China and the shifting of emphasis towards abstinence in H.I.V./A.I.D.S. prevention strategies.
Evangelical opposition to using U.S. money to fund family planning and condom use abroad has strained relationships with the multilateral institutions that administer aid and has forced Washington to take a unilateral approach to even minor foreign policy decisions -- an outcome from which the neo- conservatives within the administration have benefited.
On the issue of U.S. unilateralism, neo-conservatives and evangelical Christians have found their interests aligned, but the two camps often find themselves in opposing corners on how to set the priorities for this use of power. They are in agreement on their unwavering protection of Israel, but neo-conservatives tend to push for the use of military force to counter rising threats to U.S. power and the global economy, while evangelicals push for military force to counter religious persecution and to counter sex trafficking. In a country like China, this difference in priorities can lead to vastly different strategies.
The neo-conservative approach has been to work with China to develop its economic base, while preventing the state's rise as a military power in the region. Evangelical Christians have called for economic disengagement from China until the country improves its record on religious freedom. The war in Iraq was promoted by neo-conservatives as an asymmetrical response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 -- the first in what was to be a series of actions to quickly spread market democracy throughout the region. Although evangelical Christian leaders gave unquiet support to the war, for human rights issues and out of opposition to the U.N.'s perceived slowness to act, they were not the architects of the strategy that has largely discredited the neo-conservatives.
Should George W. Bush be reelected in November, evangelical Christians could see their influence within the administration grow because of the discrediting of the neo-conservative approach and because of recent organizational adjustments within the evangelical leadership. The National Association of Evangelicals has nearly completed a framework for political action and will unveil the document in October. The foreign policy sections of the framework strongly endorse the protection of religious freedom, abolition of sex trafficking, and, more quietly, the promotion of conservative social values abroad. A second Bush administration that moves away from the neo- conservative approach and becomes more open to an evangelical foreign policy will be a threat to the elements within the administration that have worked to expand neo-liberal economic markets abroad. By looking at how these tensions played out in Sudan, a predictive model for future action emerges.
In Sudan, business interests aligned themselves with the central government because Khartoum controlled newly discovered oil fields, and it was believed that a strong central government could produce the greatest stability to protect foreign investment in the oilfields. Evangelical Christians were vocal in their support of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (S.P.L.M./A.) in the South, because it was believed that the rebels were protecting Christians and animists from religious prosecution from the Islamic central government. Evangelicals lobbied hard for the State Department to involve itself on the side of the rebels, but only after the movement reorganized itself and began to lobby the White House directly did it receive a more satisfactory response.
In the Sudan peace negotiations, the White House favored stability over the cause of the southern rebels, but pushed for a resolution that would satisfy the basic demands of those in the evangelical community. In future conflicts, President Bush's administration could likely pursue a similar path -- business and strategic interests will take priority over those stressed by evangelical Christians, but a resolution that benefits both interest groups will be the preferred solution. In a second Bush administration, the interests of evangelical Christians could be given more attention than during the first, but neo-liberal economic theories will continue to dominate U.S. foreign policy no matter what the outcome of the November election.
Report Drafted By:
Adam Wolfe
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